Job Discussion Forums

berluche · Joined: 30 Nov 2005 Posts: 9

I came to China with a job to teach French (my native tongue) to be told upon arrival that I was in fact going to teach English academic writing!!!.

I speak English (20 years in Australia) but it is not my native tongue and I have never studied academic writing myself let alone taught it! But there you go... We are in China. Everything is possible!

To top it all, I have been supplied with (the photocopy of ) a manual which is 22 years old and the mother of all dreary books with no teacher's book...
Could anyone recommend a good "English writing" manual WITH A TEACHER'S BOOK for fairly advanced Uni students?
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danielb · Joined: 08 Aug 2003 Posts: 490

It's not a manual but you might find this helpful Best of luck! http://owl.english.purdue.edu/

voodikon · Joined: 23 Sep 2004 Posts: 1363 Location: chengdu

by that, do you mean a text on composition or some sort of grammar handbook, or what?

actually, my first impulse would be to say forget the book; find a new job. if this is the first surprise they have in store for you, imagine what will come up down the road.

anyway, i have this link for you. it's from my university's writing center, which sees, i believe, a few thousand students each term, 90% or so of which are esl learners. it offers plenty of links for writers' resources (and what do you know? even a link back here). i'm thinking the audience it aims at might be similar to your students.
http://www.calstatela.edu/centers/write_cn/sites.htm

Roger · Joined: 19 Jan 2003 Posts: 9138

Don't worry too much - teaching English is moe common than teaching French, and you can thus learn much more about how disfunctional China's education system is; French-learning students are the cream of the cream which might mislead you...

You must, first thing, lower your expectations! You will have tyo teach them very basic things such as how to centre the title, make margins, form paragraphs, economise on vocabulary and how to write WELL.

Even at university, most students have not learnt how to write a good essay... you may even do them a huge favour by teaching them in a practical, hands-on style (composing with your class a fictititious CV).

Super Mario · Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:19 am Post subject:

Bearing in mind how many different text types need to mastered, the advice re: writing a good essay is a bit general.
Do a web search using "English for Academic Purposes".
Here's one site to kick things off:
http://www.uefap.com/

KarenB · Joined: 20 Sep 2005 Posts: 227 Location: Hainan

I teach writing for 2nd year college books, but rarely refer to the textbook that the school provides (which is incorrect, outdated, and has tone of totally unnecessary information -- such as how to write a note). I haven't yet found a suitable book for teaching writing that's available in China.

Instead, I make handouts of what I think the students need to know. I focus entirely on practical English that they need to know immediately. In the first two months of the first semester we review mechanics (capitalization, punctuation, spelling) and grammar. They've studied this stuff for years, but still need a lot of help especially with choosing the correct verb form, the correct preposition, and the correct form of the word (i.e. when to use interesting and when to use interested). For the rest of the semester I teach them how to write a decent composition, as most of them take the CET Band 4 or 6 in December, and they have to write a composition for that.

In the 2nd semester, I teach them how to write a resume, a business letter, and then we work on enlarging their vocabulary (I only get them for 2 months in the 2nd semester).