Eastern Mennonite University

Level III

Chapter 1
Writing

Language Section

IC3, IT, TOEFL, Best Answer
English
| Vietnamese | Persian | Spanish
Assessment

Topic: Identity / Bản sắc

Guiding Question:

Who in the world am I?

Câu hỏi hướng dẫn:

Tôi là ai trong thế giới này?

English Language Lesson

Introductory Motivation and Focus:

In small groups, look at the portraits below. The first picture is a photograph of the person in the painting. Talk about the two portraits by describing the person in the picture. Use all the vocabulary that you know for describing faces. Be aware of the words in English that you do not know. Share with your group the words that you do know.

Then, talk about the two pictures by comparing them. What characteristics did the artist show in the painting? Did the artist create a likeness to the individual in the photograph? Then read the passage below.

Self Portrait: Black Eyebrows

I am a teacher and an artist. I like to help students see the world through new eyes. This means that I teach them to observe carefully and to see things for the first time.

Here you see two pictures of me. One is a photograph and one is a self-portrait. I painted this picture by looking into a mirror. I looked carefully for long periods of time. I enjoyed making this painting.

I can describe myself in writing, too: I have thick, black eyebrows. People often notice this about me. My eyes are brown. My hair is also brown. Smiles come easily to my face. My teeth are straight and strong. I am average by Western standards: my height, my weight, and the length of my nose. By Asian standards I am tall, large and have a big nose. My hair is cut short because I don’t like to take time to care for it. My style of dress is casual, but

artistic. I wear clothes for comfort and I like clothes made with handiwork. Also, for reasons of comfort, I wear flat shoes. I look calm on the outside, but inside, I hide a lot of nervousness, worry and creative energy. I am very creative, so there are many things happening in my mind.

Vocabulary: Look at yourself for a long time in the mirror. (Look to appendix for more words)

1) Describe your hair: __________________________________________

very short

bleached blond

brown or
brunette

medium cut

Summer

pulled back
brown or
brunette

 

medium cut
styled wavy
parted on the side

long
black
curly
permed
fly-away
 

short
black
curled

 

bald
thinning

Bald man

 

crew cut

frizzy
brown
brunette

 

light brown
highlights

straight

Autumn

strawberry
blonde
blown
bangs


redhead
curly
frizzy
short

black
straight
long
bangs
black

 

pulled back

c urly

 


shaved

 


s haggy

 

braided
cornrows

 

braided

ponytail

 


pigtails

long
thick

wavy

 

short

white

short
gray


wearing
glasses

2) Describe your eyes: __________________________________________

Slant of Eyes

 

 

Size of Iris

Eyes slant up

Eyes Slant down

small iris

large iris

Space Between the Eyes

 

Set of the Eyes

Close together
Close-set eyes

far apart
Wide-apart eyes

deep set eyes

protruding eyes
bulging eyes

Almond eyes

Evenly spaced eyes

Oriental eyes
hooded eyes

prominent eyes
Bette Davis eyes

Droopy eyes

  round eyes

pupil

black

round

narrow

bare

iris

brown

bright

sparkling

twinkling

white of the eye

blue

bloodshot

bare

tired

eye lid

gray

droopy eye lids

sad

squinted

eye lashes

hazel

long lashed

short lashed

thick lashed

the crease of the eye

green

Western eyes (eyelid shows)

Asian eyes

eyebrow

clear

intense

(hidden eyelid)

laugh lines

to blink

teary-eyed

wears glasses

to cry

watery-eyed

wears contacts

perfect eyesight

near-sighted

far-sighted

twenty-twenty vision

Flat Eyebrows

Curved Eyebrows

Arched Eyebrows

http://face-and-emotion.com/dataface/visage/visage_forehead.jsp

3) Describe your mouth: ________________________________

large

toothy

straight teeth

lips

smile

small

voluptuous

crooked teeth

teeth

grin

thin-lipped

moustache

pointed teeth

gums

frown

full-lipped

beard

flat teeth

tongue

wears a smile

tight-lipped

wide-mouthed

chapped lips

braces

has a smile

 

overbite

under bite

dimple in the chin

dimples &
mustache grin

4) Describe your nose: ________________________________

wide

narrow

flat

Roman

hooked

flared nostrils

pug

turned up

freckled

straight

bridge of nose

snooty

 

