My Special Break Activity

It has been a very quiet week when the students are on their special one week break. I could have taken a break too but I have decided not to so that I can look at finalizing the on-going assessment marks for my two classes of 47 students from my BEL499 classes. For the whole week, I've looked at my students work with less distractions as I did not have to go to classes to teach or allow my students to see me for personal or group consultations. I specifically focus on my 2 classes of Degree in Accounting students this week.

The tedious part has been to look at the e-Portfolio as I had to go to the links one by one and go through each one before deciding on the marks. I'd love to give 'excellent' grades to everyone but that won't be fair to those who had gone the extra miles preparing their sites. A lot of information can be discovered from their portfolios. It's not just about the content. The way everything is put together can portray the personality of that person. Besides the language element, I also looked at how my students used images and styles in creating this very important document.

In this situation, the saying "Don't judge a book by it's cover" cannot be applied.
You are going to be judged by what is shown. You will be judged whether you will fit in to be the member of the professional bodies. In this case, will you fit in to hold the image of an accountant?    

One of the criteria that I looked at was how my students organised their certificates. Although certificates might be easily accessible in their physical folders and files, it might be difficult if they had not been consistent in updating the files. Some students just scanned the documents and put them on the websites without proper labeling and order. Some had just selected a few and left the most important ones like the academic transcripts and their diploma certificates. Without proper labeling, you are asking the readers/interviewers to guess.

Okay, I better stop rambling now. What I wanted to share today is that I managed to achieve my goal for this week,that is to complete 'keying in the on-going assessments marks' for BEL499.

So, what's left for the next two weeks is to complete doing the Evaluation 2, the Hiring Interview sessions. At least for this subject!

I have 6 classes of EWC661 to evaluate too.

Besides teaching and evaluating, the setting and vetting of exam questions are also in progress in between and overlapping with other tasks yet to be completed.

So, there goes 'My Special Break Activity'.

P/S: Lecturers don't necessarily go for a break when their students are having theirs.

Interview Questions

http://www.slideshare.net/thomasgabriel033/top-10-internship-interview-questions-with-answers?related=3

Free English Online Courses

Here are some suggestions to improve your English proficiency at your own pace and time.

They are free online grammar courses.

http://alison.com/learn/English-Grammar

When I read the questions in your questionnaires, I also realized that most of you need to do revision on your tenses.

You may visit my previous blog post here to do revisions and the tests.

http://learningenglishthroughmyeyes.blogspot.com/2008/01/simple-present-tense-present-continuous.html

There are lots of materials available for you.

Please watch "How to Form Questions in English" below.

Most of you have written sentences and simply put 'question marks' at the end of the sentence to form questions. That's not how it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyVw_yNXArg

Rescheduling and Reallocating

While I was sitting reflecting on this week's classes, I think I might not have done very well this week. I wanted to give too much in such a short time. Less than 2 hours to cover several topics. I realized that within that time,it could be the only time that my students will 'touch' their textbooks.

I started to make some calculations.
I have 6 classes of EWC661.
In each class, I have between 28 to 36 students.
So,I will have 7 to 9 groups of on-going reports to supervise in 1 class.
I have 188 students taking this course which is the same number that I have to evaluate for their final exam paper that is 7 pages long.

Now,I wonder if the process approach to report writing can work well this time.

Okay, I'm taking a deep breath!

Wait a minute!
I have 2 BEL499 classes too.
Their resumes and job application letters have been submitted.
47 resumes and letters to be checked and evaluated.
Assuming that I look at each one of them between 5 to 10 minutes,
I need to allocate at least 470 minutes x 2 = 940 minutes.
(About 16 hours) = (4 hours x 4 days) = (2 hours x 8 days) = (1 hour x 16 days).

I'll go for the 2 hours per day of evaluating in between classes for 2 weeks.
This seems to be the most realistic time frame.

Oh dear! What about the setting of exam questions?
Today, I have been assigned to set another part of test question to be done in a few week's time.

Too much to give,not much time given.

It's time for me to reschedule and reallocate more realistic time frame.