The 2 nd International Conference of the Chinese Association for ESP & the 5 th International Conference on ESP

1. The 2nd International Conference of the Chinese Association for ESP & the 5th International Conference on ESP in AsiaFudan University27 Sep 2013 Why are we concerned about university student writing?: Writing in English across the curriculum (WAC) Winnie Cheng Department of English The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

2. This talk • Inter-faculty learning and teaching funded project (2011-13): Enhancing Students’ Professional Competence and Generic Qualities through Writing in English Across the Curriculum (WAC) • 10 ideas for integrating WAC • Sample teaching materials • Sample assessment tasks & assessment rubrics • Sample scaffolding WAC activities • Student and teacher views • Project deliverables and future directions

3. Project objectives • develop (both by team members and be informed by international best practices) teaching and learning strategies which are effective for engaging students in writing in English in academic subjects • develop effective reading and discussion strategies to support students’ writing in subjects • develop assessment frameworks, both formative and summative, for evaluating students’ use of English writing in subjects • pilot, in the form of action research, these teaching and learning strategies and assessment frameworks in at least ten subjects across faculties/schools • evaluate the effects of the pilot work • draw conclusions from the action research and make recommendations to the University for future development of writing in English across the curriculum within PolyU

4. Teacher participants & departments Prof. Chetwyn Chan & Ms Emily Sin RS Dr. Mable Chan, ENGL Dr. Hazel Chiu ELC Dr. Jason Choi ITC Dr. Michael Jim & Dr. Peter Tsang AP Dr. Aron Kwok CSE (Now CEE) Dr. Joe Lam ABCT Ms. Grace Lim ELC Dr. Daniel Lun, Prof. Kenneth Lam and Team EIE Prof. Bob McKercher SHTM Dr. Vincent Ng COMP Dr. Robert Wright MM

5. Why are we concerned about student writing? (1/2) “…the bottom line is that the majority of students do not possess the skills necessary to communicate effectively in a written format that will enable them to become successful upon graduation.” (Defazio et al., 2010)

6. Why are we concerned about student writing?(2/2) “Teachers in the disciplines should be responsible for writing instruction (Monroe, 2003, 2006), because they, as insiders of the discourse community, are in the best position to induct students into relevant literacy practices.” (Wingate et al., 2011: 70)

7. Writing to learn Learning to write

8. While addressing the challenges … • not to add too much to the subject teachers’ workload • to develop sustainable resources that can be used in class or can stand alone

9. 3 steps in the project • Identify where and how to implement WAC in discipline subjects

10. Students’ difficulties with reading in English (1/2) Interviews with teachers and students and analyses of students’ written assignments • reading materials with new or unfamiliar terminology tends to slow the reading process or to interrupt the flow if students need to check the meaning of unfamiliar terms • selecting and rejecting information appropriately, and finding key ideas • making and organizing notes from their reading

11. Students’ difficulties with reading in English (2/2) Students • Some sentences in the journal articles are too complicated. I do not understand them. I also do not know some of the words. • I ignore the paragraphs which are too difficult to understand. • I locate key words of the assignment questions and read the paragraphs that contain these key words. I ignore the paragraphs that do not contain the key words.

12. Students’ difficulties with writing in English (1/2) Interviews with teachers and students and analyses of students’ written assignments • developing their own arguments and organizing ideas • paraphrasing in their own words, particularly because they are of the mindset that the source author could express it better • limited vocabulary for professional genres • linking information to the assignment question • describing figures and tables concisely but, at the same time, in sufficient detail

13. Students’ difficulties with writing in English (2/2) A student It is difficult for me to write without plagiarizing because I “copied and pasted” information in secondary school.

14. 10 ideas for integrating WAC To enhance the teaching and learning in the classroom: 1. Short summary-writing and reading-to-extract-relevant- information activities To enhance assignment writing: 2. Assessment tasks that require good writing 3. Opportunities for brainstorming and discussion of key ideas/ information relevant and not relevant to the assignment 4. Scaffolding to sort the evidence appropriately for the assignment question 5. Support for reading to extract key information 6. Writing specific parts of an assignment 7. Support with vocabulary and expressions to expand students’ vocabularies and repertoires 8. Samples of good and poor work from student cohorts –structured questions to encourage the students to look at the work critically 9. Guidelines for giving presentations 10. Feedback for students about their writing

15. To enhance the teaching and learning in the classroom: 1 Short summary-writing and reading-to-extract-relevant-information activities Adding to existing activities: • Summarising assigned readings to extract information that will enrich the topic being taught in class Designing new scaffolding activities: • Challenge the students’ thinking and encourage them to read for specific information

