Write Your Future Self

Use FutureMe to write yourself an email that will be delivered to you in the future. You set the date and how far in the future.

Where will you be and what will you be doing next month? This summer? In six months? A year? Two years? What will it be like to get a note from the you of “now” in the future? Use it to send yourself reminders too. Come New Year's Day, send resolutions to your end of the year self. Write a note to the future to someone else (if you know their email).

What other uses can you think of?

Everyone … do the time warp! Write yourself or someone else a letter with FutureMe.



reblogged and adapted from #Ccourses Bonus #Dailyconnect: Connect with Your Future Self | The Daily Connector

10 Simple Tips for Self-Editing

…for intermediate and advanced writers…from a professional editor, re-posted from Writing Forward. This is also good advice for editing what you write in your first language as well as for working with friends and other students in a writing group. Let's think about this last idea and how you might get started. It would be a challenge and more work than for a "native speakers" writing group since you would all need to do more looking up. 

Editing Your Own Work

I spend most of my work hours editing other people’s work and self-editing my own writing. In fact, I spend more time on self-editing than I do on writing. So I thought I’d share a few of my favorite writing tips for self-editing.

English Composition I: Achieving Expertise

Thinking about higher ed in an English speaking country? Preparing for TOEFL? Or just want to improve your English writing skills? Take a look at this free online course from Duke University. 

You will gain a foundation for college-level writing valuable for nearly any field. Students will learn how to read carefully, write effective arguments, understand the writing process, engage with others' ideas, cite accurately, and craft powerful prose. We will create a workshop environment.

About the Course

Learning and Teaching Business English

From Kenneth Beare, your About Guide to ESL This week focuses on learning and teaching business English, also known as English for Specific Purposes. The main focus is on business English vocabulary, but there are also video resources on how to write various business documents.

Simple English Wikipedia

For an easier to read English language encyclopedia or general reference try Simple Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Search the 85,392 articles in the Simple English Wikipedia. Here is another short article about it.

How to write Simple English pages: these guidelines for writing articles here is also useful for general ESL writing.

Fantasy and Science Fiction:The Human Mind, Our Modern World

Here's a free online course that might suit more advanced learners, I'd say high intermediate through advanced. The course would be good reading, writing and listening practice. If the syllabus seems overwhelming, you can join just to follow and doing what you can manage. There are many students from around the world ~ more non-native than native speakers and many there to practice their English. 


We understand the world — and our selves — through stories. Then some of those hopes and fears become the world.

About the Course
Fantasy is a key term both in psychology and in the art and artifice of humanity. The things we make, including our stories, reflect, serve, and often shape our needs and desires. 

Tell Your Stories Through Writing

“One can’t believe impossible things” said Alice. “I daresay you haven’t had much practice” said the queen

.

The post continues, "Writing has always been a challenging and an overwhelming task," but identifies children as the group having difficulties. Adult and young adult learners often find writing even more difficult. Would you as older writers and L2 learners, find the storytelling tools a help to writing or another obstacle, this one technical?

Take look at the ones reviewed here. Try them out. Let us know what you think.

• Writeboard is web based document that you can work on alone or with others.
• OurStory tool uses a timeline to help you write your stories and adds pictures, videos and text. Send it others via mail or share it on different social networking sites.
• At StoryBird, create your own stories using existing drawings.
• TheStoryStarter has more than 1 million story starters and prompts for all ages. This tool is great to start a narrative story. Choose a starter that interests you and write your own.
• WhatifQuestions asks you “What if?” questions to generate your own story.

And more...

“You are not the same as you were before. You are much more… muchier now” said the Mad Hatter to Alice.

Tell Your Stories Through Writing, Ozge Karaoglu's Blog

Written evidence of the workings of the mind

 A useful writing checklist for the self-paced learner, particularly learners preparing for TOEFL and future university studies in an English speaking country. Don't dismiss mistakes as editing carelessness: they can reveal deeper cognitive and language skill gaps. Checklists can help you identify, become more aware of problem areas and address them on your own. The immediate, short term benefit is a better grade.

