"So, what do we have to do?"

First of all, congratulations for making it this far into the course!

Some of you may have been wondering which tasks we still need to accomplish, so here I'll try to explain:

1) An essay (which has been referred to as "My Expertise") and its content will depend on your own experience and expertise. Its length should range between 7 and 10 pages. You must use the Chicago Manual of Style (we analyzed the sample document that I've shared on Drive). 

The due date is November 11 and everyone will give a short presentation to the class on that week.

2) A five-paragraph-essay; it will take place on November 6 under test conditions. You will choose ONE of the tasks to be written:

* An expository essay

* A descriptive essay

* A narrative essay

* A persuasive / argumentative essay

* A compare-and-contrast essay

3) There will be a a Final Test on November 20, which will include ONE of the following standardized tasks:

* A CAE (Certificate in Advanced English) task. 

* An IELTS (International English Language Testing System) Academic task (both 1 & 2).

* A TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) task.

Have a nice weekend!

Arturo

This is a nice example of a five-paragraph essay. Please, check the source for further detail:

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/five_par.htm

A Sample Paper

1Stephen King, creator of such stories as Carrie and Pet Sematary, stated that the Edgar Allan Poe stories he read as a child gave him the inspiration and instruction he needed to become the writer that he is. 2Poe, as does Stephen King, fills the reader's imagination with the images that he wishes the reader to see, hear, and feel. 3His use of vivid, concrete visual imagery to present both static and dynamic settings and to describe people is part of his technique. 4Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a story about a young man who kills an old man who cares for him, dismembers the corpse, then goes mad when he thinks he hears the old man's heart beating beneath the floor boards under his feet as he sits and discusses the old man's absence with the police. 5In "The Tell-Tale Heart," a careful reader can observe Poe's skillful manipulation of the senses.	The introductory paragraph includes a paraphrase of something said by a famous person in order to get the reader's attention. The second sentence leads up to the thesis statement, which is the third sentence. The thesis statement (sentence 3) presents the topic of the paper to the reader and provides a mini- outline. The topic is Poe's use of visual imagery. The mini- outline tells the reader that this paper will present Poe's use of imagery in three places in his writing: (1) description of static setting; (2) description of dynamic setting; and (3) description of a person. The last sentence of the paragraph uses the words "manipulation" and "senses" as transitional hooks.
1The sense of sight, the primary sense, is particularly susceptible to manipulation. 2In "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe uses the following image to describe a static scene: "His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness . . ." Poe used the words "black," "pitch," and "thick darkness" not only to show the reader the condition of the old man's room, but also to make the reader feel the darkness." 3"Thick" is a word that is not usually associated with color (darkness), yet in using it, Poe stimulates the reader's sense of feeling as well as his sense of sight.	In the first sentence of the second paragraph (first paragraph of the body) the words "sense" and "manipulation" are used to hook into the end of the introductory paragraph. The first part of the second sentence provides the topic for this paragraph--imagery in a static scene. Then a quotation from "The Tell-Tale Heart" is presented and briefly discussed. The last sentence of this paragraph uses the expressions "sense of feeling" and "sense of sight" as hooks for leading into the third paragraph.
1Further on in the story, Poe uses a couple of words that cross not only the sense of sight but also the sense of feeling to describe a dynamic scene. 2The youth in the story has been standing in the open doorway of the old man's room for a long time, waiting for just the right moment to reveal himself to the old man in order to frighten him. 3Poe writes: "So I opened it [the lantern opening]--you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily--until, at length, a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye." 4By using the metaphor of the thread of the spider (which we all know is a creepy creature) and the word "shot," Poe almost makes the reader gasp, as surely did the old man whose one blind eye the young man describes as "the vulture eye."	The first sentence of the third paragraph (second paragraph of the body) uses the words "sense of sight" and "sense of feeling" to hook back into the previous paragraph. Note that in the second paragraph "feeling" came first, and in this paragraph "sight" comes first. The first sentence also includes the topic for this paragraph--imagery in a dynamic scene. Again, a quotation is taken from the story, and it is briefly discussed. The last sentence uses the words "one blind eye" which was in the quotation. This expression provides the transitional hook for the last paragraph in the body of the paper.
1The reader does not know much about what the old man in this story looks like except that he has one blind eye. 2In the second paragraph of "The Tell-Tale Heart," Poe establishes the young man's obsession with that blind eye when he writes: "He had the eye of the vulture--a pale blue eye, with a film over it." 3This "vulture eye" is evoked over and over again in the story until the reader becomes as obsessed with it as does the young man. 4His use of the vivid, concrete word "vulture" establishes a specific image in the mind of the reader that is inescapable.	In the first sentence of the fourth paragraph (third paragraph in the body), "one blind eye" is used that hooks into the previous paragraph. This first sentence also lets the reader know that this paragraph will deal with descriptions of people: ". . . what the old man looks like . . .." Once again Poe is quoted and discussed. The last sentence uses the word "image" which hooks into the last paragraph. (It is less important that this paragraph has a hook since the last paragraph is going to include a summary of the body of the paper.)
1"Thick darkness," "thread of the spider," and "vulture eye" are three images that Poe used in "The Tell-Tale Heart" to stimulate a reader's senses. 2Poe wanted the reader to see and feel real life. 3He used concrete imagery rather than vague abstract words to describe settings and people. 4If Edgar Allan Poe was one of Stephen King's teachers, then readers of King owe a debt of gratitude to that nineteenth-century creator of horror stories.	The first sentence of the concluding paragraph uses the principal words from the quotations from each paragraph of the body of the paper. This summarizes those three paragraph. The second and third sentences provide observations which can also be considered a summary, not only of the content of the paper, but also offers personal opinion which was logically drawn as the result of this study. The last sentence returns to the Edgar Allan Poe-Stephen King relationship which began this paper. This sentence also provides a "wrap-up" and gives the paper a sense of finality.

