English for Academic Purposes

Learning by Design: An Online Tool for EAL Curriculum Development

2011-11-11T13:16:00.000-08:00

Here is the latest issue of the BC TEAL News.

https://www.bcteal.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/BCTealFall2011.draft_.11.1.pdf.

My article is on page 23. It's a review of Dr. Hetty Roessingh's online EAL curriculum development framework, Learning by Design.

Something I said in class the other day . . .

2011-10-12T14:42:00.001-07:00

I was explaining the BICS-CALP framework (Cummins, 1981; Roessingh, 2006) to my students in the Elementary Teacher Education Program (ETEP) at UBC's Okanagan campus the other day, and here is something I came up with in class:

Part of our job as teachers is fostering the education of our learners' imaginations so that they can precisely articulate themselves in increasingly decontextualized and cognitively challenging academic endeavour. That precise articulation is unleashed with the ability to deploy an apt and varied vocabulary.

An English as an Additional Language Philosophy of Principled Eclecticism

2011-09-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

A teacher who does not take pedagogy seriously, who does not study, who teaches badly what she/he does not know well, who does not struggle to obtain the material conditions indispensable to education, that teacher is actively inhibiting conditions indispensable to education, that teacher is actively inhibiting the formation of intellectual discipline so essential to students. That teacher is also destroying herself/himself as a teacher.

Paulo Freire (1987), Letter to North American Teachers

Articulating a personal philosophy of education is not an easy task to undertake. Men and women have been grappling with the question of how to educate themselves and their children for thousands of years. It is the drive to fulfill human potential that pushes me to seek the best possible practice for my classroom. As such, I am not unwilling to look into all of the different traditions and pedagogies that have been espoused over the years to create my personal teaching philosophy. Furthermore, I strive to carry out a reflective teaching practice in which I constantly re-evaluate my teaching and work toward constantly better practice. Therefore, I ascribe to an eclectic approach which searches out methodologies appropriate for the context in which educators find themselves. Above all, this approach does not bury itself away in the pedagogy of the moment to the detriment of past successful practice and future innovation. It can be termed as a teaching philosophy of principled eclecticism, which has been described as a coherent and pluralistic approach to language teaching (Mellow, 2002; Larsen-Freeman, 2000). Within principled eclecticism, informed educators approach the task of developing a personal philosophy of education with a critical eye on the past and an inquiring eye to the future. This means looking to gather around the best tools to serve learners in their situated context in order to help them reach their fullest potential as human beings.

As a starting point, a traditional approach to education grounded in behaviourism and classical humanism can reveal a number of ideas which have value to the principled eclectic (see Bloom, 1956; Skinner, 1968). Examples of traditional approaches endure in the Canadian educational system. Especially at the tertiary level, there are times when a teacher fronted lecture can fulfill a valuable role in the transmission of knowledge and be part of a student centred teaching philosophy. While rejecting the elitist notions of classical humanism, I am attracted to the idea of transmitting cultural heritage from one generation to another. We do not live in a cultural vacuum, and an understanding of what our culture has created in the past can have a profound effect on where our culture will be going in the future. Neither a person nor the language they speak is ahistorical. Many of the core concepts upon which Canadian society is based come from the cultural outpourings of the past from as far back as the ancient Greeks and Hebrews. Cultural outpourings from the past that were valued in former ages do have a place in modern education. To be a participatory member of a modern democratic society, it is important to be both culturally and linguistically articulate. However, this should be done with a critical eye that weighs the values that are inherent in our cultural heritage and understands the roles that this heritage can assign to the various members of our society. The power of reason so valued by the classical humanists is not to be cast aside either. An educational system that produces students who are able to reason produces students who will be able to consider the world with a critical eye that can question the world rather than accept the status quo. Through this process of questioning our students can come to a greater awareness of the reality that surrounds them. The teaching situation will call for the teaching approach, and the teacher, as an informed practitioner, will match the pedagogical approach with the situation, looking at times to behaviourism and classical humanism to guide teaching practice.

However, this is not the only way to teach for a principled eclectic. Taking a more constructivist approach to education can also be incorporated into a teaching philosophy of principled eclecticism (see Dewey, 1944; Piaget, 1952; Vygotsky, 1978). The idea that education can be an instrument of social change is laudable. Tied to this idea is the assumption that schooling affects the level of economic growth and progress in a society. A second assumption is that education is capable of redressing social inequalities through the equalization of educational opportunity (Apple 1979). Thus, the acquisition of knowledge can be seen as an active social process in which the teacher plays the role of a facilitator or guide. In his or her role of facilitator, a teacher can use authentic materials in a classroom where the students are actively engaged in the process of learning and are provided with the intentional teaching and support needed to become productive and contributing members of the class. Here, the functional notational approach to language teaching is chosen over the grammar translation method. While at times the classical didactic teaching of a grammar rule can play a valuable role in the education of the student, other times it is important to highlight the pragmatic functions that the forms of a language can play. Because of the various salient aspects of constructivist methodologies, the informed educator will not ignore this approach when making decisions about his or her practice. In order to ensure active learning, this entails adding a layer to my teaching philosophy that embraces an inquiry based approach that fosters the research skills and initiative students need to reach their educational goals.

