Job Discussion Forums

[nomad soul]

Good for you for being proactive in your career planning. As for other Gulf countries, you might consider Oman.

Good luck!

[rossc]

Nomad Soul, actually, I meant Oman!

I have no idea why I wrote Sudan. I haven't even considered looking at that as a place to teach. Think I'm just tired!

[iggyb]

The book below isn't geared for ESL, but it has some ideas that can work.

http://www.amazon.com/Image-Grammar-Grammatical-Structures-Writing/dp/0867094664

If you are teaching Korean university students, the book should offer some useful ideas -- even at the intermediate level -- due to the amount of years the students have already been exposed to English.

I'd think it would also fit with Koreans due to the amount of grammar they have crammed down their throats in secondary school. The book will give them a different feel for grammar and the language. It shows in a way that is easy to understand how professional writers do their craft.

I haven't used it with Koreans myself, but an instructor in writing I loaned the book to at a program where we taught Korean English teachers ended up basing his curriculum on it. (In fact, he kept begging to keep it so much I finally gave it to him and have to replace it...)

[veiledsentiments]

Whew... Oman is a much better choice than Sudan.

BTW, your plan sounds good. Doing another contract and looking at various ways to teach writing is a good idea.

VS

[veiledsentiments]

[rossc]

VS and Nomad Soul,

Seems like u have been out in the Gulf for awhile. Used any good textbooks for writing u can recommend which may be good? I reckon Arabic and Korean learns are not so different!

[johnslat]

Dear rossc,

I think this is a decent series:

"Focus on Writing is an academic writing program that provides students with essential tools to master not only the key steps in the writing process, but also the grammatical structures, lexical knowledge, and rhetorical modes essential for academic writing.

This five-level series progresses with students as they grow in confidence and ability from sentence level (Book 1) through paragraphs (Books 1�3) and essays (Books 3�5). Each unit leads writers step-by-step through the process of prewriting, writing a first draft, revising, and editing before producing a final draft. Not only do students write an entire paragraph or essay in each unit, they are also given plenty of practice at the sentence and word levels."

I'd have used it in Saudi if it had been available then - I'm using Book 3 now with my ESL upper-level Transitions students, most of whom will be taking college credit classes next.

The series builds nicely, from sentences (simple, complex, compound) to paragraphs, to essays.

Regards,
John

[iggyb]

VS

I think you can look at it two ways: 1 that it does focus more on creative writing than academic -- but -- 2 that it's primary focus is on building an understanding of grammar through process writing. And a better feel for grammar in reading and writing should transfer between styles.

I don't really believe in focusing only on academic or creative writing. I much prefer to have the students experience creating a variety of texts. That is why I dislike the formulaic academic writing too commonly taught in the US to native speakers.

In the writing process I used in the US, the first finished text they wrote would be an essay - because the tests they have to take before graduation are so important, but for the newsletter, I'd have them change it to a news format or poem or something else.

One thing I liked about it was how it helped deal with mixed level classes: The lower levels had a hard time with the formal essay, but they did practice it, then they could change it to a type of text that better suited their ability.

That book I linked is geared to native speakers, but I believe it isn't too difficult to modify it to suit the ESL classroom. Much depends on the type of texts you select to read and your expectations on what they write.

I think it would work with Korean adults, because they have spent so many years studying English already - even if their abiity to use the language is still low.

I'm not sure that is true in the ME.

[veiledsentiments]

I can tell you that it isn't a process that will work in the Gulf. It is near impossible to do much creative writing when you have a class where most of them can't write a simple one clause sentence. You have usually a max of 2 semesters (best case 3 or 4) to get them from that level to the 5 paragraph academic essay. The reality is that you can't, but they are pushed ahead anyway. You spend most of your time teaching them ways to deal with their deficiencies. You have no time to waste on "creativity" or fun little exercises. It is a hard slog of drafts and more drafts... and teaching them how to find their mistakes (often by finding them in their classmates' essays) and correct them.

After getting past those first essays where the 2nd draft is miraculously fabulous... written by the Filipino maid, their US graduate student big brother, or even their father... (he got his PhD in the UK)

I never used textbooks except at the lowest levels, and have used the ones John mentioned. Mostly I used my own materials directed to the course and students. Low level texts are easy to find and there are lots of good ones. The problem comes once you get to the essay. Native speaker texts are totally unusable, as are even the ESL texts used in Anglophone countries. They are WAY over their heads.

VS