turned-up noses
beard and mustache

no bridge

bridge

Roman nose straight nose

5) Describe the shape of your face:________________________________

Oval

Round

Long

Square

Heart

Diamond

http://www.eyebrowz.com/faceshape.htm

narrow/thin

firm jaw

high cheekbones

wide forehead

broad

square chin

dimpled chin

chiseled features

pointed chin

6) What do people see or remember about you? ________________________________

7) How does your personality show in your appearance? ________________________________

slender

slim

gentle

kind

formal

skinny

clumsy

honest

faithful

casual

heavy

overweight

jolly

loyal

courteous

fat

average

curious

jovial

glamorous

well-built

curvy

interested

confident

sloppy

muscular

posture

shy

timid

adventurous

overt

serious

nervous

quick

dull

Answer the following questions about yourself. You may discuss this in small groups or with a partner, or you may write down your answers. You write or speak about this to become aware of how clearly and deeply you can describe yourself. Do you have the vocabulary? Are you able to speak from your heart or are you merely repeating answers you have memorized in the past?

  1. What’s your name?
  2. What does your face look like? (use the vocabulary lists above)
  3. Describe your physical structure.
  4. Who do you look like? Who looks like you?
  5. Where are you from?
  6. How old are you?
  7. What work do you do? Or what do you study?
  8. Do you enjoy your work or your field of study?
  9. How do you spend your free time?
  10. What do you like about your life?
  11. What don’t you like about your life?
  12. Describe your personality.

    Introduction to Writing Skills: Writing Process Overview

    The Writing Process: How Do We Write?

    Writing is process. What does this mean? This means that what we write transforms. Our first ideas and sentences that are written down are not the final product. We do not write exactly what we want the first time. Rather, these ideas and sentences will undergo change and transform and a piece of writing will develop and evolve. In IC3 we will be developing Seven Steps in this process.

    The Writing Process in Seven Steps

    Step One: Exploration and Discovery

    The ideas that we write need to come from somewhere.

    • Explore what you already know
    • Create and generate new ideas
    • Read and research for ideas
    • Get the ideas down on paper
    • Build vocabulary

    Step Two: Generating Ideas

    Then we must ask:

    • What is the purpose for writing?
    • Who will read it? Who is the Audience?
    • What form will the writing take? A narrative? An essay? A journal entry? A research paper?
    • With what style do we write?
    • What research and thought processes must take place?

    Strategies for generating the ideas :

    • Ask more critical questions
    • Freewrite and brainstorm (writing down ideas without worry of grammar and spelling)
    • Map and cluster (invent and organize ideas in a way that relationships and processes can be visually explored)
    • Keep a journal (write personal explorations and reflections on ideas)

    Step Three: Organizing the Ideas

    Develop organizational skills

    • Conduct Research
    • Narrow the topic
    • Identify the main idea
    • Develop the thesis
    • Organize the ideas
    • Select and limit the information in a paragraph
    • Select the type of paragraph: different types of paragraphs serve different purposes

    Organizing Strategies: Create an Outline that includes

    I. Introduction

    A. Set the Context

    B. Explain why the topic is important

    C. State the thesis

    II. Body

    A. Builds points

    B. Develops ideas

    C. Supports the main claim

    III. Conclusion

    A. Reemphasize the main idea

    B. Restate the thesis

    Step Four: Composing

    Write the first draft.

    • Write by balancing the natural flow of ideas with the organization you’ve outlined
    • Develop cohesion and style: develop grammatical and lexical skills that serve to unify paragraphs.
    • Find the right words
    • Connect and transition the ideas
    • Using correct form: practice with the mechanics of writing
    • Spelling
    • Punctuation and capitalization

    Step Five: Edit and Revise

    Analyze and Review

    • Analyze the organization of your ideas and sentences
    • Clear thesis?
    • Clear communication of ideas?
    • Logical organization of ideas?
    • Does the information support the main idea?

    Reviewing strategies

    • Refocus
    • Reorder
    • Add
    • Omit

    Step Six: Edit and Proofread

    Proofread

    • Paragraph structure?
    • Check the cohesion and style
    • Conclusion restates the thesis and overviews the main ideas?
    • Does the paper appear professional?
    • Are there spelling or punctuation corrections needed?
    • Is sentence structure correct?
    • Are sentences clear and easy to read?