A further vital part of my principled eclecticism is the idea that education is an emancipatory, empowering, enabling, and democratizing endeavour (see Friere, 1970; Krashen, 1987; Giroux, 2006). Education is about the growth and self-realization of the individual. The teacher should aim to be a transformative intellectual who is a partner in learning. In the words of Freire “the teacher is no longer the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach” (Freire, 1970, p. 67). At times, this too can be a valuable role for the teacher. The teacher can learn from the students, just as the students can learn from the teacher. Using this philosophy, the classroom becomes a community of learners that includes the teacher. The students are full partners in their learning, and the curricular goals are co-created and shared. Housed in this philosophical approach are the whole language and language experience methods which are important tools in the methodological bag of any teacher. Once again, the method matches the situation, and the teacher must choose what method is best for any given situation.

My teaching philosophy is made up of a dynamic mix from many traditions. However, this has not been thrown together without thought. It is a principled approach that puts the needs of the learners in the forefront. No curriculum is neutral and each philosophy of education reflects a particular view of the social order. Furthermore, each philosophical approach reflects the social order and generates social meanings, restraints and cultural values that have an impact on my students. I want my students to become critical thinkers and to generate their own meanings surrounding reality. I want my lessons to be situationally and communicatively realistic while keeping in mind that what is reality in my classroom may not in fact be reality. It is necessary to keep this in mind because the reality that I present, or omit to present, contributes to the shaping of the social roles of my students in society (Auerbach and Burgess 1987). I want my students to be critical thinkers, and I also want to give them the tools to enable them to be critical thinkers in the most effective manner. Giroux (Auerbach and Burgess 1987) holds that “increasingly a premium must be placed not so much on what to think, but on how to think critically. Preparation for living in a rapidly changing world requires that people learn how to learn.” By teaching our students how to read, write and express themselves in English, we are not only giving them the tools to function in society, but also to gain access to the empowerment of self learning. If this is the case, we cannot do our students the disservice of not using all of the means available to us in order to help them reach their maximum potential. As such, I am willing to borrow from the other traditions.

Accompanying the above is a belief in accountability in education. Because of this, I wish to implement the best possible practice in my classroom, which may require me to choose the best methodology from each of the traditions according to the needs of my students, and the context of the learning. I must look at the different philosophies, traditions, approaches and pedagogies that have been espoused over the years with a critical eye. My personal approach is that of the principled eclectic who searches out the methodologies appropriate to the context in which I find myself at any given time. Above all, the activities in the classroom have to be purposeful, and the teacher needs to have a plan that will bring the students to greater levels of understanding. In order to do this, a transformative teacher considers the situation, and instigates the most appropriate practice. Additionally, I strive to maintain a reflective teaching practice in which I also look critically at my own teaching so that I can continue to evolve as an educator. As a result, I cannot do my students the disservice of not using all of the means available to me in order to help them reach their maximum potential. I must present to the students a variety of methodologies tailored to their specific learning requirements in particular situations.

References:

Apple, Michael W. (1979). Ideology and Curriculum. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Auerbach, Elsa and Denise Burgess. The hidden curriculum of survival ESL. In Freire for the Classroom (ed. Ira Shor). Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Bloom, B.S. (ed.). (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Susan Fauer Company, Inc.

Dewey, J. (1944). Democracy and Education. New York: Free Press.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Herder and Herder.

Freire, P. (1987). Letter to North American teachers. In Freire for the classroom (ed. Ira Shor). Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Giroux, H. (2006). The Giroux Reader. C. Robbins, ed. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Krashen, S. (1987). Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Prentice-Hall International.

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mellow, J.D. (2002). Toward Principled Eclecticism in Language Teaching: The Two-Dimensional Model and the Centring Principle. TESL-EJ 5(4). Retrieved December 28, 2010 from http://tesl-ej.org/ej20/a1.html

Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of Intelligence in Children. New York: International University Press.

Skinner, B.F. (1968). The Technology of Teaching. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.

