Job Discussion Forums

[Drizzt]

Sorry if this question has been discussed before, but I failed to find many useful threads about this, so I am just going to ask.

I have a possible job offer teaching postgraduates at a university for 10 classes per week.

To begin with, during the year and a half I've been in China, I've only taught oral English, but the idea of teaching something different is appealing to me.

However, I do realize that writing classes probably require a lot more prep time since you have to grade papers, unlike in oral English.

My questions are the following:

1. In general, how have you gone about teaching this subject (useful techniques, methods, etc.)

2. Are there any good books or resources to aid a teacher in teaching this for the first time?

3. Did you personally find it more or less enjoyable than teaching oral English and why?

4. Since it requires a considerable amount of work outside of class, do they generally pay more than oral English classes?

5. Is there anything else I should be aware of I haven't yet mentioned?

Thanks for any insight!

[Roger]

[bendan]

I teach writing classes. In general, I'd say they are nice for a change, and sometimes more satisfying if you have motivated students. It's an awful lot more work, however. I found that more serious students gave me more respect when I did these classes, but less motivated students find the classes more boring than oral English classes.

My college pay a little more for writing classes, but it doesn't begin to make up for the extra work involved. Think about it carefully if the class sizes are large.

I have a couple of Longman books on academic writing to supplement the horrible Chinese textbook, and I've also used a couple of websites. I think [url]owl.english.purdue.edu[/url] was one. Every week I give a handout which draws together stuff from various sources.

[vikdk]

[Yu]

I currently teach thesis writing to Senior English majors.... well, up until today (they had their final exam).

Teaching writing involves much time outside of class. I have 120 students writing 20 page papers. I found their writing skills were satisfactory. It is the finding information and not plagiarizing it that is more difficult for them. Take care to know what their needs are and what the department expects of you. Students dont have so much experience with writing research papers. Things dealing with format. Citing sources... and as far as writing more the way of organizing ideas is a more western pattern is the biggest obstacle to overcome.

I enjoy teaching writing. I will teach it again next semester.... they may even give me a coteacher.

PM me with more specefic questions.

[Drizzt]

Some really good ideas here. Thanks for all the help...I think I will end up accepting this position.

[tony lee]

I have advocated negotiating a much lower class load for teaching writing -- as much as half the standard number of hours to make up for the huge amount of marking. You said 10 lessons. Is that 10 double periods?

I notice that karenb negotiated a 50% load teaching writing and this is what I consider fair. There is nothing more galling than watching your fellow oral English teachers waltz out of the gate two weeks before the end of term (because Oral doesn't count, you can hold exams early) while you settle down to marking say 240 exam papers that were writTen on the last day of term (because Writing IS "important"). I had 120 students and cut the number of formal assignments from the one per week demanded by the Dean to about 4 a semester, but even that was a huge chore at times.

The alternative is to use the method popular with Chinese Teachers -- a big tick somewhere in the top half of the page and another big tick on the bottom half. No detailed critique or suggestions for them. Smart! (because most students don't take any notice of them anyway)

Tony

[mjlpsu]

The best way to prepare for a serious writing class (as long as you use Americanized English) is to get acquainted with two important books: the Chicago Manual of Style and AP handbook. If you use British English, you can still use these books with just some changes in spelling.
I've had to edit plenty of international writers in law and business... and they all sucked. Please teach them well enough that I won't have to beat myself over the head to fix their writing... I must admit, however, most were better writers than native English speaking lawyers and businesspeople.

[trchambers]

If you're a good ESL teacher, you'll incorporate a writing component for your oral classes and an oral component for your writing classes. I did this for two years at Sheng Da College in China and consequently, was considered to be one of the better if not the best foreign teacher during that period of time (2003-2005).

For both oral and writing classes, I asked my students to write at least once a week: conversation [person A and person B] writing for oral; and compositions, of course, for writing. My total class load numbered around 170 students, but I had no problem keeping up with the demands of editing and making "native" comments.

As it relates to the writing classes, every class period, I would put many of the students' words, phrases and sentences on the board that I thought were, "Chinese-ish" and grammatically/structurally weak, then correct them in front of the students to indicate my "native" way and approach with the language. This editorial and animated style of the students seeing their and their classmates' English "ripped apart", so-to-speak, was a wake up call and effective in their overall improvement of expressing themselves in the written form.

This was very much of a repetitive process, week in and week out, over the entire academic year with enhancements through oral reinforcement. And my oral classes crossed over into this realm as well with the students seeing their written conversations "ripped apart", then working orally with the corrections and "native" way.

And for your information, dictation of everyday situations in question form in order to generate answers is a great way for all students to improve their English skills. The dictation that I used in my oral classes I also used in my writing classes. My oral students would see the dictation questions later on the board with the required practice with a partner of answering the questions and continuing the conversations. And my writing students would do pretty much the same except rather than practicing orally, they would write compositions based on the dictation question situation.

If interested, you can go to:

http://www.shengdacollege.tomrchambers.com/

to take a look at some of the classroom activities, and you can actually download [Word documents] the mid-term and final exams I gave.

People who say that there's too much to do inside and outside the classroom shouldn't be teaching. If you're a good teacher, this doesn't even enter into the equation. What's important and whatever it takes, is to help the students acquire this second language for them.

[poof]

I have experience of teaching writing to uni students. Firstly, it suits me better, as I seem to make a better 'lecturer' than the eternally effervescent edutainer of the oral classes!

