Category: Sabahat

There are many reasons to apologize, whether on your own behalf or your nation’s. Perhaps the most important is to put the past to rest in order to move on. “History is often tragic,” Mr. Obama said in Turkey, “but unresolved, it can be a heavy weight. … And reckoning with the past can help us seize a better future.” He had just finished talking about America’s legacy of slavery and discrimination, and was pivoting to Turkey’s need to come to terms with “the terrible events of 1915” — the Armenian genocide (not that Mr. Obama used that terribly freighted word). Mr. Obama suggested that Turkey needed to confront its mistreatment of minorities, as the United States has done, to achieve justice today.

This paragraph is from a blog and the reason I chose it is that because of the amount of punctuations used, this paragraph just stands out at first glance. It is also interesting to see how punctuations differ from a regular academic paper or a news piece because in a blog, it comes directly from a person’s thought stream and needs to get the author’s emotions across. Therefore, the use of quotation marks, ellipses, dashes and brackets really gets emotions and emphasis across.

 

Above Rome’s pale yellow and dusky orange buildings, the sky somehow looks bluer than it does almost anywhere else. Did I take proper note of that when I saw it all the time? When it was the canopy over my waking, my working and the all-consuming, all-distracting tedium of daily life?

Reading this passage just blew my mind and I just had to add it here. The writing is amazing but I feel like the punctuation marks used, specifically the question marks make this passage even more powerful

 

This is not simply a matter of grammatical correctness. Shortening “illegal immigrants” to “illegals” reduces human beings to a status label, and a morally loaded one at that. It reduces the essence of a person to an act of violation, an offense. When you use “illegals” as the object of a sentence it literally erases the human beings who the sentence is about and makes the grammatical object of the sentence an abstraction, a label of condemnation.

This particular paragraph is from an opinions page from The New York Times and the reason it stood out for me is because the author here uses quotation marks not quote someone but rather to convey the irony of this subject and to emphasize the name “illegal immigrants.”

My score: 8

A ray of light in the dark, despondent novel is the friendship between Majid and Pat. The friends, whose pastimes include lifting wallets, stealing cars, pimping, sleeping with lonely wives and making neighborhood nuisances of themselves, are fiercely loyal to each other. This is evident by two scenarios in the novel. The first is when Majid and Pat get jobs at a factory that makes stereos; however, after a disagreement with the management, Pat gets fired. In solidarity and loyalty, Majid also walks out on his job.

I was busy much of my past month because it was taken up by one task – getting a job! Before starting graduate school at MIIS, I was working in a small non-profit in San Francisco. I had started there as an intern and in a year, I exponentially grew as a professional. This was a job that I loved but once I quit, I realized I needed to start working again. As a result, I applied to a retail job here in Monterey. After much anticipation (and nervousness), I finally received a call for an interview – the “first” interview. That weekend I had the interview, which was a hiring event – meaning 20 other people were being interviewed at the same time! After the 2 hour event, I went home feeling pretty good about how I did (at least in my mind). Finally, after four days later, I received another call for a second interview, this time in a smaller group setting. At the second interview, I was with 2 other people at the same time and all three of us were very nervous. After the 40 minute conversation, we all headed our separate ways – this time, I wasn’t sure how I did. After much apprehension – and sometimes panic – I finally received the call I had been waiting for! They offered me a job and I accepted right way. Needless to say, last month was replete with much dread, nervousness yet excitement at my prospects.

 

The pilot could not find nowhere to land. 

I haven’t had no luck finding a job.

One of my grammatical pet peeves is represented by the two sentences above. They are examples of double-negative sentences that happen when two negatives are used in one single clause. They are usually used to emphasize the negative but are considered incorrect in the English language. This is my pet peeve because when someone uses them informally while speaking, I sometimes don’t understand what they are saying and it is confusing. When it is written, it is even more confusing because it certainly makes no sense to me.

Another one of my pet peeves is the use of affect and effect. Because they are so similar with the only difference being the one letter, it is very easy to misuse one or the other. Affect is used when describing something that influences. For example, “The rain affected my hair.” On the other hand, effect is used when describing the result of something. For example, “The effect was eye-popping.” This gets confusing for me but it annoys me to no end when it is incorrectly used in news stories or any official document.