2011-06-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

Scott's Fall 2010 EAP 1 Students

http://keithryokohaha.blogspot.com/

http://luckysnow29gmail-mgxiong.blogspot.com/

http://deamo419.blogspot.com/

http://bobohappinessplace.blogspot.com/

http://cathunter38.blogspot.com/

http://diegoincalgary.blogspot.com/

http://hmsroro84.blogspot.com/

http://daydayupupup.blogspot.com/

http://takshrufi.blogspot.com/

http://msalim2006.blogspot.com/

http://fayt2.blogspot.com/

http://edwardrexli.blogspot.com/

http://viperliry.blogspot.com/

http://nancyincalgary.blogspot.com/

http://blackrockbarttroz.blogspot.com/

http://weiweiibaby.blogspot.com/

http://hassantukar.blogspot.com/

http://cadic264.blogspot.com/

http://shanshan413.blogspot.com/

http://kiona-funhouse.blogspot.com/

http://abdulhappyhappy.blogspot.com/

http://ashjan-alyamani.blogspot.com/

http://optimisticesgirls.blogspot.com/

http://ahmadfinance.blogspot.com/

http://abdulaziz2011.blogspot.com/

http://sulaimanblogger.blogspot.com/

http://ntheer.blogspot.com/

http://ahmedbingoo.blogspot.com/

http://miaadhamadalqurashi.blogspot.com/

http://fatimah82.blogspot.com/

http://z-mydream.blogspot.com/

http://saleh1987.blogspot.com/

http://hmg2010.blogspot.com/

http://amjad9504.blogspot.com/

http://theblue11.blogspot.com/

The Lexical Anatomy of a Novice NNES Undergraduate Essay

2011-02-22T13:57:00.001-08:00

I just had another article published, this time in the ATESL Newsletter. Here is the link:

http://www.atesl.ca/cmsms/home/newsletters/february-2011/feature-article-4/

This article is a case study of a first year university essay written by an international students whose first language was not English. The article looks at the lexical profile of the student in terms of lexical breadth and depth and compares this profile to that of a native English speaking first year student at the novice academic writing level.

If you have any comments, please let me know.

New Article - Just Published!

2011-02-17T10:24:00.001-08:00

I have just published a new article in the TEAL News. The article is part of the "Wired Teacher" column, and it can be found on page 13 here: http://www.bcteal.org/newsletter/issues/BCTEAL_2011_Winter_Newsletter1.pdf.

The title of the article is:

How Times Have Changed: Online Vocabulary Profilers

The article outlines how online vocabulary profilers such as Web VP English v3 Classic on the Compleat Lexical Tutor website (www.lextutor.ca) can help teachers determine the whether or not the vocabulary level of an article is suitable for their class. Also, vocabulary profilers can help teachers find the words that that want to highlight and teach before the students read an article.

Enjoy!

TESL Canada Call for Proposals

2011-01-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

I’m going to be a co-editor of an upcoming special issue of the TESL Canada Journal. I’m really honoured to have this opportunity to work with Dr. Hetty Roessingh on this project. The theme of the issue is: Generation 1.5 in Canada: Multiple Perspectives on a Shifting Demographic Landscape. This really ties in with my PhD work, and it is becoming a much talked about topic here in Canada. I’m pasting in the Call for Proposals below, but it can also be found on the TESL Canada website here: www.tesl.ca. If you are a Canadian ESL/EAP teacher, please think about contributing to our publication. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

Call for Proposals

Special Issue of TESL Canada Journal, Fall 2012

Generation 1.5 in Canada: Multiple Perspectives on a Shifting Demographic Landscape

Co-Edited by Hetty Roessingh, PhD and Scott Douglas, PhD

Generation 1.5 is fast becoming a topic of research endeavour and classroom significance as the numbers of these students escalate exponentially in major school jurisdictions and postsecondary institutions across Canada. The literature characterizes this demographic category as consisting of individuals who immigrate as children or are the Canadian born children of immigrants, are educated in the local school system, and have life experiences that cover two or more languages, countries, and cultures. The common feature of this demographic is that the first language, or home language, is not English or French.

This themed issue addresses this topic from various perspectives including but limited to:

Achievement outcomes
Language and literacy
Academic Language Proficiency
Curriculum, pedagogy and classroom practice
Teacher preparation
Identity
Assessment
Transitions to higher education
Program support
Policy
Provision of Services

We encourage a broad range of methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks, including case studies, program descriptions, classroom practice, and other qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods papers.

A 250 word abstract outlining the paper is due March 31, 2011 and should be sent to

Dr. Hetty Roessingh.

To review author guidelines, visit the journal Website: www.teslcanadajournal.ca and click on bottom right 'Information for Authors’.

Papers are due July 1, 2011.

Queries for the special issue can be sent to Dr. Hetty Roessingh.

What do standardized test scores mean for undergraduate students?

2011-01-06T07:34:00.000-08:00

I’ve been looking around at a lot of university websites lately, trying to think what scores would be needed to enter an undergraduate program, and then how much growth might be expected (needed) to occur over the course of one year of undergraduate studies in English. For now, this is just “educated” guess work, but it’s something I’d like to think more about in the future. For reference, the University of Calgary requires iBT TOEFL 83 for entrance to most of it’s undergraduate programs. I’ve set the score just a smidge higher than the university English language proficiency requirements for most measures.

Basically, while there are minimum English language proficiency requirements to enter an undergraduate program, those requirements can’t remain static. They need to grow in order to keep up with the demands of a student’s particular program of studies. A certain TOEFL score may be high enough to enter university, but it is not necessary high enough to exit a program of studies. This means that students need to continue focusing on their English throughout their stay at university.

	Entrance to 1^st Year	Exit from 1^st Year
iBT	85	90
Paper TOEFL	563	577
CBT TOEFL	223	233
CAEL	71	78
IELTS	7	8
MELAB	85	90
CLBA	7/8	8/9
English 30 Diploma Exam	50%	75%

Happy End of the Semester!

