17/06/2007 by Jon.

The first part of the examination will be this Wednesday, as I explained in the last class. Just to remind you, I expect to see that you have chosen a question from the list of questions (see the last post), that you have done some independent research (you can show me your notes to demonstrate this), that you have brainstormed to generate diverse ideas (again, I expect to see notes to show this), that you have chosen a central claim for your essay and that you have begun to plan it.

In order to be very clear then, what you need to show me in the class on Wednesday is the following. Please bring everything to class. You do not need to hand it in, but I want to see it and to discuss it with each one of you.

• evidence of research (notes, statistics, web addresses, etc.)
• evidence of brainstorming (lists of ideas, diagrams, flow charts, etc.)
• your planned central claim (the ‘thesis statement’ that will form the basis of your argument - this should be one sentence)
• an outline plan of the essay (a list of paragraphs with notes on the content)

You do not need to write the essays for this week. I want to talk through your plans with you before you write the final draft.

 OK - good luck! If you have any questions, please post them here.

Posted in General | 11 Comments »

12/06/2007 by Jon.

We’re getting near the end of the course, so I think it’s time to begin talking about assessment. I’m not going to set you exams, instead I’m going to ask you to write an essay - or tw essays if you are following both the writing and the Blair’s Britain courses.

 I’m going to give you a wide choice of questions - you can see them here:

End of semester essay questions

The questions are quite hard, but that’s so you can all show me how clever you are!

 I’ll talk more about the assessment tomorrow and you’ll have a chance to ask me any questions then. You can also ask questions by posting comments to this entry.

 See you tomorrow. 

Posted in Blair's Britain, Writing Classes, General | 3 Comments »

11/06/2007 by Jon.

Last week we had two classes on superstition. In the first, we looked at some common superstitions in the UK. In the second we tried doing some palm reading on each other.

 You can see my presentation here:

superstitions.ppt

 For the text we read in the evening class, see the link below…

 http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-magazine-superstitions.htm

Posted in Blair's Britain | No Comments »

05/06/2007 by Jon.

Last week we talked about religion in Britain including the statistics generated by this year’s tearfund survey. You ca find the survey at the address below:

 http://www.tearfund.org/News/Latest+news/NEW+SURVEY+One+in+seven+adults+attends+church+every+month.htm

I’m afraid the BBC interview with the rabbi and the bishop that we listened to last week will have been taken down now - they only leave their radio programmes online for one week. Sorry I didn’t get around to putting up a link earlier. However, you can find plenty of news stories related to the subject of faith schools on the Guardian newspaper website which has special sections on religion in Britain and on education:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/0,,179375,00.html

http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/specialreports

For stories specifically on the faith schools debate see:

http://education.guardian.co.uk/faithschools/0,,1034028,00.html 

Posted in Blair's Britain | 5 Comments »