Hi everyone!

Hope you are all doing well.

It has been great working on our video project with Nan and Rene who have been very flexible with my busy schedule, thank you guys!

We have made a lot of good progress on our video between last and this week. Last Thursday, we all met up during regular class time to go over our plan of action for the following weeks. Together, we put together a storyboard, figured out whom we will interview, how long each section of the video will be and our next steps. As a result, we have three interviews completed this week that are with Eliz from the Graduate Writing Center, Jennifer Hickey, a MIIS TESOL alumni and Professor Katherine Punteney. We also filmed our opening and transition scenes as well as peer interviews. Our next step now is that we have divided the work amongst ourselves with regard to the actual lesson plan and slides and we intend to complete them by Thursday of next week. Once we have completed the slides, we will start the intensive editing process and hopefully, have it ready for everyone’s viewing pleasure soon!

Thank you and have a great weekend everyone!

This week’s readings consisted of three chapters about sentence structuring. The first chapter provided us with an explanation of what a basic sentence is and how to make sure that it is complete. A complete sentence in the English language consists of three integral elements: a subject, a verb, and a complete thought. To this end, the author of this book explains each of these elements. This book also puts an emphasis on what a sentence should not include. The grammatical errors that we should all watch out for are:

• Fragments
• Run-ons
• Problems with subject-verb agreement
• Problems with verb form and tense

 

The first error, fragments, is considered a serious mistake in writing and occurs when a sentence is missing any one of its components: the subject, verb or a complete thought. This chapter also shows you how to locate fragments and the common mistakes that people make. One such mistake is when a fragment sentence starts with a dependent clause meaning the sentence does not have a complete thought. Correcting such a sentence is easy and includes connecting the fragment sentence to one before or after it.

Another error considered very important by the author of this book is the use of run-on sentences. A run-on sentence is one where two complete and independent clause sentences are joined incorrectly and written as one sentence. There are two types of run-ons: fused sentences and comma splices. A fused sentence is two complete sentences without any punctuation and a comma splice is two complete sentence joined by just a comma. Locating run-ons, especially in one’s own writing is difficult. However, once run-ons are found, they can be corrected by adding a period, a semicolon, a dependent word or a comma and coordinating conjunction. The author also provides us, the readers, with an important piece of advice for when editing run-ons: Read each sentence out loud, and listen carefully as you read.

As a student of social sciences, specifically political science, I have used APA style for the majority of my undergraduate studies. However, between the time I graduated and started graduate studies at MIIS, I have fallen out of touch from APA. For me, selecting this topic was a no-brainer because I need to relearn APA so that I can use it more easily for the rest of my time here. As someone who wants to base my career in policy-making and writing, I know that APA will also be helpful for me in the future. My hope for this project is that I along with my group members, Nan and Rene, can provide specific information about the advantages of APA style such as its widespread uses in various fields, ease of use and non-reliance on footnotes. I have used other styles such as MLA, Chicago etc. but APA has always been the easiest to use and follow. APA style’s flexibility with the availability of information is also a big reason why I really enjoy using the style.

I’m really sorry for the delay in posting!

Title of Article: Escalation and Its Development

This article discusses conflict escalation and the five processes by which they take place:

• Issues grow rapidly increasing intensity of conflict,
• Parties become committed to struggle,
• Specific issues turn into general statements,
• The desire to succeed changes to desire to win that changes into desire to hurt,
• The number of participants involved in conflict grows increasing conflict intensity.

The authors also writes of two models of escalation: the contender-defender model where one side has a goal of creating change that places it in conflict with the other party. The other is the conflict spiral when escalation results from a circle of action and reaction. (104)

 

This article speaks about escalation and defines it as the use of progressively heavier tactics increasing the intensity of conflict. The authors outline the five ways that conflict transformations result in escalation. He also writes of using two escalation models to understand the processes and conflict within those models. (49)

 

This article speaks about five conflict transformations that result in escalation. The authors also outlines two escalation models that help understand the conflict and its process. (26)

 

Reference: Pruitt, Dean G. Kim, Sung Hee. 2004. Pg 87-100. “Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement.”

