July 13th Chapter Meeting Presentations
Warren Merkel, III (Chonnam Natl. University)
Less is More: The Use of Brevity in Second Language WritingJacob Boer (Gwangju EPIK, Elem. Ed. Program)
Young Learner Activities That'll Knock Their Socks Off
Swap-shop
Share your teaching ideas, activities, and outstanding books and teaching materials.
Door Prizes
Include a gift certificate for one mouth-watering pizza at The First Alleyway.
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Presentation Abstracts and Presenters' Biographical Sketches
Less is More: The Use of Brevity in Second Language Writing
Warren Merkel
The process of developing proficiency in English as a second language (ESL) writing can be viewed as a series of building blocks. Students learn the alphabet, orthography, sentences, and paragraphs, all of which lead to a finished product. As students progress towards different goals, they face a number of challenges, such as syntax and grammar, as well as different types of sentences and awareness of genre forms. In the intermediate to advanced stages, once students are able to express themselves moderately well, they often focus on clarity, unity, coherence, transition, and varied structure, to name a few.
However, one aspect of second language writing that tends to get overlooked is brevity. As students’ vocabulary increases, as they write about more advanced topics, and as their sentences become longer and often more complicated in structure, verbosity sometimes supplants economy. As a result, students often feel that this “sophisticated” writing is necessarily better; consequently, advanced-level student writing can become bloviated, confusing, and in general, unpleasant to read.
This workshop will first define brevity and its significance before engaging participants in a few quick exercises on brevity. It will then move on to an explanation, discussion, and quick practice of a writing contest entitled “55 Fiction” started by New Times magazine in San Luis Obispo, California. The rules for the contest are simple: submit a short story that contains all the elements of a story (characters, plot, conflict, etc.) in 55 words or fewer. Finally, the workshop will discuss how writing with fewer words instead of more can be adapted to intermediate- to advanced-level English classrooms in Korea to benefit both student and teacher.
The Presenter
Warren Merkel is currently a visiting professor and teacher-trainer at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, South Korea. His interests include contrastive rhetoric, plagiarism across cultures, and the role of brevity in writing, the last of which led to his first publication, “Make Every Word Count,” in Language Magazine. Before working in Korea, Warren studied in Germany, taught in Japan, worked for a translation company in New York, and earned his master’s degree in TESOL from the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, Vermont. In the fall of 2013, he will begin a doctorate in Foreign Language/ESL Education at the University of Iowa (USA). Email: merkelthree@yahoo.com
Young Learner Activities That'll Knock They're Socks Off!
Jacob Boer
The national elementary public school English curriculum puts a tremendous emphasis on playing short games with almost every teaching hour in the classroom. For young learners, games are introduced as a low-stress alternative to time spent on rote memorization. This is great because having fun and using your imagination comes natural to children. Often though, the book provides insufficient material or a complete absence of fun activities for the teacher to use. In this talk we will revisit what children want from a game and how a teacher’s objectives can also be met while playing them. Game to be demonstrated include Time Chair, SPY Game, Cover-Up, Point for Points, Lotto Lines, and Phonics Fun.
The Presenter
Jacob Boer has lived in South Korea for four years. Like many who came before him, he only thought he would only stay one year. But he has found Korea to be a very exciting land with many great opportunities. Jacob currently teaches the elementary school level with E.P.I.K. and lectures for special teacher training courses for the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education. He also lecturers at native teacher training workshops and at orientations for new E.P.I.K. teachers about lesson planning for the elementary school curriculum and PowerPoint use in the ESL classroom.
