Teacher Daniel

Dust is uncountable. It isn't dusts.
desert not dessert

affect and effect
USAGE NOTE Affect and effect have no senses in common. As a verb affect is most commonly used in the sense of “to influence” (how smoking affects health). Effect means “to bring about or execute”: layoffs designed to effect savings. Thus the sentence These measures may affect savings could imply that the measures may reduce savings that have already been realized, whereas These measures may effect savings implies that the measures will cause new savings to come about.

Rhetorical Questions:

* "Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?" William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2.


Some rhetorical questions become idiomatic English expressions:

* "What's the matter with you?"
* "Don't you know any better?"
* "Have you no shame?"
* "Is the Pope Catholic?" and "Do bears shit in the woods?"
* "Do fish swim?"
* "Are you crazy?"
* "Who cares?"
* "How should I know?"
* "Are you kidding me?"
* "Do you expect me to do it for you?"
* "Do pigs fly?"
* "What's up?"

Ethos example:
Acme Gizmotronics, the company that you've trusted for over 100 years, has recently entered the World Wide Web! Now you can purchase our fine products through the internet. Our quality gizmos, widgets, and thingamabobs can be shipped to you within minutes. All come with the famous lifetime guarantee that makes Acme the company that the world depends on for it's gizmo needs.

Wiley Coyote Our spokesperson, Mr. Coyote says "I'm not really a coyote, but I play one on tv. I've used Acme products for years. Their slingshots, rocket launchers, crowbars, pogo sticks, and power pills are the best around. And don't forget their high-powered dynamite! I buy everything from Acme. They are the company that I trust the most."

ACME is currently supporting reasearch into a form of clean, ultra-efficient, cesium-based power that promises to usher in a new period of cheap, globally available power. Based on a small island off the coast of Costa Rica, ACME Technology Research is one of our most significant divisions.

Logos example:
By combining cesium and dihydro-oxide in laboratory conditions, and capturing the released energy, ACME has promised to lead the way into the future. Our energy source is clean, safe, and powerful. No pollutants are released into the atmosphere. The world will soon have an excellent source of clean energy.



A typical example of energy released from the dihydro-cesium process.


ACME is currently working towards a patent on our process. Our scientists are exploring ways to use the process in cars, houses, airplanes, and almost anything else that needs power. ACME batteries will be refitted with small dihydro-cesium reactors. Once the entire world is powered by ACME's generators, we can all relax and enjoy a much easier life.

Pathos example:
Cesium-Based Reactor Kills!
A baby turtle breaks free from the leathery shell of its egg, catching its first glimpse of its first sunrise. It pauses a moment to rest, unaware of the danger that lies so close to it. As the tide comes in, approaching the nest, it also approaches a small pile of metal - cesium. The water draws closer and closer, the turtle unsuspecting of the danger. Finally, the water touches the cesium.

The nest is torn to bits in the resulting explosion, destroying even more of an endangered species.

Why does this happen? One name: Acme.

Acme Gizmotronics is supporting a dihydro-cesium reactor, trying, in their anthrocentrism, to squeeze energy out of such destructive explosions. And, they are dumping waste cesium onto the shores of their island, threatening the environment. Studies have shown that the dihydro-cesium reactor will destroy the island's ecosphere in less than four months!

How can they get away with this?

Costa Rica (where the island is near) has lax environmental laws, allowing Acme to do whatever they want - including destroy endangered species.

What can you do about this?

Don't let them get away with it! Boycott Acme products! And call your representatives, and tell them you support stricter legislation to prevent things like this!

I'm wondering if I could initiate a point based system to grading essays. I think it would be beneficial to my students because they could see in a quantitative way what areas they need to focus on and those in which they excel. I figure I should have 3 categories:

Grammar: Content: Style:

I should give 5 points for each for a total of 15 points. 12+ = A, 10+ = B, 8+ = C,

I'm thinking that the categories might not really explain anything though. I mean I can accurately give grammar and content a figure, but style? I thinking I could use style to encompass the realm of tone, figurative language, that ever ubiquitous "enjoyability to read." Sigh...it's late...it's time to go home

S. from my Wednesday class is my favorite. She has started to work the collocation words into her essays. And that's not all, she underlines them so I know where they are in the essay. I think I'm going to encourage all my other students to do this. I should also give them extra points for using figurative language in their essays. They should underline these and I'll give them praise and points!