My writing style tends to be a very slow process. For me, it is very important to internalize the topic I’m writing on by rereading the topic and its requirements as many times as possible. This helps me understand exactly what I need to research and helps me focus when I actually start writing. Looking into online resources is my next step so that I can learn as much as possible about this topic. I really believe that usually there is just one resource that I can find that is perfect for my topic. This is the source I turn to most often once I find it.

The next very important part is making an outline that directs and focuses my writing. This is not a formal process but rather entails me writing words and half sentences on a rough paper and scribbling around on that page. This way I have every issue I need to address in my paper is within the outline. From here, I either formalize and clean up my outline if it is a particularly long paper or I just start writing my paper from there on.

When I start writing my paper, I find writing the introduction quite difficult but I still go ahead and write it because without it, the paper feels very unnatural for me. In the body of my paper, each paragraph has to be specific to just one issue. Since I learned PIE, I have to make sure that each paragraph has the point, information and explanation. Since I use a lot of “filler” words so that I can reach the page limit and words such as “however, furthermore, therefore” when it isn’t quite appropriate, I need to focus on concision.

Once I have completed writing my paper begins the extensive editing and proofreading portion of the paper. I used to be very hesitant in showing others my writing but this is something that I have overcome because that is the best form of editing where others can see something that I’m missing. It is also during this point that I will check the new concepts learned in class such as PIE, Christensen method, reducing redundancies and making sentences concise.

 

 

Hi Adnan,

I apologize for the delay in posting your feedback, I hope it’s okay 🙂

I really enjoyed reading your writing process. I also identified with your perspective that writing journals is a much easier and smoother process than academic writing because of the level of formality. Having read your writing in blogs and the papers you shared with us through the semester, I would like to emphasize that your strongest suit is the clarity you bring into your writing. Every time I read one of your works, I get amazed that it just flows and is so easy to read no matter what the subject, it really is great.

 

1. Having read the chapter on Shape, I would say that you usually write wonderful short sentences that convey the point fast, as is recommended. However, if all your sentences are always short, they can get lengthy and wordy when reading them as a paragraph. Take these ones:

In academic writing I’m always careful with the language I use. Formality and high register words are required in this situation.

 I think that your sentences have a direct, clear subject, which is good. To make the sentences concise and have an active verb, I would suggest merging the two sentences (above) and bringing the verb “use” to the front to make the sentence active. For example: “I use language carefully in academic writing because formality and high register are required.”

Another example:

Writing journals on the other hand, I have no problems. Instead, I enjoy writing them because they tend to be rather informal.

You can change these sentences so that it avoids interruption “on the other hand” and is more active and concise:

On the other hand, I have no problems writing journals and enjoy them because they tend to be rather informal.

 

2. I would say that you don’t take long getting to the subject. Usually, you cover it in the beginning of the first sentence and this is not a problem for you. Because of the short sentences, there is usually one introductory clause.

 

3. Let’s take this sentence from your blog: “In other words, the feedback that I received from my peers was insightful and helped me figure out some gaps that I would never see them by my own.”

In this sentence, the subject was “feedback that I received from my peers was insightful” and the verb was “helped.” According to our reading, it says that we should keep our subject short and get to the verb quickly. As evident by your sentence, you did a great job. Looking over the rest of the blog, it is the same so good job!

 

4. While reading you blog, I did not find too many sentences that displayed interruptions. One that did include an interruption was in your last paragraph: “If we did, it would be messy and impact our scores, for example, if we were writing something for a class.”

This sentence is sprawling and sounds disjointed when read aloud. There are a lot of commas. To clean this up, I would suggest moving the subject clause to the front and change the sentence to, “If we were writing for a class, our sentences will be messy and impact our scores.” If you like, you can even include “for example” to the front of the sentence.

Other than this instance, I didn’t see many interruptions in sentences.

 

Overall, you don’t really have a problem with shaping sentences and you did a great job.

Let me know if you want me to clarify anything and see you next week!

Sabahat