engaging writers and writing: designing eap writing courses christine b. feak... in spite of a lot...

Engaging Writers and Writing: Designing EAP Writing Courses

Christine B. Feak

. . . in spite of a lot of challenges

All of the writing issues my students bring to me that make my work really challenging

Christine B. Feak

. . . and interesting

Some assumptions regarding EAP

Academic English is not an L1 for anybody.

EAP writing support is needed at all levels of education for all students regardless of L1.

The work we do has incredible value.

Content instructors often are not able (or maybe unwilling) to mentor students to become good writers.

Some assumptions regarding EAP

For some advisors the act of immersion in academic writing alone is thought to be sufficient to “transform students into legitimate participants in their academic communities of practice” (Casanave 2002).

Many advisors have difficulties coaching or scaffolding their students, modeling, and making explicit their tacit knowledge of writing (Brown, Collins, & Duguid 1989) since they have never been trained to do so.

Students often turn to us.

Cultural Capital Genres as cultural “mapping” (Martin & Rose, 2008)

“the paradox of writing in doctoral education” (Starke-Meyerring, 2011):

“what is normalized and appears universal to long-time members of a research culture is deeply culturally specific to that culture and therefore new to doctoral students” (p. 72)

Some assumptions regarding the teaching of academic writing

EAP writing courses focusing on typical academic writing are important.

Writing demands for the new generation of students are changing.

It’s becoming more challenging to determine what to teach. And when.

But. . .

Selected topics today

What are students writing?

What should we teach?

What challenges are we facing when we teach writing?

Students?

Feedback and Assessment?

Approaches?

Writing Tasks?

How can we address those challenges?

What might students write for academic purposes?

Academic

Non-academic

Distinction is becoming less clear in some cases

What might students write for academic purposes?

Research papers Critiques Book Reviews Posters Essays

Concept papers Position papers

Policy memos Policy reports Tweets?

Tweet your dissertation / thesis: tweethis

“If u can’t summarise ur research in a tweet u need to do a lot more work on ur question.”

Tweet your dissertation

When thinking big, small matters. Using scientific computing to demonstrate how small-scale processes have large hydrological impacts.

How blurry are the boundaries? Examining interactions between production and conservation forests in Indonesian villages.

Can we drink and drive? Minimizing the impacts of bioenergy policy on water quality

Prepared or not – assessing the state of local adaptation planning and action in U.S.

What to do when we are unfamiliar with the writing students need to do?

A “go to” structure with identifiable parts or moves

Problem-Solution OrganizationLogical and multi-purpose Used in articles, papers, posters, abstracts, presentations, and research statements

Swales, JM. &Feak, C. B. (2012) Academic Writing for Graduate Students. University of Michigan Press.

tweet tweet, a picture is worth 1k words but might mislead; what sound can tell us about the environment in a visual culture

What other academic writing might students do?

Bio-statements

Email

Webpages

E-portfolios (Seelio)

Blogs

Wikis

https://seelio.com/

Webpage Bios

University Bio-Statements

More examples

http://www.lsu.edu/capergroup/people/asfell.htm

https://depts.washington.edu/owrc/OurStaff.html

Webpage Bios

Moves Steps to complete the move (both obligatory and optional)

Identifying Give nameGive positionList institutional affiliation and location of institution

Establishing academic achievements

List degrees earned and where

Revealing publications Highlight publication activity

Describing research List areas of interest and/or activity

Describing professional activities/projects

Describe past or current job-types or professional responsibilities

Describing honors List awards


CVs

Resumes


Manuscript reviews

Responses to reviewer comments

Cover letters

Teaching philosophies

Professional philosophies


Conference abstracts

Funding requests (external or internal)

Navigating Academia

Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2011). Navigating Academia: Writing Supporting Genres. University of Michigan Press.