I'm teaching Robert Wright's,"Why it is like Something to Be Alive." Hmmmm...It has to do with the consciousness of bats and he cites this guy Nagel. Nagel says, "The essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that is is like to be a bat." What? Here are my notes.

So only bats could know what it's like to have consciousness...so...we could never know?

He's saying that everything is something, but then he goes into what consciousness is in a random rambling tone highlighted with pop culture references i.e. the Jetsons and GMC trucks. Then he talks about Descartes, "I think therefore I am."

Here's the definition of epiphenomenon:

ep·i·phe·nom·e·non (ĕp'ə-fĭ-nŏm'ə-nŏn') pronunciation
n., pl. -na (-nə).

1. A secondary phenomenon that results from and accompanies another: “Exploitation of one social class or ethnic group by another [is] an epiphenomenon of real differences in power between social groups” (Harper's).
2. Pathology. An additional condition or symptom in the course of a disease, not necessarily connected with the disease.

Reading this, I must say, that I don't like Robert Wright. Here's a picture of the goober. He has this rambling, smart-alecky tone, as he tries to coin terms like "Shadow Consciousness."

Wait..by paragraph 17, I'm starting to like him. I'm buying into his punniness.

He shifts from bats to computer consciousness and to be honest, I think my students have had technology beaten so deep into their craniums that this is simply white noise.

Ok...he's starting to allude to the concept of a "Ghost in a Shell."

"Koestler is using a different approach, aiming at a more general explanatory principle, the hierarchical organisation of life and the adaptability of living forms through a continuous exchange of energy and information."

su·per·flu·ous (sʊ-pûr'flū-əs) pronunciation
adj.

Being beyond what is required or sufficient.

Wright: "That's the tough question. If the feeling is truly superfluous, then there can be no evolutionary explanation of it."

Paragraph 23: Copier metaphor.

Para 24, he's equating consciousness to evolution. Consciousness is a mistake...copies of copies.

Para 26 computers don't need to be self conscious to be conscious.

Para 29 he talks about the robots on the subway...robot dating...they are acting...like a really bad actor saying, "I love you"

Para 30 goes into morality of killing robots. I wonder if it's the same as killing a bug

Para 31 why consciousness exists...is it a survival instinct?

Para 33 he brings to question, is consciousness an afterthought? A secondary phenomenon?

Conclusion...he's basically saying it's something to be alive and it's something to simply a product of evolution. We should accept it and deal with it. Hmmm...I think he probably pissed off a bunch of religious people

Here's what I'm going to do today. Inductive reasoning. I'm going to get the students to make generalizations about me and then about each other. Then I'm going to trap them into talking about generalizations about Japanese and Americans and then talk about how hasty generalizations and stereotypes are fallacies that could ultimately hurt their writing.

I think this'll be fun^^

Here are some notes:

Inductive Reasoning

According to Answers:
Adjusting a course of action based upon a limited amount of information gathered. It is a process where one starts from a specific experience and draws inferences (generalizations) from it. For example, a salesperson, by observing a potential customer's reaction to the sales presentation, may induce what the customer's needs and personality are and what should be said to obtain the sale.

According to Wikipedia:
Inductive reasoning is the complement of deductive reasoning. For other article subjects named induction, see Induction (disambiguation).

Induction or inductive reasoning, sometimes called inductive logic, is the process of reasoning in which the premises of an argument are believed to support the conclusion but do not ensure it. It is used to ascribe properties or relations to types based on tokens (i.e., on one or a small number of observations or experiences); or to formulate laws based on limited observations of recurring phenomenal patterns. Induction is used, for example, in using specific propositions such as:

This ice is cold.
A billiard ball moves when struck with a cue.

...to infer general propositions such as:

All ice is cold.
All billiard balls struck with a cue move.

