Statement of Purpose Revisited

At the beginning of our workshop you wrote a short introduction for yourself. Now re-write your statement of purpose, introducing yourself and what you have learned in your classes so far and about America. You have practiced some important academic skills. What do you think will be the most useful for you? Which one makes you a better student?

Lesson Six: Analyzing Arguments

• Assignment: Listen to the presentation about analyzing an argument.
• Assignment: Choose an opinion article from the list of links below. Write a short analysis of the argument on your blog.

Arguments are around us all the time. We make and hear them whenever we try to persuade someone we're right or whenever someone wants to convince us to buy their product. To be a critical thinker and an effective academic writer, we need to understand how arguments are put together.

Choose an opinion article (or letter to the editor) from a magazine or newspaper.

• What is the THESIS?
• What is the evidence or premises the author uses to reach his conclusion?
• What do you think?
  

Here are some on-line versions of opinion articles.

Daily Titan Opinion Articles

Early Classes (NY Times)

          Teen Ink Opinion

Lesson Five: Synthesizing Sources

• Assignment: Read the synthesis handout for examples
• Assignment: Choose the sources you want to use and synthesize them on your blog.

Remember that the video we watched said that research is combining what you know with what other people think. Combining ideas and opinions is called synthesis. You start by explaining what one of your sources thinks, then contrast or combine it with a second source. Finally you make sure the reader knows what your opinion is by either explaining it or using vocabulary that makes your opinion obvious. For example, you might write, "Smith says .... but he doesn't understand that ....". Even though you didn't say "I think", the reader knows what your opinion is.

Lesson Four: Paraphrases & Summaries

• Assignment: Complete the Paraphrase/Summarize handouts
• Assignment: Post a news article summary on your blog

A good academic writer has to be able to paraphrase, summarize, and synthesize the ideas of others. Look your handouts to see how to do this.

Prompt: Choose an article from this website on any topic you want. Try to use an article from a real print newspaper (e.g. New York Times, LA Times) Summarize/Paraphrase the article in one amazing paragraph or two. Use APA style when you cite the reporter. At the bottom of your entry include a link to the article and write the reference. Your summary should be 1-2 paragraphs. For example,

Pham, Alex. (2009, Mar 20). Video game revenue jumps 9% in February.Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 26, 2009, from
http://www.latimes.com

It seems that despite the recession in America, the video game industry is doing OK. Pham (2009) reports in this article from the LA Times that the industry grew approximately $733 million dollars (par. 2). In particular, Pham reports that console gaming - like Nintendo or Xbox - have done really well. Some examples given include including Sony's playstation and Nintendo's Wii, which sold 753,00 units (par. 9). While these numbers sound impressive, Pham mentions that consoles sales acutally "carry very slim profit margins for their manufacturers" (par. 10). Let's hope that new video games are received well or else maybe the government will have to bail them out, too!

Lesson Three: Referring to Sources - Citations

• Assignment: Listen to the presentation on research and take notes
• Assignment: Complete the APA citation exercises with your group
• Assignment: Write an example on your blog. You can quote or paraphrase. Here is the information you will need:

The author is Peter Pan. The book was written in 2012. On page 33 the author wrote: "Video games make up a large industry in today's economy. The electronic arts industry is estimated to be worth over $50 billion worldwide."

Lesson Two: Referring to Sources - Bibliography

• Assignment: Ask What is Research?
• Assignment: Look at the picture and discuss what you think it means
• Assignment: Complete the bibliography handout in your group
• Assignment: On your blog post the bibliographic reference for ONE source

To learn more about academic writing and practice our English, we need to choose an academic issue. Our topic this summer is Video Games: Are they harmful? 

In lesson two we will learn how to create a bibliography. A bibliography is a collection of all the useful things you read or watched that helped you decide how to write about your topic. Here is an example of a bibliography on our topic:

Example Bibliography about video game violence

Brazil Academic Study Program
"Introduction to Academic Writing"

Welcome! This class is designed to prepare you for university-level academic writing in English. The class is divided into 8 one-hour lessons. Each lesson will include some sort of an assignment that can be completed in the lab or as homework. You will submit your homework on-line by posting it on your own academic weblog (blog). 

LESSON ONE: Getting Started & Introductions

• Assignment One: Create a blog.

• Assignment Two: Write a Statement of Purpose

• Assignment Three: Convince two classmates to read your SOP and explain why they would accept or deny you if they were the president of the university.

For our first hour, you will need to create your blog. After that you will be writing your first entry, which will be an introduction to me and your classmates. In your post pretend you are writing a Statement of Purpose (SOP) for a college application to Cal State Fullerton. Pretend that you are applying for a degree program. If you don't know which program you might want in the future, you can choose business. In a SOP you should include the following information:

1. Who are you and why are you interested in going to college
2. What will make you a good student
3. What are your future goals and dreams