valya's blog communication 101

before last week

2007-12-23T10:09:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-17T00:48:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-03T00:46:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-25T11:54:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-18T11:53:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-11T15:20:00.000-08:00

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

comm101 goes on..

2007-11-04T12:30:00.000-08:00

This week was a bit shorter than others. Because of the "republic day" we missed the first class of Comm101. So I can only explain one lesson for this week. On that lesson we were suppose to give our essays to Mr.O'Regan. But it was not as easy as you think. Most of the teachers take all the essays and if there is something missing they take points out of your essay. But Mr.O'Regan's style was different. He did not get any essay if there is something missing. He believes that if something is missing then you didn't read the instructions which means you have a lack on this course, so there is no need to take your essay. We spend lot of time on that, then we spend a lot of time on turnitin.com. Which is a nightmare or some students. This site is calculating how much plagiarism a student have done. Because Mr. David know we'll panic he block the system for us and only he did saw these percentages. We talked a bit on that and observed that this percentage does not show that much reality. This week was short but a harsh one. See you a week later bye!

first draft of first essay

2007-10-31T02:38:00.000-07:00

Firstly sorry for writing late. I think it's because of the holiday and the all assignments I should do fo this week. This week was quite interesting. As you know we had a reading for about 10 pages. We finished that but we had to answer Micro&Macro questions. Those questions seemmed really easy, however they were not. When Mr. O'Regan started to gave the answers our group realised that we did not make a good job. Some questions were actually but some were asking important but hidden clues. Mr. O'Regan explained it all and we were comfortable that we learned the true ones. Because these questions were going to help our first essays. You can not know how much these essays mean to us. Firstly they are %25 of our lesson and to get Mr. O'Regan's attention we have to spend a lot time on it. I finished my essay this week and I'm really excited to see what my peers and Mr.O'regan will say. Hope they will like it. See you!

Fifth week

2007-10-21T09:49:00.000-07:00

This week started much more peaceful. Later on we saw the first essay's topic. It was a bit scary. We were dealing with the question to understand while Mr. O'Regan wanted us to pre-read the text. It seems fine but later on I saw it was too scientific for me to handle. Then that lesson we started a group work to learn how to write summaries.

Firstly we tried to remember what we have learned in the past for summarizing. Then "Handbook for Writers" book came to help us. Every group write the facts they found on the board and we tried to see if they are really facts or not. Second lesson was a bit more challenging. Because we were suppose to read the text called " Is the Internet Changing Social Life?It Seems the More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same."The text we are going to write the first essay on. While reading it seemed to e that I understood the most important points, but after Mr. O'Regan gave his questionnaire it was well seen that none of us were good at the points that Mr. O'Regan thought important. We talked about the words which have other meanings then we usually use them. He briefly explained that we should look more carefully to catch the points that are important.

One more topic about this week was podcast. I finished my Podcast last week but I'm not sure if it is good enough or not. So this week I'm going to work on that. Because this Friday is the deadline for it. I hope this hard essay and Podcast will conclude in a good way. See you next week...

Fourth week

2007-10-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

One more week passed. And finally we have finished a month. However it was not as good as I dreamed so. Mr O'Regan gave us 20 pages of reading for this week.It was about cyberspace and it was written by Aaron Ben Ze'ev. I read this article, take notes and spend lot of time more than I've ever expected. Then the fourth week started as I'm going to introduce. This week started quite different because for the first time Mr. O'Regan gave us a quiz. Actually two quizes at the same time. I know it sounds quite odd but we do the same quiz two times.

First of them was closed book attempt and the second one is open book attempt. He gave us 20 minutes and he wanted us to finish 10 questions two times. It was a different experience for me to have the sime quiz twice but still there are lot of things to learn freom this experience. First of all we learned to control the time. It is obvious to spend much more time on open book attempt is a wiser idea. Still the idea of getting marks on both scares you a bit. Whatever at last quizes have finished. I was hoping I will get good grades. Mr O'Regan explained all the questions answers. Everyone corrected one of the class mate's quiz. It was ironic but everyone get a F. At that time my class mate told me that I get an C-. Firstly I was shocked that the first score I get was C-. It was not what I expected, but still I was a bit confident that everyone else getting F means that I did fine. Then Mr. O'Regan explained that we are different. It is not normal even if everyone gets F. We should not feel confident about getting a F if everyone is getting one. And that lesson finished like that. He gave us a homework which I should spend time on, but it is student's mission.

