Real World Writing

Real World Writing

The link above is from Sacramento State University. Read it to find out about how people use writing in the world beyone school

Employability Skills Survey

Skills Credentialling Tool For Individuals


Employability Skills Survey

Acounting In Canada Website

We would like to ask for your help in testing and evaluating a new website for Accountants in Canada.

Steve Sutherland, an associate of EMCN and some others are starting a field test of the www.AccountingInCanada.ca website. This is an online guide for newcomers to Canada who wish to begin or bridge their career as a professional accountant here in Canada.

The field test will consist of reviewing the website and then answering a brief feedback questionnaire on your experience with the website. They are looking for people who are immigrant accountants themselves or whose clients fit this description.

Please take a look at this website www.AccountingInCanada.ca



Once you have had a good look at the site, please complete the feedback survey which can be found at:

Survey

You may wish to preview the survey before you visit the website, so you get an idea of the kind of feedback for which we are looking. Please have the survey completed and submitted by next Friday, September 25th. Please feel free to forward this message to anyone whom you feel would be an appropriate field tester of the website (whether they work for an immigrant serving agency, another organization, or are an internationally trained accounting professional themselves).



Thanks for your help with this.



Susan

Welcome Accountants Group 2009

Here is the blogging assignment -

A blog is an on-line journal, or a place to share your thoughts with others. You are going to create a blog in class today. I will show you how.

Then, from now until the end of the term you are to 1) post a minimum of one entry per week to your own blog, and 2) read other people's blogs and 3) make two comments per week on someone else's blog. That's it. If you do that, I will give you 100% for this assignment, which will be worth 5% of your writing grade.

You can write about anything that interests you, post pictures or discuss interesting things you have found on-line. Anything. It's YOUR blog.

There is only one rule - Don't copy and paste things from other websites to avoid writing anything of your own. If you do find something interesting from another site that you want to share, make sure that you write an introduction telling your blogmates why you found this interesting and why you wanted to share it.

The objective of this assignment is to get to know each other better, to have fun and to learn to use writing to communicate in a casual, informal way.

To get you started today, maybe you would like to post the paragraphs you have been working on. Or look through the entries in my blog and see if anything there sparks your interest. How about the issue of Lucy the Elephant?

Should Elephants Live in Alberta?

Lucy, Edmonton's Elephant
Zoo rejects bid to move Lucy
An interesting story in the local news right now is the story of Lucy, an elephant living at the Storyland Zoo. Some American celebrities think that it is very cruel to keep her here in Edmonton, because it is just too cold for her here. They say that she should be moved, and that she is sick and very unhappy living here. They want her to go to an elephant sanctuary in Tennessee USA where it's warm, even though she has lived in Edmonton for her entire life - 32 of her 34 years. But many veterinarians say that she is too old and not healthy enough to be moved and she would be unhappier away from the people she has bonded with, and the only home she has ever lived in.

What do you think?
Look at these sites. Which do you think would be better for Lucy?

Edmonton Valley Zoo
The Elephant Sanctuary

Excellent pronunciation site

American English Pronunciation / Rachel's Page

It is an excellent site, although a bit heavy on the American part. She doesn't pronounce things quite the same as I do, but the theory and practice activities are great. Be sure to look at her Links, as well.

One word meme

This is a meme. If you are interested, you can copy it, and change my answers to your answers and recopy it into your blog.

You are supposed to answer the questions with only one word.

1. Where is your cell phone? Pocket.
2. Where is your significant other? Close
3. Your hair colour? Light Auburn
4. Your mother? Babysitting
5. Your father? Video-ing
6. Your favorite thing? Comfort
7. Your dream last night? Forgotten
8. Your dream/goal? Contentedness
9. The room you're in? Office
10. Your hobby? Silversmithing
11. Your fear? Poverty
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? Travelling
13. Where were you last night? YMCA
14. What you're not? Patient
15. One of your wish-list items? Dining Table
16. Where you grew up? Small town
17. The last thing you did? Typing
18. What are you wearing? Eddie Bauer
19. Your TV? Functional
20. Your pet? None
21. Your computer? Outdated
22. Your mood? Neutral
23. Missing someone? Yes
24. Your car? Functional
25. Something you're not wearing? Watch
26. Favorite store? Chapters
27. Your summer? Coming
28. Love someone? Lots
29. Your favorite colour? Green
30. When is the last time you laughed? Today
31. Last time you cried? January

Have fun with it.

