Pukman @ WinK: the community that time didn't forget

Today, let's talk about some ways to join sentences together to make longer sentences. The 3 key words you need to know to understand the explanations are:

1. conjunction
2. compound sentence
3. complex sentence

Below are some excerpts from the website we will use today:

The 'magnificent seven' conjunctions (the most commonly used) are:

and, although, as, because, but, if, or

When you make a compound sentence, you are joining two or more simple sentences together with a conjunction. If you took the conjunction away, the sentences would be complete and they would still make sense.
e.g. 'I hate curry, but I like Thai food.'= 'I hate curry' + but + 'I like Thai food'

Complex sentences don't just divide into neat, complete, simple sentences if you take out the conjunctions. In complex sentences the conjunction is used to join together clauses. A clause is a group of words that contains a subject and a verb. Some of these clauses might be complete short sentences, but in a complex sentence at least one of them will depend on the conjunction for its meaning.
In other words, if you take the conjunction away, the sentence won't divide into complete units that make sense by themselves.

e.g. 'The dinner was burned because she had forgotten it.'
= 'The dinner was burned' + 'because' + 'she had forgotten it.'

We will visit the lesson Putting Sentences Together at the BBC Skillswise site.

If you have some free time, please try Alpha Attack!

Most of you asked me to help you correct your work for the first assignment. Because for many of you this was the first time to have a "live" correction session, you probbaly were most concerned with finishing with a good "product".

However, the most important thing with correction is what you learn from it. So for assignment 2, we're going to rework something you did in the first semester (or any other older piece of work if you didn't take the Writing 3 in the first semester). We'll do a "live" correction for this assignment, too, but the key this time is to remember what kinds of corrections were made so that you can avoid the same patterns in the future.

The first thing to do is to find a piece of work from the first semester that you are interested in reworking, and to copy it to a new post in your blog. Make sure the title of the post (or the top of the body) includes "copied from DATE" with a link to the original. Don't edit this post. Then you should copy the post one more time to yet another post and start looking for ways to improve it. You can edit directly in the post or do this in TextEdit or Word and then paste into the new post.

(Please do this after finishing the previous assignment!)

1. Target is 15,000 words (minimum 10,000).
2. Some assignments will be spoken.
3. With spoken assignments, you will be expected to be careful with spelling and grammar. You will have opportunities for feedback from friends and your teacher.
   

Today, let's work to improve our essays. We will work on your essay drafts in order to create a better final essay. (The deadline for the essay is next Thursday.) That essay is the equivalent of a 提出物, so you should take care with grammar and vocabulary.

First, find a partner to work with (groups of three are OK, too). Then do rock-scissors-paper or similar to decide whose essay draft to look at first (A). First, work separately. You should both (A & B) write blog comments on A's essay. Here is a checklist of points to look for:

1. Singular nouns without an article (a/an/the)
2. Singular nouns with plural-form verbs
3. Plural nouns with singular-form verbs
4. Incorrect spacing. Remember you need a space after a period or comma, but not before.
5. Spelling
6. Mixed present/past.
   

The main focus of this course is writing quantity, but from time to time I will give you guidance on grammar and accuracy. Here's the first lesson:

1. Look out for singular nouns! If it's not an abstract noun, then you probably need to change it in some way, e.g.:
   
1. Make it plural (add "s");
2. Add "a" or "an", or "the".
2. Watch punctuation and spaces. The basic rule is: ONE space only AFTER a comma or period, and no space before.
3. Don't press RETURN ("kaigyou") without a reason. If you want to make a new paragraph, in Blogger it's usually best to press RETURN twice.
   

Keeping these rules in mind, please correct the sentences below. (Copy them into your blog and correct them there.)

I like movie .I sometimes go to the cinema ,butusually I watch movie at home. Yesterday, I watch interesting movie called Man on Fire.

Remember that, if you find these points difficult, you can write in Microsoft Word, which will usually indicate any mistakes.