3103/3104 Course Coordination

It has come to my attention that our students frequently have difficulty when it comes to making connections between their words, sentences, paragraphs, and ideas. On one hand, they grapple with a small pool of familiar phrases. On the other hand, they often translate these to ill effect (though with the very best of intentions). For this reason, this blog entry is meant to share a few resources with you in relation to these essential essay building blocks.

First and foremost, our very own Graduate Teaching Assistant, Angel Matos, created an extremely handy handout to support students in this regard. It includes transitional words in English with their Spanish parallels, as well as model sentences that incorporate them. Some of these sentences are rather humorous while others deal with current events/issues to which our students can frequently relate (or which at least pique their interest). You may, however, change the sentences, if you like, as Angel has provided this document in .doc format so that you can make revisions/additions as you see fit.

Secondly, the OWL (Online Writing Lab at Purdue University), a resource that many of us are familiar with and already integrate into our 3103/3104 teaching, has a link to transitional devices that should be quite illuminating for your students.

Thirdly, How to Write Anything, one of the required textbooks for INGL 3103/3104, includes a brief section on transitions (350-353). Moreover, refer to this text’s index under “transitional word/phrase” for other details and advice on transitions.

In addition, I routinely tell my own students that one of the best ways to find transitional words is by doing a simple Google search. Below I include some useful links to transitional phrases and their English or Spanish counterparts. The Google search I used for this purpose was simply: transitional words english spanish

http://users.wpi.edu/~arivera/transi.html

http://utminers.utep.edu/micontreras/trans.htm

http://courses.washington.edu/dibas/201/transitionwds201.html

http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/s/a/sam50/studentinfo.htm#Frases%20%C3%BAtiles (this is my personal favorite)

Finally, it may behoove you to give your students a clear idea of what your expectations are in terms of transitional phrases. Despite the fact that I repeatedly include them as a rubric category for evaluation, I was recently surprised to find, when I conducted a quick survey of my students, that very few were actively incorporating them in their writing. I spent an eye-opening fifteen minutes engaging them in the following exercise:

Dr. S: Please take out your essays and circle every transitional word you used.

…Five minutes later…

Dr. S: Okay, this is the moment of brutal honesty. How many of you found no transitional words in your essays?

[A couple of hands are slowly and bashfully raised].

Dr. S: How many of you found one transitional word in your essay?

[a number of hands are raised confidently at this point]

Dr. S: How many found two?

[a few more hands are raised]

Dr. S: Three

[just a couple more go up]

Dr. S: Four? Five? Six?

[one or two more hands proudly go up].

This is where the limit was hit, which means that, on average, most students in my classes are initially using only one to two transitional words in a 500 word essay! I needed to give them a clear number of transitional words/phrases to explicitly aim for, so I suggested they start with one transitional words per paragraph at a minimum and to strive for two. Of course, if they wanted to aim for more, that would be fine, but I warned, at that point, about the risks of transitional overload.

At this point in my lesson, I shared Angel’s handout with them (see above), to which they carefully paid attention (they were primed for this follow-up activity given the humbling paucity of transitional words they identified in the initial survey)! I then asked them to see how many of these words they could add to their essays. The end result? Generally, a few misplaced transitional words but, overall, resounding success!

I hope these pointers work for you. If you have any others to add to this list, please let me know!

During the Spring 2010 semester, a series of three workshops on poetry will be offered by Prof. Leonardo Flores (see the detailed announcement here: http://blogs.uprm.edu/english/2010/01/17/three-poetry-workshops/).

The titles and dates of the workshops are as follows:

The Music of Poetry Tuesday, January 19^th from 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. in Sánchez Hidalgo Room 204

Poetry and Meaning Tuesday, February 9^th from 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. in Sánchez Hidalgo Room 203

Looking at Poems Tuesday, March 16^th from 10:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m. in Sánchez Hidalgo Room 203

As preparation or as a component of your students’ study of poetry in INGL 3104, I encourage all instructors of INGL 3104 to attend and potentially find ways to integrate related assignments into your curriculum. I am certain Prof. Flores will leave you with much poetic food for thought.