Students could vastly improve their assignments, and marks, if they followed a few important rules. Tara Brabazon, Times Higher Education, offers a 20-point checklist 

Writing Exercise: 25 Word Stories

... and you can write your own today. How much of a story can you write in just 25 words? Give it a try. Write for yourself, blog your stories, share them with a writing groups or (addressing Blogging English readers) post your story as a comment to this post.

For example, here are "Three Stories Kevin's Meandering Mind Wrote Yesterday"

Some days, the stories just unfold.

Yesterday, I wrote four 25-word stories and I really liked three of them. The fourth was, OK, but not great. Interestingly enough, two of the stories were directly inspired by tweets in my Twitter stream. I read what two of my friends (Bill Ferriter, @plugusin; and Brian Fay, @brianfay) posted, caught a glimpse of a story and wrote it out. The third story just came out of nowhere, but it turns out to be the one I like best of all.

First of all, Bill was posting some thoughts about using a Livescribe pen, which is a nifty transcription tool that can create podcasts from writing and more. So, I wondered, what if the pen didn’t do what it was supposed to do, but did something a little … odd (I may have had Twilight Zone in my mind.)

Thus:

She realized the Livescribe Pen was writing something other than the transcription. It dawned on her then what was happening.

Then, later, Brian was writing about using his wife’s computer. He has been experimenting with the new Google Chrome netbook, which is entirely cloud based, and he was noting how odd it now felt to be living off the desktop instead of in the browser. I like the double meaning of cookies here, and wished I could have played off that a bit more. The constraints of the story didn’t allow that.

Thus:

Near the bookmarks, inside the cache & just out of reach of the cookies, she made a little nest & went to live in her browser.

But the story I really thought I nailed was this next one. I think an NPR story about Wikipedia I listened to the other day was still rolling around in my mind. And I had this idea of connecting a wiki to tattoos, for some reason (I can’t remember the connection I was thinking of now, so I guess it doesn’t really matter). With 25-word stories, remember, it is all about what is not being said, and trying to get a little “kicker” in there. It’s difficult to pull off. I think I did it with this one that, in just a few words, says all you need to know about this relationship. I think the word “tartly,” which I added only in the last moment, makes all the difference in the world here, don’t you?

“What if my body and spirit are nothing but a living wiki,” he wondered. She replied tartly, “You’d have a lot of edits.”

Peace (in the hint fiction),
Kevin

PS — The story I didn’t like so much, even though it hit closer to home?

The taxi rolled up, on schedule. Their eyes never left the cell phones. They opened the door. “Home?” “Duh. Of course, dad.”

via dogtrax.edublogs.org

posted to both Blogging English for my students and Just Writing

Posted via email from Just Writing

Catching up and considering directions

Catching up: 

Our Blogging English group has a new member, Eric (English nickname), who has been lurking, checking out the page and getting to know us ~ as best he can in the company of lurkers.

@Eric ~ please post your introduction as a comment to this post. Other not-so new members who have yet to introduce yourselves, please do the same. Until I either work out better ways to get you to write or give up on it altogether, I'll stick with the old, familiar standbys: nagging and posting reminders as well as asking you to write reviews, share opinions and respond to posts.

I haven't post a reply to Sadamu yet because, in addition to getting caught up in other writing and internet obligations, I've been thinking about what to write. That also means thinking about what he wrote, my overreaction, obvious misunderstandings, implications for the self-paced learning project, learning and teaching styles and strategies, and especially about writing.

There's enough for more than a post there. Too much to cover here or in a single comment. Here's the short version: I apologize to Sadamu for having overreacted. I was less disappointed in his reply (which I still think missed the point) than in the failure of the group to write and post. Needing to re-write is NOT an excuse for not writing to on the class writing blog. If I don't see your writing, I'm going to assume that you are not writing. So if you are, show me.

Revision or re-writing is another matter altogether and a complex task with many steps that even most native speaker college students don't get.  Of course you should proof-read before posting to correct basic mistakes that you notice.  You should also reread what you have written, perhaps read it out loud to yourself to make sure it makes sense.  That's your initial draft, which may be just fine for informal writing. Then share it by posting so we can give you feedback, comment, offer suggestions and so on.

