My e-Portfolio
TDC 2 – Writing
Teacher: Elton
Carvalho
I have been a teacher at Casa Thomas
Jefferson for just over nine years. If you are asking yourself why I am only
taking the TDC course now, the answer is time. Being a full-time teacher, it
was impossible to find time to study when the course was a traditional course.
I teach every night and the classes took place either on Mondays and
Wednesdays, or on Tuesdays and Thursdays. With the blended format, I had the
opportunity to manage my time and finally take up this project. If you are
asking yourself why an old dog like me has decided to take a TDC course at this
point in his life, after 25 years of teaching, the answer is growth. Some might
say that you cannot teach old dogs new tricks. However, besides the fact that I
did learn new tricks, it is a great chance to recycle what I know, or what I
think I know, and to reflect upon my teaching.
Last semester I took the grammar
course and learned so many cool, different ways to engage students in grammar
learning. This semester we are studying writing and phonetics. The writing
course is a wonderful way to review the concepts that we teach our students. I
have always thought of myself as a good writer, but the truth is that my
writing was always very loose, like writing a novel, for example. Academic
writing is a whole different ball game, where we have to pay attention to
coherence, cohesion, and unity. By having to analyze my own writing, I believe
I will be able to do a much better job when teaching my students in the future.
After all, you cannot teach something well if you cannot do it yourself.
As far as this bimester goes, we
have studied different types of writing, more specifically narrative essays,
comparison essays, process analysis essays, and argumentative essays. I have
learned to organize my ideas and to write in a controlled way, always
supporting my thesis, as well as concluding my thoughts. Call it a recipe if
you must. There is a checklist that you can follow when writing academic
essays, a crucial tip we can pass on to our students.
This portfolio is a collection of
essays produced in the past two months. Not being able to post everything that
was written, since it would become too long, here are three essays that
represent my growth as a writer, and hopefully as a teacher of writing. The
first one is called “The Advantages and Disadvantages of Being a Bilingual in
Today’s Society.” It was the first writing of the course. The second one is a
process analysis essay done in the middle of the course. It is called
“Improving Listening and Vocabulary.” The last one is in fact the last one we
did for our course, and it is an argumentative essay written in class on the
advantages of blended learning. Hopefully, you will be able to notice the
improvement in my writing.
Finally, I would like to thank my
teacher and my classmates for making this blended course such a fun journey.
Without your feedback and participation, I would not have learned so much. I
hope we can stay and grow together until the end of the course. Phonetics and
Phonology, here we go!
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