Strong and weak induction

Strong induction

All observed crows are black.
therefore
All crows are black.

This exemplifies the nature of induction: inducing the universal from the particular. However, the conclusion is not certain.

...
Weak induction

I always hang pictures on nails.
therefore
All pictures hang from nails.

Assuming the first statement to be true, this example is built on the certainty that "I always hang pictures on nails" leading to the generalization that "All pictures hang from nails". However, the link between the premise and the inductive conclusion is weak. No reason exists to believe that just because one person hangs pictures on nails that there are no other ways for pictures to be, or that other people cannot do other things with pictures. Indeed, not all pictures are hung from nails; moreover, not all pictures are hung. The conclusion cannot be strongly inductively made from the premise. Using other knowledge we can easily see that this example of induction would lead us to a clearly false conclusion. Conclusions drawn in this manner are usually over generalizations.

Teenagers are given many speeding tickets.
therefore
All teenagers speed.

In this example, the premise is built upon a certainty; however, it is not one that leads to the conclusion. Not every teenager observed has been given a speeding ticket. In other words, unlike "The sun rises every morning", there are already plenty of examples of teenagers not being given speeding tickets. Therefore the conclusion drawn can easily be true or false (perhaps more easily false than true in this case), and the inductive logic does not give us a strong conclusion. In both of these examples of weak induction, the logical means of connecting the premise and conclusion (with the word "therefore") are faulty, and do not give us a strong inductively reasoned statement.

Validity

Formal logic as most people learn it is deductive rather than inductive. Some philosophers claim to have created systems of inductive logic, but it is controversial whether a logic of induction is even possible. In contrast to deductive reasoning, conclusions arrived at by inductive reasoning do not necessarily have the same degree of certainty as the initial premises. For example, a conclusion that all swans are white is false, but may have been thought true in Europe until the settlement of Australia, when Black Swans were discovered. Inductive arguments are never binding but they may be cogent. Inductive reasoning is deductively invalid. (An argument in formal logic is valid if and only if it is not possible for the premises of the argument to be true whilst the conclusion is false.) In induction there are always many conclusions that can reasonably be related to certain premises. Inductions are open; deductions are closed. It is however possible to derive a true statement using inductive reasoning if you know the conclusion. The only way to have an efficient argument by induction is for the known conclusion to be able to be true only if an unstated external conclusion is true, from which the initial conclusion was built and has certain criteria to be met in order to be true (separate from the stated conclusion). By substitution of one conclusion for the other, you can inductively find out what evidence you need in order for your induction to be true. For example, if you have a window that opens only one way, but not the other. Assuming that you know that the only way for that to happen is that the hinges are faulty, inductively you can postulate that the only way for that window to be fixed would be to apply oil (whatever will fix the unstated conclusion). From there on you can successfully build your case. However, if your unstated conclusion is false, which can only be proven by deductive reasoning, then your whole argument by induction collapses. Thus ultimately, pure inductive reasoning does not exist.


Good Pdf of inductive and deductive reasoning

It's a sad day. My 10am class is down to 6 students. sigh...I think it's because it's too early. Fortunately the good ones stayed^^ Unfortunately, I spent a ton of time grading all of those jerks papers yesterday for no gosh darn reason.

AhhhhEEEEEEEEEEYAAAAAAA!!!!

Oh, so it goes.

Today is a review and in class essay. Make sure you have paper to hand out.

Review. And then do the in class essay.

First of all, I am going over the essays that my students wrote for China's potential influence on Korea. I need to go over that they need to write for an audience of people that might not be familiar with the topic. My students mention things like the History of Goguru and they don't realize that people that are not Korean have no idea what it is. They need to give background information so the audience will understand the topic in context. This will help Korea to fight China's "perversion of the history."

Also to note, the essays for the class are getting shorter and shorter. They also lack detail and effort. I need to have a discussion with the class. Is it because they are getting too busy or are the topics simply boring?

I think I'm going to go over conclusions today. I'll get everyone in the class to read their conclusions and then I'll pick and pan them.

I'm going to punch R. in the nose for turning in such a crappy paper!