On Mexico's Economy in 2003

Washington Post, November 24, 2003                                              

By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan
ECATEPEC, Mexico -- Jesus Santana Hernandez opened his refrigerator and looked at the contents: a bottle of water and an onion. His mother was at work washing dishes in a taco joint. So it fell to Jesus, a wiry 12-year-old, to feed his three younger brothers and sisters. The onion was no help. He grabbed the water.
Jesus had homework to get to -- math, Spanish and science -- but there was no time. He scooped lumpy cereal out of a box and mixed it with the water. He propped up his 10-month-old sister on an unmade bed in the corner of the kitchen and tried to comfort her with cold mush. She cried.
Jesus is in the sixth grade, the last year of primary school in Mexico, and confronts a decision faced by children his age throughout the country. According to government education officials, at least 300,000 Mexican children each year drop out of school after the sixth grade. Some last a year or two more, but the average Mexican has left school by age 14.
A child from a working-poor family, Jesus is a smart boy with natural ability and ambition who wants to continue his studies. But he must deal with the same obstacles that block the paths of millions of children here: pressure to help struggling families by getting a job; uninspiring public schools; and low expectations of parents who think that more than six years of school is a luxury.
Mexico's poor educational achievement is at the heart of why this nation of 100 million has remained stuck economically on the ladder of nations. Unable to compete with better-trained workforces elsewhere, Mexico has largely settled for a niche in low-skilled assembly jobs. Now it is even losing those to China, where low-skilled workers are paid less. Business leaders here are pleading for an education revolution.
A generation ago, Mexico and South Korea ranked near the bottom in academic achievement among the 30 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said OECD official Andreas Schleicher. Today, among people age 25 to 34, Mexico ranks last in the same OECD studies, while South Korea has risen to No. 1. South Korea's highly skilled workers produce some of the world's most popular cars and electronics, but Mexico's workforce still relies largely on sweat.
"It's not that Mexico has declined, it's just that everyone else has progressed," Schleicher said. He said one explanation for the stagnation is clear: Public education is nearly a religion in South Korea, while Mexico ranks last among OECD countries in investment in primary education. "Mexico and other countries that have not kept pace with everyone else in education have paid a heavy price, economically and socially."
Jesus's stepfather, Mario Cruz Diaz, 40, is a mason's assistant. He went to school for a total of three months and has trouble reading and writing his children's names. He wants Jesus to stay in school because even low-paying factories prefer that their employees have a high school education these days. But he's not sure the family can afford to keep Jesus sitting in a classroom when he could be working.
Jesus, well groomed and with an almost adult seriousness, wants to be a lawyer. "You don't get anywhere if you don't go to school," he said. "I'm going to try to stay in." But nobody in his family has ever made it past sixth grade.

