end of 2nd week

two weeks of class have gone by already.  I feel very positive about the new classes and I can see I have a fine group of students. Becoming reflective and thinking critically is  a major part of the class and we are well on our way to doing that. I'm interested to see how everyone reacts to the Freed article, which is a new one in the course. I am presenting it as a contrasting point of view to Tannen's...

New term - new students

Hi everyone, after 1 1/2 years of course building and piloting, we are finally poised to begin our first "real" offering of our U-Town Writing courses to our "real" audience (students resident at U-Town). We are all very excited about moving into our new offices and using our brand-new facility. I've made some changes to our course this semester. For one thing, the course code is now: IEM1201-C. I & E stands for "Ideas and Exposition", which is a fitting way to describe the core of the course - we will learn and discuss lots of ideas, and work on presenting and writing about them. I'm sure the course will be as successful as it has been in the previous two semesters, and I'm looking foward to meeting all my new students and getting started. BTW, if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at elcmje@nus.edu.sg    

gender relations in Singapore - any "real men" out there??

You might find this article amusing - I wonder if you agree...

http://sg.travel.yahoo.com/inspirations/253-alexis-ong-the-problem-with-singapore-men?cid=today

unit 3

As we finish up with our revision of Assignment 2, we are starting Unit 3, the activities of which will all focus on conceptualizing and writing Assignment 3. Summarizing, comparing sources and using sources as lenses for understanding will all be part of the next assignment, but it will include more than those skills. We will broaden our reading to include more scholarly works and spend lots of time discussing our progress on our assignment 3 projects. Because of this, it will be crucial that you keep up with your work, which should be able to move forward at a reasonable pace. I'm looking forward to our discussions on your project topics in the next couple of weeks.

perceptions so far

I've been very pleased by the level of discussion and engagement with the material and ideas, both in class and on the blogs. The first presentations went very well and I especially appreciated the discussions that followed them. Gray is an excellent jumping off point to many of these discussions, and we can see by our exposure to Lakoff and Cameron that others are bringing up the same sort of issues we have been.

I think (hope) you will find the video "Tootsie" a very interesting addition to our materials. It explores the constructed nature of gender behavior in a clever and humorous way, but our analysis will try to unpack the assumptions underlying the film and the way the main character played by Dustin Hoffman went about transforming himself into a woman. I'm looking forward to seeing your reaction to the film.

11 phrases men use

gender tiff by Raymond and Deborah

mens' and women's brains