I think I should get my students to handwrite the first drafts. I think it'll be better for them and it will honestly force them to rewrite. This is something that I'll have to think about for next term.

One more thing. No more eating in the classroom. It is J's new rule. They can eat during breaks, but not in the classroom.

First of all, my goal is to start putting my lesson plans on this blog so that I know what I need to focus on for the week. If other people would like to see my teaching methods that's all fine and dandy, but I seriously need to do this for myself. I find it's easier to blog my lesson plans because they are always there. I want to move away from a hard copy way of keeping records. I'm constantly losing papers and those distractions keep me from the task at hand.

So...it's all about me. I guess, I could close it down to other people but for some odd reason, I won't write the blog if I do that. I guess I like the idea of having some audience.

Ok...back to work.

The school year has started for many of my students so many are transferring to other classes. I'm a bit worried about my Writing Focus 3 because I think I am down to 3 or 4 students.

Jin ha, one of my Tuesday night students has transferred to my Sunday morning class and I haven't had time to grade his papers. I have to photograph them and e-mail them to him.

First, I'm going to go over their homework. I won't have time to go over the vocabulary. They read On Discovery pg234 and Coming Home Again 244. I should focus on the relationship between The mother and son and how food is symbolic of their relationship.

Then I'll go into the lesson.

I'm going to start with Taylor Mali's How to write a Political Poem to illustrate ideas emphasis, parallelism, and length.

I'm going to give my students quick definitions of

Emphasis,
Loose and Periodic Sentences:
Loose Sentence-A sentence that introduces the main idea close to the beginning and concludes with a series of modifiers.
Periodic Sentences: A sentence that builds to the main idea.
Climax-
Parallelism-Grammatically similar words, phrases, and clauses arranged to highlight similar ideas.
Antithesis-The arrangement of contrasting ideas in grammatically similar phrases and clauses-The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. To be or not to be, that is the question., and
Length


I think it would be better to start with the reading Abe Lincoln's The Gettysburg Address. Then go into definitions and then point out the the writing skills that we just defined in the speech. Then I'm going to talk about Taylor Mali. I'll go over the poem, talk about it and then move on to MLK's essay entitled "Nonviolent Resistance."

At the end of class, I'll hand back their previous essays and offer suggestions for improvement.

For homework, they can write the assigned topic or they can write a political speech on a trivial campaign like the importance of pooper scoopers^^

Dan

For this class I'm going to briefly go over the lesson in the book and then give kids a chance to write definitions for words. I'll start them with:

Clinchpooper and then Wisterpooper and finally thenan.

These are really words. You can find out what they mean here

Then I'll ask them what is a definition of...should I do nationalities??? I don't think that would be wise. I think it would, but it would have to be in depth. I should get students to define the French, Australian, New Zealanders or Kiwi's, Canadians, the Americans and Korea.

I should get them to focus on a national symbol. For example, the Kiwi should use the bird Kiwi as their symbol, the French the baguette...etc.

I think this will be fun and then we can brainstorm about their topic...what it's like to be Korean.

Dan

I've seriously got to focus. I mean last night I said some unkind words to Yea Jin and I'm going to have to be extra nice for the next couple of days to get back my footing. If I was her, I would have used my footing to kick my own ass...I mean her ass...I mean..

Anyway, the whole point is that I'm lacking ideas and originality. I need to prep better for my classes and I should use this blog just like I used the blog at Wonmyeong Elementary School.

Determination. Let's get my prep done.

Dan

I'm going to get students to write political speeches for WF3 and I'm going to get a list of ambiguous terms in order to get my students to define.

I am too nice to my students. I need to be more strict with them because they are not improving, they are simply going into a lull. Sigh...I really admire Erica and Richard. They are really strict, but they get results. I've always felt that I should nurture the students and let them find their own way. The problem with this is that after a while they tend to lose that edge and they de-prioritized my class for another. Hello, don't they know that my class is the most important one! I need to get mean and if they drop, then it's not my fault, it's theirs'.

I don't want to be the teacher that gives "Easy A's."

Let's make them work for it.

Dan