Level I

Chapter 4
Writing

English | Vietnamese Section

English | Vietnamese
IC3, IT, TOEFL, Best Answer
Self- and Teacher Evaluation

Styles of Learning

What traits signal success in your country’s ‘educational system’?  

Câu hỏi hướng dẫn:
Giáo dục: Làm thế nào để tiếp thu và sử dụng tri thức trong nền văn hoá của bạn?

Vietnamese Language Skills:

Writing About School

Grammar: “Lai”: To Do It Again

Verbs with “Lai”

English Language Lesson

Back to Top

How do you acquire knowledge? Read the following passages about how people acquire knowledge. Mark the statements that are true for you.

1 __	“I try to go to class every day and take notes carefully.”
2 ___	“I review the notes every night before I go to bed.”
3 ___	“To remember a lesson, I often read it out loud while trying to memorize every word.”
4 ___	“My teacher checks our lessons every class session to know whether we know the lessons. So we have to learn by heart to answer her questions.”
5___	“I question while reading something, and try to answer the questions myself. This helps me remember what I read better.”
6 ___	“I am part of a study group. I like to talk over our lessons with classmates. We also can share the workload.”
7 ___	“I keep a journal, trying to write down something: my thoughts about a friend, a neighbor, or current topics.”
8 ___	“Every day, I try to learn 10 new words. I use cards and write each word on one side of a card, its meaning on the other side. Then I put the cards in a box or case. Every day I take them out and review them.”
9 ___	“I get up early and review all my lessons for the day. My mother says that we can remember anything easily and quickly in the early morning.”
10___	“If I write it down, I remember it.”

Read the following quotes and sayings about knowledge. You may use a dictionary to check up the meaning of the underlined words.

• Knowledge is a treasure, but practice is a key to it. (Fuller)

• Education is what remains after one has forgotten what he learned in school.

• To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe. (Marilyn vos Savant)

• Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Be still and allow the mud to settle. (Lao Tzu)

• What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances, determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful. ( Blaine Lee)

• What we become depends on what we read after all the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books. (Thomas Carlyle)

• Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you'll never cease to grow. (D'Angelo)

• There is no knowledge that is not power. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

(from http://quotations.about.com/cs/inspirationquotes/a/Knowledge5.htm)

Free writing Exercise

Write quickly without worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Write anything that comes into your mind as you read the following questions. Don’t think about the quality of the writing or try to edit as you write; just write down as many thoughts as you can for several minutes.

1. What is knowledge? Is it what we memorize, understand or use?

2. How do you show that you know something?

3. What do you do to remember something?

4. Have you learned by heart some poems, proverbs or short sayings? What does this do for you?

5. When is the best time for you to study?

6. Do you read on a schedule? (Every day, once a week or twice a month?) What do you often read?

7. Do you go to the library or attend a theme club? For what reasons?

8. Do you write regularly? journal or diary, letters, as a method to study?

9. What do you do to prepare for an exam or test? review lessons or notes everyday, learn everything by rote, cram everything some days before?

After you are finished, look over what you have written and pick out the best thoughts or ideas. You will use them to write a composition describing your habits of learning.

Introduction to Skill(s):

The Concluding Sentence

In a paragraph, the first sentence is often the topic sentence, and the concluding sentence usually goes at the end. This sentence is to summarize the main idea stated in the topic sentence. It often restates this main idea.

Example:

T.S: I often work hard on my lesson, and this helps me retain it longer.

C.S: Doing different things with a lesson helps me digest it better.

Describing Habits

1. Use the simple present tense to describe habits.

Rules for forming the tense with the third person singular subject (He / She / It / Singular nouns)

- Add -es to the verbs ending in -s, -x, -sh, -ch, -z, -y (with the preceding consonant)

- Add -s to the rest of verbs

Example:

She often studies overnight.

Nam stays up very late to read his favorite book every day.

2. Use adverbs of frequency to describe the habits

The following words indicate the frequency in the descending order.

Always

usually

often

sometimes

rarely

never

The adverbs can go before the ordinary Verbs or after Be or Modal Verbs.

