Dear Peter
I know information of some website is not reliable (such as CNN), but I think many websites are really good to be the source of information. So, could we use another website more than in your list for our writing? Maybe, we'll ask you for your permission before we use such website for our source. For me, I often read article from U.S.News & World report. I think many of them are interesting for me. Can I use article from this website for my next post?
Regards
Friday, 2 July 2010
8 comments:
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This is their website
ReplyDeletehttp://www.usnews.com/
Tum,
ReplyDeleteI am perfectly happy for you to use any source whose writing is of a reasonable standard. In my selection of suggested sources, the BBC News is the lowest because it's target audience is so broad, encompassing everyone from junior high school graduates up, which is why the paragraphs are so short and the grammar relatively simple.
I would prefer you to read, and I think students in level 5 reading and writing should be aiming to read, material at The Economist's level, which assumes the equivalent of a decent university education, and is much closer to academic writing in style and content, as reflected in the grammar, the vocabulary, the critical analysis and the deeper exposition.
How would you rate the language on US News and World Report? (I just read a couple of articles to get some idea for myself, but I would like to know what you think of it, and why you think that.)
_____________
Your question is a good one, and is exactly the sort of question to post here.
I'm looking forward to your classmates' replies.
I think I understand Tum’s point which means sometimes he does not find any interesting news in which Peter suggests to read. Please correct me If I misunderstand. I also agree with his point. For example, now, I’m checking the economist website and here is the title of most comment in five days ago.
ReplyDelete1. Elections in Hong Kong: Functionally democratic
2. Nuclear proliferation in South Asia: The power of nightmares
3. Turkey and the PKK: A blocked opening
4. Democracy in America: Guns n' Robes
5. Russia and its neighbourhood: Russia's empty empire
And I have to admit that all are not interesting because I do not have enough background or understand to those articles, then I am not capable of response writing, so it makes choosing topic which is the first step of doing writing is tough and takes a long time.
However, I absolutely do agree with Peter’s reason that the list of website he gives is very useful. I mean Tum and his classmates can familiar with style, context, vocabulary, grammar, and so on, where they will similarly see the same when they are going to study aboard.
Anyway, I have a solution which compromises both of them. I mean we have two response writings per week, so I think one of assignment has to use sources as Peter’s list, and another can be any. Will it work?
I don't agree with Book's comment at July 3, 2010 12:57 AM that it's hard to find an interesting topic on The Economist. I just had a look at the current homepage, and although everything that Book wrote is perfectly true, it does not seem to me a very strong support for idea that choosing a topic there is difficult or time consuming.
ReplyDeletePersonally, apart from the article on the Supreme Court ruling, which I found very interesting, and have already blogged myself, I would agree with Book that the other most commented on articles are not interesting to me. However, the front page article on a scandal in Japan over Sumo wrestling interested me enough to have a look. Then I clicked on the "Science and Technology" heading on the left, and found several articles that interested me - I'm generally interested in that area, so it's something I do usually look at.
And if you don't like science, there is the "Culture" section, or "World", which inludes "Asia" as a sub-heading.
One criterion I had in mind in choosing which publications to out on the list of suggested reading sources was that they must all offer a wide range of topics for you to choose from.
As I've already mentioned in my reply to Tum above, another criterion that ranked high was the quality of the writing (July 2, 2010 10:00 PM); relevant to that is my comment on "Responding to the News: weekly blog schedule", where I said that "you may blog on an article from elsewhere, but it must be from a publication at a similar standard" (¶ 2, point 1).
It does not worry me if you use other sources, and I thought that Nid's post "How long have you expected to live?" cited two very good sources; although I might have cited the primary source for the results from the Boston University School of Medicine.
But the discussion here has given me another idea that I hope Tum and Book might not disagree with. I'll put it in a new comment, or maybe a new post, after I have a coffee break.
What's wrong in their article? I just think those articles are interesting for me, and meybe for my colleague also. For example, "Early Consumption of Soda Indicator of Unhealthy Diet", "Emotion Affects Memory's Reliability", etc.
ReplyDeleteDon't you think so?
Tum, re July 4, 2010 12:42 PM,
ReplyDeleteI agree that their articles are interesting. That was never a problem. As I mentioned at July 4, 2010 12:42 PM above, it's the style and standard of writing that I'm concerned with.
I just had another look at US News and World Report's homepage. The headline for the lead story read: "How to Get in Virginia's School of Business" (retrieved July 4, 12:52 PM, UCT + 7:00 from http://www.usnews.com/) That kind of basic grammar mistake is not serious, and would not lose you any marks in a TOEFL exam; however, it is sloppy, and having it in the headline of the lead story does not reflect well on the publication's standards.
When you first asked about using it, I did read a couple of their articles; I found them interesting and informative. Unfortunately, they are also written in a style that is less formal, with many colloquial expressions, abbreviations, and grammatically simple structures. There is nothing wrong with this, but it is not an academic style. It's more the style appropriate to senior high school or informal, social discussion of issues. It wouldn't worry me if you wrote in a similar style here, but I would like you read something a little closer to a formal, academic style, which might also be a little more challenging. The only publications I explicitly ruled out were The Nation and The Bangkok Post, which are of too low a standard to serve as good examples for you. That said, I read The Nation every day - it is, after all, a useful source of information on local news. And I sometimes use it as a source for class work, often to provide examples of defective critical thinking or careless writing.
And this brings us to a related issue worth another comment. I also read the story that went with the poorly written headline: "How to Get In: University of Virginia Darden School of Business." (We can see what probably caused the sloppy error in the headline.) The newspaper is interviewing officials, and the university officer's reply to question 2. states an important point: "You would be surprised how many times we receive essays that do not answer our actual questions at all." This caught my eye because it's something we see regularly in class, both in written answers and in discusion, and it causes serious problems in both the written answer to a question and in the class discussion. The problem is not with writing or speaking, but with reading and listening, and this is borne out by TOEFL statistics, which show that higher level students typically perform more poorly in reading than in writing, and in listening than in speaking. This is one reason why in class I tend to insist: 1. that you answer the question that was actually asked, not some other question; and 2. that you get the sort of answer you ask for from your classmates, not a completely different sort of answer. If an answer is wrong, even completely wrong, that is less serious a problem than not understanding and answering the question that was actually asked. If you write a brilliant paragraph that doesn't answer the question asked, you will fail that question. A so-so answer that at least address teh question asked will probably get a passing grade. (I occasionally fail more than half a class's written answers to a question for this reason, but only if I'm sure that we had done enough preparation to reasonably expect people to understand the question and what was being asked.) I am sure that the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business's expectations are equally reasonable.
I hope everyone is reading this discussion. The issues Tum has raised are important for all of us.
ReplyDeleteAs always, more comments are welcome.
Peter, re July 4, 2010 2:58 PM,
ReplyDeleteThank you, Peter. I've seen your point clearly. It uses informal style and not useful for our future in academic area. And your's another point which is our mis-the-target-respond, I also realize when you put it to my sight. Sorry to dissapointed you, Peter. (T_____T)