2010-12-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

It’s almost the end of the semester. In fact, there are only two more teaching days left, and then there are the final exams. I thought for this post, I’d give some tips on how to write an essay for the EAP 1 final exam. Let me know what you think about them!

Thirteen Steps to Writing a Short 4 Paragraph Essay for the Final Exam

Step One:

Brainstorm three or four supporting ideas for the topic.

Step Two:

Brainstorm three or four supporting points for each of the supporting ideas from Step One. Brainstorm facts, details, statistics, anecdotes, examples, elaborations, explanations.

Step Three:

Choose the best two supporting ideas from your brainstorm and decide which one is the first body paragraph, and which one is the second body paragraph. Remember to save the best for last!

Step Four:

Choose the best two or three supporting points for each of the supporting ideas you have chosen for your essay. Underline or circle them in your brainstorm.

Step Five:

Write a thesis statement for your essay.

Step Six:

Write a topic sentence for your first body paragraph.

Step Seven:

Write a topic sentence for your second body paragraph. Don’t forget a transition between the two body paragraphs.

Step Eight:

Write a concluding statement for your conclusion paraphrasing the thesis statement.

Step Nine:

Write a general to specific introduction. It should be about four sentences long.

Step Ten:

Write the first body paragraph. It should be about 100 – 150 words long.

Step Eleven:

Write the second body paragraph. It should be about 100 – 150 words long.

Step Twelve:

Write the concluding paragraph. Use added thoughts, comments, predictions, hopes, wishes, judgements, opinions, or recommendations. Do not add any new information about the topic.

Step Thirteen:

Read over the essay carefully two or three times. Revise for ideas, and edit for grammar and mechanics.

Extraordinary Measures and Popcorn!

2010-11-20T14:01:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday class was really different than usual. It was a special holiday for our Muslim students, so the class was really small. As a result, I decided we could have a "fun" educational day instead of the usual classes. First of all, I showed the students a couple of powerpoints on adjective clauses . . . I'm not sure if this part of the day was so fun for the students, but then the fun stuff started to come. I made popcorn in class! I brought in my hot air popcorn popper, and I silently demonstrated to the students how to make popcorn while they took notes. This fit in perfectly with our unit on Process Paragraphs because after I was done making the popcorn, the students had to use their notes to write a process paragraph on how to make popcorn. I was surprised at how educational it actually was! The students learned lots of new vocabulary like "measuring cup" "hot air popper" and "kernels". Anyway, after we finished our process paragraphs, I made up a whole bunch of popcorn and melted some butter. Now we were ready for a movie!

The movie my students chose to watch was Extraordinary Measures. In the morning I showed the students the trailers to five different movies, and then they voted on the movie that they wanted to see in the afternoon. I was really happy that they chose Extraordinary Measures because I had never seen it before. Basically, it is about this guy whose children have a terrible genetic disease. He finds a scientist who can help him make a cure for the disease. I won't tell you the ending, but I think a couple of my students were crying during the movie! here is the trailer:

All in all, it was a really great day!

Convocation 2010

2010-11-14T12:53:00.001-08:00

It's now official. I have a PhD! I had my convocation last Friday, and I've received my fancy piece of paper saying that I have a Doctor of Philosophy with a specialization in Teaching English as a Second Language. Hmmm, does this mean I now have to give my students more homework because I'm an "expert" now?

Convocation started off with my parents picking me up at my house. We then went to the university for the Faculty of Education convocation lunch. The lunch was really nice with posh little sandwiches and cream cake, but all I could manage was a cup of coffee. For some reason, I was actually feeling nervous, so I couldn't eat anything. This is really rare for me!

After the lunch, I went over to pick up my special robes and hood and put them on. I also picked up my degree at that time. Then, once everyone was ready, we marched into the Jack Simpson gym headed by a Scottish Piper. The ceremony started at 2:30, and it finished around 3:30. My turn came when I went up on stage and my hood was official attached to my robes. I then shook hands with a bunch of people on stage, got my picture taken, and sat back down. Once that was over, I was a doctor!

After the ceremony, my parents then took me to my favourite Chinese restaurant in Brentwood Mall, and we had Pekin Duck. It was so good. I love the little pancakes that come with the duck. We also had duck noodles, and duck tofu soup. My dad also wanted to have some vegetables with black bean sauce, and we ordered some extra ginger chicken because my mum doesn't like duck too much. She thinks they are too cute to eat.

Anyway, it was a great day! Enjoy the photos!

Me with my PhD:Me walking off the stage: My mother and I:
My father and I:

The "convocation" cake and I:

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

2010-11-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

Right now in my class we are reading The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Scary stuff!!

I don't usually link to funny youtube videos, but I couldn't resist. Let me know what you think about it!

If you like the song, you can find the lyrics here: http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/arthur/jekyll_and_hyde-lyrics-1188936.html

Back from Edmonton!

