Counting Sheep

On the topic of sleep, there is a reading article on page 73 and some vocabulary exercises on page 74.

The vocabulary can be revised with flashcards. Or flashcards with some other words. Or a long list of words about sleep from A to Zzzz.

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Reflective Statements

As mentioned above (in week 2), there are two main purposes to the language portfolio. The reflective statements represent the second purpose: to demonstrate your ability to assess evidence of language level. This part of the portfolio is worth 4 times what each other part is worth, so you should devote a significant amount of your portfolio-development time to it.

The reflective statements represent your notes to the reader on what you believe each included artifact says about your language level and why it says that. Each artifact should have its own statement. The idea is to present the reader with a description of what the artifact is, your reasons for including the artifact, and what you think the artifact shows.

The reflections serve the purpose of telling your reader what you want them to get out of reading your portfolio. They let you put the artifacts in context and help you focus attention on what you think is important. They also can be seen as a way to demonstrate connected writing skills.

Just as the comprehensive self-assessment looks at your skills generally - both positive and negative - so you can look at the reflective statements as assessing the specific examples.

In your reflective statements, you should be pointing out exactly how your artifacts demonstrate what you want them to show - where in the artifact it demonstrates your skills and to what extent.

If we looked at the first example from last week, we could see a speech that should demonstrate an ability to "give clear, systematically developed descriptions and presentations, with appropriate highlighting of significant points, and relevant supporting detail". So in the reflective statement on the speech, in addition to describing when you gave the speech and (if it was an assignment) what the task was for the speech, you want to talk about how the speech shows this is true.

So you might talk about how you structured the speech, emphasizing the outline you gave at the start and the summary you gave at the end. You could describe how you chose which points to highlight and what words you used to do that highlighting. And then you might discuss how it was that you developed the ideas - such as what linking words (however, therefore, etc.) you used to show connections and contrasts between various parts.

You could also describe what you see as the weaknesses in the speech, e.g. that one time you had to pause to remember where you were in the structure, and so what you need to work on for the future. You can show a comprehensive look at the speech as a whole and in detail, though obviously not as long as the speech itself.

You could do similar kinds of things with other artifacts, such as the example of essays. With those, you could even highlight important words directly in the essay by such tactics as bolding, underlining, and highlighting. This can help to draw attention to what you think is important in the example.

Remember that these statements help to show your assessing skills and also to guide your reader through your portfolio. You need to make sure possible questions about the artifacts (where/when it's from, why you wrote it in that style, etc.) are answered and also that your opinion and reasons for that opinion are clear to the reader.

Below you can see one example of some of the kind of writing that would fit into a reflective statement. It is taken from a student from a previous year. This would be combined with highlighting the exact parts in the essay where this is done and also describing more the assignment for the essay (those are left out to keep the example anonymous).

In this essay I will show you, that I’m able to describe advantages and disadvantages of the particular issue. I don’t repeat the same words over and over again and the text looks more cohesive than previous ones. The questions given in the essay catch the reader’s attention, make the text more lively and cohesive and the reader feels involved in it. They made him to think more about the problem and they can lead to following debate.

Your writing doesn't have to exactly mirror this - this is just a short example to give you a taste. If you have any questions about what is appropriate, please do ask them in the forum for this class.