Monday, June 23, 2014

I have, again, posted online the research essays written by my EAP students.  (English for Academic Purposes)



The morning class is here , the evening class is here , and the Tuesday-Thursday class is here.

The motivation and ideology for this is exactly the same as the last time I posted EAP essays on line, so I'll just link back to my previous justification rather than repeat myself here.

This is a different level from last time, so the topic is different.
The original topic in the course syllabus was: What role has human activity played in causing climate change?
In order to be able to do this writing topic as a class paper, I changed the topic slightly to: Climate Change: Causes, Effects, and Solutions.
Students were put into groups of 3 or 4 and assigned either the cause, effect, or solutions.

The focus of the class reading had been mostly on the causes of climate change, so in each class we had multiple groups assigned to causes.  Initially I tried to stay in the background and let the students themselves divide the various causes among the different groups, but halfway through the term it became clear that this wasn't working, so I made up a suggested outline for the causes groups to help them divide the writing task up among themselves.  The sample outline I produced is duplicated below:


Suggested Outline for Causes
I. Explain what the Greenhouse effect is
                *This section would explain the science behind the greenhouse effect, i.e. how some of the
                                sun's heat is trapped in the earth's atmosphere by Greenhouse Gases
II. Natural Causes of Climate Change
                A. External Factors
                                *  e.g. variation in the sun's energy output
                B. Internal Factors
                                *e.g. interaction between atmosphere and oceans
                                * Naturally occurring Greenhouse gases and their causes
III. Human Causes of Climate Change.
                A. Greenhouse Gases
                                1. Carbon Dioxide
                                                a. Burning  Fossil Fuels
                                                                1). Oil
                                                                                *e.g.  cars, airplanes, etc.
                                                                2).  Natural Gas
                                                                                * e.g. cooking, heating, etc.
                                                                3). Coal
                                                                                * e.g. heating, electricity generation, etc.
                                                b. Deforestation
                                                c. Other Causes of Carbon Dioxide
                                                                * e.g. from burning other substances, etc.
                                2. Methane
                                                *e.g. rice cultivation, cattle & sheep ranching, landfills, coal mining, oil
                                                                drilling, leaky gas pipelines, et cetera
                                3. Nitrous Oxide
                                                *e.g. agriculture, industry
                                4. Chlorofluorocarbons and other Flourocarbons
                                                *e.g.  refrigeration, air-conditioning
                                5.  Ozone
                                                * motor vehicles, power plants, et cetera
                B. Other Human Causes of Climate Change
                                ????????? (We haven't studied this in class, but possibly you could find something)

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