What are some emerging demands

New genres

New audiences

New purposes

Writing for non-experts

Non-technical summaries

NSF proposal overviews

Lay abstracts

EXPERT TO EXPERT

1An accelerated lamellae formation (ALF) methodology has been developed to determine the delamination propensity and susceptibility of pharmaceutical glass vials. 2The ALF process consists of a vial wash and depyrogenation mimic procedure followed by stressing glass vials with 20 mM glycine pH 10.0 solution at 50 °C for 24 h and analyzing the resulting solutions by visual inspection for glass lamellae. 3ALF results demonstrate that while vial delamination propensity generally correlates with glass hydrolytic resistance, ALF is a more direct test of glass delamination propensity and is not affected by post-production vial washing that can affect results obtained using hydrolytic resistance tests. 4ALF can potentially be used by pharmaceutical companies to evaluate and screen incoming vial lots to minimize the risk of delamination during the shelf life of parenteral therapeutics, and by glass vial manufacturers to monitor and improve their vial manufacturing processes.

EXPERT TO NONEXPERT

1Glass flakes can sometimes appear in liquid pharmaceutical drugs contained in glass vials. 2These glass flakes are a result of several factors related to the glass vial production process, glass vial sterilization procedures, and the formulation of the liquid pharmaceutical drug. 3Vial testing is routinely done in order to select glass vials that are less likely to form glass flakes. 4The factors leading to the formation of glass flakes were studied and applied to a method designed to directly screen vials for their propensity to form glass flakes. 5The washing of vials followed immediately by sterilization at high temperatures was determined to be a critical factor in the formation of glass flakes. 6As a result, a laboratory mimic of this procedure was incorporated into the newly developed method for screening vials. 7This mimic procedure as well as robust accelerated incubation conditions and a sensitive visual inspection procedure are key aspects of this vial screening method.

The challenge?

The curse of knowledge

The challenge of vocabulary: verbsSomerville, R. C., & Hassol, S. J. (2011). The science of climate change. Phys. Today, 64(10), 48.

Scientific term

Nonexpert understanding?

Alternatives

enhance improve intensify, increase

aerosol spray can tiny particle in the atmosphere

positive trend good trend upward trend

theory hunch, speculation scientific understanding

uncertainty being unsure, a lack of knowing range

error a mistake, something wrong or incorrect

difference from an exact number

bias preference, unfairness, preconceived negative idea

a tendency

scheme a devious plan systematic plan

anomaly abnormal occurrence change from long-term average

Emerging Demands

The Conversation

Devoted to injecting facts and evidence into the public arena

Articles written by university scholars and researchers who have deep expertise in their subject

https://theconversation.com/us

Emerging Demands

“The public invests a lot in higher education. We have an obligation to give back the fruits of our labor.”

--Philip Hanlon (President of Dartmouth College)

“Being engaged in public discourse is part of academic’s obligation to society and is an important component of how the public views them.”

--University of Michigan President’s Panel on Public Engagement

Challenges?

New genres

New audiences

New purposes

New demands on the next generation of scholars

Other Challenges?

Do students enjoy writing in English?

Most likely not

Or at all?

So, are students part of our challenge?

Yes . .

Students have a lot of writing “baggage”

What is in this baggage?

Whatever is in the baggage, it will work its way into writing.

and no.

What writing baggage do students bring into our classrooms?

What baggage do students carry into our writing classrooms or any writing task?

Previous writing success and/or failure

Some image of themselves as writers—whether good or bad

Procrastination, perfectionism, conformity, dread, self-doubt, fear

Fantasies of a world where they do not need to write . . .

“Rules” of writing

Other Challenges?

Unpacking the writing baggage

What baggage do students carry into our writing classrooms or any writing task?

The “Rules” of Writing Revisited

This paper. Never start a paper with This paper discusses . . .

Split infinitives. Do not split infinitives in formal writing.

I/we. Do not use first person—ever.

Passive Voice Writing actively eliminates wordiness

What about writing “rule” baggage?

Repetition. Do not repeat words and phrases.

Transitions. Frequently use transitions to show connections.

This and these. This and these should always be followed by a noun.