Vegetarian Food

Cheap, Yummy Food?
Have any of you ever picked up food from the Truc Lam Monastery? It sounds intriguing, but I'd like to know if it is worth the trip over there. Here's the scoop on the place, according to Edmonton's Vegan & Vegetarian Diner's Guide:

Truc Lam Monastery Meditation Centre
11328 97 Street
780-471-1093
Sun 10a-noon

Every Sunday morning, this Buddhist temple sells homemade vegetarian dishes from its basement (pay by cash only).

When you attend the service, a free veggie meal is provided. There are tables and chairs set up to sit and eat. All the food is sold from a length of tables against one wall, so get in line and point to what you want and it will be packaged up for you. Vegans beware that some dishes contain milk or egg depending on the week - one week a dish will be vegan; one week it is not. Nothing is labelled. Ask and you will be directed to someone who speaks English and can explain which dishes contain animal products.

You cannot get better value for your money: a package of 3 salad rolls with sauce for $2! A litre container of soup (curry, sweet and sour vegetable, or 'seafood') for $5! Fake meats and fake fish (made with bean curd and mushrooms) from $3 to $5. A smorgasbord of veggie dishes too numerous to purchase in one visit. Bring your own reusable cloth bag for extra goodness.

Enter from the south doors on the main level. Free parking in the back. The Dharma Service starts at 10:30 (upstairs) and visitors are welcome. If you are just getting food, it is less busy once the service starts.

(Stolen from my friend Boubabe's blog.)

www.lextutor.ca/Concordancing. Complete the worksheet

Grammar Exercises from A Canadian Writer's Reference
A Canadian Writers REference
Click cancel to log in
Go to Grammar Exercises and look at Grammatical Sentences, (pages 204-215)

If you want to do more work with articles, looke at Grammar Exercises>ESL challenges> E-ex E3-1 and E3-2

Halloween

Halloween was great when I was a kid. My mom made my costumes for me. At that time, kids usually dressed up as cowboys, gypsies, nurses, rabbits, or clowns. No TV characters and no one had a store-bought costume. But it was a different time. It was the 1970’s and I lived in a town much smaller than Edmonton. It only had 1200 people so I think we managed to visit every house. I always went out with 4 or 6 of my friends. No one’s parents came with us, unless it was very cold. If it was, somebody’s mom would follow us around in a warm car, just in case. I was sent out of the house with instructions not to eat any candy until I got home, because mom and dad had to inspect it first. Of course, I ignored that. The best part was how much fun I had walking around town after dark with my friends. We laughed and talked, and pretended to be scared of shadows, or dark houses. Sometimes we met other groups of kids from school. (There was only one school). We’d stay together for awhile, and then split up, or find other groups. I don’t remember it being very cold ever, but it must have been. So as a big group we would walk from house to house and at the door we would yell ‘trick or treat’ as loudly as we possibly could to announce ourselves. We would collect our piece of candy in our pillowcases and move on to the next house.

After about two hours we were all back in our own houses and I would turn over my candy to my parents who would pour the bag out onto the living room floor and look at it all for any signs that it might have been interfered with. They would inspect the fruit for any signs that some one might have inserted a needle or a razor blade into it. If it was safe it would go into the fridge. Home made cookies or brownies had to be thrown away immediately, in case they were poisoned. Not that there ever were many home baked things. Most people knew it wouldn’t be eaten. But once I got a toothbrush.

After I got my candy back I separated it myself. There was always one or two bags of potato chips, the best things of all, and some chocolate bars. These I ate in the first few days, but there was also a lot of candy like lollipops and cheap, molasses toffees. I wasn’t very interested in these and they lingered for a long time.

