Help pages: Standard college essay: why 5 paragraphs and more

Dear All,

even though we are coming to the end of the semester and end of the course, I feel it necessary to explain to you again why the standard number of paragraphs in your essays is 5. It actually comes from the times when Greek philosophers started having open forum debate on various issues. They discovered through practice that the smallest number of arguments that can make their speech persuasive is 3. Before presenting them it is necessary to make an introduction and in the end a conclusion, which summarises the arguments presented in the body and leaves the readers with something to reflect upon. Do you recognise the standard essay organization pattern in this description? Hope you do and will discuss it with you further during our meeting.

Here is a list of several resources that can help you get a better idea about the essay organization and what you should do to write a successful essay:

1. How to write a 5-paragraph essay
https://www.thoughtco.com/write-a-five-paragraph-essay-1856993
2. More resources for writing a 5-paragraph essay:
https://www.jscc.edu/academics/programs/writing-center/writing-resources/five-paragraph-essay.html

Task 8_April 27 - May 4: An essay about academic pressure and leisure activities

Dear All,

how are you? I'd like to suggest us to discuss the question of your leisure time and academic pressure the materials for which I found of the British Councils' Learning English website. Hope that you'll find the discussion of this topic interesting and will write an essay on this topic after completing a series of exercises the links to which are listed below.

Do the preparation exercise first. Then read the text and do the other exercises.

An essay about leisure time and academic pressure

https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/writing/advanced-c1-writing/essay-about-leisure-time-academic-pressure

Task-11: Semester Assignment-submission-deadline_MAY-23

Dear All,

It's hard to believe that we're coming to the end of this semester. It was very difficult indeed because of the circumstances we had to work in. Still, I'm sharing with you the requirements to the Assignment you have to complete to get assessed and receive zachyot. 

What is the Contents of Semester 2 Assignment

1. An essay based on reading an article of your choice from a recent newspaper/magazine publication (350-400 words)

2. An essay How Has My Writing Changed that explains your strengths as a writer and ways in which you hope to continue to develop your writing and research skills in the future. In writing this essay, you can use the following questions as your guidelines:

a)       How has your writing changed throughout the course?

b)       What do you now see as your strong/weak points and which area(s) for improvement of your writing mastery you see

c)       You can also include a paragraph, analyzing the activities done throughout the course from the point of view of the usefulness and/or uselessness for the improvement of your writing. Try to formulate, which of the activities you took part in as part of this course were useful or not and was there anything missing, i.e., something you think as important was not discussed and done (something that was not necessary was done).

• 
  

Here is a checklist you can use to make sure that you have all the necessary pieces:

a)       Essay 1: A response to a selected reading

b)       Essay 2: How has my writing changed?

How will the Assignment be assessed?

Criteria for evaluation of your portfolio: points/100                              

                                                                                                     
15   General organization. All required materials are included. They meet the word limit requirements      
15   Analysis of the writing process: How has my writing changed.  (Essay)
25   An essay on a topic connected with some article from recent newspaper periodicals   
25   Language 

20   Mechanics, spelling, punctuation, clarity of expression.     

Submission deadline: May 23, 2020

Task-9_May 5-10: What's Your Dream Job?

Student Question | What’s Your Dream Job?

BY MICHAEL GONCHAR

 MARCH 10, 2016 5:00 AMMarch 10, 2016 5:00 am

Photo

Related ArticleCredit James Graham

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Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.

• See all Student Opinion »

What do you want to be when you grow up? Has your dream job changed as you’ve gotten older? Have you already started investing time and effort to try to make it happen?

In “The New Dream Jobs,” Jenna Wortham writes:

When the National Society of High School Scholars asked 18,000 Americans, ages 15 to 29, to rank their ideal future employers, the results were curious. To nobody’s surprise, Google, Apple and Facebook appeared high on the list, but so did the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The Build-A-Bear Workshop was No. 50, just a few spots behind Lockheed Martin and JPMorgan Chase. (The New York Times came in at No. 16.)

However scattershot, the survey offers a glimpse into the ambitions of the millennial generation, which already makes up more than a third of the work force. By 2020, it will make up half. Survey after survey shows that millennials want to work for companies that place a premium on employee welfare, offer flexible scheduling and, above all, bestow a sense of purpose. These priorities are well known and frequently mocked, providing grist for the oft-repeated claim that millennials are lazy, entitled job-hoppers.

But it’s important to remember that this generation was shaped by a recession, an unprecedented crush of student debt and a broad decline in the credibility of all kinds of institutions. Stability is an abstract concept to these young workers, so they instead tend to focus on creating a rich, textured life now, rather than planning for a future obscured by uncertainty.