What about repetition?

Innovation research is typically concerned with understanding how innovations emerge, develop, grow and are displaced by other innovations (Hockerts, 2003). In order for an innovation to be effective, or even successful, it must result in a significant change, preferably an improvement in a real product, process or service compared with previous achievements (Amabile, 1997; Harper and Becker, 2004). It has commonly been assumed that innovation is the main driver for economic growth in that it strengthens the competitiveness of countries as well as of sectors and individual companies (Porter, 1985). At a more narrow level, innovation contributes to the profitability and long-term continuity of the firm. It also leads to quality improvement, increasing variation and diversification in products, increased productiveness and a positive influence on turnover, profitability and employment (Guinet and Pilat, 1999). Other contributions of innovation include the protection or extension of market shares, improved operational efficiency, improved reputation and cost reduction (Abernathy and Clark, 1985; Cooke and Mayes, 1996). This importance of innovation is also supported by non-economic perspectives, which focus on a better social and environmental corporate performance bringing an improved market position within reach (Elkington, 1997; Larson, 2000).

Innovations are of different types. The most common two are incremental and radical innovations (Henderson and Clark, 1990). . . .


From a public health perspective, alcohol advertising should not be directed at vulnerable groups, nor should it portray excessive drinking or other objectionable content such as illegal activity. This position, reflected in both statutory and voluntary regulations of alcohol marketing, is consistent with social learning theory1 as well as empirical research showing that young people exposed to alcohol marketing initiate drinking at an earlier age and progress more rapidly to heavy drinking.2,3 To avoid partial or total bans on alcohol marketing through statutory regulation, alcohol industry groups have developed self-regulation guidelines that describe which types of content (and exposure markets) they will exclude voluntarily.

In recent years, self-regulation codes have come under increasing scrutiny for several reasons. First, it is alleged that the sections of the codes governing acceptable content are ambiguous and difficult to interpret.4,5 Second, the sections governing exposure markets may not prevent large numbers of young people, the primary vulnerable group the codes are designed to protect, from being exposed to alcohol marketing.6 Third, the complaint and adjudication process used to determine whether a particular ad has violated the code is considered inefficient and possibly biased in favor of industry interests.4,7

Familiar Innovation is

Unfamiliar the main driver for economic growth growth in that it strengthens the competitiveness of countries.

Familiar It also leads to

Unfamiliar quality improvement, increasing variation and diversification in products.


Familiar Alcohol advertising

Unfamiliar should not be directed at vulnerable groups, nor should it portray excessive drinking or other objectionable content such as illegal activity.

Familiar This position

Unfamiliar reflected in both statutory and voluntary regulations of alcohol marketing, is consistent with social learning theory1


What about this?

20684. . . . age related GDM incidence, presents in the literature, and THIS finding differs only in scale from study to study. Howe

20685. . . . significant role in the duration of acute care hospitalization. THIS finding is corroborated by Tirschwell et al 6, whose

20686. . . . with loved ones, and to bring beauty to suffering. THIS helps to relieve the anxiety, fear, and other component

20687. . . . age at confinement, parity and pregnancy complications. THIS information is collected by midwives, at 2 junctures: 1

20688. . . . clinical guidelines are in place for risk assessment of falls. THIS is a particular concern of some hospitalized patients,

20689. . . . medicine studies that use subjective outcomes such as pain. THIS is especially true for music therapy studies that use a

Are students part of the challenge?

Students are increasingly more diverse.

non-traditional

career changers

discipline changers


Students may

have limited experience

be used to one and done writing and

be comfortable with the “rhetoric of fact”

be struggling to make sense of the writing practices in several disciplines

have ineffective writing strategies

What writing strategies might students apply?TASK ONE (Academic Writing for Graduate Students, 3rd Edition)

Discuss these possible writing strategies with a partner. Place a checkmark next to those writing strategies that you use a lot. If you rarely or never use some of the strategies, discuss why you do not.