A Four-Hour School Day
Jesus walked his little brother, Yair, a giggly first-grader with cheap metal caps on his front teeth, up a hill to school. They passed the vast city dump in Ecatepec, a worn-down city of 2.5 million people just northeast of Mexico City. They arrived at the Americas Elementary School just before classes began at 1:30 p.m.
Americas is a typical Mexican school, under-funded and struggling, where education seems more like a pastime than a goal. If Jesus is looking for inspiration to stay in school, it is hard to find between these crumbling walls.
Even the hours are stacked against his success: Most Mexican elementary schools run two shifts. The first is from 8 a.m. until 12:30 p.m.; then different students fill the classrooms from 1:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Too many students and too few school buildings have forced the split schedule upon millions of children. The primary school day in all public schools is four hours, with a half-hour for lunch and recess, compared with six or more hours in private schools.Mexico's teachers' union, one of the world's largest and most powerful, has strongly resisted efforts to lengthen the public school day; its members earn two full salaries for teaching the double shift.
Jesus, spiffy in his school uniform, navy blue sweater and gray slacks, dropped off Yair at his first-grade class and then took a seat in Veronica Montoya's sixth-grade classroom. Montoya, 26, teaches every morning at a private school across town, where students learn things Jesus has never heard of, such as Google and Gandhi.
At Americas, where as many as 45 children squeeze into a classroom, there are no computers and students have to bring their own toilet paper. Parents chipped in to paint the school baby blue two years ago, but the walls are already peeling like sunburned skin.In Jesus's classroom, bits of the ceiling are falling in. There is little on the walls, except a newspaper clipping about Arnold Schwarzenegger.
After Jesus and his classmates took their places at 1:30 p.m., Montoya walked in and told them to open their Spanish books. For the next 15 minutes, she stood outside and argued with a student and his mother. He was one of three students she had suspended the day before because they hadn't done any work in the first two months of school. His mother was angry. She told Montoya that she had to work, and she had nowhere else to put her son in the afternoons.Montoya said many children receive no academic support at home. But she said the saddest cases for her are students such as Jesus, who want to study but find it hard because of economic factors.
"Jesus is a good student, but sometimes he doesn't do his homework," she said. "He studies, but it's a question of time. He also has to help the family because they don't have many resources. If he had more time to study, he would be a better student."For the next hour, Montoya walked from student to student, wordlessly correcting homework. Most of the rest of the pupils chitchatted. But Jesus kept his nose in his schoolbook, reading quietly and writing down answers to grammar questions, paying little attention to the banter around him.
For the first hour and fifteen minutes of a four-hour school day, there had been no lessons taught in Jesus's classroom, which is not uncommon. The week before, Jesus had no school on Wednesday because Montoya had a doctor's appointment, and there is no budget for substitute teachers. There were no classes Friday because of teacher training. He stayed home another day because his uniform was wet: "I have to wash my pants myself, and they weren't dry in time." He watched television instead.At 2:45, Montoya led the children out to a few desks scattered around the playground. She broke them into small groups and told them to come up with a mock evening newscast, with news stories and commercials. Then she went back inside. She said she had paperwork to do.
For the next hour, the children pondered the assignment, but mostly enjoyed the sunshine and chatted. Across the playground, school workers got ready for lunchtime, setting out little cups of strawberry yogurt, sprinkled with chocolate-coated corn flakes, and a spread of candy and sugar-spiked junk food.At 3:45, the students filed back into the classroom to present their skits. One group announced a car bomb in Russia. Another read a news item about a babysitter who poured hot soup on some children. Jesus and his group read one about a drunk driver causing an explosion at a gas station. The silly skits made everybody giggle. This was fun.
It was 4 o'clock. Time for recess and candy. If Jesus had learned much of anything at school today, it was not obvious.In a recent OECD study of the reading ability of 15-year-olds in 27 countries, Mexico ranked last, with 44 percent reading at only the most rudimentary level.

