The two test topics for the L3 group discussion test this term are: 1) Advice to high school students and 2) Troubles Talk. These are linked to units 8 and 10 in Passages, respectively. The handouts below help introduce the group discussion test topics. Please note the change from three topics in previous terms. As usual, students will be asked to select one of these topics from a cup at the start of the test. Therefore they need to prepare for both topics.

These handouts consist of a jigsaw task for the ‘advice’ topic and an info gap task for the ‘troubles talk’ one. On the reverse side of each handout, a freer speaking practice activity related to the test topics appears along with the fleshed-out speaking test prompt. Warning: vexing copy jobs await you; there are different sheets for A, B, C, and D students (although this could also work in groups of three or five). You will need to download all the files in the set (i.e., A, B, C, and D).

To complete these tasks, all members of the group must interact. That is intentional, because in the discussion test we would like to equalize participation, encourage negotiation, and impress upon each and every kid in L3 the notion that they can make a contribution to the discussion. Thus, we hope you don’t mind that we’re inviting you to do all the test prep you want.

As stated in the instructor’s notes, the test will be held during the week of November 26. Please inform your students and stay tuned for more details. There is also one change in format. While classes will still be combined, teachers will mark their own (and one other teacher’s) students. Yoroshiku.

Giving advice A

Giving advice B

Giving advice C

Giving advice D

Troubles talk A

Troubles talk B

Troubles talk C

Troubles talk D

For all you Level 3 writing teachers, here is a series of handouts that can be used to teach the persuasive essay. Hard copies can also be located in the Level 3 binder in the office.

The file labeled persuasive intro contains:

1. An opinion-exchange task on some controversial topics
2. An info-gap task based on essay ideas that students generate
3. Usage notes on modal verbs followed by some thesis sentence completion exercises
4. Model outlines for the essay
5. An activity designed to raise awareness of the Toulmin structure (let me know what you think–this is in the pilot stage)

The quoting-and-paraphrasing.doc file has some comprehension-based activities intended to introduce those concepts (it might not hurt to ask any liberal arts students if they learned about these writing conventions in the LA seminar as a way of activating background knowledge). There is also an example of a reference list in MLA style. The Level 3 shelf has a very concise MLA style guide–not much help, I know. If anyone has ideas on how to make teaching first-years to write a reference list less painful, please share them!

Finally, there is a one-page peer checklist to be used when students turn in their first drafts. When I do this in my other writing class, I get students to pair up, read their whole paper aloud to their partner (as a proofreading activity), then ask them to swap papers, read silently and fill out the checklist for their partner. You might want to review the terminology used in this one well in advance–so that you can teach it in class or change it to suit your own approach.

P.S. All of the links on the Level 3 writing resources page over at elpweb.com are still functional. Here are a few that are worth checking out:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
http://citationmachine-east.net/
http://www.eslbee.com/

Partly to alleviate the burden on teachers who dislike having to do a lot of photocopying and partly to organize student resources for the writing course, the level 3 team has decided to gather a set of writing materials to distribute to students as a booklet at the beginning of the Spring ‘07 term. There is a consensus that students should not be asked to pay for the booklet, as it will be made up of material that was previously distributed as class handouts.

Ideally, this booklet will consist of any activities, examples, guidelines, instructions, or evaluation criteria which course teachers deem necessary for their students. The project is currently focused on the Spring term.

Because we want to keep copying costs to a minimum and respect the fact that teachers on the course do have a great deal of flexibility in terms of how they teach it, we would like the selection process to be limited to only those materials which teachers consider highly useful (this, of course, implies no obligation to use the materials in class). We are soliciting materials and feedback from all teachers so that this will be a collaborative effort.

I am attaching a brief table of contents page which has been approved by the level team. You can assist us by making any comments on this document or sending contributions in the form of activities, model paragraphs, writing tips, etc. Please also let us know if you would like to nominate for inclusion in the booklet any materials in the existing level 3 binder.

If you are interested in helping out, please email me directly, respond to this announcement, or write comments in the project binder located on the Level 3 materials shelf in PFC.

While there is no official deadline for contributing, we plan to complete the project by early March.