Second lesson of this week was more interesting because Mr. O'regan checked the quizes again and I get a F this time. My score was 71 but now it is 48. I was really shocked and dissappointed. I was a really good student in the high school. Actually finished the last year in the first place, but the first score I get in the university was a F. Noone can imagine how dissappointed I was. Because I really studied for that text but I couldn't show it. I think I'm back to my high school days. My exam fobia is back. I struggled lot to beat this fobia but I'm feeling that it is coming back. Whatever it was a great shock for me but I think I can handle it. Then the lesson go on with group works. There were three groups and all of these groups were searching for the clues according to their topic in the text. (CMC vs Other communications, CMC vs Face to Face, Characteristics of CMC.) I think It was a good exercise except the part that not everyone joins efficiently. Still it was nice to work with a group.

P.S: CMC is computer mediated communication.

Third week

2007-10-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

For me it is unbelievable but this the third week in Comm101 class and I still survive. However I realized that I have a trouble writing academic essays. For many years in my high school teachers accepted and appreciated the essays I wrote. This is the first time I'm failing while writing an essay. Let me explain to you more detailed. In the second lesson Mr. O'Regan wanted us to write a diagnostic essay about the text he gave us. It was about "Internet Addiction". Text was quite easy so honestly I didn't spend to much time dealing with it. So he gave us 2 questions to answer in 500 words. Till now everything is quite normal isn't it? I wrote this essay quite similar to what I wrote in my high school and in Toefl exam.

Then this week arrived and Mr. O'Regan gave our diagnostic essays back. But something was abnormal. There wasn't anything written in my essay rather than mine. No marks of red pens. So I couldn't wait and asked him. He told me that I'm going to see in two minutes. He started to explain his criteria of looking to academic essay. The things he explained were quite similar but when I looked at my essay I couldn't see the things that Mr O'Regan expected. If I couldn't see it how can he find it? He briefly explained the things we should do to write well academic essays. While he was doing these things he wanted us to gave a point to our essay out of 100. I gave firstly 75. After he explained his expectations he asked us to write a new mark. And I wrote 60. However then he explained that all of us failed this diagnostic essay. With that disappointment, Mr. O'Regan told that it was a diagnostic essay so we are not getting any marks, it was only for understanding where we failed, which was pretty successful for me.

Afterwards Mr. O'Regan give some clues about pre-reading, which I had no idea about. I learned a lot about pre-reading. Understanding who wrote the text, where he wrote it, why he wrote it can help a lot before reading it. Like the "Turkish art is rubbish" quotation, he told us not to be bias before reading the essay. Sometimes numbers of pages or the identity of write may explain lots of things and sometimes it is irrelevant to the topic.

Again it was a useful lesson. At least I have some ideas about writing a well academic essay and pre-reading. I do believe with these tactics, my future readings and Comm102 class will be easier.

First week&First opinions about Comm101 class

2007-09-26T23:46:00.000-07:00

Imagine a day in a new school, that you know just few people and there are rumours about the first teacher you're going to meet. All the school is talking about how hard his lessons are. You can call it mistakenly or by chance the fact is it is your first lesson. In your mind you still think about how you could pass his class if he is that hard. If he is that hard you should fail and your GPA will shorten and the dreams of making double major is diminishing.

These were the first opinions I have in my mind while walking to the class CAS136.I also started to think that Mr. O'Regon should be a sucessful teacher too. Because there are always rumours about the teachers who introduces classes differently. And if they are unique they are called hard teachers. While these thoughts are confusing my mind clock was showing 12:25, and there was only 5 minutes to our class. As I entered Mr. O'Regon's lecture he was walking through the class, he waited until it was 12:30 and then started his lecture. When he started his lecture it was easy to understand that he was introducing the lesson different than other instructors. At that moment I realised even if I fail his class this would be a special experience.

The requests of him were quite unique. He was talking about making podcasts and blogs which I have no idea how to make. (But as you can see I'm going to achieve this goal in few minutes.) Internet and Relationships will be our topicthropugh this semester, so while we are challenging with the texts about internet, living it lively would help a lot I think. Even thoughI kind of think that this would be my hardest lesson, and needs lot of attention, I liked the idea of using the material that we are going to study. Only thing that bothers me is that it not fair for us. Other Comm101 classes will probably write 2 essays. But we should write 2 essays and also update our blogs every week. However I still think that we will learn much more than others on writing skills.

As a conclusion I know there is a image that hard ones are the scary ones... But sometimes we should realise that hard ones can be the best ones for your future life. Thank you Mr. O'Regon for this interesting experience. I hope the other weeks will be that much thrilling too.