____ 1. Translating, if you use English as an international language

____ 2. Spending a lot of time on gathering information or doing research and then quickly writing your paper from your notes, data sources, or outlines

____ 3. Referring to one or more “model” papers in your discipline, noticing in particular such matters as how the papers are organized, how phrases are used, and where and why examples or illustrations are provided

What writing strategies might students apply?

____ 4. Relying on a mentor (either native or non-native speaker) who “knows the ropes” and can anticipate how a particular written text might be received by a particular set of readers or reviewers, the latter of whom may also be able to offer advice on which journal or conference a piece might be submitted to and why

____ 5. Relying on friends who are not in your field to help you with phraseology

____ 6. Developing a sense of the anticipated audience, particularly with regard to what needs to be said and what does not

____ 7. Recognizing the need for some stylistic variation and acquiring the linguistic resources to achieve this

What writing strategies might students apply?

____ 8. Finding useful phraseology from other, possibly published papers and using it to string your ideas together

____ 9. Constructing an appropriate author “persona,” so that you come across as a member of the disciplinary community

____ 10. Concentrating on making sure your sentence level grammar is accurate because that is the most important aspect of getting your ideas across


Students are burdened by

dislike and fear of writing

questionable rules applied correctly, but not producing successful writing

Ineffective strategies

inconsistencies in what they have been taught (or seen in other reading) and how their writing has been assessed


But students also bring a lot strengths to our writing classrooms

Challenges

Assessment

Scoring rubrics of classes past or present

Rubrics represent the evaluator’s view

Pre-set criteria in the rubric are only some relevant, possible criteria

Quality of a piece of writing may be more than the sum of its parts might suggest

Understanding of Audience

4 - Exceeds Expectations Demonstrates a keen understanding of the target audience, and uses appropriate vocabulary and language. Anticipates probable questions and addresses these concerns with evidence pertaining to probable potential readers.

3 - Meets Expectations Demonstrates a general understanding of audience and uses mostly appropriate vocabulary and language structures.

Understanding of Audience

2 – Needs Improvement Demonstrates a limited understanding of audience, and generally uses appropriate, if simple, vocabulary and language.

1 - Inadequate Not clear which audience is intended for this writing.

Hook / Introduction

4 - Exceeds Expectations Introductory paragraph begins with a statement that both grabs the attention of the reader and is appropriate to the audience.

3 - Meets Expectations Introductory paragraph begins with a statement that attempts to grab the attention of the reader, but is incomplete in some sense, or may not be appropriate to the audience.

Hook / Introduction

2 – Needs Improvement Introductory paragraph begins with a statement that might be construed as an attention getter, but is not clear.

1 - Inadequate Introductory paragraph does not contain a hook or attention grabber.

Introduction of an “A” paper in a Linguistics Course

Using Limericks in English Language Teaching

One method for improving the success of a language teaching endeavor is to use materials that engage the students. If students are interested in the teaching material, there is a higher likelihood that they will become proficient practitioners of the language. I kept this observation in mind when creating the sample teaching material for this assignment. I used limericks as the theme for the material because I feel that the humorous, often silly content, and the distinctive meter may help capture the interest of teachers and students alike. However, these qualities are not the only ones that have influenced my decision to use limericks. While it may be useful if users enjoy using the materials, the main goal is to teach language, and so, I needed to test the potential of limericks for teaching English.

To reinforce my initial suspicion that limericks have great language teaching potential, I performed a Google search on the use of limericks in ESL instruction and found several resources that have successfully employed them.

(Male, NS, 4th year student)

Introduction from a published paper

In recent years there has been growing interest in the study of academic writing. One line of research has concentrated on the study of grammatical and stylistic aspects of written academic discourse. Among the phenomena investigated are the use of tense and aspect (Burrough-Boenisch, 2003 and Hinkel, 2004), modality (Vassileva, 2001), the use and function of adjectives (Soler, 2002), nouns (Flowerdew, 2003), the use of reporting verbs (Thompson & Ye, 1991), and so on.