Ex: I always feel nervous when my teacher calls me to check my lesson.

He is sometimes up early, especially when the exam is coming.

Writing Assignment:

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In two or three paragraphs, describe way(s) that you learn. Under what conditions do you best study? What style of learning is best suited for you? How best do you show what you know?

The paragraphs should be well-constructed with topic sentences, support and concluding sentences.

Do not start writing until you have gone through all the exercises in this chapter.

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Vocabulary: Below are descriptions of two theories of the ways that people think. Use the words in the charts below as vocabulary words.

Left-Brain and Right-Brain Dominance

Not all people think alike. When we are presented with new materials in class, we each have different ways to learn this material. Consider the theories of Left- and Right-Brain Dominance. Below you will find lists of characteristics of Left-Brain Dominant people and Right-Brain Dominant people. Which are you?

	Left-Brain Dominance		Right-Brain Dominance
	Intellectual		Intuitive
	Remembers names		Remembers faces
	Responds to verbal instructions and explanations		Responds to demonstrated, illustrated, or symbolic instructions
	Experiments systematically with control		Experiments randomly with less restraint
	Makes objective judgments		Makes subjective judgments
	Planned and structured		Fluid and spontaneous
	Prefers established, certain information		Prefers elusive, uncertain information
	Analytic reader		Synthesizing reader
	Reliance on language in thinking and remembering		Reliance on images in thinking and remembering
	Prefers talking and writing		Prefers drawing and manipulating objects
	Prefers multiple choice questions		Prefers open-ended questions
	Control feelings		More free with feelings
	Not good at interpreting body language		Good at interpreting body language
	Rarely uses metaphors		Frequently uses metaphors
	Favors logical problem solving		Favors intuitive problem solving

Multiple Intelligences

The theory of multiple intelligences was developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. It suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, is far too limited. Instead, Dr. Gardner proposes different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:

1. Verbal - the ability to use words
2. Visual - the ability to see things in your mind
3. Physical - the ability to use your body well
4. Musical - the ability to understand and use music
5. Mathematical & logical - the ability to apply logic to systems and numbers
6. Introspective - the ability to understand thoughts and feelings in yourself
7. Interpersonal - the ability to relate well to other people’s smarts

Let's explore each one briefly by matching the intelligences and what they mean. Write the types of intelligence against the descriptions. As we do, think about which are your strongest kinds of intellect?

________Uses charts & symbols to get a point across, sees things clearly in the mind, can sense what something will look like, likes pictures and demonstrations to help understand things.

________Good at explaining things, likes writing and reading, places more importance on things which are written or verbalized, likes work pictures, puns, creative phrasing, new words, enjoys expanding vocabulary.

________Enjoys quiet time to be alone in thought, understands his own motives and reasons for doing things, likes to daydream about new ideas and explore his own feelings and thoughts.

________Learns best by doing, wants to get hands on contact with the subject, feels a need to move while learning, pastimes involve activity or handiwork.

________People smart, good with others, can mediate arguments, knows what to do to connect with someone else, sensitive to others, likes contact with people, teams committees, social events.

________Likes to put things in order, arranges things logically, looks for patterns and relationships between things, good at analysis, calculation, planning. Needs for things to make sense. Speaks in sequences; first, second then third.

________Remembers tunes and lyrics easily, uses music as a frame of reference, has a natural sense of timing or rhythm, enjoys sounds of all types, is easily distracted by sounds, notices the cadence of things.

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Passage(s) in English:

Betty Edwards is an art instructor whose classic work Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (originally published in 1979) has greatly influenced the teaching of drawing.

Edwards uses the findings of modern brain research as an organizing principle for her system, and is especially guided by "split-brain" research which suggests that the two hemispheres of the brain have different functions. She proposes exercises to bring out the creative abilities of the right side of the brain, as opposed to the analytic and logical abilities of the left brain. (http://www.mywiseowl.com/index.php?title=Betty_Edwards&action=edit).