16. Design activities integrated into existing tutorial topics within the subject (1/2) RS202/2020 Foundation Psychology for Rehabilitation Professionals • Scaffolding activity 1: To read a passage about working memory and write their own summaries to answer the prompt ‘What is working memory?’ • Handout/tasks: ‘A strategy to guide your reading’

18. ‘A strategy to guide your reading’ (Reading 1) To answer the question, it is first important to find the information that is relevant, and discard anything that is irrelevant, no matter how interesting it might seem. Step 1: Read through the whole passage to get the overall story line. Step 2: Read the passage again. This time: • Underline the words which are more important than the others for answering the question. • Cross out the others which are less important. • Make a list of the remaining words, which become the key ideas for answering the question. An example of the key points in the passage: What is working memory? • short-term, immediate, primary, operant, provisional What happens in working memory? • active thinking, problem solving, focus Training and improving it • can be trained with regular exercise • training can improve focusing and processing • strategies and ‘tricks’, e.g. mnemonics An example of points that are interesting but not the most important information in the passage • Deficiency in working memory can be responsible for learning difficulties • Improvement can happen in a few weeks

19. Design activities integrated into existing tutorial topics within the subject (2/2) RS202/2020 Foundation Psychology for Rehabilitation Professionals Scaffolding activity 2: Challenge the students’ thinking and encourage them to read for specific information • Read a passage • Identify relevant information and use it to support their solution to the problem: ‘How was the relationship between the husband and wife?’

20. Once upon a time, a husband and a wife lived together in a part of the city separated by a river from the places of employment, shopping and entertainment. The husband had to work nights. Each evening he left his wife and took the ferry to work, returning in the morning. The wife soon tired of this arrangement. Restless and lonely, she would take the next ferry into town and develop relationships with a series of lovers. Anxious to preserve her marriage, she always returned home before her husband. In fact, her relationships were always limited. When they threatened to become too intense, she would precipitate a quarrel with her current lover and begin a new relationship. Now the hour was late and the woman was getting desperate. She rushed down to the ferry and pleaded with the ferryboat captain. He knew her as a regular customer. She asked if he could let her ride free and if she could pay the next night. But the captain insisted that rules were rules and that he could not let her ride without paying the fare. Dawn would soon be breaking, and her husband would be returning from work. The woman remembered that there was a free bridge about a mile further on. But the road to the bridge was a dangerous one, known to be frequented by highwaymen. Nonetheless, she had to get home, so she took the road. How was the relationship between the husband and wife?

21. ‘A strategy to guide your writing’ (Reading 2) • Underline the key ideas in the reading that give you some clues about the relationship between the husband and wife. In the margin, note what you think each key idea tells you about the relationship. • Think about the concepts/ theories/ principles that you have learned in this subject and make a list of the ones that you think might be related to your key ideas. • Next to each key idea, write the related concepts/ theories/ principles. • Write one or two sentences for each key idea to explain what it tells you about the relationship between the husband and wife. Use the concepts/ theories/ principles to support your explanation. • Some sentence beginnings that might help you: • From the information that … we can see that the relationship is … • Another clue about the relationship is that … • ... supports the idea that the relationship is… • Another aspect of the relationship is …, as supported by … • We can see that … is happening in the relationship because …

22. To enhance assignment writing:

23. 2 Assessment tasks that require good writing - that challenge students’ equilibrium and force them to apply thinking strategies to their (speaking and) writing

24. RS202 Foundation Psychology for Rehabilitation Professionals (1/3) Three guest speakers each spoke to the class for 45 minutes to share their personal experiences on the respective topics of (1) the challenges and adaptations experienced in life during the transition from normal vision to blindness; (2) how personal values and attitudes can influence one’s success or failure in life after suffering from a stroke; and (3) how health-related stress can impact on an individual’s psychological functioning. • Oral presentation • An essay

25. RS202 Foundation Psychology for Rehabilitation Professionals (2/3) Oral presentation • Collate the background information for the case so as to facilitate the audience to gain an accurate impression of it. • Identify a major life event which is deemed appropriate to this case (gathered from the talk and/or other publications). • Select a psychological theory which can help understand the course of this life event and possibly the speaker’s experience when going through the life event. Explain how one psychological theory can be applied to describe the speaker’s life event and hence his/her personal experience. • Comment on the limitations of the psychological theory in facilitating your understanding of the life event and/or the speaker’s experience.