Each semester, we 3103 and 3104 exams are carefully and collectively designed to so that the process goes forward as smoothly and anxiety-free as possible (for students and faculty alike).

• In what is usually the last Course Coordination meeting of the year, faculty review the guidelines for administering the exam. Please click here for a copy of these.
• At this meeting, the final exam readings are determined and prompts are drafted, if not finalized.
• Once the readings have been confirmed, the Course Coordinator prepares and distributes Final Exam Guidelines for students. Please click here for the Spring 2009 version of these guidelines for 3103 and 3104.
• Once the prompts have been confirmed, the final exams are prepared (the Course Coordinator also takes responsibility for this). Please click here for the Spring 2009 final exam prompts for 3103 and 3104. You may share these with your students if you feel this would be helpful for them.
• The exam packets are distributed to faculty and GTAs approximately two and a half hours prior to the actual exam. They are picked up in the Course Coordinator’s office (Chardon 109).
• If contingency plans are necessary, then a student should take the exam after (not before) the established date. The student should be aware that s/he will receive alternative prompts, not the same ones distributed on the official day of the exam.
• As for the official exam date, the course coordinator typically sends out a formal request early in the semester, requesting the earliest possible exam date so that faculty and GTAs have sufficient time to review the final exam essays and submit their final grades. Click here for a copy of the letter sent in August 2009 for the Fall 2009 exam.

In INGL3103, giving your students free reign with their argumentative essay topics sometimes creates more problems than it solves. Students frequently have a hard time identifying a topic that is debatable, narrow enough, and that can be argued without relying upon God or the Bible as their primary evidence. With that in mind, you may want to have them freely brainstorm numerous topics (to get their creative juices flowing), and then create a list of annotated and revised list of approved topics from which they may choose (this will also prevent you from having to make uncomfortable excuses about why they can’t write about the unmentionable final exam topic!). It is also extremely useful to have them initially generate their topics in a question format in order to insure there are differing, and thus debatable, perspectives on the matter. You may want to borrow from and/or adapt the following lists to suit the needs and interests of your own students.

Possible Topics for Research I (courtesy of Celia Sanders)

Possible Topics for Research II (courtesy of Mary Sefranek and inspired by Celia’s list above)

I am sure you have been frustrated, on one occasion or other, by students who request that you excuse them from a class due to an exam scheduled for another class at the same time. It has perhaps seemed unfair to penalize them for missing one of your classes if they must necessarily take a pre-calculus, chemistry or x exam at the same time your class is scheduled. Likewise, it perhaps has seemed unfair to you, the instructor, to excuse a student from a class when you have dedicated considerable time and effort to planning a lesson that s/he should not miss. Perhaps even more aggravating is the irrefutable fact that a colleague in another field has scheduled a required exam for a student during your own class time and insists that your student be there! Certainly, it’s a Catch-22 situation that puts both instructor and student in a double-bind. On Thursday, September 20, 2009, however, we received official notice that such double-duty is not only unacceptable, but that it, in fact, goes against established institutional policy. Simply stated, departmental exams must not conflict with the students’ other classes, laboratories, or exam schedules. Link here for the memo from the Dean of Academic Affairs regarding this policy. Be sure to share this information with your students and let them know you will not excuse them from class due to exams scheduled for other classes.

Over the last few first days of class, I  have come to realize that many of our first year students are not familiar with writing reference books and that a self-guided “tour” of our new How to Write Anything text might be quite useful for them…as well as a great collaborative activity in which they might engage. With that in mind, today I created and test piloted the How to Use Ruskiewicz’s How To Write Anything PowerPoint Orientation and Scavenger Hunt and am pleased to report that my three sections of students responded very enthusiastically. Not only did they immensely enjoy not having to listen to me up at the front of the classroom for a change, but they very much appreciated the opportunity to work in their assigned groups with an informal structure. I must admit, the snack incentive was quite a lure too, but the freedom to move, stretch, work at their own pace, and socialize academically was warmly received and fully taken advantage of…I was particularly impressed by the academic use of a cell phone in class to take pictures of individual PowerPoint slides for the group “secretary”, or person selected to copy down Scavenger Hunt questions and answers. I have not yet developed an official answer key, but would be happy to send it to you in the next couple of days as I am already processing students’ responses. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for this document.