L3 writing booklet TOC

This handout presents some basic information about quoting source material for the persusive essay, including the placement of quotes within sentences and verbs used to introduce quotations. Following that, on the second page, there are some quotations which students can practice on. Although the handout does not mention any particular style, the examples on the first page follow APA format.

Discussing the differences between quotation and paraphrase might be a good way to lead into this activity and it would be helpful if students brought their sources to the class to practice with. It could also be a lot of fun to talk about the quotes and invite students to agree or disagree with them, providing their own backing for or against the claims contained within. We had a great time analyzing the Sugimoto quote in my class.

Quoting.doc

…in which students practice their reading comprehension by matching the texts to the correct picture while learning about some ever-popular inventions that never made it to mass production.

chindogu matching

These handouts, based on the book, Treatment of error in second language student writing (Ferris, 2004), will help orient students in the Level 3 writing class.

There is a questionnaire about grammar knowledge, a grammar pretest, a handout for eliciting a diagnostic paragraph, and an error analysis sheet for teachers to attach to the diagnostic when returning it. This material is aimed at developing students’ self-editing skills and awareness of the main kinds of errors they make in their writing. It will give new students a general idea of what to expect later in the course, when working through drafts marked by their teacher and also provide teachers with information about students’ writing ability and understanding of how to fix errors in writing.

Here is everything in MS Word format. The files are numbered according to the sequence in which they would be used in class.

grammar questionnaire

grammar pretest

diagnostic paragraph

editing exercise

This is the portfolio rating scale I created while working on the Level 3 Writing course teachers notes:

Level 3 Portfolio Rating Scale

I have tried to make the criteria as conceptually independent as possible, without being specific as to the material required of the writer, however, this scale assumes that the writer will be asked to make a cover letter and table of contents for the portfolio.

Regarding the material to be presented, there are a number of options for that, including but not limited to: mind maps, notes, failed draft attempts, first drafts, and typed versions of final drafts. Please keep in mind that student choice in selecting the material is a key principle in portfolio assessment, as is progress (rather than perfection in the final product), which is the rationale for the last two bands of the scale (paragraph development and grammar/vocab development).

It was hard to differentiate, in the absence of actual student work, between the D and F levels of the scale, so I have grouped them into one level. If anybody has suggestions as to how a D performance might differ from an F one, please do tell.

As mentioned in the notes, this scale implies only one way of marking the assignment and I expect that other useful grading criteria might emerge during the course of the semester–download, modify, and share!

Dan

P.S. Chapter 9 of the book Assessing Writing by Sara Weigle deals entirely with Portfolio Assessment. You can borrow this book from the library in the meeting room of the PFC 3F office.

A follow up to the handout on suffixes in Alibrandi (thanks for the comment, Ted). Same format, but this one’s on prefixes. It may seem out of sequence to present suffixes THEN prefixes (after all, prefixes come at the beginning of a word), but I would point out that words with suffixes are easy to classify according to part of speech (e.g., words w/ -tion are nouns, words w/ -ly are adverbs, etc.), while words with the same prefix can be different parts of speech (e.g., international, internationally). I don’t know if this makes them harder to learn, but you can’t really organize them to the same extent…

Word parts II (ali)

This is a vocab worksheet for Looking for Alibrandi focusing on suffixes. It has examples of noun, adjective and adverb suffixes and a fill-in exercise using quotes from Chapter five. Ss scan the text to see if their answers are correct…

Word Parts I (Ali)

A pair of handouts to familiarize Ss with a range of words and phrases used to connect ideas in writing. If your Ss are ready for something more than ‘first’, ‘next’, and ‘finally’, you may want to have a look. The handouts have clozes (based on the online quizzes for chapters 3 and 5) asking Ss to distinguish between six types of connectors followed by additional examples of each type.

It may also be necessary to teach appropriate sentence patterns. There is plenty of room to improve on these, so here they are in Word format.

Connectors 1 (alibrandi)

Connectors 2 (alibrandi)

Here’s a handout to review modals for prediction and guide Ss in guessing what will happen to the main characters in Looking for Alibrandi.

Story Predictions (Alibrandi)

Here’s a file I uploaded:

Autumn semester EAP presentation on writing assignment 2