26. RS202 Foundation Psychology for Rehabilitation Professionals (3/3) Essay • Choose one of the two guest speakers with whom you did not work on the group presentation. • Identify the two psychological theories used by your peers in describing the life event/personal experience of the guest speaker. Compare and contrast the two psychological theories in terms of the theorists’ cultural backgrounds, assumptions underlying the theory, and descriptions of the challenges/changes/growth. Make an account of the strengths and weaknesses of each of these theories to describe the life events and/or the personal experience of the guest speaker. • Identify your own personal life event/experience which is deemed important to you. Describe how the two psychological theories discussed in #2 can explain your past and future behaviors related to that life event/experience. • Reflect how understanding life events and personal experiences (the guest speaker and yourself) can enrich your professional education and practice in occupational therapy.

27. 3 Opportunities for brainstorming and discussion of key ideas/information relevant and not relevant to the assignment

28. Brainstorming key ideas CSE377 Occupational Health and Hygiene Assignment Topic: Describe the advantages and disadvantages of employing older workers in occupational health and safety in Hong Kong.

29. Worksheet • Brainstorm in groups of 3 about the duties and responsibilities of occupational health and safety workers in Hong Kong. List your ideas in the space below. • Your teacher will select one or two groups to report to the class and give comments as appropriate. • During the week, find at least 5 more points to add to your list based on what you have read in academic sources. Please remember to list the name of the author(s) and the year of publication of the books/journal articles/published reports that you read, immediately beside the point. • Please bring this worksheet to the next lecture for discussion.

31. Rated highly by students as a “useful” activity: Many ideas were generated in a short time. The activity motivated me to discuss the assignment with my classmates. I got some new ideas from my classmates during this activity. Through discussion, I understood how to find relevant information for the essay. This activity helped me to explore the assignment topic more thoroughly. This activity helped me to understand more about the assignment because [the teacher] explained the assignment while conducting the activity.

32. 4 Scaffolding to sort the evidence appropriately for the written assignment

33. CSE375 Construction Safety Assignment topic:

34. CSE375 Construction Safety • Scaffolding activity • The purpose of this activity is to build onto the ideas that you brainstormed last week. The table is to guide you to think about the different parts of the assignment question.

38. Generally, the students’ comments suggested that the scaffolding tables helped them to organize the ideas from their brainstorming and the literature: The table contains all of my ideas. It was easy for me to refer to my ideas and the corresponding literature. It allowed me to have an overview of what I had found in the literature.

39. Having the key ideas laid out before writing helped them with the essay structure: The activity provided me with a structure to write the essay – both the “support” and “refute” parts are included in the essay. Before this assignment I seldom paid attention to the “refute” part when reading and writing. It provides a structure for my answers. I used the key ideas in the table to write my paragraphs.

40. The scaffolding helped them to understand the topic The assignment was not quite clear. After reading the table I had a better understanding of the assignment question.

41. Transfer to other contexts: I will use a table, which is similar, to prepare for other assignments. It helps me organize the information from the literature and structure the assignment. Now I brainstorm before finding literature for assignments. I will brainstorm the assignment in a more detailed way, e.g. divide the assignment into different sections and brainstorm each section. I have been paying attention to the evidence from the literature which refutes a particular viewpoint apart from the evidence which supports the viewpoint.

42. 5 Support for reading to extract key information

43. ENGL217 English for Advanced Academic Writing • Why does the author use the word xxx in Paragraph xx? • Why does the author specifically mention xxx? • What does Paragraph xxx mean? How does this relate to yyy?

44. ENGL217 English for Advanced Academic Writing

45. 6 Writing specific parts of an assignment (e.g. Introduction)

46. Introduction The introduction explains what the report is about, and sometimes who ordered it. Some useful expressions for stating the objectives of your essay are: • The purpose / objective / aim of this essay is to examine / investigate / explore, etc. • This essay seeks to / aims to examine / investigate / explore, etc. • This essay examines / investigates / summarises / presents / outlines / describes, etc. In the space below, list the information that should be included in the introduction to your assignment report.

47. Writing an introduction (FAST 1000) • Some key topics to include in the introduction: What is the question you are investigating? (i.e. to compare the advantages and disadvantages) • Define the topic (hydro-electricity) • What are the main, important aspects of hydro-electricity? [Include everything here that your reading says is important.] • Which of these aspects are you going to talk about in this report?

48. Writing an introduction (FAST 1000)

49. Conclusion The conclusion shows your thoughts about whether to employ a full-time or part-time safety supervisor on a construction site after having weighed up all the evidence for both sides. Here are some expressions that you can use in your conclusion: • We conclude/recommend/propose/suggest… • I think/believe …. • The company should… • (Please note that when the passive voice is used, the tone becomes more formal. This form is often found in formal business reports: • It is recommended that a working party be formed to investigate the problem. In the space below, list the information that should be included in the conclusion of your essay.

50. 7 Support with vocabulary and expressions to expand students’ repertoires