The University has a license for the software program Gradekeeper, which is an excellent way to record your students grades, attendance, and much more. The link to the latest 6.5 version of Gradekeeper is www. gradekeeper.com. You will need a code, which I will not post on this public forum, but can send you via email if you are interested so that you can set up your record-keeping system prior to the start of classes. Good luck! Ahem…Prof. Ray Knight is a Gradekeeper wiz and has also given a number of institutional workshops on this software, so if you really run into technical difficulties, he may be able to lend a helping hand.

In the 2009-2010 academic year, the INGL 3103/3104 Course Coordination Committee will meet on the following dates:

FALL  2009

1. Thursday, August 13th (Syllabus review and semester overview)
2. Thursday, September 24th (hosted by Cathy Mazak):“Using Online Dictionaries as Resources for Emergent Bilingual Writers”
3. Tuesday October 13^th (hosted by Mary Sefranek) “Evaluating Online Sources” (to be facilitated by GTA Nora Falvey)
4. Monday, November 23rd (Monday Schedule/Final Exam Preparation)

SPRING 2010

1. Thursday, January 14th (hosted by Mary Sefranek and Betsy Morales) “Doodle with Moodle! Demystifying the Newest Online Forum for Classroom Teaching” (to be facilitated by Professor Arlinda Lopez of the University of Puerto Rico-Aguadilla). See the following link for detailed information:http://blogs.uprm.edu/english/2010/01/11/doodle-with-moodle/
2. Thursday, February 25th (hosted by Judy Casey and Liz Dayton) “Using the Writing Center as a Grammer Resource”
3. Tuesday, March 23rd (“Tricks, Tips, and Tools for Teaching Poetry”) to be facilitated by Prof. Leo Flores
4. Thursday, April 15^th (Final Exam Preparation)
5. Tuesday, May 11th (Extraordinary meeting to tie up loose ends)

Dates that appear above in boldface are part of the Sequence Course Colloquium. This is a pilot project that will be offered collaboratively across all course coordination committees in the 2009-2010 academic year in order to offer an on-going series of workshops that all faculty and GTAs teaching these courses will attend and that will be open to other Dept. faculty as well.

Collaborative meetings will contribute to three important aims:

1. the extension of professional development hours opportunities to faculty and GTAs
2. a collaboration and exchange of ideas/info/best teaching practices for emergent bilinguals across committees
3. and especially in this time of institutional cutbacks, the implementation of simultaneously occurring cross-committee meetings will save Course Coordinators, Faculty, and GTAs valuable time and prevent the repetition of information across committees

To clarify, CEP hours for each of these workshops will be offered, thus contributing to, and extending the possibilities for, routine professional development among all faculty members and GTAs in the English Department. In effect, this means that twice a semester, Course Coordination meetings will be held collectively, and the other two meetings will remain focused on the specific aims/needs of the particular course.

Specifically, each Course Coordination Committee will be responsible for planning and hosting one Collaborative Course Coordination meeting per academic year. The Course Coordinator serving as host for her/his particular meeting will keep track of attendance and submit required paperwork to CEP to ensure that all attendees receive professional development hours.

In the 2009-2010 academic year, we will also evaluate this collaborative effort, requesting feedback from participants on the new meeting format, the usefulness of the topics addressed, and other topics that might be taken up in these meetings, including, but not limited to: Using ESL Strategies in the English Classroom, Using Gradebook to Tally Student Scores and Attendance, Adopting New Media in the Second Language Classroom (YouTube, Moodle, Webquests), Developing Syllabi and Course Outlines, Addressing Grammar in the Composition Classroom, Teaching Poetry and Drama in the Composition Classroom, Conducting Assessment Cycles, Designing Evaluation Rubrics, etc.) . The results of this survey will enable us to reflect on the successes and limitations of the collaborative meetings, reconceptualize these as needed, and consider other potential workshops Course Coordination committees might host.

