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In Part 1 of this Teaching Tip topic,
Dawn Bikowski will present a five-step process
for building an academic writing plan and some
specific examples of how to present each step in the
plan.
Welcome, Dawn!
Welcome! My name is Dawn Bikowski,
and thanks for tuning in to
Academic Writing: Building an Academic Writing Plan.
Let's get started!
In Part 1, I'll show you five steps to building an
academic writing plan for your ESL/EFL students,
and I'll show you specific examples that
you can use to meet those goals.
Do you wonder how you can teach academic writing
in a way that actually meets your students' needs?
I'm going to guide you through this with
five steps to academic writing.
Number One: Know the Material.
Number 2: Do a Needs Analysis and Identify.
your goals.
Number Three: Sequence your Goals.
Number Four: Develop Interactive Activities.
and Number Five: Assess Student Learning.
Let's go to the first step which is to
know the material you'll be teaching.
You can do this by talking with colleagues
about their experiences and also by
informing yourself about academic
writing such as through the English Teaching Forum
by the US Department of State.
Not only can you attend conferences, but
you can also read up on academic writing
expectations and assignment types, and
requirements in different fields.
The second step is to do a needs analysis.
A needs analysis will allow you to identify
the goals you'll have for the course.
Now let's look at an example.
Let's say that you are teaching high school students
and they know that they should write one
main idea in each paragraph, and put that
idea in the first sentence, called the
topic sentence.
However, when they actually write papers,
their first sentences don't reflect the main point
or organization of the paragraph.
What would you teach students here?
One thing you could do is help students see how
they can do and not just say.
This means you help them practice ideas we talk
about in class.
For example, you might decide that they need activities
where they can identify and create topic
sentences collaboratively.
Once you have your needs analysis done,
you can identify goals for your students.
The third step then, is sequencing those goals.
This is where you will also decide which
larger goals need to be broken into
smaller steps for students to practice.
Let's look at an example of breaking a
large goal into smaller steps.
Let's say that you have that same group of
high school students who are now writing a
paper, using three sources.
They know they should use quotes or paraphrases from
the sources, but they can't seem to identify which
ideas to paraphrase, or how to integrate
those paraphrases into their own papers.
Instead they're copying sentences.
What smaller steps could we create to help the students?
Maybe you thought of the same smaller steps
that I did.
The ones that come to my mind are these four:
first, focusing on reading, specifically activities
to help students find information.
Then activities to help students with
paraphrasing and summarizing.
Third, activities to help students integrate paraphrased ideas
into their writing.
And finally helping students follow a citation style guide,
such as APA or MLA in the US.
Once you have your goals identified
and sequenced, then you can create
interactive activities that match those goals.
Developing interactive activities starts with
training students to identify language patterns and
become critical thinkers.
You can do this through discovery activities.
For example, asking students to examine writing in
their field to decide if it includes both passive and active voice .
You can also use peer response which offers
benefits such as increasing students'
motivation and confidence with their
writing, and also evaluating their own rights.
This leads us to the final step which is assessing
student learning. Assessment needs to continue
through the course.
Here's an example:
at the beginning of the course you can
ask students to write specific goals for
the writing development.
Midways through the course, you can analyze their
papers in order to decide how to structure
future teaching.
And at the end, you can ask students to reflect
on those goals and their development.
Writing assessment also includes feedback, of course.
I recommend that you develop your own
feedback plan.
A feedback plan answers the question of how
you will get students' comments on their writing.
I also like to tell my students my feedback plan,
and let them practice with types of feedback I give.
I've included my feedback plan here.
Of course, each feedback plan will change depending
on the class you're teaching and what your
students need.
My plan includes the following list:
feel free to pause the video and read it
more carefully.
Well, we've gone over five steps that can
help you build an academic writing plan
for your ESL/EFL students.
I hope you found some useful tips!
Thanks for joining me today. Be sure to check out
Part 2 of this series which focuses on
helping students build coherence and
cohesiveness in their writing.
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