I would equip yourself with a good book as a framework. Extract the most useful components, then supplement with your own. The book I still use as my base has been lost, but I clearly remember one of the authors as Alice Oshima. Search a bookstore. Find a writing book that suits you.

My approach is to work my way up through fundamentals. I start with types of sentence structures. Passives and participial phrases are good styles for academic writing, for example.

Then, I work on: topic sentences; thesis statments; connectors; how to express opinions; writing a good single paragraph; advantage and disadvantages; how to paraphrase and summarize; statistics and quotations.

I present my ideas, then get the students to work on exercises TOGETHER - they must discuss their choices for answers. Then, students can practice with their own paragraphs/essays. Proofreading what other students have written is a good idea. Getting students to present what they write. Students also contribute to a website by writing assignments. Sometimes, I will find a newspaper article in the student's native language, and they have to write a suitably styled translation - a great exercise.

Marking essays thoroughly does take HOURS and HOURS of extra work. If you have huge class sizes, you could see your evenings taken up with marking. I have now insisted to students that they must not write more than 1 A4 page, and I will not set any more than 1 essay per student per week. When I find students making common errors, I will board them and ask the class who can spot the error. Always encourage them to discuss WHY they offer an answer.

It's important that a student can write a decent paragraph before they try to write an essay. Remember, it's quality that counts, not quantity.

[sttwo]

My experience was limited to two semesters for third year English education majors at Changchun Normal University.

The information my predecessors gave me taught me not to give any examinations and to have all of the writing done in class. because of this I totally forewent even trying how to teach writing a "research paper". Other teachers with the same students gave them writing projects in research paper format and spent lots of class time illustrating how to do this on the board. They brought sample research papers pre-formatted to class and passed them around. In fact they did everything imaginable to get the finished product to approximate what westerners have in mind defines a research paper. The results were disastrous regardless of the topic, the plagiarism rampant, etc.

I stuck to giving about four topics at the beinning of class after highlighting the most common errors anbd pitfalls during the most recent assignments. I had between five hundred and eight hundred writing students during each of two eighteen-week semesters and I gave each student a weekly writing assignment so that I had betyween 500 and 800 "essays" to mark weekly. By the time the second semester was over and the marks had to be turned in I was so exhausted that I had to dump one very deep stack of paper although I had read through all of them.

The university supervisor in the English education department refused to divide the workload so that each of the 7 visitng teachers would have a writing class. others taughtonly conversation and had little or no preparation or taught culture/customs/history of Europe or North America. I ended up doing things this way because the students were totally bored with any sort of "lecture" or "writing theory" format. I just stuck to the most basic points and stuck to the most basic compare and contrast kinds of things about topics they would know such as "The Pros and Cons of the Olympics coming to China" or "A celebrity I worship or despise and why".

After it was all said and done, just doing a writing assignment each week did improve their writing even though it didn't approach the standard the teacher would have liked to have seen. I judged that to be success in this unmotivated environment.

Lastly, and most importantly to me--Ilearned what I know about china by having taught writing for one year. Students opened up on paper knowing that i wouldn't share their writing with anyone else. It was a bear returning their papers to them and students were transferred between classes, etc. I did the best that I could with the time that I had. I will never agree to teach writing in China again, because it's just far too much work. It gave me new insight on teaching conversation as I discovered the grammar scrambling that I was missing when hearing it only orally.

Either the libraries do not exist or the students are totally unwilling to spend the time doing 'research". People who took in research papers just got internet citations which could never be adequately verified. Even on a scale of only 120 students, I would run the other direction. It would be better teaching at a language institute on weekends and evenings than doing that. Just imagining battling writng again horrifies me.

When you do writing assignemnts in class you do get a few who have others write their assignemnts for them but most students are unwilling to do that because they have to produce their own assignment at the same time. Most of my students were female and far more diligent than male students ever are so that my experience is somewhat stilted as well.

[Leon Purvis]

You can cut the time you spend making corrections tremendously by requiring peer review of the students'work. This gives the writer a chance for his work to receive free proofreading and (usually) constructive, critical feedback. Require the peer to sign his name on the paper and make it very clear that he, too, must help his fellow student. A comment of OK won't do. (Yeah, I know, there are cultural implications and the usual objections are sure to follow, but the same objections exist in the west).

As noted, any of the Longman books will offer the teacher a lot of help in providing content. The Chicago style book, and even the APA style book (for science papers) provide excellent guidance. For research papers, MLA is pretty much standard fare in the west in the humanities on the graduate level. I'd provide a standard form for their works cited page just to make it easy on the students.

The simplest approach for handouts is to be found in the Purdue University website noted earlier. Purdue's OWL has a lot of info for E1 as well as E2 students. In fact, if you have the resources for duplication, your entire writing curriculum could be based upon the OWL website.

It has been lobotomized in recent years, but when I began using Purdue's website in the late '90's it provided a LOT of easy-to-find, east-to-use content.

[lollercauster]

[klaus]

if u collect a even single paper for the purpose of making corrections in the first year of a writing course (or probably ever) or even think that "collecting and marking" should form even a minor part of a language teachers job then you are wasting your time and have no idea what you are doing.

[nolefan]

I spent two years teaching writing classes and the biggest challenge i faced was always the issue of plagiarism. You have to deal with most of your students copying whatever materials they deem appropriate and turn them in as their own writing without giving credit/references.

free writing was one of my favorite teaching methods because it gave the students an opportunity to just write for the sake of writing with no grades attached.

cooperative writing allowed them to see what others were doing and try to correct it themselves.