ENGLISH WRITING Thiu nng

Session 7 Module IV Instructor: H L V

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OVERVIEW
Warm-up Application components Resume/CV preparation (part 1)

Previously on Thiu Nng

Feedback: Em ngh l bn em nn c ti liu cc ti liu tham kho, gio trnh cho bui hc mi trc khi n din ra (v d nh l: v Thematic progression improment techniques th c th tham kho mt ti liu ny, v Theme and Rheme th c th c trc ti liu kia)
This course has not been developed from any standard curricula and it is the first course in the world (to my knowledge) to teach English argumentative writing based on main differences between English and Vietnamese. Theoretical background: Contrastive Rhetoric and Systemic Functional Linguistic (Rheme/Theme, TP progression, Appraisal Resources) It is neither a graduate course nor a linguistics one. The syllabus is still in the process of development let me know if any part of the materials does not make sense to you.

WARM-UP
Food for thought (taken from actual CVs)
Objective: Student today. Vice president tomorrow. Desired salary: The higher the better. Marital status: Single. Unmarried. Unengaged. Uninvolved. No commitments. Sex: Occasionally Education: A bachelorette degree in computers. Other qualifications: Twin sister has accounting degree. Working experiences: Wholly responsible for two failed financial institutions.

WARM-UP
Food for thought (cont.)
Language skills: Exposure to German for two years, but many words are not appropriate for academic use. Language skills: being bi-lingual in three languages Special skills: can stand on my head for a few minutes Personal interests: Donating blood. Fourteen liters so far Other interests: Playing with my two dogs (they actually belong to my wife but I love the dogs more than my wife) References: Please do not contact my immediate supervisor at the company. My neighbors will give me a better reference. Emergency Contact Number: 911

APPLICATION PACKAGE
Package
Resume (CV) Personal statement (PS)/Statement of Purpose (SOP) Letters of recommendation (LORs) Awards and testimonials Application package: other necessary components Professor contact Final interview Writing sample(s)

Why RESUME comes first?

Resume vs. CV: do we need a full CV for our application?

RESUME STRUCTURE
Objectives, research interests Contact information Education Relevant experiences
teaching experiences research experiences other professional/working experiences

Honors, awards and grants Publications and conference presentations Extracurricular / Community activities Professional affiliations Other qualifications (language, computer, statistics, etc.) Personal hobbies/interests References
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RESUME STRUCTURE
Objectives, research interests
short-term vs. long-term goals be concise but specific
Example: seeking a Masters degree in Applied Linguistics

summarize your research interests with three to six keywords

Example: Vocabulary development, translation & L2 writing

RESUME STRUCTURE
Objectives: problematic examples
Seeking a Professor position in a well-known university
seeking an academic faculty position (tenure track) in an well-known accredited tertiary institution

Example: Seeking a Master Scholarship in Public Relations

Seeking a Masters degree in Public Relations (with financial aid)

RESUME STRUCTURE
Objectives: problematic examples
Information technology is my passion since I was a high school student. Therefore, I always want to go to a world top-level university to have an opportunity to obtain more useful knowledge in IT field.
provide too much details more appropriate for SOP

I want to become a Marketing Manager in a foreign company

seeking a Marketing Manager position in a... (size) small-sized | mid-sized (nationality) international | multinational corporation (industry) in IT | telecommunication | the hospitality industry

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Research interests: problematic examples
Applied Geographic Information System in Forest Resources and Management Internationalization of SMEs seem a bit narrow. Use several keywords peculiar to your own discipline the risk of having too narrow or broad research interests the professor-matching process, more important for Ph.D. students

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Contact information
full name, postal address, phone, fax, and e-mail for home and office Name, Addr., Tel, Fax, Email, (H), (O) & (M) Notes: Gender, DOB, marital status, nationality normally NOT required
Why so?

Work/school email should be included (if you have one) If you provide a personal email, make sure its neutral and not something like Imsodrunk@gmail.com or Iloveporn@yahoo.com you may indicate that you prefer which email for program communication
Emails: personalemail@yahoo.com (preferred), workemail@yahoo.com

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Education
list chronologically, with the most recent first
list degrees BEFORE certificates

include date of graduation (or a date range), type of degree and major, affiliation (department and university), GPA, class standing, title of thesis/dissertation
for graduate application, ONLY list postsecondary schools The date the degree was awarded (Month and Year) is preferred indicate expected graduation date for degrees not yet completed Overall/cumulative GPA vs. Major GPA: which to be used? Class standing and GPA: class vs. section (e.g., class size 210, section size around 30) specialized class vs. graduating class
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RESUME STRUCTURE
Education
Example: May 06 Masters Degree in Applied Linguistics, Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures, Texas Tech University, U.S. GPA: 4.0 (A+ for thesis) Thesis: Personalized vocabulary development and organization based on the mechanism of association. Aug 90-May 95 Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronics and Computer Science, Electronics and Telecommunication School, Hanoi University of Technology. GPA: 7.85 (Class standing: graduated 3rd in the class of 30)

