Successfull academic writing

Parts of a paragraph:

• Topic sentence (what are you writing about) it should be interesting and not very long.
• Body ; it should follow the order of importance or a chronological order. 
• Closing sentence; it should restate the main idea and  add something to think about. 

Source: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cCuExRE6N-4 last visited on may 30 2013. 

Structure of paragraphs in academic writting 

• what a paragraph is: a distinct section in a piece of writing
• Types of paragraphs: persuasive, narrative, descriptive and explanatory. 
• qualities of a successful paragraph: unity, coherence and development. controlling idea answers to the "wh" questions. 
• tee rule: topic, explanation, example, evaluation. 
• concluding paragraph:  should summarize the main point, state main conclutions and answer to the presented questions, it shouldn't introduce new material, end with a generalization or end with a quotation. 

source: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=w183qB0KDFg last visited on may 30 2013. 

Cultural choices.

My version:

In my country there are many choices for people who want to spend a weekend in a fun and non-traditional way. For those people interested in history and what life was like in old times, there are medieval fairs at least once a month during autumn, winter and spring, offering a sample of medieval town living and battles for the spectators to enjoy safely. For those who are fond of fantasy, festivals with musicians and writers are held at least twice a yaear. The people interested in science fiction can choose between traditional science fiction conventions and new genres gatherings like the International Steampunk Day. Even comic and manga fans have ComicCons and other events to enjoy. There is a new option every weekend, almost all throughout the year, to make everyone happy and to avoid traditional, predictable and overcrowded places like shopping malls and cinemas.

Costanza's version:

In my country, there are many options for an original weekend. For those people interested in history and what life was like in old times, there are medieval fairs at least once a month during autumn, winter and spring, offering a sample of medieval town living and battles for the spectators to enjoy safely. For those who are fond of fantasy, festivals with musicians and writers are held at least twice a yaear. The people interested in science fiction can choose between traditional science fiction conventions and new genres gatherings like the International Steampunk Day. Even comic and manga fans have ComicCons and other events to enjoy. This brief summary of events suggests that no matter which your interests are, you will have a good option to enjoy.

Metacognitive Analysis:
Although Costanza's sentences are a little bit shorter, the overall meaning of the paragraph is the same in both versions. No meaning seems to be lost.

She is a writer

The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie introduces, in her speech about the dangers of a single story, a very interesting point of view on something many historians and sociologists have mentioned many times so far: how there is always another side to the coin as regards histories. First she tells about her own experience as a child, when she read English and American fiction and started to write, as a consequence, stories that imitated them, with characters and places she had never seen. She felt her own life experience was not to be told in stories. Then, when she went to university in America, she was faced with something that surprised her at first: she was not what her roommate had expected. The other girl had read about Africa as a place with almost no civilization, full of poverty, grief and untouched cultures; a middle-class educated person like this was not what she expected. Later, she faced this same situation again when she visited Mexico: having lived for a while in America and being acquainted with the American point of view, she expected all mexicans to be people who were trying to cross the border and live illegally. She could not expect to find people who could live happily in a mexican city. All these experiences showed her that it is not enough to see things from one point of view, as this only helps to create stereotypes and these are incomplete visions that rob people of their dignity, emphasizing difference rather than equality. 

Source:
Chimamanda Adichie. The Danger of a single story (2009).Available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg. Retrieved: May 26, 2013.

MLA Rules for Academic Writing and Citation styles.

MLA (Modern Language Association) Rules for academic writing.

Layout:

As regards the page layout, the margins must be set to normal, i.e., 1 inch on each side. The font must be one that is easy to read, in regular style, size 11 or 12. There must be no hyphenation.

The header must be blank. The name and page number should be on the left margin of it.

For all the information preceding the paper, the alignment must be to the left, leaving a double space between lines.

When writing titles, the alignment must be central. Caps are used for every word, except articles, coordinating conjunctions and prepositions. 

When writing the body of the paper, the alignment is to the left. There is 1/2 indentation for every new paragraph. Quotations that are longer than four lines are by themselves, with 1 more inch of indentation for the whole of it. There is no indentation in the first line.

The works cited should be listed in a new page. There is no indentation in the first line of each item but there is on the ones that follow, if the item is too long.

Citation rules:

Works should be cited in the following way:

Author's surname, Author's name. "Title of part/poem/etc". Title of book. Original place of publication: Original publisher, Original date of publication. Title of website.Publication date of electronic version. Sponsoring organization. Date accessed. < Document URL >.

APA citation rules:

Works should be cited in the following way:

Author's surname, Author's name. (Date). Title of article. Title of Book.Volume number (Issue number) Page numbers.

Contexts

1- There are two friends talking about their previous day. One of them tells:
"I asked for the day off at work to take my grandma to the doctor. We went there at midday and, as there were no more patients, we were back home within the hour. She wanted to sleep so I came back home and spent the rest of the day watching the cycling on television. Talking about bikes, have you got yours mended yet?"

2- Anna arrives to Adam's house unexpectedly and finds him looking at some brochures. He is planning his holidays. She offers to help him. He agrees, noticing she is upset about something. They look at some of the brochures together an she sighs. He asks her what is going on and, after a while, she explains her house is a mess and she does not want to be there for a while: "Darlene is as miserable as ever, and jackie never comes to visit us. Anyway, I'm sure you don't want to hear about my problems, so let's get back to thos holiday plans."

I am a writer - Reflection and improved version

After reflecting on our first writing task, which consisted basically on writing about 300 words on the topic "I am a writer", taking into account the writing model discussed in class and with other classmates, some things should be mentioned.