2010-11-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

I’m back from Edmonton. Above you can see a picture of the hotel I stayed at. I was only there for two days, but I feel like I was there for a week! I was in Edmonton for the Alberta Teachers of English as a Second Language (ATESL) conference. I always love going to conferences, and this conference was great. On the Friday of the conference there was a speaker from Australia, Lynda Yates, who made a presentation on pragmatics. Pragmatics has to do with how language is used and how culture influences how language is used. One example that Dr. Yates gave was that in Canada we might say “how’s it going” when we greet someone, but someone from Chinese might say “have you eaten yet?” or “where are you going”. If those are translated directly into English, they won’t work very well on an English speaking Canadian. The other keynote speaker was Dr. Tom Cobb. He presented on the Saturday of the conference. It was really great to hear Dr. Cobb speak again. He first presented at an ATESL conference in 2002, and that was the first conference that I ever went to. Seven years later, I based my PhD research on his work! I finally got to meet Dr. Cobb at the conference in person, and I was pretty nervous. Especially when he came to my presentation!

However, conferences are more than just presentations. It’s also a great chance to meet up with friends from all over the province. I was really happy to meet colleagues from Edmonton and Lethbridge that I hadn’t seen in a while. It’s always great to catch up!

All in all, it was a great conference, and I can’t wait to go again next year!

Alexander the Great Presentations

2010-10-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

I wonder how many of my students have started to go out for coffee with a friend, even if they both speak the same first language, and promise themselves that they will only speak English for 30 minutes. I remember learning that languages are learned when you have two people who are willing to negotiate meaning with one another. That is, if one person doesn’t understand, the other person doesn’t mind trying to explain what they want to say in a different way one more time. Finding someone like that, however, can be difficult. I see it all the time, but I guess people have busy lives, and if a native English speaker is speaking to a non-Native English speaker, they don’t always have the patience to negotiate meaning. That’s why I tried recommending to my students that if they can’t find an English speaker to practice with, that’s no problem, they can just practice with each other.

On another note, my students have just finished doing their presentations on the Penguin Reader Alexander the Great. The presentations were brilliant! I was actually surprised because, to be honest, sometimes I dread presentations. They can go on and on and no one understands what is being said, and the students spend the whole time speaking into a piece of paper or with their backs to the audience talking to the power point screen. Painful! However, this time, it didn’t happen. Usually, presentation time is a time of open topics with students choosing their own group members. This time, however, I randomly chose the groups for the students, and I assigned the topics. The Penguin Reader we have been reading in class has 10 chapters, so I divided the class up into ten groups, with each group presenting a different chapter in order. Although students could search the internet for pictures and maps, they weren’t allowed to use any other information except that in their books. By narrowing down the information they could use, the students really focused on the chapter they had to present, and boy did they know their stuff! I have an entire class of experts on Alexander the Great! I think by lowering the amount of work they had to do in order to find content for their presentations, they were able to focus more on the English and delivering a good presentation. On top of all that, because the groups were randomly assigned, there were speakers of different first languages in all the groups. The working language had to be English, so it was good practice as well while they were preparing. Anyway, I was very impressed! I can’t wait for the next presentations!

Nihongo Half Hour!

2010-10-24T13:08:00.000-07:00

I think a lot of my students know already, but my hobby is learning Japanese! I lived in Japan for two years, and I think one of my biggest regrets is not learning how to speak Japanese fluently. I remember, when I first went to Japan, I thought it would be easy to learn the language because I had been to other places before, and I had quickly learned the local language. For example, when I was 17, I went to Quebec for six weeks, and by the end of six weeks, I couldn't stop speaking French!

Why, then, can't I speak Japanese? I think the main reason why I didn't learn how to speak Japanese while I was in Japan is because most of my friends spoke English. I had a lot of American friends, and naturally we spoke English together. Also, I only spoke English with my Japanese friends as well! As a result, after two years, I hardly spoke any Japanese. In contrast, whenever I go to Quebec, I speak French all the time. In fact, I even speak French with a lot of my English speaking friends. When I lived in Quebec the first time, I went to college for a six week French program, and we were forbidden from speaking English. As you can imagine, I soon learned how to at least communicate.

Anyway, now that I am finished my PhD, I really want to work on my Japanese again. I go to Japanese school every Friday night for two hours, and I have a Japanese tutor who comes to my house for two hours a week. On top of all of that, my friends and I have have just started a new activity. Once a week, we meet in a cafe and we only speak Japanese for half an hour. We call it Nihongo Half Hour. I came up with the idea because I'm always telling my students they need to practice speaking their English more. However, they always complain that they don't have any native English speaking friends to practice with. No problem! Practice with each other!! Anyway, I decided to talk my own language learning advice to heart, and now we are doing Nihongo Half Hour. It's hard! Our conversations are really basic - mostly we just talk about our hobbies and food, but for 30 minutes, it's nothing but Japanese. After the 30 minutes are over, I think some of us are relieved! However, we do it, and I think we are getting more fluent in Japanese. I totally recommend my students do the same thing in English. I hope they can find a coffee shop that they like, and time themselves for 30 minutes so that they only speak English for half an hour. If I can do it in Japanese my English speaking friends, they can do it in English with their non-native English speaking friends!

Good Luck!!

Midterm Exams!

