Welcome to English Composition

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Welcome toEnglish Composition
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Todays Class

• Reading review
• Grammar Exercise
• Toefl Essay Structures
• Reading preview
• Homework

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Reading Review

• The Elements of Style chapter 2, parts 14 22
• 14. Use the active voice (passive voice is when
  the subject is also the object of the sentence)
• "to be" past participle passive voice
• 15. Put statements in a positive form
• 16. Use Definite, Specific, Concrete Language.
• 17. Omit needless words

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Reading Review

• 18. Avoid a succession of loose sentences
• 19. Express coordinate ideas in similar form
• 20. Keep related words together
• 21. In summaries keep one tense
• 22. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the
  end

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Grammar Review

• Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding
  s (Elements of Style pg. 1)
• Daves hat.
• Charless hat.
• My dogs hat.
• Form the possessive plural of nouns that end in
  s by adding
• The peoples government.
• My parents house.

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Grammar Review

• In lists put a comma after every item in the list
  except the last item. The last item is always
  preceded by either and or or.(Elements of
  Style pg. 2)
• I ate three hot dogs, five pieces of sushi, and
  two bags of french fries at the night market.
• When I wasnt sure if it would be better to take
  the train, bus, or to fly.

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Grammar Review

• Enclose parenthetic expressions between
  commas.(Elements of Style pg. 2)
• When I first arrived in Taiwan, which was in
  2004, I couldnt speak any Chinese at all.
• My old friend, who lives in Thailand now, came to
  visit me yesterday.

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Grammar Review

• The number of the subject determines the number
  of the verb. (Elements of Style pg. 9)
• Bob, along with Joe and his friends, is going to
  run the marathon.
• All of the students, except Bill, are going to
  pass the test.

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Grammar Review

• Whenever possible use nouns as adjectives.
• DO NOT WRITE, The goat from the mountains that
  was fat ate my homework.
• WRITE, The fat mountain goat ate my homework.
• DO NOT WRITE, The noodles from Italy that were
  spicy burned my mouth.
• WRITE, The spicy Italian noodles burned my
  mouth.

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Grammar Review

• BEWARE OF THE WORD OF!
• DO NOT WRITE, The people of Taiwan.
• WRITE, The Taiwanese people.
• DO NOT WRITE, The dog of Matt.
• WRITE, Matts dog.

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Grammar Exercise

• Lets practice a little bit of what weve learned.

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A Note on TOEFL Essays

• TOEFL generally requires you to write two kinds
  of essays
• Normal Essay (5 paragraph style slightly
  different from the one taught in class)
• Comparative Essay

For sample essays visit www.testmagic.com
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A Note on TOEFL Essays

• The Structure of the TOEFL Essay
• P1 Background Information Thesis
• P2 Supporting Point 1
• P3 Supporting Point 2
• P4 Supporting Point 3
• P5 Conclusion

For sample essays visit www.testmagic.com
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A Note on TOEFL Essays

• The Structure of the TOEFL Essay
• P2-4 were often written as one paragraph.
• The conclusion is often different from the
  thesis.

For sample essays visit www.testmagic.com
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A Note on TOEFL Essays

• The Structure of the TOEFL Comparative Essay
• P1 Background Information Thesis
• P2 Comparison 1
• P3 Comparison 2
• P4 Comparison 3
• P5 Conclusion

For sample essays visit www.testmagic.com
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A Note on TOEFL Essays

• An example comparative paragraph.
• My Chinese teacher always taught me to use lots
  of adjectives when I write English. She said
  they give the language color and make it
  interesting. My writing teacher Matt, on the
  other hand, says that I should use few adjective.
  He says that they are wasted words and that the
  meaning of the adjective is often already in the
  noun.

For sample essays visit www.testmagic.com
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The Importance of Editing

• "Books aren't written- they're rewritten.
  -Michael Crichton
• "Writing is Rewriting. -Richard North Patterson
• ""The beautiful part of writing is that you don't
  have to get it right the first time... You can
  always do it better."  -Robert Cormier

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Why We Workshop

• To practice our editing skills
• To learn how to see common mistakes in other
  peoples work so that we can find them in our own
• To learn about the way other people use language
  to communicate ideas
• Most importantly, to find out what is wrong with
  our writing so that we can fix it

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Group Workshop

• Now lets workshop some essays as a class

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Reading Preview

• Chapter 3 A Few Matters of Form
• A colloquialism is a slang word, phrase, or
  idiom. Use them like regular speech. Do not put
  them in quotation marks.
• Use exclamation marks sparingly. If you use too
  many, they lose their meaning.

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Reading Preview

• Chapter 3 A Few Matters of Form
• Headings I recommend asking your publisher for
  requirements
• Hyphens are only used to combine two adjectives
  to create one compound adjective.Eg. The big
  smelly dog (no hyphen) The world-class
  hotel.

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Reading Preview

• Chapter 3 A Few Matters of Form
• Use normal margins unless you have a special
  purpose, such as leaving room for editing.
• Numerals Write numbers using numerals rather
  than words, except when writing dialogue (people
  speaking).

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Reading Preview

• Chapter 3 A Few Matters of Form
• The final punctuation mark of a sentence is
  always outside of any parentheses inside of the
  sentence.Eg. It looked like a shadow (but may
  have been a ghost).orIt looked like a shadow
  (but might have been a carpet, blanket, or
  ghost!).

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Reading Preview

• Chapter 3 A Few Matters of Form
• Words broken at the end of a line should be
  broken between syllables.

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Homework

• Reading
• The Elements of Style
• Chapter 3 A Few Matters of Form

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Homework

• Writing
• .

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Homework E-Workshop

• Step 1 Format your essay properly (see notes
  about essay formatting)
• Step 2 Email your essay to all members of your
  group.
• Step 3 Edit the group members essays using the
  Microsoft Word editing function.
• Step 4 Email the essays back to the group
  members who wrote them, and the teacher, before
  12 noon on Monday, November 30th

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Assignment Formatting

• Filetype (please do not paste into the email)
• .doc or .docx format
• Font Times New Roman 12 pt
• File name
• should look like yourname_essay_title.doc
• First three lines of the essay should be
• Title
• Name
• Word Count