Ozturk, I. (2007). The textual organisation of research article introductions in applied linguistics: Variability within a single discipline. English for Specific Purposes, 26(1), 25-38.

Rubric Score?

Inadequate

How Cats Lap: Water Uptake by Felis catusScience 26 November 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6008 pp. 1231-1234

1Terrestrial animals have evolved diverse means to acquire water, including absorption through the skin (1) or extraction of moisture from food (2), but most rely on drinking (3–12). 2Drinking presents a challenge to land vertebrates, because fresh water occurs mainly as horizontal liquid surfaces, such as puddles, ponds, lakes, or streams, and animals must displace water upward against gravity to drink it. 3Crucial in the drinking process is the role of the tongue, which in vertebrates is used in two distinctly different ways. 4Vertebrates with complete cheeks, such as pigs, sheep, and horses, use suction to draw liquid upward and use their tongue to transport it intraorally (13, 14). 5In contrast, vertebrates with incomplete cheeks, including most carnivores, are unable (after weaning) to seal their mouth cavity to generate suction and must rely on their tongue to move water into the mouth (13). 6When the tongue sweeps the bottom of a shallow puddle, the process is called licking (4). 7When the puddle is deeper than the tongue excursion into the liquid, it is called lapping (15). 8Here, we report on the lapping mechanism of the domestic cat (Felis catus).

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6008/1231.full%23ref-1









Theses / Main Idea Structuring

4 - Exceeds Expectations Introductory paragraph contains a clear thesis of main idea with clear suggestions as to how the body of the essay will support this thesis.

3 - Meets Expectations Introductory paragraph contains a clear thesis. However, the following support sentences are not necessarily, or only vaguely connected to the body paragraphs. .

Hook / Introduction

2 – Needs Improvement Introductory paragraph contains a statement that may be construed as a thesis. However, there is little structural support in the following sentences.

1 - Inadequate Introductory paragraph contains no clear thesis statement.

Importance of seeing the range of what may be successful

Only by experiencing the variations of a particular concept can that concept come to have meaning for students (Bowden and Marton 1998).

Goals of teaching writing?

The goals of most . . . writing classes are transcendent. That is, the usual purpose is to enable students to write better not for writing classes, but for other purposes (Leki & Carson, 1997, p.39).

Goals of teaching writing?

[When we teach writing] we have the opportunity to help our students experience the intellectual stimulation and excitement, as well as the responsibility, of engaging and collaborating with multiple audiences of all kinds, from peers to professors. (Lundsford, 2012 p. 255)

Approaches to teaching writing

Is there a best approach? Post-process

A focus on Composing processes and abilities of students Writer-reader relationships Function of language in specific genres and

organizational strategies (e.g. cause and effect / problem-solution)

Writing as a social practice


Writing is not done for writing's sake.

Writing is done to achieve something else.

Writing is purposeful, goal-directed and culturally shaped.


Writing is multimodal.

Writing is a cognitive and creative process.

Writing is culturally, politically and historically located.

Writing is situated, purposeful social interaction.

Genre approach

Genre-based pedagogies

Allow us to tie together matters of audience, purpose, strategy (organization and linguistic choices), and language accuracy.

Use of models is a central feature

Genre approach

Genre-based pedagogies

Modeling involves

revealing the thinking underlying a text

analyzing relevant aspects of a text

providing students the metalanguage they need to talk about texts

assisting students in “performing” the genre.

Criticism of models and modeling

Models and modeling have been contested.

Often criticized for an emphasis on following norms and presenting genres as fixed, thus perpetuating the status quo.

Genre models may be construed as templates.

Students are given a product, an outcome of a process carried out by someone else.

Access to the creative process that is central to writing before writing.


Models may hinder the development of an individual’s writing and authorial voice.

We need to make sure that students do not see models as a form into which content is somehow poured” (Eschholz 1980: 35) and

from thinking that “the way to good writing is to mold oneself into the contours of prior greatness” (Bazerman 1980: 656).