This process is called peer review. In a way it goes back to and depends on introductions (the ones most of you have not posted). Why? Because we need to know your writing goals and purpose to make helpful suggestions. For example, I know that Eric plans to take the TOEFL. He will be given a limited time to write a short formal essay. Therefore, we know that Eric can't afford to settle for informal writing. What can other goals tell us?

Indirectly, this brings me to the second part of the title, considering directions...


If no one is willing to write, then what is the purpose? Should I make this blog public and just post lessons, study materials and "learning to learn" information? I made the blog private rather than public for you to have privacy and be more comfortable sharing your writing.  It's up to you.

You may be able to make some improvement in your writing just by writing alone and for yourself. On the other hand, you could end up just reinforcing mistakes and not improving but fossilizing mistakes. For sure, you are unlikely to become a proficient writer without feedback. Good writers, even great and famous ones, need feedback, to be told where they had problems and what they needed to fix. It's up to you.

How to Help Students Write Better

Although this is a self study group (which means I don't make a habit of marking student writing), writing is a primary focus. That makes this article relevant. If you want to write better, feedback and revision are necessary. How do you propose handling that within our DIY (do it yourself) structure?
So is writing, not that anyone else has been doing much of that lately.


The following are not my words and do not apply to blogging on the study group blog, which is informal writing to practice writing and very different from college writing.

Collaborative Learning: Writing and PLN's

Building your PLN or Personal Learning Network is an important part of what we will be doing here. The blog post I'm sharing explains them very well. This is one of the clearest explanations I have come across. I am also hoping we will discuss what PLN's are and how to use them here. 

Among other things, I envision this blog as a shared PLN that we will all learn from. My own PLN includes other blogs and groups, social media, friends and colleagues I exchange email with. Currently, I am participating in an online workshop that includes developing PLN's. 

Non-internet version of a PLN might be clubs for common goals and interests, sharing information with friends from work or just sitting around with other students talking about classes and studies. Can you think of other examples? 

When we've all settled in, gotten acquainted (or reacquainted) and you've learned more about PLN's, I'd like to create an assignment similar to the one below.

Self-paced learning does not mean you have to do it alone. 

Vanessa

Writing Challenge #23: My PLN via Tara Benwell's Posts - My English Club by Tara Benwell on 9/21/10

PLN stands for Personal Learning Network. These days, English teachers use sites such as twitter and Facebook to create a PLN. We also visit each other's blogs. These sites act as an online staffroom that is open to the whole world. We interact with each other online and share ideas and links.

English learners can form a PLN too. You don't want to learn English alone, do you? MyEC is a great space to create your PLN. You can chat, write on each other's walls, comment on blogs, and practise English in a variety of other ways. You'll have so much fun that you'll forget you are learning English.

Your online PLN consists of the people who you interact with most online. You learn from them and they learn from you. You have a special connection online even though you may not have met all of these people face-to-face. Like in real life, your PLN will change from month to month and year to year.

One important thing about creating a PLN is sharing it with others. New members of MyEC (my English class) look for hints about who to befriend. Who are the most active users? Who wants to use Skype? Who likes chatting about set topics in the chat room? This month we are going to describe our PLN. This will be good writing practice. It will also be helpful for new MyEC members who are looking for learning partners. Your PLN can include people from within MyEC as well as people outside of MyEC.

Starting your own PLN

1. Open a new blog post. Create a list of people who you learn from online (about 3-10 people). Find a link to each person's website, online public profile (i.e. Yahoo, Blogger, Google), twitter account, or blog.
2. Describe what you learn from each person and why you consider this person an important member of your PLN. Use the tag PLN. This will make it easy for us to point new MyEC members to some friend suggestion lists.
3. Share a link to your PLN post in the comments below.

welcome to our group

Here's a quick "shout out" and hearty welcome for Blogging English's new members, Junai, Xuan Bui, Hala and Zoh.  Junai has been very active posting comments. All have written me private introductions as part of their applications. Now it is time to introduce yourselves to each other and the members of the group blog. 

Think of your written introduction as writing out what you might say about yourself when meeting new acquaintances or colleagues in person. Take a look at the tag cloud on the right hand side of the page. Click the "introduction" tag to see examples of introductions other blog members have written.  