The required course texts for the Spring 2010 semester are:

For INGL3103:

1) Barnet, S., and Bedau, H. (2008). Current issues and enduring questions: A guide to critical thinking and argument, with readings. (8^th. Ed.).  Bedford/St. Martin’s (You should have an instructor’s version of this text that includes an instructor’s manual.

2) Ruszciewicz, J. (2009). How to write anything. Bedford/St. Marten’s (The instructor’s manual for this text is available as a .pdf file and can be obtained from the Course Coordinator upon request).

For INGL3104

Kennedy and Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (11th ed.). New York: Pearson and Longman.

Online resources for all of the above texts exist and can be accessed via the links listed on the right side of this blog. They require that you sign up as an instructor, so do so at your earliest possible convenience.

Availability

These texts will be available for students to purchase prior to the start of the 2010 Spring semester. In addition, for students who cannot immediately afford to purchase the texts, they can be obtained on a short-term basis in the General Library. There are four to five copies of each text on reserve, four to five copies of each text on the library shelves that may be checked out for a short period of time, and one copy of How to Write Anything in the reference section of the library. Books on reserve can only be accessed by students temporarily (a one to two hour limit) and books in the reference section cannot be removed from the library.  Thus, there are no foreseeable reasons why your students should not be able to access the texts from the first day of class to the end of the semester.

If you would like to check on the availability of these texts in the library yourself, click on the following link:

http://www.uprm.edu/library/en/index.html

One of the subjects our INGL 3103/3104 students most frequently request our help with (and point out as their personal Achilles’ heel) is the elusive matter of grammar. And, while the explicit focus of INGL 3103 and 3104 is not grammar, per se, we must necessarily address grammar in our students’ compositions. How, then, can we integrate grammar into our classes without making it the exclusive focus, without boring our students to tears, and definitely without the use of fill-in-the-blank worksheets? The latter, in fact, are not at all typically recommended as an effective means of teaching grammar – to either first or second language learners – among most contemporary scholars in literacy studies, English as a Second Language (ESL), bilingual education, and second language acquisition. Here, then, are a few alternative possibilities for you to explore:

1) The National Council of Teachers of English, courtesy of Traci Gardner, publishes an excellent weblog for teachers called the NCTE Inbox and occasionally covers topics relating to English Language Learners (ELLs). In March of 2008, one of the topics explored was Grammar Myths for the ELL/ESL classroom. This posting included an exceedingly useful overview of grammar myths, but it also provided a number of helpful strategies for supporting ELLs’ grammar learning, not to mention additional links for supporting ELL students in the classroom more generally.

2) A rather entertaining way to integrate grammar instruction in your classroom might be to take advantage of students’ affinity for digital technologies and introduce them to Grammar Girl (AKA Mignon Fogarty) who routinely publishes podcasts providing sometimes comical and always witty advice on grammar (Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing). As of today, she has recorded a total of 137 podcasts and their popularity recently led her to capitalize on their success and publish a book.

With Grammar Girl, then, you might assign students a weekly podcast to listen to and that you might discuss in relation to their own writing, particularly if you hunt down the podcasts that address particular limitations or weaknesses in their grammar that you have been observing.

3) I always find it useful to use students’ essays as a basis for creating my own PowerPoint presentations on grammar and other related writing issues. See, for example, my Common Essay Errors Round I, for a presentation I shared with them after they submitted, and I began correcting, their first essay assignment. I typically create one of these documents after each essay submission to personalize my grammar instruction (hence Round I is followed by Round 2, Round 3, etc.). Students appear to especially enjoy these presentations and have asked me to post them to WebCT where they can go back and refer to them over the course of the semester as needed. One strategy I particularly recommend, however, is having them apply the rules presented in creating their own grammatically correct sentences. For example, last week, my students collectively made up the following sentence: Even though I threw the ball into the trough, it went through the window first, which I thought was a tough thing to do. This sentence was created after a review of troubling t-words they constantly tend to confuse (refer to above PowerPoint presentation).