The writing model describes different steps in the writing process:

• Pre-writing
• Writing
• Revising
• Editing
• Publishing

Many things need to be taken into account as we advance through these steps. The pre-writing process is necessary to determine the genre of our text, plan how the ideas will be presented and organize the information accordingly. Some notes may be written down in order to help the writer as s/he advances in the process.

I did not take any notes before writing this text. I did not even write an outline. Still, the genre was clear to me since the beginning, as well as the topic and the outcome. Y planned some basic things in my head and started writing, deciding where to put a final stop as the words and ideas flowed.

Although the result was quite pleasing to me, I am aware this is not the correct way to proceed. The way I worked may not cause great problems in short pieces like this but may become a problem when writing longer and more complex pieces in which many ideas overlap.

The writing was done at once, with very little revision afterwards. There was not much editing and the last step, that is to say the moment of publishing and the audience to whom the text would be presented, was never taken into account. Thus, the result is a text in a weird, expositive genre, suitable only for academic contexts like a language class in a teacher's trainig college or a translators course.

I am a Writer

What is it that defines if a person is or is not a writer? What is the difference between a normal person and a writer? Who deserves to be called that way? A couple of weeks ago I started reading a book that discussed precisely these questions. This reading created mixed feelings in me. As the author said, and I have been able to see for myself, many avid readers have, at least at one point in their lives, the desire to write. And it is not only a wish for fame and recognition, but an actual need to create and give life to the thoughts that flood their minds most of the time. Some, in the form of fictional stories, others with more academic contents. But the end is the same: sharing everything they have with others.

The question the author asked, what most of us who have gone through one or more of these phases have asked ourselves, is: when does one person stop being a "wannabe" and becomes a writer? There are many answers to that question. Some say you become a writer when you have published something (that is to say, once you have written something worth publishing). I disagree. I believe the moment you become a writer is when you write that final stop in whatever it is you wanted to create, whether it is a novel, an essay, or a short story, and you share it with someone else. Exposing yourself to others and showing them what is really inside you is one of the bravest things a person could do. It is a great risk, as our creation might be greatly critizised, and surviving it is sometimes a hard task in itself. But I have done it. I have taken the risk. I have survived, and I am still willing to create. That is why I truly believe I am a writer.

I am a writer - 1st version

What is it that defines if a person is or is not a writer? What is the difference between a normal person and a writer? Who deserves to be called that way?

A couple of weeks ago I started reading a book that discussed precisely these questions. This reading created a lot of different things in me, mixed feelings. As the author said, and I have been able to see for myself, many avid readers have, at least at one point in their lives, the desire to write. And it is not only a wish for fame and recognition, but an actual need to create and give life to the thoughts that flood their heads most of the time. Some, in the form of fictional stories, others with more academic contents. But the end is the same: sharing everything they have with others.

The question the author asked, what most of us who have gone through one or more of these phases have asked ourselves, is: when does one person stop being a "wannabe" and becomes a writer? There are many answers to that question. Some say you become a writer when you have published something (that is to say, once you have written something worth publishing). I disagree. I believe the moment you become a writer is when you write that final stop in whatever it is you wanted to create, whether it is a novel, an essay, or a short story, and you share it with someone else. That is the moment you expose yourself to others and you show them what is really inside you. That is one of the bravest things a person could do. It is a great risk, as our creation might be greatly critizised, and surviving it is sometimes a hard task in itself. But I have done it. I have taken the risk. I have survived, and I am still willing to create. That is why I truly believe I am a writer.

Who I am

When I look at that title, that simple, short, little title, many things come to my mind. Who I am. One could write so many words about oneself and still none of them would tell who we are. I could get very philosophical about that. But that is not the aim of this post. The aim of this post is to welcome you, whoever you are, to my blog. The intention of this space is to post the written production from Language and Written Expression IV, one of the last subjects from my study course in the Teacher's Training College. Soon, luckily, I am to be a teacher. In the meantime, here we are. And everyone is probably wondering who I am (well, the title promised I would tell a little bit about that, did it not?)

My name is María Belén. I am 24 and I was born and raised in Adrogue, to the south of the city of Buenos Aires. I first said I would be a teacher, to my mother's horror (she is a teacher herself, as... about half of my family), when I was about five years old. Only in the last years of secondary school the idea of translating crossed my mind, too. Still, the firts thing I did when I finished school was to write my name down for the Teacher Training Course. This was the year 2007, and I was young and eager to study and learn... And everything would have been fine if I had not failed Language and Oral Expression I again and again and again for about four years (it sounds fun now but it was not at the time). So instead of reatending it, I sort of dropped out and started studying to be a Translator. A couple of months later, anyway, I was back at my old college sitting for exams I had never sat for. And the following year, havind passed the subject that had made me leave on the other course, I went back to teacher training (in a new institution, the one I am in right now). All this, without dropping out of the Translators course. This means that, at the time being, I am attending my two first subjects from the fourth and last year of my Teacher Training Course and the four last subjects of the second year of my Translating Course. Fun, is it not?

I work as a private teacher, sometimes. But mostly my job is in the area of the Arts and Crafts. I make home made notebooks and stuff of the sort which I sell on the internet and on some little faires and events.

I enjoy very much reading (when  have free time, which I have forgotten what it was at the moment), writing, drawing (although I tend to forget how to do it properly), singing and listening to music, about which I could write an entire post only to explain what I listen to. Just to make it simple, I will say I enjoy almost every kind of music, but I listen mostly to Metal music, especially Symphonic and Gothic Metal.

Well... I believe that is pretty much it. Of course, this will be my first and last post in this style. Everything else here will (try to, at least) be academic writing. Still, opinions are welcome, and I hope you enjoy it!

Belén