Models may be discouraging because they often consist of expert texts that have undergone a considerable amount of revising.

But, corpora of non-expert writing are available

• MICUSP

• BAWE

http://micusp.elicorpora.info/


Mad libs

There is no quick fix to writing.

This paper presents a 1. _______ method

for 2. _______ (the) 3. _______ . Using 4.

______ , the 5. _______ was measured to be

6. ______ . Results show 7. _______

agreement with theoretical predictions

and significant improvement over

previous efforts by 8. _______ , et al. The

work presented here has 9. _______

implications for future studies of 10.

_______ and will contribute to addressing

the problem of 11. _______ .

1. An adjective that means new2. A fancy research verb

3. A noun that is an obscure research area

4. A method someone else invented

5. A noun property of something

6. A number + units of some kind

7. An adjective that indicates something really good

8. Some poor author

9. An adjective that indicates importance

10.A noun that is a buzzword

11.A big, fancy noun that captures something of great social concern

(based on Ph.D. comicshttp://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1121

Affordances of models and modeling

Students are exposed to uses of language that are considered to be effective for a particular purpose.

The cognitive load on students can be reduced since they do not have to figure everything out on their own.

Analysis of models can help students understand the importance of audience, purpose, authorial voice and language choices.

Models and collaborative learning

Use of models is a good fit with collaborative learning approaches.

Collaborative or group writing enhances discovery, problem-solving, audience, and voice. It also reduces editing errors and parallels professional writing in the real world (Woolever, 1991). consistent with the Increased emphasis on education

based on social interaction (Kárpáti, 2009).


To what extent should we attempt to teach the genres and subgenres students need to master?

If we do not, then what do we teach?

If we do, then how do we go about it?


Genres are often the result of important work that precedes the writing.

Can we perhaps tap into the work that underpins the writing students might need to do?

Can we address the “baggage” and capitalize on students’ strengths?


How do we help students gain genre awareness?

Genre awareness is the competence as to when to write, when not, and what to write about to whom, when, where, and in what manner.

(after Hymes, 1972)


We can perhaps teach genre awareness

Engagement is key


Much academic / non-academic writing involves writing about some input

Figure 1. Dollars Donated to Charities Per Household

Table 1. Total Traffic Volume Ambassador Bridge Detroit, Michigan

1998 11, 679,917

1999 12,440,026

2000 12,301,001

2001 11,130,319

2002 10,454,930

2003 9.644,086

2004 8,879,222

2005 8,666,989

2006 9,680,232

2007 9,082,435

2008 7,349,305

2009 6,494,620

2010 7,232,366

2011 7,254,103

Source Material

Contextualized

Accessible

Representative

Engaging

What is Missing?

Involvement

Engagement

Motivation

Why is engagement important?

The data collection component of research is common to all fields of study.

It is important to collect data because it enables one to answer stated research questions.

Why is this important?

Academic writing is all about exploring, evaluating, answering and writing about questions.

It focuses on problems, puzzles and perspectives. It is part of the process of building new knowledge from

old.

What about the timing of instruction?

EAP writing support is generally offered for students beginning their degrees.

Students may be placed into classes based on proficiency

Regardless of proficiency students are still expected to engage in some rather complex writing such as literature reviews or policy papers

What about the timing of instruction?

We should broaden our concern beyond proficiency.

The link between language proficiency and academic success is tenuous.

Proficient students are often considered “too advanced” to need EAP support and have limited resources.

Course Development in Light of New Writing Demands

Thank you!

MICUSP

Around 830 papers (roughly 2.6 million words)

Different types (e.g. essays, reports, response papers)

16 disciplines within four academic divisions (Humanities and Arts, Social Sciences, Biological and Health Sciences, and Physical Sciences).

Papers written by final year undergraduate and graduate students who obtained an A grade for their paper.

Papers marked up in XML and maintain the structural divisions (sections, headings, paragraphs) of the original paper.