Always Another Fee
Late one morning, Jesus sat at the kitchen table and tried to do his math homework.He carefully counted the sides on a geometric shape with the tip of his pencil. Then he took his worn dictionary and matched a picture in the mathematics section with the shape on his homework. "Octagon," he wrote in his notebook.Jesus had time to study because he didn't have to work today. But the pressure to earn money for his family is already bearing down on him, and like nearly half of his classmates, he spends his mornings working. He has a job in a neighbor's yard stuffing punching bags with sawdust for about 40 cents a bag. He also keeps bags of ice in the freezer and sells them for 10 cents.
"Every penny in our pockets helps," said Cruz, his stepfather.
Cruz said Jesus's schooling is a severe drain on limited finances. In the best weeks he and his wife together earn $120, he said. From that, they pay for rent, food, transportation and clothes for a family of six. They pay an inscription fee of $15 each to send Jesus and Yair to the Americas School. That pays for such things as chalk, light bulbs, bleach and cleaning the toilets. Parents also pay for uniforms, books, pencils, field trips and food for a never-ending string of festivals and holidays.Supplies are so short that students are required to bring four pesos (about 36 cents) to pay to take the monthly exam; the school needs the money to buy the paper.Mexico invests more heavily in higher education and has several of North America's leading public universities, but they tend to benefit the best students and the upper classes.
"There's always something you have to pay for -- an exam, a uniform, inscription fee. Public schools in Mexico are not free," Cruz said.
The government of President Vicente Fox has greatly expanded an anti-poverty program that pays some parents every month they keep their children in school. But Cruz said he was not considered poor enough to qualify for those benefits.
"We have never gotten anything from the government," he said, noting that his toddler, Yeslie, will start kindergarten next year, giving him a third set of school fees to pay.Those fees are collected by Eduardo Castillo Hernandez, the school janitor and head of the parent-teacher association. Castillo knows how those fees and other school costs determine whether children stay in school or drop out. Particularly costly, he said, was the $30 gym uniform for the older children, he said. So his daughters, 14 and 15, quit school when they were 12; they now work in a restaurant.
On this morning, Cruz was rising late. After two weeks without work, he had been back on the job the night before, laying tiles in a restaurant kitchen in Mexico City, and soon would be returning there. He wanted to keep the money coming while the work lasted.
"Jesus is a hard worker, and it would be better for him to try to go on to secondary school," Cruz said. "But these days it's more difficult to support your family. There are fewer jobs, and there's less food to go around."
Cruz said that when he tries to get work on a job site, those who are chosen are the ones with more skills. Still, he said, he wouldn't force Jesus to stay in school. "He should stay there only if he likes it and makes the most of it."Cruz and Gloria Hernandez Rico, 33, Jesus's mother, have been together, but not married, for nearly nine years. He has a 15-year-old daughter from a previous marriage; she has a 15-year-old son. Both children dropped out of school after sixth grade to work. The seventh grade marks the beginning of middle school, which is often located farther from students' home. In rural areas, the seventh grade can take hours to reach by bus, another reason 12-year-olds tend to drop out.
Hernandez also quit school after sixth grade 20 years ago, a reminder of how little has changed in a generation. Nobody else in her family had much schooling, but she said everybody was doing fine. "If he quits now," she said of Jesus, "I wouldn't say anything." She said he likes to work to bring in money the family needs.Jesus was still studying at the kitchen table, next to the small single bed he shares with Yair. "I know if I am going to be a lawyer, I need to keep studying," he said.

