Second Year Improving Academic Essay Writing Discussion

June 18, 2005 in Hayama

(Suzanne, Milt, Jamelea)

Summarized by Suzanne

These were the main points:

1. Might not be possible, but what about prerequisites for Improving Academic Essay Writing? There are wide gaps in Ss ability and prior experience, so it seems counter-productive to have them all grouped together. (Yuri’s suggestion about tutoring, might be a viable alternative, however.)

2. In line with the above, what about a reference textbook option for students who need support in basic writing and grammatical skills?

3. Assessment: Completion of homework assignments should be a factor in final grade.

4. Both choosing an appropriate topic and recognizing and writing a topic sentence are major difficulties for students—even those who’ve had previous writing classes.

5. Using the computer room is difficult: Opening hours—too few! (This guarantees a low rate of usage; and it is difficult for students who don’t have their own p.c. to do HW, etc.)

Further comments from Milt

6. Through doing an analysis at the beginning of the year, I found that the students were aware of all the functions and requirements of academic writing; however, they were not confident in applying what they learned the previous year. I have decided to concentrate on review this first term. In the second term I will concentrate on doing more research work.

7. Through doing a lot of peer editing, I hope that the students who are not too confident can learn from their classmates. In class, I do a lot of short writing activities in which the students are then asked to discuss their ideas, so that they can be more aware about how to handle the homework.

Further comments from Jamelea

8. We discussed how often we should mark students work. Milt suggested definitely checking the first draft of each student’s work.

9. We also discussed what students need. We decided students need to practice and see plenty of examples. Teachers have to respond to students on an individual level most of the time, although some things can be taught to the whole group, e.g. transitions connectors & general reviews of writing (e.g., style, structure). But mostly they need to practice under their own initiative encouraged by the teacher.

Continuing the conversation: Reflection from Andy B. on this course

Practically all of the things that Suzanne, Jamelea and Milt mention have come up at some point in my Improving Academic Essay Writing class, too. The pre-requisite for this course is that students are second-years; there is no pre-requisite for their writing ability, although many of the students will have completed the first-year Introduction to Academic Essay Writing course, while some will have done a grammar-translation course or introduction to academic paragraph writing course in the first year. On the other hand, our students have chosen to do academic essay writing in the second year, so the best starting point is perhaps their choice, previous experience and motivation.

Like Milt, I’ve tended to see most of the first semester as a review. This motivation may involve wanting to speak and use English, as much as write English. Clearly, the ideal would be that all students start with a clear awareness of, and ability to produce, appropriately organized academic essays, but we need to work with the gap between the ideal and the real.

On the difference in student awareness / ability…

Awareness runs ahead of ability. We are conscious of how to do things, but we need time and space in which to develop our ability to do them. It seems to me that short awareness-raising activities, based on timed writing or shorter pieces of writing done by students in class, coupled with discussion and written reflection about what students notice in their own writing compared to other students’ and near-peer models is perhaps a useful path to follow.

I am never quite sure what the appropriate balance is here, or whether there are ideal sequences that always work, but something like the following is what I have found to be reasonably effective generative and adaptable sequence. It starts from a point where students have completed their first draft of an essay and have the first draft with them on paper in class:

a) students discuss in pairs what they wrote about and why (because they are more focused on content at the start, and organization becomes more of a concern in later drafts);

b) students discuss in pairs how they organized their first draft and what problems and questions they have about the organization of their first drafts;

c) students read a near-peer essay (later draft) and highlight what they think are good points of the organization of the essay;

d) students discuss (c) with a new partner and compare their first drafts to what they noticed in (c);

e) students write a 20-minute reflection in their notebooks on changes they feel would be useful to make to their next draft;

f) students start writing on their first draft in a different colour any changes that they would like to make to their first draft;

g) one person from each pair reports quickly to the whole class what are their shared concerns;

h) (optional: teacher can point out some ways to deal with one or two of the concerns across the whole class);

i) homework: students complete their second drafts, and bring 2 word-processed copies to the next class, one copy of which is to be handed in at the start of the class to the teacher.

I feel there is a risk in delaying critical reflection until students have completed a full essay. There is also a risk in the teacher pre-teaching before students have engaged with reading or writing parts of academic essays.

What the above sequence hopefully does is allow for plenty of peer-mentoring within a structured framework; it also allows plenty of opportunities for the teacher to see where students are through listening to pair discussions and noticing what students write in their critical reflections.

Somebody like to continue the conversation?