MICUSP

MICUSP

A file header includes, among other things, information about the discipline and the student’s level, native-speaker status, and gender

Possible to carry out customized searches in subsections of the corpus, e.g. only in Biology papers written by native-speaker final year undergraduate students.

MICUSP(all disciplines)

MICUSPBiology

MICUSP Engineering (civil, industrial, & mechanical )

MICUSP English

MICUSP Sociology

Kuteeva, M. (2011). Wikis and academic writing: Changing the writer–reader relationship. English for Specific Purposes, 30(1), 44-57.

Stafford, T., Elgueta, H., & Cameron, H. (2014). Students’ engagement with a collaborative wiki tool predicts enhanced written exam performance. Research in Learning Technology, 22.

Online non-academic

What might we write for non-academic purposes?

Email

Tweets

Text messages

Facebook posts

Blogs

Notes / reminders / lists

What other writing might students need to do in English?

Applications

Cover letters

Reviews—hotel, restaurant and product reviews on websites


Sheraton, Brooklyn, NY

I was given a nice size room on the 10th floor at the end of the hall. It was perfect: quiet, clean and had a nice view of the street. The hotel is perfect for commuters and for those taking the train as parking and the MTA are steps away. But as convenient as the location is, once you're inside, it feels like your tucked away in a comfortable oasis.


Backpack

I needed a new laptop/everything else bag and since I had good luck with my last bag from High Sierra I thought I would try again. I've never had a backpack type laptop case but it looked like it would work for my travels. So far it has been outstanding. I've taken it on two cross country trips and its performed flawless. I like the handle on top with the metal cord in it, very sturdy. Extending handle for rolling has worked well too. It holds a lot of stuff but its not too deep. Fits in the overhead compartment just right and the pockets are out where I can get to my stuff if needed during the flight.

Only reason I didn't give this five stars is I think it leaves my laptop a bit exposed on the top due to a lack of padding. It is also a VERY tight fit for my 17.3" Dell


Email—invitations / thank you messages / inquiries / tech support

Business correspondence

Essays? Unlikely the type of writing students need to do once

they graduate

Evaluative Writing

Sheraton, Brooklyn, NY

I was given a nice size room on the 10th floor at the end of the hall. It was perfect: quiet, clean and had a nice view of the street. The hotel is perfect for commuters and for those taking the train as parking and the MTA are steps away. But as convenient as the location is, once you're inside, it feels like your tucked away in a comfortable oasis.

Evaluative Writing

Backpack

I needed a new laptop/everything else bag and since I had good luck with my last bag from High Sierra I thought I would try again. I've never had a backpack type laptop case but it looked like it would work for my travels. So far it has been outstanding. I've taken it on two cross country trips and its performed flawless. I like the handle on top with the metal cord in it, very sturdy. Extending handle for rolling has worked well too. It holds a lot of stuff but its not too deep. Fits in the overhead compartment just right and the pockets are out where I can get to my stuff if needed during the flight.

Only reason I didn't give this five stars is I think it leaves my laptop a bit exposed on the top due to a lack of padding. It is also a VERY tight fit for my 17.3" Dell

An Example

For this project you will be creating a research question and gathering data with a team in support of your response to this question.

Think about the readings we have discussed and written about in the course so far and any questions you may have had about the research you read about.

Identify others in the class who are also interested your reading. Work with your group to create questions that you can explore on a small scale.

A Sample Questionnaire

1. Are you a graduate or undergraduate student? ____________________

2. Which country did you grow up in? ____________________

What is your reaction to the following? Circle one response.

3. I am satisfied with my grades and GPA.

strongly agree strongly disagree

agree disagree

neither agree nor disagree


4. I do my homework and/or study while also doing things on social networking sites. .


agree disagree



5. I study for exams while also doing things on social networking sites.


agree disagree



6. I think time spent on social networking positively affects my grades.


agree disagree



7. I think time spent on social networking negatively affects my grades.


agree disagree


Please explain your answers to questions 6 and 7.