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Education
Example (cont.): Certificates Certificate on Unix Systems Development by The Association for Overseas Technical Scholarship, Japan Certificates on Internetworking and LAN Optimization and Troubleshooting by NetLearner, Singapore

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Education: problematic examples
Feb 27th 2009, HANOI MEETING ROOM - MICROSOFT VIETNAM 10th floor Tung Shing Square, 2 Ngo Quyen Street, Hanoi. Participant, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Team Foundation Server, lectured by a Microsoft Vietnam Expert. Keep in mind: the keyword for resume is succinct only list certificate courses dont mention places, lecturers, etc. What if this is a well-known lecturer? Certificate in SQL Server 2008 granted by Microsoft [Vietnam]

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Relevant experiences
teaching experiences
Why teaching experiences are important? List the courses you taught, co-taught or assisted with as a TA. Mention student level (adult / secondary / high school / college / 8th grade) Note the institution, supervisor, the number of your TAs (if applicable) and class size (enrolment). Notes: exclude private tutor jobs unless you were working for a tutoring center. Otherwise, put these in the working experience section.

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Teaching experiences
Examples
Teach (college-level) classes in | on... TA for classes in.... 2008 2009 TA-ed two graduate classes on Functional Approaches to Language (Fall 08, enrolment: 12) and Applying Cognitive Linguistics to Language (Spring 09, enrolment: 20) Supervisor: Dr. Andrea Tyler, Georgetown University

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Relevant experiences
research experiences
List assistantships and other research experience. Include the institution, research projects, nature of the position, duties, dates, and supervisor (or advisor/project director). Mention significant results (e.g. generated papers)

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Research experiences
Examples
2007 2008 principal researcher in a Cognitive Linguistics project on Modality Teaching which investigates two current pedagogical approaches to teaching English modals to determine if one approach is more effective than the other Supervisor: Dr. Andrea Tyler. Result: presented two conference papers, co-authored a journal article and a book chapter

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Research experiences
Examples: Cuc thi or Tun l sinh vin nghin cu khoa hc
Student Research Contest or Research Contest for University Students Undergraduate Student Conference or Conference on Undergraduate research Question: should you present this as a contest or conference?

Note: youll need to mention your research topic, or better yet, the exact title of your presented paper.

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Research experiences problematic examples
(Research experience) Built, installed and configured a custom Linux system from more than 100 packages (Research experience) Design a resource management system based on C# and SQL Server for BCHANOI Club

Comment: do not confuse working experiences with research

experiences. what could be implications of mistakes of this type?

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Relevant experiences
working experiences or employment history
include internships, administrative work and part-time/summer jobs include paid jobs only include job type (temporary/part-time/full-time/probationary), date range, position, company name, supervisors name and contact info list major responsibilities and accomplishments be specific (e.g., supervise 10 staff or install 100 computers)

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FUN ACTIVITY

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Working experiences
Examples
Oversee | supervise ... Support | assist with... (be) responsible for | ensure ... Collaborate with | partner with... | report to... 04/01 06/04 Quality Assurance person, Accellion Pte Ltd, Singapore [Supervisors name and contact info] - design and implement test plans for in-house applications - inspect codes submitted by programming teams and ensure integrity - develop test agents to automate various testing tasks

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Working experiences problematic samples
Achievements:
Being able to professionally organize and manage lectures. Designing successfully lectures on computer and combining the fact examples with the theoretical lessons. Comment: these are not your achievements. This is how you did your jobs and you may talk about it in your SOP.

Achievements: highly appreciated by the supervisor for the professionalism and accuracy of the sub-project.
Comment: only list specific facts (e.g., give specific numbers). Otherwise, talk about it in your SOP/LORs.

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Working experiences problematic samples
(Work experience) Office: Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (VBARD). A 100% State-owned bank, listed in Top Ten Vietnam Well-known Brands and Top Five Most convenient banks in Vietnam in 2009. Website: www.agribank.com.vn
Comment: more appropriate for SOP/LORs. No need to include URLs of companies, projects and universities

Fun question: (major responsibilities) Talk in other peoples sleep. So I am

College Professor

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Honors, awards and grants
include the date awarded, awards title and granting institution. give a brief description of the awards nature (if necessary) explain how hard/rare for one to receive this honor (if possible) mention frequency (annually, monthly, etc.) Award types graduation honor research grant: why this is important? watch a sample video talk about this in both awards and research experience sections. Also mention the amount of fund. Question: How can you get a research grant? scholarship/fellowship competition/contest prize team vs. individual (by default) events work performance 28 community contribution

RESUME STRUCTURE
Honors, awards and grants
Examples: 06 - 11 Graduate School Fellowship granted by Georgetown University 2003 Award for Excellence by Literati Club, Emerald, UK for the paper on Effective techniques for automatic extraction of web publications.