    Proofread Strategies

    • Run spell and grammar check on the computer (but remember that you are smarter than the computer)
    • Read your paper aloud
    • Ask a classmate or friend to read your paper
    • Talk to your teacher

    Step Seven: Write a Second Draft for Teacher Evaluation

     

Rules for the form of sentences and paragraphs

Writing Assignment:

By looking in a mirror or a photograph of yourself, you will write about your appearance and about yourself. You will follow some of the nine steps introduced above: You will generate ideas with freewriting. Then you will organize some of these ideas into paragraphs. In this chapter, we introduce to you one way of writing your ideas called “Freewriting.” Here is an overview and guide to a freewriting assignment:

Freewriting

Freewriting is writing down ideas that are circling in your brain. Freewriting is free of rules and styles and should be thought of as a personal tool to help a person to write, record ideas, and unburden oneself of emotions. There was a time when freewriting was used and looked at only by the writer, but in this new age of computers, freewriting takes on other tasks of importance.

As we rely on computers and communication with email, being able to freewrite becomes an essential tool for our daily lives. We use email correspondence to communicate immediately and often our response is to quickly write and send messages. Therefore, it is important that we learn to write clearly in a prompt response. In this text, you often will be asked to correspond by computer, therefore practice in freewriting will be an asset to learning the English language. This means that thinking in English rather than translating from your first language into English should be a skill learned more rapidly than before. The best way to learn to freewrite is to write and write and write.

Before computer correspondence, freewriting was a skill to help generate ideas for writing essays and other compositions. Sometimes this is called “brainstorming.” Of course, it still is a good tool and useful way to discover your ideas. Often when a person is full of emotion, writing down all these feelings can help to get your ideas into a form you can see and organize. This often helps people psychologically. Most diaries and journals are written in a freewriting style. Some people feel the need to freewrite often in order to get their feelings and ideas down quickly.

For academic writing purposes, go through the following steps: Concentrate on an idea for a topic. Don’t stop to think about how good it is or whether you can actually apply it to the topic. Instead, write the idea down before you forget it and try to form another idea. When you get used to freewriting, you may find that you have to write very quickly because you will have a lot of ideas at once. This is good. Focus on getting everything you think of written down. Do not focus on how useful each idea is.

Exercises and Activities for Developing Content of Student Writing:

Now practice freewriting . Look in the mirror. Write down whatever comes to mind when you see your own image. Are you short or tall? Left-handed or right-handed? What do you like to do? Do you look like a teacher, farmer, nurse, etc.? Do your eyes twinkle? Think of as many things as you can. Write them all down as quickly as you can. Don’t think about whether or not you want to write about it. You can worry about that later. For now, just write down your ideas.

Exercises and Activities for Building Skills:

Correct this paragraph using the rules for the form of sentences and paragraphs in the box above:

  1. meet the new english teacher
  2. melinda newman has come to our campus to teach English to first and second year English majors. she is a forty-year old woman from chicago illinois in the united states
  3. she is very unusual on our campus because she has red hair and blue eyes She stands 192 cm tall. she will be an outstanding teacher in more ways than one. welcome her to our campus

Exercises and Activities for Incorporating Skills into Student Writing:

Cohesion and Style

A well-written paragraph has cohesion. Cohesion is the “glue” of a paragraph; that is, it connects the ideas in a paragraph. A good writer writes in such a way that their paragraphs are easy and clear to read with cohesion and style.

Let us consider cohesion and style when editing the first draft of your writing.

  1. A cohesive paragraph has correct verb tenses.
  2. Good grammar and rich vocabulary improve the style of a paragraph.
  3. Special words such as and, but, so and also connect your ideas.

Using “And”: When you have two verb phrases about the same subject, you can connect the phrases with and.

Example:

I am a teacher

I am an artist.

I am a teacher and an artist.

Example:

I teach students to observe carefully.

I teach students to see things for the first time.

I teach students to observe carefully and to see things for the first time.

1. Connect these phrases with and:

eyes are black

hair is black

a._______________________________________________________________________

teeth are straight

teeth are strong

b._______________________________________________________________________

height is standard

weight is standard

c._______________________________________________________________________

2. Now find some phrases in your paragraph that you can connect with and. Be sure they refer to the same subject.

Using “Also”: Use also when two sentences have similar ideas. Also is used in the second sentence, usually before the main verb in the sentence, but after the verb “be.”

Example: My eyes are brown. My hair is also brown.

Example: She is intelligent. She is also beautiful.

3. Use “also” in the following sentences:

He is a good father.

