Saturday, October 11, 2008

Formative Works 1-6

Course 1: Grammar Pratice Exercise 1

- Interest Level: 5/10

To be perfectly honest, grammar is not one of my favourite learning fields, which explained the low interest level. However, the course did pinpoint issues I have with the use of commas in dialogs, something I rarely use, hence the issues.

- Difficulty Level: 5/10

The difficulty was average, but I found some questions badly explained and presented. When I looked over my mistakes, I realized that most of them were due to the way the exercises were presented.

- What I learned

As I mentionned before, this course went over notions I had already seen more than one at school, although it's always good to revise them. The area where I learned a little bit more really is the correct form on punctuation in dialogs.

- Score: 80%

Course 2: Persuasive Writing 

- Interest Level: 3/10

Writing is a personal passion, so I thought this course would be a bit more interesting. However, when I saw the topic I had to work with, my motivation and interest went downhill. I have no knowledge regarding how science should be teached to give effective results.

- Difficulty Level: 7.5/10

This high difficulty level is due to the fact that I didn't know anything about the subject I was suppose to write about. Also, no clue as to what we were to be evaluated on were given. Everything was pretty much a mystery, which is not the kind of support you expect when writing an essay.

- What I Learned

I did not learn a lot unfortunately. I was expecting a detailled scoring gride, but everything was vague and general. In the end, I have no idea what I should work on and what I already know. Frankly, I am not satisfied at the end of all of this.

- Score: 4/6

Course 3: Prewriting

- Interest Level: 7/10

I suffer from writer's block every time I have an essay or a text to write. I am hoping that his course will help me bypass this struggling.

- Difficulty Level: 3/10

Every exercise was extremely easy, but I think that difficulty was not the point of this exercise. It really was to pratice what was explained in the text.

- What I Learned

While being, easy, this course showed me how to seize the tone and the audience I should aim for in a text. It also provided new ways of brainstorming that I will try to use in the future.

- Score: That particular course did not have a score at the end of it all.

Course 4: Punctuation in Sentences

- Interest Level: 7/10

While still being grammar, I found in the first text I did that my dialog punctuation needed some polishing, which is why I decided to take this course.

- Difficulty Level: 2/10

I was not challenged at all. I was expecting exercises on dialogue punctuation, but there wasn't any. The punctuation rules that were explained in this course had already been covered in class. 

- What I Learned

I learned about restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. I already knew the basic, but not how their were called. Quite frankly, this alone was not enough to motivate me.

- Score: There was no score.

Course 5: Fine-Tuning Punctuation

- Interest Level: 7/10

I hope I do not get my hopes up for nothing! This lesson is supposed to cover quotation marks, something that I used in dialogues. I think that I will finally be able to pratice this particual skill.

- Difficulty Level: 4/10

The exercises were still pretty simple, but the rules were a little bit more complex. The dialogue punctuation that I longed to be proprely explained was in fact not that hard. That did please me to no extent.

- What I Have Learned

I finally got what I wanted: dialogue punctuation. I learned that when you want to use quotation marks inside another one, you have to use this particualr type of quotion marks: '...' This does not apply to French punctuation; however, I thought it was very pratical. I also learned when to put commas in dialogues.

- Score: Once again, there was no score for this test.

Course 6: Adjectives and Adverbs

- Interest Level: 6/10

I chose this course because I think that adjectives and adverbs really are what bring personality to a text. I expect to learn new ways to incorporated them in my writing and verify what I already know.

- Difficulty Level: 2/10

The course was extremely easy. I was expecting challenge, but I found out that the goal of these exercises was to differentiate abverbs from adjectives. This is something I know how to do since my English classes in grade school. It is not rocket science!

- What I Learned

As I said before, everything covered by this course was things and rules that I was already aware of. Unfortunately, I did not learn a lot, much to my dismay.

- Score: There was no score.

1 comment:

Frank B said...

Fanny,

Lots of good perceptive comments. I was hoping you would rate each course. It's too bad you didn't do your work on time.
6/10