Students: Read the entire article, then answer the questions below:

— What’s your dream job? Why do you want that job? Do you think you’re well suited for it?

— What qualities are most important to you in your future career? Salary? A sense of purpose? Scheduling flexibility? Feeling challenged? Feeling appreciated? The ability to get ahead? Liking what you do or being good at your job? Anything else?

— What investments are you willing to make now to help you get your dream job eventually?

— What companies would you want to work for? Are you surprised by the National Society of High School Scholars survey rankings?

Your task is to write an essay answering the questions that you consider relevant from those listed in the prompt. It should be a well-developed essay, not just a set of answers to the questions enumerated above. You're also required to include a relevant example taken from an external resource, which should be properly referenced in the text of your essay and at the end of it (Check the blog's help pages to revise how it should be done if necessary)

Task-10_April 30-May 5: University Guidebook

Dear All,

How're you? Hope you are doing all right under the circumstances and would like to wish you all the best with everything. I hope that you will find the task I've designed for you interesting and useful. It'll give you a chance to get acquainted with different aspects of students' life in Britain, in particular with that of the students studying at the University of East Anglia before creating a guidebook for the students who are coming to study at Novosibirsk State Univesity.

You are going to create a Guidebook for the students who come to study at our university from other countries. Can you discuss with each other and let me know which section of the guidebook you would like to contribute to 

Task 1: Think about your answers to the following questions and share your answers with your peers and me in WhatsApp:

1. What are the hardest aspects of students' life in Russia? What can help the Ss studying in Ru get adjusted quicker and easier? (Complete this task by 

2. What do you think will surprise foreign Ss the most:

-in a pleasant way

-in an unpleasant way

Share your answers in WhatsApp.

3. Next, look through the Guidebook to get an idea about the content of different sections 

After that, choose the section you would like to contribute to together with another student (We need to agree who is going to work with who)

Below is the list of Sections of the Guidebook we'll have  (this is my suggestion but it'd be great if you suggested some more and/or other sections keeping in mind your audience).

1. General overview: add your name if you want to contribute to this section

2. Getting around: add your name if you want to contribute to this section

3. Programs of study: Subjects + Exams (Maybe, the sections about the exams should be separate and written by another group of students: add your name

4. Financial issues: add your name

5. Social life: add your name

6. Extracurricular activities:

- Clubs: add your name

- Sports: add your name

- Add your own: add your name

- Add your own: add your name

7. Add your own section: add your name

8. Add your own section: add your name

9. Add your own section: add your name 

The option "Add your own section" is to cover the content not covered by the other sections but which you feel are necessary. Let me know if you want to add your own section but are not sure about its content

Don't forget to use the URL shortener bit.ly to create shortened links (but check them first, please, because sometimes they do not work for some reason). It's just not to clutter your text with many links. 

N-gram viwer task: an extra task for you to do

Here is a link to the N-gram chart of "really". Check it to see how the frequency of "really" has changed over time. I think it's interesting to know this information. Do you?

You can actually go to the Ngram Viewer yourselves and see how the frequency of some words from
the books you read for your home-reading. Choose 3 words you like from your book and check
the Ngram Viewer results for them.

It’d be interesting to learn which words you have looked up and how their frequency changed over time. 

Share this information in your blogs

Help pages post: Reference details formatting. A reminder

Dear All,


I'd like to remind you that you need to remember that when you use the information from any resources, such articles from online publications or Wikipedia, for example, you need to provide the reference details


it's not enough to provide the link to the resource; this is what you do in the body of your writing. In the end of your work you need to add full reference details: there is a post in the blog about it at


https://acdemicwriting18825.blogspot.com/2019/12/referencing.html

As you can see, it was published back in December last year.

Actually, I've decided to copy the information from that post and share it with again here as a Reminder

Here you are:

 Le       Let me remind you how to format the references to the resources you have used in your works correctly. The thing is that it's not enough to provide the link to the article(s) you have referred to in your work. You need to add the following information:
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of the article. Title of Online Periodical, volume number (issue number if available). Retrieved from: https://www.someaddress.com/full/url/. Date of access. Date of publication. Example:S   Smith, B. (2015, July 15). Commenting on the current situation. Retrieved from http://www.buzzle.com, K. Klein, M. (2018, June 29). The Negative effects of Facebook on communication. Social Media Today RSS. Retrieved from http://socialmediatoday.com

Please, remember to ADD REFERENCES TO YOUR POSTS! You do remember that without this information you are in danger of plagiarising, don't you?