He worked on long division problems, with his nose an inch from the paper. He has a knack for shutting out everything around him, from the chatter in his classroom to the economic realities dragging him toward the same hard life his parents have known.He wrote and erased. How many times does seven go into 32? He flipped the worn pages of his notebook, struggling for the answer.Then the stew needed stirring again.

                                                                            Researcher Bart Beeson in Mexico City contributed to this report. 

Source: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/mexico/mexico-dropouts.htm

First Of All:

People have been using the word ‘firstable’ in place of the phrase ‘first of all’ for a little while.

And now it’s officially a thing apparently.

Whether it’s a malapropism, where people have actually misheard the phrase ‘first of all’ and are just going with a similar sounding word, or whether time constraints in the modern world are such that we just ain’t got time to write an entire phrase anymore, we don’t know.

However, Buzzfeed today alerted the world to this lamentable etymological fact, reporting that, according to Twitter tracker Topsy, ‘firstable’ has been used 96 times in the last month.

Now they mention it.



FIRSTABLE HARRY SPRAYS HIS EYES WITH THE PERFUME AND NOW HE SLIPS OVER AFTER GETTING OUT THE POOL THATS WHY I LOVE HIM

— ♡reb♡ (@guccireb) June 8, 2013



too honest? what is wrong with being TOO honest and firstable, there's no such thing as TOO honest. #YouMadBro?

— Dead Rain (@DeadLoneWolf) October 2, 2011

Secondable, we even have a Twitter account @1stofall that corrects people when they use firstable by mistake.



@princeclemmings I think you mean "First of all"

— First of All (@1stofall_) November 12, 2014



@aniIingus I think you mean "First of all"

— First of All (@1stofall_) November 12, 2014

Everyone’s mourning the sad demise of the English language on Twitter.



Wait… So some people actually think the expressions are firstable and secondable instead of first of all and second of all….?

— SuitsSuitMe (@SuitsSuitMe) November 12, 2014



Firstable is not a word you cretins

— Sweet Baby Bladefoot (@jatierose) November 12, 2014

But, some are arguing that, actually, language is meant to evolve over time, adapting to social and political trends.



@BuzzFeed but it's not actually dumb at all… That's how language develops

— David Lawrence (@MrDaveLawrence) November 12, 2014

For better or worse.



@BuzzFeed well, all languages are like living entities, they're always evolving, changing… For Better or for worst. This time for worst

— Simon Says Follow (@Lhiz_Jordn) November 12, 2014

So, thirdable, we might all be saying it soon.





Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2014/11/12/firstable-meaning-first-of-all-is-probably-a-word-now-and-thats-just-how-it-is-4945799/#ixzz48Xk1EMUi

The Open Window

by H.H.Munro (Saki)

            "My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me."

            Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come. Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do very much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.

            "I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice."

            Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction came into the nice division.

            "Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.

            "Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here." He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

            "Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed young lady.

            "Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.

            "Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time."

        "Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot  tragedies seemed out of place.

            "You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

            "It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?"

            "Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it."

            Here the child's voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human.

            "Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back someday, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. "Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window--"

            She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.

            "I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.

            "She has been very interesting," said Framton.

            "I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They've been out for snipe in the marshes today, so they'll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you menfolk, isn't it?"

            She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter.

            To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic, he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

            "The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably widespread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement," hecontinued.

            "No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention—but not to what Framton was saying.

            "Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!"

            Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with a dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.

            In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window, they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I said, Bertie, why do you bound?"

            Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall door, the gravel drive, and the front gate were dimly noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid imminent collision.

            "Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window, "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?"

            "A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton; "could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of goodbye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost."

            "I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve."

            Romance at short notice was her specialty.

Source: http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/openwin.html