OPINION Essay

Our second assignment is: “Writing an Opinion Essay".

You should first read this item of news that was broadcast on TV3 a couple of weeks ago (17th November,2005). You can also watch the video of the news:

http://www.telenoticies.com/noticia/not194747031.htm

After reading the article, choose ONLY ONE of the following topics:

1. Introducing English learning at earlier ages in school settings. What is your opinion?
2. State your opinion about content-based teaching, specifically, teaching a normal school subject (e.g. Geography) in English.
3. Will the knowledge of English attained at the end of your degree be sufficient for your future career?

Write a 300-word essay about the chosen topic following the Opinion Essay guidelines provided in class.

An opinion essay expresses the writer's opinion on a particular topic. A good opinion essay not only states what the opinion is, but also why the writer holds that opinion, and shows that the writer has examined and evaluated other possibilities.

If you need some more information about the topics and/or how to write an opinion essay you can consult the links provided on the right margin:

Remember to post your essay and comment on the ones from your classmates. You can comment on your clasmates’ postings:

• if you agree or not with some of the points stated.
• if you want to add some ideas.
• if you need to pose a question about something that is not clear.
• if you want to help your classmates with their linguistic appropriacy.

This assignment should be completed by Friday the 16th. If you want to send me your essay for feedback before posting, please email it to me at least 3 days before the deadline.

Welcome to our blog

Welcome to our collaborative blog written by the students of Llengua estrangera 1: anglès from the Facultat de Formació de Professorat, Universitat de Barcelona, with the objective of improving their writing skills in English.

This blog will be a shared space to write essays and comment on them. The reason for using a blog is to widen our approach to writing.

The main objectives of this blog are:

• To share ideas among students about writing in English.
• To gain the confidence required to write in English at the university level.
• To expand our sense of writing exploring the potential of this digital medium.
• To improve your writing strategies and skills
• To have easy access to resources on the web about writing skills.

To accomplish this, we will work through various tasks that will demand that you explore varieties of writing.

Blogs have proven to be an excellent way to focus on writing and thinking.

Hope that this blog will motivate you to write more often and help you improve your writing skills.

Anecdotes

Our first assignment is: “Telling an anecdote".

Last Monday you told some classmates an anecdote that happened to you. Now, it’s time to write it so all the classmates can read your anecdote

Remember that an anecdote is a short, amusing account of something that has happened.

Before writing it you can check the links related to anecdotes that you can find on the right margin.

You can post your anecdote and comment on the ones from your classmates. During this week you have to comment on at least two posts from different students.

You can comment on:

• Details you like about your classmate's anecdote
• Events that remind you of similar stories that happened to you or you’ve heard of
• How your classmate told the story
• Some linguistic features you want to stress out

To post your anecdote follow the instructions from the post Writing on the blog. If you want to make a comment, follow the corresponding link at the end of the post you want to comment on.

The assigned work should be completed by Wednesday the 30th.

Creating your first blog

Creating your own blog is very easy, but I've provided a mini guide below to help you through all the process. First of all you have to go to http://www.blogger.com and create a new account.

Then, click where it says "Create your account now". The first screen you get is shown below.

Type first your "user name" and "password". Use ones that you are already using or can remember easily.

Your "display name" is what it says when you post to a blog (what appears on the webpage). Under what you write it will automatically say "posted by". I suggest you use your real name. My "display name" is, for instance, Joan-Tomàs Pujolà.

Accept the "terms" and then click "continue"...

The next screen looks like the one above. Choose a title that you think it will be representative of your blog. You can always change it later on if you change your mind.

The "blog address" is the address you will have to go to to see your blog. Don't put any spaces in it.

You then have to choose a "template" (screen shown below). The template controls what your blog looks like.

You get some choices, and you can change your mind afterwards.

Click "continue", and then you'll get this:

It really is that simple!

Now you can start "posting" to your newly created blog. The interface looks like this, with a textarea and lots of those buttons already being familiar to you from any word-processor:

You will need to write something in order to be able to actually view the blog, and have to click "publish post" first (orange button). You also get a "save as draft" button (in blue), which allows you to save what you've written and post it later.

One final thing... at the top right, you'll see a link "Back to Dashboard".

Your dashboard shows you all of your blogs (you can have lots of them) and you can access and edit them from there.

You'll have the one you are now setting up for yourself and our university blog (“However, I think that…”) as soon as you've joined it.

To join our blog you have to accept the invitation that I'll be sending you to your email address.

So, let’s start blogging….!!

Based on Tom Walton's instructions

Writing on the blog

To write a “Post” on the blog you have to click the Posting tag and you'll get in the "Create" area. You will see the following screen:


Click on “Compose” and in the textarea provided write your text or paste it from a word-processor.

Before you post, note that clicking "Preview" allows you to see what it's going to look like when you do post.If you're using "compose" mode, hit your return key twice to get a space between each paragraph.

Notice that when you paste text in on Blogger, you may get formatting that you don't want (wrong text size, line breaks in the wrong place, etc). You can remove unwanted formatting by (1) selecting the section you want to remove it from, and then (2) clicking the last button to the right in "compose" mode -- the one that looks like a rubber. If you roll-over it you'll see that it says "remove formatting from the selection".

You might then have to put a few line breaks back in, but it's the fastest way to clean things up.

Apart from that clean-up facility, note that you've also got a spellchecker (third from the right) -- and, again, don't forget that you can "Save as Draft"(blue button), rather than "Publish Post"(orange button).

So, let’s start writing….!!

Good luck with it!

Based on Tom Walton's instructions

Our class

Some members of our class: