before last week

This week we had only one lesson because of the bayram holiday. So I'll be explaining only one lesson of this week. This week we filled the evaluation forms for Mr. O'Regan. Koc University has a system which plans to evaluate each teacher with the help of students point of view. That is why we filled a form. Then the lecture was about transitions and linkers. Mr. O'Regan realized that we had difficulties on using linkers that's why before final exam he explained us how to use and where to use them... This week will going to be the last week of Comm101 class, if we pass. So wish me luck.. See you!

last weeks of semester

This week we received our essays back. Mine was okay at least it was read by Mr. O'Regan. Some of my classmates essays were not read because they didn't wrote as the minimum requirement. Whatever I hope they will fix their mistakes with tutorial and on the second draft. My essay's criteria sheet was commonly ticks that was good however the comments that Mr. O'Rwegan shared was not that much well. He claimed that I couldn't understand the topic and so on. So we arranmged a tutorial with him. He explained all of my mistakes and which I think was really useful.

So again I started to change my essay. This is like the fifth time I'm sitting infront of the computer and writing my essay. Except these essays Mr. O'Regan made us realize that these are the last days of the semester which means final is coming. So he said we should learn things not only for our second draft also for our final exam. Lets see what the last days bring...

11th week

This week all ogf the students were in a hurry. Because we were suppose to give second essay's first drafts. First lecture of the week was same as the week before the first essay. Mr. O'Regan talked about the things we should do and we shouldn't while we are writing our essays. He said our essay look like coban salad which is not mixed or even chopped. That's why he advised us to combine the ideas of Ben Ze'ev and Whitty, by ours.

Then Mr. O'Regan gave us examples of bad titles or introduction sentences, however not an example of good. I think if he present some good examples it would be helpful. I also think Mr. O'Regan can teach us more on writing essays. My writing skills are from the high school and last year of my high school because of OSS I didn't get any english lessons. I wasn't in ELC in the Koc so I don't have that much writing skills. If he could show some technics to me I'll be glad. Only technic I learned, which actually no one told me but I used to it, is Toefl type of essay. Except this critique I think Mr. O'Regan is being helpful while we are on the writing process. With his critiques I change some of my first writings..

I believe that Comm101 will be helpful for myu academic carrier and Comm102 however if I could learn more writing skills everything would be easier for me.

Before entering December

This week was a strange one. First lesson of the week was going quite well. We were suppose to read Whitty's text and the stories that we wrote about cybercheating. Till then it was okay. Mr O.'Regan then distrubeted some charts that we should fill about those stories. Everyone was split into groups, and we had really fun while filling that chart. Then the horror movie started for me. Mr. O'Regan distrubeted the essays we wrote. I was expecting a good grade, because I spent lots of effort and Mr.O'regan commented well on my first draft. However when I got my essay back I saw that it wasn't graded. I got a 0. At first I couldn't understand it and with that angryness I started to cry. I felt that there is nothing that I can do, so it is the best thing for me to leave this lesson and get a F automatically. I don' know how but my self-esteem came back and I asked Mr.O'regan what changed his mind. My first draft was quite good, but now I got a zero. He told me that I made 3 mistakes that he corrected in the first draft. I know he was right but it disturbed me a lot. I spent hours to correct each mistake how come it could be like that. Then we realized that I printed the wrong one. Mr.O'Regan looked at my first draft and saw how I corrected my each mistake with a pen, so he gave me a one more chance. Whatever I wrote it again got 86 out of hundred. It is not a wonderful grade but after writing third time it is unbelievable that Mr. O'Regan was that generous.

Second lesson was quite good too. Mr.O'Regan talked about Ben Ze'ev's text. He compared and contrast some points on Whitty's and Ben Ze'ev's texts. He talked about good manners, moral,immoral and amoral things. Which I think we learned a lot. We are suppose to writ our second essay's first draft for Wednesday, so I should start working hard...
See you

9th week

We are on the 9th week I guess. I'm confused with the number of weeks but whatever. As I told you so Comm101 goes on . And I'm trying my best to go on. This week second drafts were given to Mr. O'Regan. I suppose he read all of the essays but still we don't know our grades. On the first lesson of this week Mr. O'Regan talked about this. We are going to learn 40% of our grade and if we get a low one and if we have the chance to fail then we can already fail by not doing anything. And also this grade will show how we performed these 9 weeks. So I'm a bit afraid of having that grade, but also too curios. Hope to learn it. Then on the first lesson Mr. O'Regan shocked us by telling us to write stories. On Comm101 classes we were use to write essays but this time Mr.O'regan wanted us to write a story. However story was about Internet again. Itwas about cheating on Internet. Whatever we used our creativity and write our stories.We were going to learn why we wrote it on the second lesson of this week.
Second lesson of this week we were suppose to give evaluations we made on peer reviews on our podcasts. And also we were suppose to read the text by Whitty.Whitty' text was the reason we wrote that stories. Whitty conducted an experiment like this to search how people affect towards cybercheating. So Mr. O'regan tried this experiment on us =). This text and another Ben Ze'ev text will be our second essay's main texts. The second essay is going to be 4-5 pages long. It's first draft will be given on 5th of December so I'm starting to write some this week. So we talked about this essay and the Whitty's text. Mr O.R'egan told us to read Whitty's text again and Ben Ze'ev text to answer the question he asked for our essays. It's time to read them... Bye bye

This week was a bit harder than others I guess. We were suppose to write our second drafts this week. It seems easy for must of us, because the hardest part, the first draft, is finished. However to check every little mistake is not easy as it seems. So I spend my entire week on making by second draft better. We were suppose to book a tutorial with Mr. O'Regan and I did book one. We meet with him. He explained all my questions and criticized my essay.However the stopwatch which was counting down from 15 minutes made me nervous a little bit.

This week we also get our podcast reviews back from our peers. The reviews that are made for my podcast seem fine except some of them. I do agree with some of their criticizes however you feel different when someone writes really bad things for your podcast. Whatever... Then Mr. O'Regan explained all types of essay writing. He explained us that it is not as we think like just compare/contrast or agree/disagree essays. He spent a lot of time explaining us each type. Then he wrote a topic and bring some papers. Everyone had to choose one paper and on each paper there was written one type of essay writing. It would be challenging I think, but it is great for us to learn writing skills.
See you next week...

7th week on Comm101

Well this week was a bit different. First day of the class was about observing the first drafts of our essays. However Mr.O'Regan did not gave our essays back on that moment. He was right about doing this because if he would gave those essays on the beginning of the class, no one would listen to his comments. That is why he explained the common mistakes Turkish students and Comm101 students do.
While explaining these mistakes, he explained how he denoted the mistakes of ours. Lesson went on with Mr. O'Regan's explainings. At the end of the class Mr. O'Regan gave permission to take our essays. I was really afraid of seeing mine. Because about the turnitin comments he noticed that we shouldn't quote from the text, but I realized that I did. Also as I said on my first writing on this blog Mr. O'Regan is famous with his low scores. However I was shocked when I saw the criteria sheet. There was one false all of the others were ticks. That gave me courage to look at my essay. When I looked at it I saw that Mr.O'Regan wrote more than I did with his red pen Even though that disappointed me I was glad about the criteria sheet. I knew that does not mean that I wrote a wonderful essay, but it meant that I did a fairly good job. If I can work harder for second draft there is good posibility that I can get a high grade.

Whatever... Second lesson was a bit different, Mr.O'Regan gave clues on how we should improve our vocabulary skills. Like making a vocabulary notebook, or using the right dictionaries. He was aware that most of us use seslisozluk.com. However he mentioned a very good point. Seslisozluk was done by Turkish writers and they were not the best on English. That was for sure. After realizing these kind of things. Mr.O'Regan wanted us to do a vocabulary quiz to realize how we do... I will explain you the result on the next week's blog...

Bye Bye