Supporting students as learners: two questions concerning pedagogic practice (original) (raw)

‘What am I Expecting and Why?’ How can Lecturers in Higher Education Begin to Address Writing Development for their Students?

Journal of Academic Writing, 2011

This paper reports on a small-scale study in a post-1992 UK University that set out to explore how lecturers were approaching the challenge of developing first year undergraduates" writing. It approached lecturers" everyday writing practices from the perspective of literacy as social practice (Barton 2007, Barton, Hamilton and Ivanič 1999, Gee 1996 and Street 1984). Data collection focussed on the different ways the participating lecturers had tried to support students writing development as well as the extent to which they felt responsible for developing writing as part of their specific subject teaching. This study concludes that it may be beneficial for higher education institutions to provide opportunities for lecturers to develop their own academic writing identities in higher education, as well as supporting them to work more effectively as writing developers within their subject specialisms, or collaboratively with specialist writing development staff.

Becoming writers: Transforming students' academic writing

Investigations, 2017

The present paper builds on Elbow’s (1998) idea of ‘free writing’ and other creative approaches to writing as we explore methods to foster students’ academic writing skills. Rather than focussing on a deficit student in need of ‘fixing’, we introduce and reflect on the usefulness of free- and creative writing exercises as we explore how we can enable students to find ‘a voice’ as we support them on the way to becoming successful academic writers. In this context, we argue for academic/study skills support that takes students ‘serious’, and builds on their existing strengths, knowledge – and writing skills.

‘Take them Serious’: Strategic interventions to foster students' academic writing skills

The Journal of Educational Innovation, Partnership and Change, 2017

The present paper builds on Elbow’s (1998) idea of ‘free writing’ to explore methods to foster academic writing skills. Rather than focusing on a deficit student in need of ‘fixing’, we embed ‘free writing exercises’ within classroom practice so that all students develop a critical writing habit. The aim of this paper is to explore how we enable students to find an academic ‘voice’ as we support them on the way to becoming successful academic writers. In this context, we argue for academic/study skills modules/strategic interventions that respect ‘hard to reach’ students as we build on their existing strengths and knowledge – and develop their writing skills.

Students vs Lecturers: How Should Writing be Taught and Learned?

Komposisi: Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa, Sastra, dan Seni, 2021

There have been a number of studies investigating the hindrances that students face and their preferences in writing activities. Yet, there raises questions whether all the students' preferences should be implemented and whether lecturers should comply with all the preferences in order to create an ideal model of teaching and learning writing. Using R & D method, this present study aimed to develop Reading-Based Model of Teaching Academic Writing. This article reports the result of the first stage of the study-the needs analysis. The data were collected through questionnaires distributed to 127 university students and in-depth interview with four writing lecturers. The students' voice of their preferences in writing activities with the lecturers' views on an ideal writing class based on their experiences and knowledge of teaching writing were examined and compared. The results revealed that there were agreements and discrepancy between students' and lecturers' perception about stages in writing process, students' ability to develop ideas, the implementation of writing strategies, and the practice of corrective feedback. This study was expected to shed a light on how writing should be better taught and learnt.

Responding to student writing: motivate, not criticise

Gema Online Journal of Language Studies

This paper proposes the idea that a teacher can motivate students in the writing class through the type of feedback he or she provides to students written works. This idea, which is partly based on findings of previous studies and partly on the writers classroom experience, report that students feel better motivated to engage in writing activities when they perceive their teachers to be more interested in what they have to say than in their language accuracy. The paper contends that too many error corrections can be discouraging to the learner writer. It supports the notion that teacher response should focus mainly on content. Two major approaches of responding to content are discussed. The first is directive feedback, which is generally felt to be ineffective in promoting autonomous learning. Instructional and evaluative comments are examples of directive feedback. The second and the desired approach is facilitative feedback. In this approach, teachers give comments in the form of ...

THE WRITE APPROACH: INTEGRATING WRITING ACTIVITIES INTO YOUR TEACHING

2005

There is a belief among students that assessment of student writing ability takes place only in courses in the English department. However, as lecturers we expect our undergraduate students to write for assessment in most disciplines, most likely a research paper, report, or an examination essay. And no matter how bright their ideas, how well-researched their information or how analytic their thoughts, their grade will suffer if these thoughts aren't communicated in a clear, accessible, well-organised, and competently-written fashion. Academic writing is a skill that all disciplines demand so, at the very least, we need to offer our students strategies to help them deal with the challenges of writing effectively.

Shaping Students' Writing Skills Shaping Students' Writing Skills: The Study of Fundamental Aspects in Mastering Academic Writing

Writing has become one of important skills in English language acquistion since a long time ago. Without leaving aside the importance of using active English to communicate, the passive one also plays important role to convey the message. Writing, as a way to explore our passive English is not merely intended to describe any topic without purposes. In this case, writing is a progressive activity. Oshima and Hogue (1997:2) explain the meaning of progressive in writing is when we want to start the first step to write about a certain topic, actually we have already known what we are going to write and how we explore it. After that, we read over our writing than we will do some corrections and also changes. In short, in order to have a better writing we should never stop only in one step. The more particular and specific urgency in writing is how to make our writing academic. This is what the most college students face in their writing tasks such as essays and final projects which become the requirement for them to finish their study in a university. In fact, academic writing is not as easy as the students think that they will just ask to write a passage freely. In this case, academic writing gives full description and complete guidance on how to make their writing sounds academic. So that is what the researcher tried to explained to the readers especially for students who need to shape their ability to in doing such academic writing.