Goals & Activities

Since I am not familiar with the setting and the teaching content with the English 1000 course here, I am going to design the syllabus of a writing class for ELL students at college level.

My primary goal for this class is to help my students experience writing as a process, as fun experience (I wish I could think of more creative and engaging classroom activities), instead of merely a task, or a burden for them. I want them to realize that a writing piece is not a finished product, but rather something they could always go back to revisit and revise.

I also wish that through their own writing processes, they could develop, and truly find their own voice, and use that voice to effectively express themselves, instead of using words, yet speaking nothing truly representative of themselves.

We used to teach our students that by using 3 paragraphs or 5 paragraphs, they may effectively organize their articles, but now, I want my students to write more creatively. I hope they could not only write about their stories, but also write down their thoughts and feelings, so that they may write to learn, write to think, and write to explore about themselves.

The last but not the least, I hope I could provide enough opportunities for my students to practice writing both in the class and at home. I hope to help them develop the habit of writing something everyday.

As for the activities, unlike Nelly, who has already finished the detailed assignment sheets/requirements, currently I could only think of the major things that I would expect my students to fulfill in my writing class:

Free writing: This is one of the writing activities, from which I have benefited the most here, therefore I would definitely introduce this to my ELL students to improve their fluency and writing skills. For the first 5 minutes of each class, I would ask my students to do some free writing, writing about anything in their minds or that they want to write about. Occasionally I might also ask them to do some focused writing (that depends on whether they have a big paper in progress).

Three “big” papers: Instead of asking the students to submit a huge project at the end of the semester, I would rather have them write three essays along the whole semester, during when they would also be required to revise their papers once or twice and submit the final papers in the end. The first paper will be the self-exploratory experience for them: discovering their own journey of being a writer. The second paper will be a creative non-fiction (might change this idea). The third paper will be an academic research paper, following certain rules and format.

Writing workshops: During the whole semester, I would also organize at least two or three writing workshops, focusing on some major topics of writing, and offering guide on how to develop a paper or how to improve it. In the workshop, students will be divided into several small groups with 3-4 students each group. They will be asked to read aloud their papers to share with each other, and also learn to respond and give feedbacks to their group members.

Blogging: I would definitely use Blog in my teaching, to help my students better know each other and exchange ideas after class. They may choose the topics they are interested themselves or they may write about something that help them organize their paper ideas. Length: at least 200 words. They need to post a blog every other week, and comment on at least three classmates’ posts each time.

I might have other ideas for this class. I’ll just see whether/how they will really fit into my syllabus in the end…

Textbooks

As a writing teacher, choosing good materials for students is very important. I think that’s why Dr. Strickland would ask us to do the book report and textbook review. Only having known both the strengths and the drawbacks of the book could we teachers really make wise use of the book and make it really beneficial to our students.

On the other hand, the definition and interpretation of “good” and “bad” may vary among our students, therefore we shouldn’t limit or confine our practice and field of view to just one particular book. Like what Dr. Strickland has done, she did not ask us to buy any book and authorize any text as our “textbook”, instead, we were asked to read chapters from different books or journals. Many other teachers in our college are also teaching in the same way. In so doing, our thoughts are liberated and our horizon is broadened.

However, how much reading materials are necessary or sufficient for a writing class? And what should we expect our students to do after they’ve read the articles we’ve assigned? How can we effectively build up the connection between what they read and what they write? What activity may lead them from the images and words that they read to the images and words that they write by themselves?

And what materials/articles I should include in my writing class? How will I make sure that those articles have covered all the important issues/topics in writing? There’s still a lot that I need to know…