PORTFOLIO ENTRY #10

How to Write an Effective 5-Paragraph Essay

Thesis Statements: Four Steps to a Great Essay

PORTFOLIO ENTRY #9

HALLIDAY - LECTURE

Michael Halliday - Language evolving: Some systemic functional reflections on the history of meaning

Student	Time Lapse	Concept
Suparo Paula	0:00 a 0:15	-Language evolves with its contact with the environment which is composed of physical and social processes that shape and define human life.  -Semiotizasing the human experience is a uniquely human attribute. -The children’s developmental steps match with the progression of contexts in which meanings are exchanged.  .
Madelaine Bezenzette	0:15 to 0:30	-Develop knowledge Common sense Knowledge: Comes from home, a neighborhood of the child. Educational Knowledge: Becomes the discourse of the primary school. Technical Knowledge: Discourse of the secondary school. Language has evolved through time with the evolution of the human species so that to cope with its needs language is organized around two kinds of meanings: the ideational and the interpersonal. A third metafunctional component, the textual, give relevance to the first two.
Belen Porco	0:30 to :0:40	Destruction of knowledge: The polarization, the gaps in our society between what we know and what we don't’ replacing what we have and what we have not. Evolution of knowledge: Different way of knowing: codifying, transmitting,  A genre has played an important part is narrative Proverbs: Traditional repository os common sense in everyday life situations. They construed knowledge in isolated doses, they don’t combine patterns, narratives can do this.
Juan Ignacio Fernández	0:40 to :45	-Grammatical metaphor is the actual phase of knowledge and it creates a parallel universe of virtual processes and virtual entities. All of these processes are good for thinking.
Macarena Garcia	45’ to 1:07:00	-Meaning potential changes over time, it always increases and it is modulated and that it is transmitted to the next generation -All human beings are able to develop the meaning potential in our brain. The meaning potential expands as we learn different languages System: -Writing increases the meaning potential. Writing is a contextualized process and its meaning arises throughout the building of language structures and knowledge -Any human being achieves the meaning potential of the whole system -Human beings try to improve the language by making new designs -The meaning potential adds new meanings and it is a significant factor  -Translators provide multilingualism by using different target language discourses and discourse patterns of other languages as well.

PORTFOLIO ENTRY #8

WHAT IS SYSTEMATIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS IN THE EFL CLASS?

PORTFOLIO ENTRY #7

Thesis Statement

What is it? → It is the specific claim your essay supports 

How it is composed? → It is composed of three parts. 

1) The subject: It is related to the topic of our essay. What is our essay going to be about? Be careful! 🔔 Knowing the topic is not the same as knowing what you are going to write about in your paper. For example, you can say that you want to write about computers, but that is not enough for a thesis statement. 

2) The precise opinion: It is our opinion or claim on that topic. Taking into account the example from above, What do you have to say about computers? Are they good for our environment or not? 

3)The blueprint of reasons: It has to do with showing your readers how you plan to argue and support your opinion about that claim. Keep in mind 🔔 the fact that your reasons should be different from one and the other so that they do not overlap the previous one. 

Where do these reasons go? 

Each reason can go at the end of the Thesis Statement, at the beginning of the Thesis Statement or they can be simply listed in the Thesis Statement. 

Look at the examples on the video 

This material was adapted from: 

Thesis Statements--How to Construct and Compose.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=301&v=DfUkhdh8Z08

How to Write an A+ Thesis Statement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=237&v

PORTFOLIO ENTRY #6

-How much do you know about the Systematic Functional Linguistics approach? Click the following link and complete the form to check it!-

EXTRA ENTRY - CLASS WORK

We made up a video which contains two examples of constatives and performatives sentences.

PORTFOLIO ENTRY #5

PARTS OF THE PARAGRAPH

From: Learn English with Alex [engVid]2009.Parts of a Paragraph - English Academic Writing Introduction.Web site: http://www.engvid.com

1-  TOPIC SENTENCE - What are you writing about.

2- BODY -Supporting arguments and details for our topic sentence.

How we are going to organize details? 

1-Order of importance
2-Chronological ordering of events

3-CLOSING SENTENCE-  Reminding the audience what we are writing about.

Review: Topic Sentences

Choose the best among the several topic sentences for each paragraph below.

1. I saw around Velva a release from what was like slavery
to the tyrannical soil, release from the ignorance that darkens
the soul and from the loneliness that corrodes it. In this
generation my Velva friends have rejoined the general
American society that their pioneering fathers left behind
 when they first made the barren trek in the days of the
 wheat rush. As I sit here in Washington writing this, I can
feel their nearness. (from Eric Sevareid, "Velva, North Dakota")

Answer:

The answer Many politicians deplore the passing of the old family-
sized farm, but I'm not so sure. is correct.

Explanation:

Sevareid argues that farming is destructive as a way of life, no
matter what romantic notions are attached to it. He is not
writing about the productivity of farms, about his own life story
 ("I grew up on a family-sized farm..."), and his main point is not
that people moved away from the cities in the late the nineteenth
century.

2. The first is the wear-and-tear hypothesis that suggests
the body eventually succumbs to the environmental insults
of life. The second is the notion that we have an internal
clock which is genetically programmed to run down.
 Supporters of the wear-and-tear theory maintain that
the very practice of breathing causes us to age because
 inhaled oxygen produces toxic by-products. Advocates
of the internal clock theory believe that individual cells
are told to stop dividing and thus eventually to die by,
for example, hormones produced by the brain or by their
own genes. (from Debra Blank, "The Eternal Quest" [edited]).

Answer:

The answer There are two broad theories concerning what triggers
a human's inevitable decline to death. is correct.

Explanation:

This paragraph is a straightforward description of two possibilities,
neither of which is preferred over the other. In this case, it would
be wrong to mention only one of the possibilities (the "internal
time clock") in the topic sentence, or to treat it as a philosophical
discussion of death itself  ("we all must die..."). As for the biology
professor, He or she might very well have given an interesting
 lecture, but that has nothing to do with the content of the paragraph.

3. The strictest military discipline imaginable is still looser 

than that prevailing in the average assembly-line. 

The soldier, at worst, is still able to exercise the highest 

conceivable functions of freedom -- that is, he or she 

is permitted to steal and to kill. No discipline prevailing

 in peace gives him or her anything remotely resembling 

this. The soldier is, in war, in the position of a free adult; 

in peace he or she is almost always in the position of a child.

 In war all things are excused by success, even violations 

of discipline. In peace, speaking generally, success is

 inconceivable except as a function of discipline. 

(from H.L. Mencken, "Reflections on War" [edited]).

Answer:

The answer We commonly look on the discipline of war as vastly
more rigid than any discipline  necessary in  time of peace, but this
 is an error. is correct.

Explanation:

The topic sentence must emphasise the comparative nature of the
paragraph. Mencken does argue that soldiers need discipline, but
this is not all he argues in this paragraph. Likewise, while soldiers
may well serve an important function in wartime, and while they may
well be able to compete well in peacetime, neither of these points is
discussed in the paragraph.