Here are some links to help you:

How to Succeed in an Online Writing Class: Plan, Revise, Discuss:

This site is a document written as a kind of 'how to' for online writing students. 

It is important, especially in short online classes but also in any writing class, for students to realize that they need to plan out their work carefully, identifying as specifically as they can when they can fit their work into often hectic schedules. 

Students also ~ mistakenly ~ minimize the importance of both discussion and revision. In an online course for credit, students are more or less forced into discussion because it is a large % of their course grade. When there is no grade or credit, students feel than participation and writing discussion is not important. 

Of course they (you) will not get bad grades for not discussing or revising: nor will you learn how to write. 

How to Succeed in an Online Writing Class: Plan, Revise, Discuss

Web Apps for Writers

100 Free And Useful Web Apps For Writers from The Presurfer by Gerard

No matter what you write, whether it's for a college class on creative writing or for a novel you've finally found time to get around to, having some tools to make the process a little easier is always a welcome prospect.

This list brings together a wealth of just those kind of resources, all found online and all free to use, so you can concentrate on being creative and producing the best writing you can.

Rules for writing

Your rules for writing via Culture | guardian.co.uk by Michelle Pauli on 2/23/10

Saturday's selection of expert advice on how to write fiction has generated a lot of interest. But we'd like to know your maxims, too

I really enjoyed Saturday Review's Ten rules for writing fiction feature and, judging by the stats for page hits and the buzz about it on Twitter and other sites, so did many others.

A Really Nice Online Writing Exercise

A Really Nice Online Writing Exercise via Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day... by Larry Ferlazzo on 2/7/10

Proofreading: Spelling and Writing is a really nice series of many, many exercises where students have to correct paragraphs. It's divided by levels of difficulty.

I'm adding it to The Best Online Interactive Exercises For Writing That Are Not Related To Literary Analysis (It's a long story about why that list has that title — you can read the explanation in the post).

Thanks to the Langwitches blog for the tip.

11 Rules of Writing -- a concise guide to important grammar, punctuation, and writing style rules

Oops... I have been emailing study materials but did not realize until just now that my messages were going into drafts instead of being published immediately.

A handy writing resource for your personal resource file, Bookmark: http://www.junketstudies.com/rulesofw/

My notes: This site is a concise guide to some of the most commonly violated rules of writing, grammar, and punctuation. It is intended for all writers as an aid in the learning and refining of writing skills. Explore each of the rules to see examples of its application, and use the references to find additional explanations and examples on the Web or in print. Look up grammatical terms in the glossary.

For a wider variety of information, check related FAQs and other writing resources. Also, click on the Word of the Day until you've learned a few new words.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Writing Paragraphs (slideshare.net)
• I Do Not Use Correct Punctuation. So What? (kylelacy.com)
• What Classroom Practices Best Promote El Ls Writing Develoment (slideshare.net)

Update: Advanced Writing Class

Several of you have expressed interest in the writing intensive class I'm starting. Sadamu has sent his application letter ~ I'm waiting on Allun's letter. Other applications have come in through the StudyCom page, but there is still space in the class.

I'd like to make a few comments about what I hope we can do in this course. First, the writing won't be just essays and academic writing. I want to customize the the class and assignments to suit individual writing goals: academic, business, professional, technical, and personal communication. Exploring a variety a writing styles, forms and situations will make the class more interesting ~ and develop stronger writing skills.

If you are interested in taking this class, please email me ~ vanessa.87036@gmail.com

New StudyCom class: advanced writing

I am starting an High Intermediate/ Advanced Writing Group (with emphasis on academic essays for TOEFL prep and academic writing). This writing intensive group will write substantial posts for class discussion, analyze and critique essays and writing samples, regularly write and revise  essays. I must limit enrollment because responding to student writing is labor intensive and time consuming.

To apply for the class, write an application letter essay and email it to me at Vanessa.87036@gmail.com.

Introduce yourself and include a brief biography (paragraph #1). Describe your English learning background (paragraph #2) and evaluate your writing strengths and weaknesses (paragraph #3). Finally, state your writing goals and explain why you want to improve your writing (paragraph #4) 

• What Is Academic Writing? 

  Academic writing - from Wikipedia