Tonight, however, things seem to be different. There’s not so many kids. I guess they are all at the mall, or the community parties. A lot of the ones who are coming look too old to be out. I considered myself too old when I turned 12. Some kids are not even in costume. And there is often a lurking parent in the background. They ring the doorbell and say ‘trick or treat’ quietly when I come to the door. I wonder if they are having as much fun as I did. It doesn’t seem like it. But they do get better candy.

'Ukraine' or 'The Ukraine'

Today, in our grammar class on articles we discussed when to put a definite article (the) in front of names of countries, and we didn't come to a decision about whether Ukraine or The Ukraine was correct. The answer is below, copied from Wikipedia. It looks like you were right, Anatoliy, but old habits die hard.

Ukraine, from Wikipedia
"Ukraine" is from Old East Slavic ukraina meaning "borderland". It derives from u ("by, at") and the Slavic root kraj ("edge; region").[6] The territory was so named because it was the borderland or "frontier zone" of medieval Russia at the time of the Tatar invasion in the 13th century. ... In the Ukrainian language, krayina simply means "country." In English, the country is referred to without the definite article, conforming to the usual English grammar rules for names of countries. Before the country's independence in 1991, the country was often referred to as The Ukraine. The term Ukraine rather than The Ukraine is now predominant in diplomacy and journalism.

One Million Acts of Green

Last night I was watching one of my favourite news programs, "The Hour" with host George Strombolopolous. Have you ever watched this program? It's a good show, aimed at younger people who like to get their current events in a more relaxed, 'hip' manner. One of the things he talked about last night was a new program called One Million Acts of Green. It's a page that is trying to encourage Canadians to do big and small things to save the environment. Hopefully as a group Canadians (and immigrants) can do one million things to help the environment. THey are talking about little things, like washing clothes in cold water, to big things like buying more environmentally friendly cars and products to heat and cool your house. The page also tells us how much Greenhouse gas emmissions we are saving with this act. So, I joined today and I will see what I can do. I already do somethings, but I can do others.

So, my question is... how much difference do you think one person can make to the environment? After all, its the big companies who do the most damage. If I don't remember to switch off my lights, or I let my car run too long, does it matter?

Welcome Accounting Group

You will be able to find yourselves and the other classmates here.

Here is the assignment

If you post a minimum of one entry a week for the next 8 weeks (in English) and comment on at least three other people's entries I will give you 100% for this assignment, which is worth 5% of the total writing mark.

You can write about anything you want, post any pictures or links that you want. It's YOUR blog.

I will send out a conversation starter once every week to get you started.

Blogging Video

What is a blog? And why do I need one? To answer these questions, watch this video.




Now take a look at this
Blogging For Beginners

Word Forms

Protected
Word forms

Knowing different word forms is a very useful skill when paraphrasing.

This is an easy quiz where you have to choose the correct word form.

This link takes you to an interactive quiz using different word forms.

This page has several quizzes about word forms in context.

This link is for a table in which you have to insert different word forms in the same word family.

Susan thanks Vivienne for allowing her to steal this.

Sites for Journal Writing Ideas

Here are some sites you can go to if you want some ideas for topics to write about in your journals.

The Daily Meme What's a meme? "In the context of blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on." (Reprinted from the website)

Daily Writing Prompts

Journal Writing Prompts

Enjoy!

Nouns

Next week when Helen comes back she will begin nouns and articles. Please look at these exercises as well

Quiz 1
Quiz 2
A, An, The quiz
Quiz 4
Grammar guide

Prepositions

Here are some links to help you with prepositions.

Quiz 1
a4esl.org
englishpage.com
esl.about.com
www.better-english.com
eslcafe

Pronunciation Places on the 'net

Here are a lot of interesting sites that I have gathered, so far. If you have anything interesting to add, please let me know.

Speech accent archive Listen to people from all over the world speaking English

English Club.com

Holly's Corner This site has a lot of different pronunciation activities.

Randall's Cyber Listening Lab

pronunciation links

itesl journal pronunciation sites

Okanagan University

PronWeb