Print

Print

I forgot to mention that in the US some writing centers have sponsored writing groups for both grad students and faculty and even "boot camps" for summer dissertation writing--whether writing in L1 or L2. I think these approaches may also be worth looking into because postgrad students may have more maturity to make these work as long as there is a minimal framework and support in place.

This also seems to be a good model where you get a critical mass of expertise and and institutional knowledge of best practices that can be passed on rather than just one off courses.
http://web.ceu.hu/writing/sfaccess.html

Anyone interested in sharing materials for use with non-native speaking postgraduate students is welcome to email me at
[log in to unmask] (not this email I am sending from)  I am teaching both social sciences and engineering research writing in English classes in Korea.

As non-tenure track faculty teaching skills, I would like to see all this research on research writing that is coming out lately actually result in more usable materials like Swales and Feak have written, rather than even more research about how research writing is difficult for non-native speakers, an issue that has been discussed in technical communication and mainstream science journals since the 80s, and is well-known to us working "on the ground."

It seems that tenure track faculty only get rewarded for journal articles but have little incentive in they way they are evaluated to make good materials and sometimes don't teach the writing skills they research. Yet non-tenure track faculty often have materials and are doing this kind of work but are often invisible as we don't easily appear in reference lists as much of our material is unpublished. I think the field of ESP/EAP has some structural problems on this issue.

An alternative would be more research like the "Write like a Chemist" project:
http://www.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195305074/about_book/?view=usa

where they have researched the field, published about the process, piloted and evaluated (and published about this too), and made a usable textbook and where I seem to remember content faculty and composition specialists working together as they do at MIT. At MIT  they build the communication requirements into the curriculum as well (mostly at undergrad but some grad courses too)
 http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12155
rather than separate out composition/ESL support often with a disconnect to the curriculum which is a common criticism of both EAP and composition.

I admit that this approach is not easy to organize and takes resources and a specialized staff but small steps can be taken as I have done with minimal resources (reduced teaching load and a part-time assistant).

Making materials is a lot of work so another approach could be if different institutions developed units on different skills and then traded them and edited them for their local context. I am working on materials for teaching paraphrase and using references in the sciences and engineering as I found the traditional approach to teaching direct quotation, paraphrase, and summary http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/1/
to not really reflect how science writing is really done or the complexity of how to use references in postgraduate study. I would like to get materials on describing data that are more detailed than what you might find in an IELTS book on common line graphs.

If one is not going to publish an entire textbook commercially, then we would have much to gain and little to lose by trading materials. See creative commons  permissions.  http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

A final interesting cultural note. The word "module" is common in the UK to mean postgraduate "course" in a North American context. However, in North America, the term "module" is often used to refer to parts of an online course. Therefore, in the context of this discussion, it could be confusing! I wonder how these words are used in other countries.

Adam
[log in to unmask]




On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 9:24 PM, Sandra Sinfield <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear All,
Currently our university recruits many international and other 'non-traditional' students - it is one of our many great strengths and virtues! I am interested in offering a Masters Module in Academic Writing for those students who want to develop their ability to write fluently, authorially, authoritatively and elegantly in their topic (and in good academic English). As a great believer in re-purposing material that is already successful rather than always starting from scratch, I wondered if anyone out there already had a module along those lines that they might like to share with the list - or just with me...
I am really happy to share any eventual Module that I develop with the rest of the list.
Thanking you in advance,
Best,

--
Sandra Sinfield
Co-ordinator (North) Learning Development
LC213, Learning Centre
London Metropolitan University
Holloway Road
London N7 6PP
020.7133.4045



Companies Act 2006 : http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/companyinfo



--
Adam Turner

Director
English Writing Lab
Hanyang University
Center for Teaching and Learning
Seoul, Korea
http://ctl.hanyang.ac.kr/writing/
http://www.hanyangowl.org