Mona's L.E blog

In today’s class, we went over the benefits of writing essays on computers, and also the three main points of writing good essays on computers. From today’s class, I was able to find more mistakes or improvement on the essay I wrote. Firstly, we learnt about the benefits of writing essays on computers, which are that it is easier for people to read, and that it does not use paper, meaning it is better for the environment. I was surprised to hear that some teachers in other schools tell their students to open spaces after each line of their essay. Mr. Paterson said that this is because the teachers find it easier to write comments directly on the paper. However, as the teacher had said too, this uses more space on papers meaning that more paper need to be used. As I am especially interested in protecting nature, I thought that adopting more computers in school is important, especially in Japan. In addition, the environment will be cleaner as there will be less paper around. This remin...

In today’s class, we spent time working on our essays subsequently from last week’s class. While working on the essay, I mainly focused on my grammar and vocabulary. This is because (I honestly don’t know from when, but) I had been logged out from my grammarly meaning that when writing my essay, there were no apps to help me guide and advance the grammar of my essay. Therefore, I had logged in back to my grammarly and added it back to my chrome page. When I had connected the grammarly to my google docs that had my essay written on, I immediately saw lots of blue lines across the text. To be honest, I was a little disappointed with myself, looking at the grammar mistakes I had made. I had realized that most of my grammar mistakes were about the use of comma. I believe that these mistakes occur as when writing sentences in Japanese, the comma is used in different places throughout the sentence. (Yes, I understand this sounds like an excuse, BUT it’s true!) However, it definitely helped...

My initial reaction to the app Mr. Paterson introduced to us called “zotero”, was interest. This is because not only when writing the essay for the L.E homework, when I wanted to list the sources for my personal project, it would take some time and difficulty. The difficulty was often caused by the difference in forms of the source, such as books, films, websites and newspaper articles. So when I heard that using zotero, you can list the citations easily while separating the way of writing them according to the forms, I was intrigued. It made me think about the possibilities in other situations of schoolwork. Furthermore, when downloading the app, I had no difficulties as it was easy to download. Therefore, I am excited and looking forward to using it from now on, hoping that it will reduce the time spend for listing the citations. Another application we learnt about is called “1password”. Although this app is useful, particularly for people who have bad memory, (like me) I was surp...

 On the 3rd period of Monday, my group got the feedbacks for our essays. Overall, there were a lot of parts we did not notice when writing and checking the essays, including personal pronouns, citations and the reliability of the source we used. Thus, when Mr. Paterson pointed out and explained these problems in detail, we were able to come up with a solution for the mistakes that we made as an individual, and as a team.  Firstly, Mr. Paterson pointed out a mistake I made in my essay which was, using casual words. Specifically, I had used the phrase “loads and loads of” in my paragraph when in reality, I had to write using only formal words. To avoid these mistakes, I thought that it is important to reread the paragraph a lot of times. (Definitely more times than you think you need to!) When rereading it, it is obviously important you read it on your own, but asking your group members, and not just one but everyone, is important too. By doing so, your essay will be looked at...

 In today’s class, we learned about writing a good hook in order to attract our readers when writing essays. Specifically, we learned about the two different types of hooks; first the “funnel” type, and second, the “opposite of funnel” type. I would say that the funnel type is commonly used compared to the second one. Therefore when I heard about the “opposite of funnel” type, I was surprised but was also intrigued since I was looking for that type when writing short essays. (Which I will explain in more detail later)  Firstly, to explain about the funnel type specifically, it is where you start off with a broad idea and gradually narrow it down to where you would call it the main claim. Here, you talk about your idea in detail and link it to your three reasons that help support your idea. I thought that this way of writing hooks is used widely across the world, as I have seen it being used in Japanese essays too. In addition, I thought that in comparison to the “opposite of...

 Have you ever wondered how to write an essay that is easy to understand and straight to the point? Well, in today's class we learned about the key points to writing an essay; the 5 paragraph structure, what to include in your body paragraphs, and the importance of hooks in the introduction sentence.  Firstly, to briefly explain about the 5 paragraph essay, it consists of 1 introduction paragraph, 3 body paragraphs, and 1 conclusion paragraph. I thought that the overall structure was very similar to our presentations. This is because when my group presented about our rooftop study area idea through the presentation, we got over the introduction with a hook, the 3 main points, and lastly the wrap up. In addition, we learned the two types of writing the body paragraphs; whether you explain about how it links to the problem or not. However, my group decide (for now) that when writing our essay, we explain about each of the problems in each body paragraph. The reason is because ...

 I guess we underestimated luck again, since we didn't present today. Again. I knew that there were some parts about my presentation that could still be fixed to make it better, but as more days pass, Mr. Paterson's grading will be stricter than ever. Anyways, two groups presented today and I had a lot of things to learn from it, as always.  When the first group presented, I noticed that everyone was confident, making eye contact with each audience for 3-4 seconds and talking with a loud voice, while also emphasizing the important parts. However, they had one major problem which was making a mistake in what content to talk about in the "limitation" part. They had talked about the cons of the outside classroom (their idea) when instead, they should be talking about other points. As the heart of the group, I had been preparing for the "limitation" part. Since I was unsure if I was preparing for the right content to talk about in the "limitation" p...