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Honors, awards and grants
Examples (cont.): 1997 Annual Award for Excellent Services granted by Ministry of Finance of Vietnam. Awarded to the top two individuals per department. or Awarded to the two top-performing staffs in a department of hundreds 90 - 95 Government-sponsored Scholarship granted annually by Ministry of Education and Training. 1st year based on entrance exam results, subsequent years on academic performance 2005 Silver Medal in the National Mathematic Contest for High School Students organized by Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Honors, awards and grants problematic examples
Fellowship for undergraduate studies
scholarship

Received an award for excellent students

sound too general for students with outstanding/excellent scholastic/academic achievement/performance/community services

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Honors, awards and grants problematic examples
2004 Award from The Peoples Committee of Hanoi
what kind of award? for what achievement? selection criteria? number of awardees

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FUN ACTIVITY

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Publications and conference presentations
only include ACADEMIC RESEARCH papers cite using the appropriate style for your discipline (i.e., APA or MLA) only use internationally recognized citation standards (not the Vietnamese one)
Notes: for Vietnamese articles, keep the original title and provide a translation

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Citation samples (APA style):
Tyler, A., Mueller, C., Ho, V. (2011). Applying cognitive linguistics to learning the semantics of English to, for and at: An experimental investigation. Vigo International Journal of Applied Linguistics 8, 122-140 (in print). Ho, V. (2009). Differences between Vietnamese, EFL and English argumentative essays: Pedagogical implications for EFL academic writing classes. 2009 Symposium on Second Language Writing, 5 7 November, Tempe, AZ, USA. Ho, L.V., & Pratt, C. (2006). A Software-Based Learning Program for Vocabulary Organization and Recall. Proceedings of DigitalStream 2006: Emerging Technologies in Teaching Languages and Culture Conference, 23-25 March, Monterey Bay, California. Ho, L.V., Fong, A.C.M., & Hui, S.C. (2002). Effective techniques for automatic extraction of Web publications. Online Information Review 26 (1), 4-18. Ho, V., & Pratt, C. Lexical association patterns and consistency by L2 learners: Implications for developing a software-based personalized vocabulary organizer. (submitted | accepted)

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Extracurricular/Community activities
the interests one has outside of the academic List service activities, committee memberships and other volunteer works. Be concise. Examples: A key member of the high school/university Alumni Association
Why this matters?

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Professional affiliations
Example
since 08/04 American Council on The Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Other qualifications (language, computer, statistics)
Language skills:
list your native language and other languages you are proficient in indicate proficiency or standardized test scores (and also the test DATE) Examples Vietnamese native speaker English 660 on TOEFL PBT, 6.0 on TWE (Test date: May 03) French Can communicate fluently both orally and in writing

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Other qualifications (cont.)
Language skills problematic examples:
Example: Certificate of Japanese Proficiency, Level: 2
Certificate in Japanese language Intermediate level? Level 2 out of...?

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Other qualifications (cont.)
Computer skills:
List software programs with which you're familiar Examples
well versed in Microsoft Office software and Photoshop CS Use MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint for study and work

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Other qualifications (cont.)
statistics skills:
why this is important? list statistics courses that youve taken and statistics programs with which youre (most) familiar. list data analysis techniques and statistics software (e.g., STATA and SPSS) with which you have experience

other standardized test scores Examples

12/03 11/98 GRE Score: 1570 (800 in Quantitative, 770 in Verbal, ranked in top < 1%) GMAT Score: 730 (51 in Quantitative, 36 in Verbal, ranked in top 1%)

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Other qualifications (cont.)
Statistics skills problematic examples:
Mathematical Analysis, literature analysis and search from journals (Pubmed, Sciencedirect, Wiley) and textbooks, Image analysis of surface characteristics and structure of micocapsules, graph, table analysis. literature review and data analysis are not statistics what could be implications of mistakes of this kind?

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RESUME STRUCTURE
Personal hobbies/interests
be succinct (no more than one line) Examples
Badminton, reading, singing and making fun of my students

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RESUME STRUCTURE
References
Ask for permission from qualified references, who will speak highly of you. Provide their name, title, office, office phone number and (preferably) work e-mail. Example: [Dr.] A BC [(Ph.D.)], [Assistant | Associate] Professor, Chair of Linguistics Department, Georgetown University

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FUN ACTIVITY

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HOMEWORK
For session 10:
Create a new or revise your current CV based on what you learned in class today. Print out a copy and bring it to class for a peer review. review the sample rsum on the hand-out, focusing on organization content sufficiency and redundancy appropriateness language use

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LAST LAUGH
Should you lie on your rsum?
Watch a comedy in which the guy lied about having a solid dance background.

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