Archive for the ‘English for Early Childhood Professional’ Category

Assignment almost done. Should be able to print it out before Friday. Writing more than 1300 words about writting processes is not an easy task. Took me quite a hard time to make it reaches 1300 words.

Anyway, in class 4, we were given hints about the exam. If not mistaken exam would be on 3rd August 2008.

We learnt Coherence, unity and outlining in class 4. These will be out in exam!!

Coherence is one important element in a paragraph. A paragraph must be able to hold together by making sure that the movement of one sentence to another sentence is logical and smooth. There are 4 ways to do so:

  • Repeating the key nouns
  • Using consistent pronouns (do not change from you to she or to he, it must be the same throughout the paragraph)
  • Transition signal (E.g. Next, Therefore, After that, First, Second, Third, In conclusion)
  • Arrange your sentences in logical order, the common ones are chronological order, logical division of ideas, comparison/contrast

A good paragraph must have unity where only one topic should be discussed in one paragraph and outlining is a process that can help in planning for a paragraph.

OK!! Assignment given and the topic is about the topics that we had discussed last week, Noun Clauses and steps of academic writing. Two weeks to pass up. Since I’ve done the summary last week, now I need to do a full essay for them.

Let’s go to what we studied for class 3. We were in the topic on writing paragraph where we covered pragraphing and title creation. Then we were told to write a one paragraph essay which I did quite badly *LOL* It should be very easy but I wrote something that could actually be splitted into 3 paragraphs :P

A paragraph must have a topic sentence, supporting sentences, a concluding sentence and make sure they have unity and coherence.

A topic sentence is a complete sentence that made up of an object, verb and a complement. It should not be too general and should not be too detailed. It can appear in the first sentence or the last sentence. When it’s in the last sentence, it’s known as concluding sentence. Make sure you do not add in any unrelated ideas.

Concluding sentence is customary for multi paragraph essay or a very long paragraph. It should summarise the paragraph. You can use words like Finally or In conclusion or Lastly and etc.

As for creating title for your essay, you must capitalised the first alphabet in every word, must not be underlined, not enclosed with a quotation mark, not ended with fullstop, and the preposition(e.g a, is, for) should not be capitalised.

After all these, we called it day.

There’s a debate in class saying that this English is too difficult for the children, it’s more for the adults. Well, everyone thinks that we should be studying English that is meant to be used to teach the children not us. However, if you see the subject name carefully, it’s for the professional; it’s not named English for Young Children like other subjects such as Mathematics for Young Children. You get what I mean? There’s nothing wrong with the subject. As a professional, you should know proper English, I’m sure you don’t want the parents reading or hearing remarks with lots of grammatical mistakes here and there from you about their children, it will affect your credibility as a childhood professional.

The second class was enough to make me confused :P We’re learning the noun clauses. All those grammatical rules are making me so blur hahaha… Frankly, I was trying quite hard in the class to digest all these things. Now I really regret that I never made an effort to remember all these rules back then in school hahaha…

A noun clause is a dependent clause that functions as a noun. It needs to be connected with an independent clause(aka introductory clause) to form a complex sentence. There are 3 types:

  • that clause
    e.g. The bulletine states that science courses required a laboratory period.
  • Wh- clause (Where, Who, When, What, whatever, wheneverm which, how etc.)
    e.g. I do not know where is the cafetaria located.
  • if/whether clause
    e.g. I’m not sure whether or not this measurement is correct.

Basically this is the summary. I’m so lazy to elaborate :P Next we proceeded to Academic Writing. We were taught how to write essays! Feeling like you are going back to study for you PMR, SPM or in your English tuition class. I’ll just list out the steps:

  1. Prewriting:
    Brainstorming - think about all the things you can think of from the topic
    Listing - list everything you’re thinking out
    Clustering - group those related together
  2. Planning - Plan your paragraph with thesis statement, then add on with supporting statement.
    be sure that, one paragraph only discuss one topic.
  3. Writing draft - Start making them in sentences.
  4. Revising draft - Check the mistakes such as spellings, grammars and so on.
  5. Final copy

Done! Compose this post for 2 days :P That’s because I don’t remember much on what I was taught because of all those grammar rules *blur* I had to revise everything all over again -.-”

Just for your information, I just got back from class.

On the 1st day of class, I got a shock. I had to pay for my textbooks! The cost that they never told me when I signed up. I felt a bit cheated. I estimated that for the overall course, I will need to fork out extra RM500+ just for the photocopied textbooks!! All these while I thought that it’s included in the course fee. Apparently… It’s not…

Anyway, let’s go back to English for Early Childhood Professional. What comes to your mind? Thinking of ABC thing? Simple English for the children? You are way too wrong!

It’s learning very advance English, well… Not that advance :P Hahaha… It’s just something you learnt back then in high school and primary school. This English is for the adult, not for kids :P The book used is very advance, it’s for college and university English.

Class started of by introducing us all the the grammatical rules such as I do, she does, we do, I am, you are, he is and etc. You know… All the basic English that you learnt back then in school, the first few chapters. Then we proceeded to types of sentences such as simple, compound, complex, compound-complex, then to parallalism and briefly about fragments.

Just something to share with you as many people make these mistakes including me sometimes *LOL*

Don’t say: Come fetch me.
Do say: Come pick me up.
Why: Fetch refers to object, it’s not to be used for human.

Don’t say: Follow me to the airport.
Do say: Come with me to the airport.
Why: Follow means you drive and your friend will be walking or running after your car.

Don’t say: I’ll send you to school.
Do say: I’ll drive you to school.
Why: Send is referring to object such as send you a present or send you a letter.

Assignment will be given next week and we will be required to write two essays! Oh dear… Going back to high school stuffs except you will be writing more than 600 words per essay which you will need to make sure you use the right tense, right vocabulary, right grammar and more. English class… I’m sure all of us went tru’ it before. Hahaha…

That’s all, nothing much to elaborate. I found out that I’ve forgotten many rules of the language hehehe…

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