2010-10-17T13:04:00.001-07:00

Here is a funny cartoon I found at this website: http://girlsbydesign.com/blog/2009/08/17/study-hacks/

Mid-terms are over, and I’m sure my students are sitting anxiously at home waiting for the results. I’m in the middle of marking them all right now, but I thought I’d procrastinate a bit and write in my blog.

Mid-term week is a busy week in the EAP program. It started off with the writing and grammar midterm. This year, I gave the students almost three hours to complete their writing and grammar midterm. It started off with 60 multiple choice grammar questions and the different grammar points that we studied in class, and then we had the writing section. I really wanted to see if the students were comfortable with the writing process, so I included the brainstorming, outlining, and rough draft in the exam before the students started writing a good copy. I hope that they understand that when they are writing paragraph, there are a number of steps they have to take before they get around to writing the final copy.

After the writing and grammar midterm, there was the reading midterm, which was also about three hours long. The hardest part on this midterm seemed to be the vocabulary. Actually, it was very interesting because usually I expect a few students to do really well, and a few students to do really badly, with the majority of the students doing average or okay. However, this midterm it seemed like their were definitely two groups of students. Students who did amazingly well (almost 100% on the vocabulary) or amazingly badly (almost 0% on the vocabulary)! I bet I know which students were the ones who studied their vocabulary really hard!

I also did oral exams with the students for these midterms. I really enjoy the opportunity to speak with the students one-on-one in these types of situations. I do always get the change to talk to each student in class, so it is a nice opportunity for me. Also, it was again obvious who studied! The students who studied had lots to say, but the students who didn’t open their books looked a bit shocked with I asked them some of the questions!

To end it all off, there was the listening midterm. This midterm wasn’t as long as the others, and I think some of the students really enjoyed it. Again, you could tell who studied!

Now, it’s time to finish marking the midterms, and start thinking about the final exams in December!

Turkey with my Parents`

2010-10-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

I had such a great long weekend! I went to Olds on Monday for Thanksgiving Day, and I ate Turkey with my parents. My mum tried to roast the smallest turkey she could find in the grocery store, but it was still huge. The turkey was cooked just the way I like it. Nice and crispy on the outside, but still juicy on the inside. Along with the turkey, my mum also made quite a few side dishes. Naturally, there was stuffing, but we also had brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes, mashed turnip, carrots, broccoli, and a delicious turkey gravy to cover everything. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it again! After that we ate some pumpkin pie, which was really good.

It was nice seeing my parents on the weekend, and it was especially great seeing their two dogs as well. I think I must have fed them about half of the turkey off of my plate! Anyway, I can’t wait to eat turkey again. I think I’ll cook another one just for fun in November for no special reason!

I went shopping with my PhD supervisor!

2010-10-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

The other day, I went to a one day conference on reading with my PhD supervisor, and afterwards we went to Value Village in North East Calgary. I wonder if any of my students have ever been there. Value Village is a giant thrift shop that sells second hand clothes and other sorts of things. My PhD supervisor loves looking for treasures in this shop. She often finds name brand clothes and other high quality things for bargain prices. The only problem is that the place is so huge, it takes hours to find the treasures in the middle of all the other stuff. While my supervisor was shopping in the ladies' clothing section, I had a look around the books, and I ended up buying seven used books for only $4 each. I also bought a glass mug for $2. They were a bargain! If you are ever bored, Value Village can be a fun place to poke around in on the weekend if you are looking for fun second hand stuff. Also, if you want to get rid of your old things, you can donate your no longer wanted stuff to Value Village and they will give money to charity when they sell your old stuff. Here is their link: http://www.valuevillage.ca

Welcome to EAP 1

2010-09-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

It's a new semester at the University of Calgary, and I am teaching a wonderful new group of students in the English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Program in the Faculty of Education. The program is very intense. There is a lot of homework, but the good news is that I do believe that people who go through the program come out on the other side with the English they need to be successful in their studies.

My students this semester are a really great mix of people, and I think a lot of new friendships are going to be made in the class that are going to last a lifetime. I'm very excited to start this new blogging project with them, and I can't wait to read what they have to say about life, the universe and everything! As for myself, I've been blogging for almost six years now. It is still my favourite writing project, and I love blogging with my students. I hope they are going to enjoy it as much as I do.

By the way, this blog post is 198 words. That's about how much my students have to write every week!

Happy Blogging!

Link to my PhD Thesis

2010-09-17T10:38:00.001-07:00

I’m finished! I had my Doctoral Thesis Oral Defence on August 24, 2010, and I survived! In fact, I even passed with no revisions necessary. In the end, it was actually a great experience. My doctoral committee consisted of my supervisor, Dr. Hetty Roessingh, the Chair for English as an Additional Language (EAL) at the University of Calgary, Dr. Thomas Ricento, the former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary, Dr. Bruce Clark, Dr. Tania Smith from the Department of Communication and Culture at the U of C, and Dr. Leila Ranta from the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. They asked some pretty hard hitting questions, and at first I was quite nervous, but I soon warmed up to the topic. After all, I had been living and breathing the study of vocabulary in terms of lexical breadth and depth for four years! After passing my oral examination, we all went to the Grad Lounge for my free bottle of champagne. I think I was in a bit of shock after the exam. It hadn’t really hit me yet that I was finished. However, when I got home and realised that I didn’t need to lock myself in my office (which is in the garage) and work on my thesis for three or four hours, I just started to cry. I don’t know if they were tears of relief or happiness or angst, but I think I sat on my couch and wept for almost two hours. I have to be honest. It was so hard writing that thesis and teaching full time. However, now it’s over and after all is said and done, it was all worth it. Here is the link to my thesis:

https://dspace.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/48195

I've handed in my PhD thesis!