He is a good husband.

a._______________________________________________________________________

She likes to wear silk dresses.

She likes to wear high heeled shoes.

b._______________________________________________________________________

He likes to play soccer in his free time.

He likes to read.

c._______________________________________________________________________

4 . Now find some sentences in your paragraph that you can add also to. Be sure that the sentences have similar ideas.

Using “And, But” and “So”: By placing a comma (,) before and, but, or so, you can connect two complete sentences.

“And” is used to add more information:

Example: I wear clothes for comfort, and I like clothes made with handiwork.

“But” is used to contrast one piece of information to another.

Example: My style of dress is casual, but artistic.

Example: I am average by Western standards, but I am big by Vietnamese standards.

“So” is used when showing a result”

Example: I am very creative, so many things are happening in my mind.

5. Use “and, but,” and “so” to connect these sentences:

He is a farmer.

He has strong hands.

a._______________________________________________________________________

She is very young.

Her skin is very soft.

b._______________________________________________________________________

Her parents are tall.

She is short.

c._______________________________________________________________________

He is very tall.

He moves very quickly.

d._______________________________________________________________________

She has blonde hair.

Her eyes are blue.

e._______________________________________________________________________

6. Are there sentences in your paragraph that can be connected with and, but and so?

Writing First Draft:

Organizing Ideas . After you have written down everything you can think of, organize your ideas. Sometimes we organize by putting ideas into categories such as people’s appearances (face, nose, eyes, and moustache), free time activities, characteristics, and behaviors.

Put your ideas into categories. This is also a time when you can start to edit your ideas. If one idea does not seem to fit with any other ideas, you can get rid of it or try to think of other ideas to go along with it. You can also use the vocabulary list to think of more ideas.

Writing Sentences. The next step is to make sentences for every one or two of your ideas. These can be simple sentences, or you can make them more complex. Here are some examples:

I am tall.

My hair is short and curly.

I am 22 years old, and I am in my third year of college.

Fish is my favorite food.

I am shy.

I study computer.

I don’t look like anyone in my family.

I like to wear earth-tone colors.

I don’t like to attract attention

But having red hair attracts attention.

Being tall attracts attention.

Try to vary your sentence structure so your sentences do not all sound the same.

Organizing Sentences. Now put your sentences in order. You may choose to describe yourself from head to foot, or you may choose to describe yourself by what catches someone’s eye first (for example, dark eyebrows, unmanageable hair, or great height). Another way to order your sentences may be from general to specific: describe your general appearance, then go into detail.

Look back at the beginning of this chapter to get some ideas. The paragraphs in the writing piece are ordered in this way:

  • Paragraph 1: the writer describes occupation and a bit about her personality in relation to that occupation.
  • Paragraph 2: introduction to a physical and personality description through art.
  • Paragraph 3: describing physical appearance by most noticeable feature and detail. Then the paragraph moves from the face to more general physical description and ends with some description about how her appearance is part of her personality.

You will focus on writing one paragraph that will look more like Paragraph 3. The sentences written above may begin to form a paragraph like this:

When you have organized these sentences, follow the “Rules for Form of Sentences and Paragraphs” above.

Sometimes I wish that I am invisible because I am very shy.

But it is hard to be invisible when people see how tall I am .

My short , red, curly hair attracts a lot of attention.

I just want to quietly study computer and hope that no one notices me. But I enjoy life. I wear my most comfortable clothes and I can spend hours absorbed in my work at the computer. My field of study has opened new worlds to me and I like that.

Editing Process and Exercises:

Now edit your first draft by answering these questions:

  1. Is your paragraph cohesive with correct verb tenses?
  2. Have you followed the correct form for sentences and paragraphs?
  3. Have you connected your ideas with “and, but, so,” and “also” to make a cohesive paragraph?

Writing Second/Final Draft:

Rewrite your paragraph neatly. Use good grammar and correct form. Read it out loud to yourself, then have a classmate read it. Turn the final draft into your teacher.

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Vietnamese Language Lesson 

 

 

Write an essay about how the identities of students across the world are both similar and different. After you have read about Nguyễn Chí Hiếu and all of his academic success (in the Reading Book, Chapter 1), how are his experiences similar with your experiences? Write generally about similarities between your experiences as a student and, based on things that you have read and discussions you have had with others, the experiences of your global colleagues.  

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Persian Language Lesson

Persian Section

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Spanish Language Lesson

Que es el burro?

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