How was my ICU ARW course, Autumn Term 2009?

Grades were turned in Monday, and it is time to reflect once again...

Need to start a label called Teaching Reflections so I can find these easily and refresh my memory before I teach the same course again.

Academic Reading and Writing, Autumn Term Program A Level in the ELP at ICU
(Click for Syllabus/Schedule)
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Overall:
It was an enjoyable term. I was lucky to have two very diligent and cooperative groups of 17 students (Thanks sections AB and AI!). Participation and performance were very good, with only one struggling student in each class. The Autumn term syllabus at ICU is overstuffed with difficult required readings and is always the most difficult of the three terms spring/autumn/winter for us to teach. However, this year was definitely the most enjoyable of the past four attempts. To some extent, I was able to get through everything and still feel like I've helped my students with the reading and writing skills.

Priorities for Improvement:

1) Reduce the required reading: Almost all teachers are agreed on this and it is high time to do something about it. We've taught the same six readings for the past four years and have complained about how it is too much, but have not made the changes due to reluctance to mess with the syllabus and test questions. It is scary how the years roll by without making needed changes. Once the term is over, it is easy to forget about it until just before the term next year, and by then it is too late to make changes and we fall back on the old system. For my first two times teaching the curriculum, I considered myself and new teacher and felt I just need to get better at approaching the requirement, so I didn't say anything. Last

Solution: The immediate solution seems to be to cut two readings (or parts of them at least) in an informal way by taking them off the test. That should work. Teachers who want to cover parts of them can, while other teachers can ignore them.

Benefits: That will open up time for doing more meaningful learning such as other more up-to-date readings, student generated discussions, or explanations for essay writing techniques. Need to make sure this happens.

Drawbacks? Not really: We want to give students significant amounts of reading to help them get used to doing college level work in English, so reducing the amount of reading detracts from this. However, we really don't have enough class time to do justice to such difficult readings at the Prog. A (TOEFL 400-450) level. We really don't. Currently I can spend only two class periods talking about a reading like this: " Race Without Color" by Jared Diamond, Discover Magazine 1994. It is a lot to take in, and with weaker readers, time is needed to help them confirm their understanding before we can work on higher order reading skills such as pointing out the relatively weak points in his argument. The "make them get used to extensive academic reading by throwing large difficult chunks at them at high speeds" approach only works with a minority of students above a certain level of reading ability. For formative development of active and confident readers, the current syllabus seems detrimental. We need to change it.

2) Help students improve use of sources in academic writing: I noticed in the 2nd essays that my students submitted that citations of sources were still quite weak. We went over what is important--using a variety of good quality sources, integrating them, citing them in the text and the Works Cited (we use MLA style), and some students got it. However, in the rush at the end of the term, many of the essays were unpolished, and the use of sources was very rough. I was shocked when a few never cited any sources in their essays at all in spite of all of the reminders and conferences and checklists. What else can I do?

Solution: One improvement would be to make sure students have fairly developed "best effort" drafts when they meet the draft deadline and come to conference about their writing. For the 1st essay, many had good drafts and led to good final essays after discussing points for possible revision. For the 2nd essay, many did not really have a clear direction for their essay and just had some brainstorming with little reflection of research. That has to be changed somehow. I have to be stricter about the quality of the draft--possibly by imposing a grade related to completeness?? However, I noticed that the "grade for draft completeness" hurts the struggling students in an unfair way...so perhaps a better solution is to make the final essay deadline earlier and then pull it back suddenly to give them an unexpected pocket of time to check and polish things up.

Having some kind of visual online tutorial would be nice too...another thing we have talked about but never executed. For use of sources, perhaps the library could work with us to create a stronger tutorial? Or could we find or create something in Japanese that would deepen our students fundamental understanding of documentation in essays and point out common misperceptions. There may also be differences in the Japanese academic tradition for using sources that may be fueling misunderstandings in some of our students.

And of course, we need to provide our students with good samples of documentated academic documents that they can analyze to see how documentation helps (or fails to help) with the argument.

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So...if I can achieve those two changes above, I think I'll be happy next year.

Other Small Things-Before I forget:

1. Ask students more details in an online survey--goals, courses they are taking, how far away they live from campus, what they had difficulty with in the previous term in terms of reading/writing, what type of entrance exam they took to get into ICU--this makes a difference in what they studied before entering.
2. Make the 1st essay worth less than the 2nd to emphasize improvement. Also, possibly simplifying the first essay somehow to allow more focus on conventions and techniques rather than quality of research.
3. Grade more harshly on the quality of self-evaluations--if a student writes a weak essay, they should take five minutes (possibly after submission--Hmm) and explain which part is weak and why. Reading one's final essay and critiquing it is very important, in addition to peer critique and teacher feedback.
4. Do a weekly "reaction journal" online to allow opinion exchange on Moodle or other forum such as students' own blogs. Another teacher Jim seemed to have very good discussions going with that format.
5. Give students more information about how to prepare for a writing conference and how the conference will flow for maximum effective use of those 15 minutes.
   
6. The reading worksheets--make general guidelines so that the directions don't have to be repeated--....don't collect them every class--make it once per week or so--try checking as students discuss? Or, just change it to an online posting--don't make all students have to prepare everything--split the work on a class wiki. Also, focus more on critical reactions and opinions than the factual points--I meant to make this change, but didn't and regretted it! Try more of a P&D system like Choskins is doing.
   
7. Help students speak up more in class -- say that I will give points for people who volunteer ideas in class or do a good job when they report on the discussion to the class.
8. Say I expect them to be chatting in English when they come to the classroom--Sylvan's idea. Tell them what I expect an excellent student to be.
9. Grading--Give a clearer chart of what is expected for 100 points?
10. Try to integrate some kind of group project? One group in charge of each reading---they do especially intensive work for helping their classmates understand it? Leading discussions, developing study materials etc.
11. Publishing--how can essays be meaningfully communicated to people outside of the classroom?
12. More creativity and initiative in general--finding the enjoyment of developing their own ideas and sharing them with people. Teach how to integrate images into essays well.

A lot of these ideas will carry over into Winter Term starting the week after...Take it step by step!

Mark