2010-08-08T11:52:00.000-07:00

I've handed in my thesis! In the end, it was 254 pages long. I've sent it out to my committee, and now all I have to do is wait for my Oral Defence on August 24th. I know that there could still be changes recommended to be done on my thesis by my committee after my defence, but here is the abstract for you to read in the meantime. Enjoy!

Thesis Abstract for

Non-Native English Speaking Students at University: Lexical Richness and Academic Success

Increasing numbers of students in both the K-12 and Post-Secondary educational systems in Alberta do not speak English as their first language. However, immigrants face multiple challenges to taking full advantage of the educational opportunities afforded by their new home. This study focuses on one period of those educational opportunities, undergraduate university education, and one set of challenges, vocabulary and academic writing. The main objective of this study was to measure the lexical richness non-native English speaking (NNES) and native English speaking (NS) undergraduate students bring with them to university in terms of lexical breadth and depth of knowledge, and compare these measures to eventual undergraduate academic outcomes. To carry this out, the Effective Writing Test (EWT) was used to compile a corpus of novice academic writing. The NNES students in the study were academically competent, as shown by their Grade 12 math marks. Nevertheless, the results showed that NNES students came to university with less robust measures of lexical richness compared to their NS counterparts. While NNES students eventually graduated from university in higher numbers, they were faced with diminished academic outcomes in terms of Grade Point Averages, Length of Program, Courses Attempted and Not Earned, and Academic Standing. Using hierarchical regression analysis, a line was traced from the initial measures of lexical richness, through EWT, and on to the academic outcomes. Measures of lexical richness strongly predicted performance on the EWT, and EWT results predicted eventual academic outcomes. The conclusion of this study is that lexical richness plays a strong role in general undergraduate writing assessment, and university level writing competence plays an important part in academic success.

ACLA 2010

2010-06-05T08:43:00.000-07:00

Here is my slide show from the ACLA 2010 Conference (Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics).

It was a great conference this year in an amazing city. I have really enjoyed my time in Montreal so far, and I have the added bonus of having uncles, aunts, cousins and my granny here too!

The main thrust of my presentation at this year’s conference was the connection between measures of lexical richness and large scale writing assessments, and the concomitant connection between large scale writing assessments and eventual academic outcomes at the undergraduate level. From this I conclude that lexical richness is an underlying variable of academic success in higher education.

It was very interesting for me to find significant correlations between measures of lexical richness taken in the first year of university studies and the Grade 12 English 30 Diploma Exam as well as the Effective Writing Test. I was then further intrigued by the correlations I found between the English 30 Diploma exam and the Effective Writing Test with GPA at university as well as other measures such as academic probation and length of program. All of this is in my presentation which you can have a look at here:

http://people.ucalgary.ca/~sdouglas/ACLA2010.pdf

Now I just have to write all of this up, along with my other findings, and I'll have a thesis . . . . . .

Busy Writing My Thesis

2010-05-23T17:01:00.000-07:00

I just noticed it has been a while since I blogged. I'm not blogging with my students this semester. I thought I'd take a break from blogging with my students while I focus on finishing my PhD Thesis. It's starting to get close now! I just recently did a presentation on some of my PhD research at the BC TEAL Conference in Vancouver at the beginning of May. As always, BC TEAL was a great conference, and I went to some really amazing presentations. I'm always impressed!

My presentation was entitled: Taking Stock of the Depth of NNES Undergraduate Vocabulary. Here is the abstract of my presentation from the program book:

Part of a doctoral research project on non-native English speaking (NNES) university students and the relationship between lexical richness and academic success, this report focuses on the vocabulary errors that persist in NNES undergraduate writing for students who have fulfilled university English language proficiency requirements. Word use is analyzed in both native English (NS) and NNES writing samples from the archives of an effective writing test at a western Canadian university. This report looks at the results of the marking process and analyses the vocabulary errors made by students in the areas of meaning, appropriacy, derivation, form, omission, and style. Preliminary results show that while NS students do make word use errors, NNES students make almost three times more word errors in their essays and the errors differ in kind and seriousness. The word errors made by NNES students affect the readability of their essays, and ultimately the final marks. Participants in this session will leave with a clearer picture of the lexical errors that persist in NNES writing at the undergraduate level. The implications of the report?s findings for the teaching and assessing of NNES students who are bound for higher education are also explored.

Also, here is a link to my presentation slides - enjoy!

http://people.ucalgary.ca/~sdouglas/SRD%20BCTEAL%202010.pdf

Winter 2010 EAP 1 Blogs

2010-05-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

These are my students' blogs from the Winter 2010 Semester. Enjoy!