In her book, Edward writes: Inside each of our skulls . . . we have a double brain with two ways of knowing. . . As each of our hemispheres gathers in the same sensory information, each half of our brains may handle the information in different ways: the task may be divided between the hemispheres, each handling the part suited to its style. Or one hemisphere, often the dominant left, will “take over” and inhibit the other half.

The left hemisphere analyzes, abstracts, counts, marks time, plans step-by-step procedures, verbalizes, makes rational statements based on logic.

We have a second way of knowing: the right hemisphere mode. We “see” things in this mode that may be imaginary—existing only in the mind’s eye—or recall things that may be real (can you image your front door, for example?). We see how things exist in space and how the parts go together to make up the whole. Using the right hemisphere, understand metaphors, we dream, we create new combinations of ideas. When something is too complex to describe, we can make gestures that communicate. (p. 35, 1979 edition)

TIPS FOR LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

1	Study every night, including weekends.  Two hours of studying the night before a test is not nearly as effective (or pleasant) as 20 minutes each night.

2	Use commuting time to review one thing--a verb ending, a set of contrasting adjectives, a line of dialog which has given you trouble

3	Break up your nightly studying--ten minutes of vocabulary before dinner, ten minutes of verbs after dinner, ten minutes of grammar review before bed (or before school if you're a morning person).
4	Do some self-evaluation and determine how and in what setting you learn best. If loud music distracts you, don't set yourself up for frustration by studying with someone who loves it.

5	Very few people learn a language best by reading about it.  You need to pronounce the words aloud, repeating them often with their English meanings and spellings, especially if you learn easily by listening.

6	If you need to write to learn, use the pen and write the words over and over.

7	Visualize the foreign words and their meanings while you're waiting at the doctor's office or for your ride to pick up.  Use flash cards for the troublesome words and display those flash cards in your room on the mirror or the door --someplace you look to automatically.

8	Study with a friend, quizzing each other.

9	Come for extra help after or before school, but be prepared to be an active learner.

10	Do not obsess on what you think you cannot do.  Telling yourself that you are a lousy speller in English and therefore cannot possibly spell in French is self-defeating.  Tell yourself that French can actually be easier than English to spell, once you learn the rules.

11	Congratulate yourself on your strengths.  You might have a real "ear" for accents.  Vocabulary may come quite easily for you.  Maybe you find grammar interesting (and, yes, there are people who get a kick out of using the term "subordinate conjunction").

(from http://www.prep.fairfield.edu/On_Campus/Academics/Faculty/ccarrington/tips_for_learning_a_foreign_lang.htm)

Exercises and Activities for Comprehension and Analyzing Content:

Exercise #1: Read the Activity given in the center column and decide if you think it is an activity using the left side of your brain or the right. You may want to discuss this with your classmates.

	Left-Brain Mode	Activity	Right-Brain Mode
1		writing a poem
2		assembling a bicycle
3		repairing a bicycle, but not having all the parts
4		learning how to write a paragraph in English
5		telling a story from your childhood
6		memorizing for a test
7		acting in play
8		copying the calligraphy of a famous writer
9		listening to music and drawing what you feel
10		following a recipe in a cookbook
11		trying to remember and cook a dish that your grandmother made when you were young
12		learning how to do a math problem

Exercise #2: Many skills in today’s education rely on left-dominant thinking. Most likely, you have exercised that side of your brain a lot. But many people may not be using the right-dominant thinking as much in academics. If you are a right-dominant thinking student, you have probably had to learn to use the left side in order to succeed in your studies. Below are some exercises to use the right side of your brain. Go through the exercises and try to make the shift. (see the translation below )

Vases and Faces: An Exercise for the Double Brain

(from Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, pp.46-47)

You have probably seen the perceptual-illusion drawing of the vase and faces. Looked at one way, the drawing appears to be two faces seen in profile. Then, as you are looking at it, the drawing seems to change and become a vase. One version of the drawing is shown on the right.

Before you begin: First, read all the directions for the exercise.

