The Winter Scholar's Archive

   Portfolio Entry #7 ~ Writing & Academic Writing ~ _______________________________________ Writing The Three Steps for Writing (for most genres): 1- PRE-WRITING We want to focus on the topic: what is the idea that you want to write about? What are some notions that you want to put in on paper? How can we do that? Associograms/ brainstorming Prompts (images, music, realia) Interviews All of these are good for thought, topic generation, and ideas for writing. They are also very good for building vocabulary, which is something you really want to do specially on topics where it can go in every direction. This helps us organize the vocabulary.  2- DURING WRITING When we focus on the writing and on the purpose of the writing, we often engage more with the vocabulary and with the grammar, because then you really have to communicate to somebody else, you have to be more precise.  Focus on writing structure: a beginning, a middle and an end. 3- POST-WRITING It's importa...

  Portfolio Entry #6 ~ SFL: Systemic Functional Language ~ A Genre, Text, Grammar based Approach How do Languages work? Learning a Language is both natural and cultural, individual and social. The perspective on language as social process allows us to explain and analyse arrangements of language (texts) as grammatical structures or constructions that are formed by individuals in social contexts to serve specific social needs and requirements. The genre, text and grammar model of written language proposed here is primarily concerned with ‘what’s going on’ in writing; it asks why a particular type of writing works better than another. Language is constantly remade by those who use it; but in order to use it, we must first have some competence with it. How can we better teach writing to our students? A primary aim of teaching writing is to provide students with the knowledge to become effective users of written English. It's not just about teaching rules and structures alone.  ...