8. I spend ________ hours a week on Facebook, RenRen, or other social networking sites.

0 1-5 6-10 11-15 more than 15

A Student PaperDoes Social Networking Affect University Student Grades?1There are many onging discussions about whether social networks influence student grades [1]. 2To explore this issue, we collected 45 survey results from a series of related questions given to students at the University of Michigan. 3Our result suggests that the social network websites may have influence on academic performance, but not very significant.4Generally, social networking websites provide a convenient platform for people to socialize with friends, maintain their relationship in a very efficient way. 5Socializing via internet has become an increasing important part of young adult life [1]. 6In addition, students using these websites share pictures and videos, read a friend’s blog, or get other informations and news. 7In other words, student do not have to make phones call or get together frequently to get updates on their lives. 8Since informations exchange is easier and faster, theoretically, social networking websites may save time on those social activities, freeing up time for other things, thus elevating work efficiency.

A Student Paper9However, there are also problems along with the convenience of social networking websites. 10Fig. 1 shows the amount of time of respondents spent on social networks while studying. 11About 90% of the students spend no more than 60% of study time on social networking websites. 12The average percentage of the usage of time spend on social networking websites is about 25%, which means 15 minutes wasted for every 1 hour studying.

Fig 1. Social network usage while studying

0-20% 21-40% 41-60% 61-80% 81-100%0

0.2

0.4

0.6

social network usage while study(%)pop

ula

tion

p

erc

en

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13About half of the respondents (Fig. 2) were unsatisfied with their

academic performance. 14Among those respondents, 84% use social

websites while studying, which indicates a very high percentage of

students are engaged in more than one task while studying. 15Another

interesting survey result is that 53% of multitasking students feel

affected, and incapable of completing their homework on time. 16Given

the existence of many uncontrolled variables, we cannot directly infer

that this situation mainly results from social websites usage while

studying. 17But social networking websites might be a part of reason to

influence their time management and concentration. 18Even more, since

the cognitive resource of the human brain is limited [1], the switching

between different tasks will reduce the work productivity. 19Generally,

social networking websites usage may be linked to a multitasking

problem, which causes time management problems and further reduces

academic performance.

Language Work

TASK

Put together a small reference collection (i.e. a corpus) of 5 articles on your research topic from one or more journals in your area. Be sure that you collect research articles. i.e. no book reviews, review papers, case reports or editorials. This corpus will allow you to compare your language choices with those of experts. The more texts you compile, the better.

Student Analysis

In comparison to my own writing, my vocabulary leans more towards the “FREQUENCY” list rather than the KEY WORDS. This is because I have decided to use terms that are not very technical, except in the case where there use is inevitable. Such examples of these inevitable technical words are “hypertrophy” and “hyperplasia”, because there are no synonyms for these terms. By comparing my writing to these lists I would conclude that my writing is targeting an audience with a general health knowledge, but that it’s not necessarily technically involved with health-related research.

Student Writing

1With the development of network technology, we are not limit to googling what we need, blogging what we think and messaging what we know, socializing through the Internet is increasingly popular all over the world. 2According to a technical report [1], twitter is popular and now has more than 250 million users. 3Over 100 million tweets are sending each day. 4In addition, with higher access to the Internet and increasing demand for information sharing, the social networking websites have become prevalent among young generation. 5Also, the study and computer time allocation patterns of young people have largely changed. 6Active users have report spend over 3 hours a day on it. 7Therefore, parents and educators worry that less time is devoted to studying by students, who now spend significant amount of time on online chatting, writing, and sharing pictures and videos. 8Hence, we consider question related to social networking sites. 9Given so much time these users have spent on social networking sites, can they do well in their jobs or school work?

What do graduate writers need? Capital (Bourdieu, 1986)

Cultural Capital

Linguistic Capital

Social Capital

Cultural Capital

Genre facility

Genre analysis

Genre awareness (Johns, 2011)

engaging writers and writing: designing eap writing courses christine b. feak... in spite of a lot...

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