1. Draw a profile of a person’s head on the left side of the paper, facing toward the center. (If you are left-handed, draw the profile on the right side, facing toward the center.) Examples are shown of both the right-handed and left-handed drawings. Make up your own version of the profile if you wish. It seems to help if this profile comes from your own memorized, stored symbols for a human profile.

2. Next, draw horizontal lines at the top and bottom of your profile, forming top and bottom of the vase. (See drawings to your right.

3. Now go back over your drawing of the first profile with your pencil. As the pencil moves over the features, name them to yourself: forehead, nose, upper lip, lower lip, chin, neck. Repeat this step at least once. This an L-mode task: naming symbolic shapes.

4. Next, starting at the top, draw the profile in reverse. By doing this, you will complete the vase. The second profile should be a reversal of the first in order for the vase to be symmetrical. Watch for the faint signals from your brain that you are shifting modes of information processing. You may experience a sense of mental conflict at some point in the drawing of the second profile. Observe this. And observe how you solve the problem. You will find that you are doing the second profile differently. This is right hemisphere-mode drawing

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Bài tập #2: Trong nền giáo dục hiện nay, nhiều kĩ năng đưa ra để rèn luyện cho học sinh dựa trên sự suy nghĩ của những người thuận tay phải do nửa não trái điều khiển. Có nhiều khả năng là bạn cũng đã luyện tập nửa não trái của bạn rất nhiều. Tuy nhiên, nhiều người thuận tay trái dùng nửa não phải để tiến hành các hoạt động học thuật. Nếu bạn là sinh viên thuận tay trái, có lẽ là bạn đã phải học cách dùng nửa não trái của mình để thành công trong học tập. Dưới đây là một số bài luyện tập để dùng nửa não bên phải. Hãy tiến hành các bài luyện tập và cố gắng đổi bên.

Lọ hoa và gương mặt: Luyện tập cả hai nửa não
(Trích từ Tập vẽ với nửa não bên phải của tác giả Betty Edward, trang 46-47)

Chắc bạn đã có dịp xem hình không gian ba chiều của lọ hoa và các gương mặt. Thoạt tiên thì bức tranh là một lọ hoa, sau đó nhìn kĩ hơn thì lọ hoa có vẻ biến đổi trở thành 2 gương mặt nhìn nghiêng. Một kiểu khác của hình vẽ được trình bày ở hình bên trái.

Trước khi bạn bắt đầu: Hãy đọc hướng dẫn luyện tập.

1. Hãy vẽ hình một đầu người ở bên trái của tờ giấy, mặt quay vào giữa. (Nếu bạn thuận tay trái, vẽ hình đầu người sang bên phải tờ giấy, mặt quay vào giữa). Ví dụ dưới đây trình bày cả bức vẽ của người thuận tay trái lẫn của người thuận tay phải. Hãy tùy ý chọn các kiểu khuôn mặt để vẽ. Có thể sẽ thuận lợi hơn nếu khuôn mặt là từ trí nhớ của chính bạn.

2. Tiếp theo, vẽ một đường ngang ở phía trên và phía dưới của khuôn mặt để tạo thành phần đầu và phần đáy của lọ hoa. (Hãy nhìn theo hình bên phải).

3. Bây giờ hãy tô lại hình của bạn vẽ lúc đầu bằng bút chì. Cùng với lúc bút chì đi qua các phần của gương mặt, hãy gọi tên các phần đó: trán, mũi, môi trên, môi dưới, cằm, cổ. Lặp lại bước 3 này ít nhất một lần. Đây là một yêu cầu của mô hình L: gọi tên các biểu tượng của hình ảnh.

4. Tiếp đến, bắt đầu từ phần trên của gương mặt, vẽ hình nhìn nghiêng này theo chiều ngược lại. Làm như vậy, bạn sẽ hoàn thành việc vẽ lọ hoa. Gương mặt nhìn nghiêng thứ hai phải tương đương với gương mặt thứ nhất để lọ hoa được cân đối. Hãy theo dõi những dấu hiệu dù mờ nhạt nhất hiện ra trong óc của bạn cho thấy sự chuyển đổi cách xử lí thông tin. Bạn có thể thấy cảm giác mâu thuẫn của trí óc ở một số thời điểm khi vẽ gương mặt nghiêng thứ hai. Hãy quan sát điều này. Và hãy quan sát xem bạn giải quyết mâu thuẫn này như thế nào. Bạn sẽ thấy mình vẽ gương mặt nghiêng thứ hai theo một cách khác. Đó là cách vẽ theo sự điều khiển của nửa não bên phải.

Exercises and Activities for Developing Content of Student Writing:

Exercise #3: Answer the following questions after having completed the exercises above. Your answers may be like free writing. Get down as many ideas as you can when answering the questions.

1. Of the multiple intelligences, which ones are you strongest in?
2. Are you a left-brain or right-brain dominant person?
3. How will knowing this help you be an even better leader, trainer, team member, family member, etc.?
4. Does learning a language require some special strategies? Are these strategies similar to or different from strategies in learning in general?
5. If a strategy works for someone, does it necessarily work for others?
6. Have you tried any of the language learning strategies above? What are they? What are the tips that are new to you?
7. What tips do you think are the most useful for you? Pick up 5 tips and rank them in the order of importance.

Exercises and Activities for Building Skills:

Exercise #4. Read the following paragraph.

Mai, a high school student, is considered very successful in her class. She is never absent from school. She listens to lectures carefully and takes very good notes. Whenever she is called on by her teachers, she always shows that she remembers her lessons well and answers all their questions. For homework, she finishes every assignment to the best of her ability. She has made these efforts for study her habit, and as a result she scores high in all her subjects.

Answer the following questions

1. Underline the topic sentence.
2. Why is it the topic sentence?
3. Underline the concluding sentence.
4. Why is it considered the concluding sentence?
5. List the ideas that support the topic sentence.

_____________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________

Exercise #5. Write the concluding sentences for paragraphs beginning with the following topic sentences.

For Example:Topic Sentence: Hoa has a very busy timetable.

Concluding Sentence : Thus, Hoa realizes that in order to do all the things she is interested in, she must keep a busy and organized timetable.

1. Topic Sentence: Lan owes her academic success to her persistence in studying a little bit every day.

Concluding Sentence :

2. Topic Sentence: Dung enjoys being with other students and believes he’s a better student when he studies with others.

Concluding Sentence :

3. Topic Sentence: Chris, a superstitious person, has taken all her tests with the same pencil resulting in high marks in all her subjects.

Concluding Sentence :

Exercise #6. Complete the paragraph with the correct forms of the verbs given.

Nguyet Tu (go)_______to bed early and (get up) ________at 5 am to study her lessons. Sometimes, she (feel) ________very tired, but her mother often (tell)_______her that it (be) ________good to study the lesson in the morning. She (arrive) ________class on time and (sit) ________.in the front to hear the lectures better.

Thanh Hang often (study) ________overnight especially when the exam (come)_______. For literary subjects, she (try) _______to memorize every word. For mathematics, she (do) ________all exercises in the textbook.

Exercise #7: Complete the sentences that describe your habits, using one of the adverbs of frequency.

Always

usually

often

sometimes

rarely

never

1. I _______ take a chance to speak English with my classmates.

2. I _______ write down a word and read it out loud while trying to memorize it.

3. I _______ associate a new word with something easy to remember.

4. I _______ study vocabulary according to topics.

5. I _______ read something in English before I go to bed.

6. I _______ read short stories in improve my vocabulary.

7. I _______ check the dictionary for every word I don’t know from a reading.

8. When I read an English text, I _______ summarize the ideas in my mind.

9. I _______ read English newspapers and share the news with my friends.

10. I am _______early for school to prepare myself for the lecture I will listen to.

Exercises and Activities for Incorporating Skills into Student Writing:

Exercise #8.

1. Look back at the ideas in free writing. Select the good ideas and arrange them in the following column for the topic “my way of learning”

What I often/usually/always do	Why?

2. Now add to these ideas other ideas such as those you wrote for Exercise #3.

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