EAP 1 Winter 2010
Liang
Abdullah #2
Noor
Jiang
Karolina
Alanod
Saeideh
Elena
Shengmo
Tararat
Sepideh
Yury
Humod
Noha
Hamad
Abdulrahman
Khadija
Tahany
Abdullah #1
Majed

It's almost time for the final exam!

2010-04-05T11:43:00.001-07:00

I can't believe that final exams start this Friday! That means that there are only three more classes before the academic writing and grammar final exam. However, I'm not worried at all. I've even come up with a 13 step plan for my students to write a great short essay on their final exam. Here it is:

Thirteen Steps to Writing a Short Essay

Step One:
Brainstorm three or four supporting ideas for the topic.
Step Two:
Brainstorm three or four supporting points for each of the supporting ideas from Step One. Brainstorm facts, details, statistics, anecdotes, examples, elaborations, explanations.
Step Three:
Choose the best two supporting ideas from your brainstorm and decide which one is the first body paragraph, and which one is the second body paragraph.
Step Four:
Choose the best two or three supporting points for each of the supporting ideas you have chosen for your essay. Underline or circle them in your brainstorm.
Step Five:
Write a thesis statement for your essay.
Step Six:
Write a topic sentence for your first body paragraph.
Step Seven:
Write a topic sentence for your second body paragraph. Don’t forget a transition between the two body paragraphs.
Step Eight:
Write a concluding statement for your conclusion paraphrasing the thesis statement.
Step Nine:
Write a general to specific introduction. It should be about four sentences long.
Step Ten:
Write the first body paragraph. It should be about 100 – 150 words long.
Step Eleven:
Write the second body paragraph. It should be about 100 – 150 words long.
Step Twelve:
Write the concluding paragraph. Use added thoughts, comments, predictions, hopes, wishes, judgements, opinions, or recommendations. Do not add any new information about the topic.
Step Thirteen:
Read over the essay carefully two or three times. Revise for ideas, and edit for grammar and mechanics.

Heritage Day was Fun!!!

2010-03-30T15:09:00.001-07:00

Here is a goofy picture of me making grilled cheese sandwiches at the Heritage Day party. I had such a great time at Heritage Day! The food was perfect, and there was so much of it! I was amazed at how much food everyone brought to the party. The only thing is that I found it hard to control myself because all of the food was so good. I felt like I had to try everything. After the party, I felt so full. Naturally, I ate way more than I should have eaten. I'm happy to say, though, that I think everyone really liked my grilled cheese sandwiches - especially Yuri. I think he must have eaten about five of them!

Anyway, I love days like Heritage Day because it is a great chance for us all to get together socially and enjoy some good food. It is also a great chance to try food from all over the world. It is not very often that I get to eat Iranian, Chinese, Polish, Thai, and Arabic food at the same time. I can't wait until our next Heritage Day - it's one of the best parts of our semester!

Postponed Quiz

2010-03-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

There is no grammar quiz on Monday. This is the first time I’ve postponed a quiz in years! Usually I like to stick to the scheduled, but lately I’ve started to relax a bit, and I’ve realised that it is more important for everyone to understand the grammar rather than moving through the textbook like a freight train in order to “finish it” before the end of the semester. Now, we have time to understand the grammar a bit more deeply before I move on.

Right now, we are studying adjective clauses (also known as relative clauses). Everyone in the class is really good making basic adjective clauses, but when it gets a bit more difficult, things start to go sideways a bit. The key thing to remember is that when you are making a subject adjective clause, the relative pronoun is replacing the subject of your dependent clause. When you are making an object adjective clause, the relative pronoun is replacing the object of your dependent clause. If you remember that, it will help you to avoid repeating the object twice in the dependent clause when you are making an object adjective clause. It sounds complicated, but don’t worry! I think everyone is getting the hang of it!

Keep on studying!

A question from a student

2010-03-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

Today I had a question about why this group of sentences is not correct:

Lindsay had better call me tonight, but that is not okay if she doesn’t. I cannot talk to her tomorrow.*

To the ears of a native English speaker, the above group of sentences sounds strange. The question is why does this group of sentences sound strange. I think the main reason is because of the word “but”. If the word “but” is removed from the group of sentences, then it sounds okay.

Lindsay had better call me tonight. That is not okay if she doesn’t. I cannot talk to her tomorrow.

This new version is perfectly acceptable. Why then is this not correct with the word “but”?

The word “but” in this case is a coordinating conjunction. It joins together to sentenceds. The coordinating conjunction “but” can be used to indicate that two sentences contain opposite or contrasting ideas. “But” can also be used to give a sense a conflict between two sets of ideas, or a sense of negation between two sets of ideas.

The first idea in the example above is “Lindsey had better call me tonight”. The use of the modal “had better” conveys a sense of warning, and implies that something bad may happen if Lindsey does not call.

The second idea in the example above is “That is not okay if she doesn’t [call]. I cannot talk to her tomorrow.”

Does the first idea contrast or conflict with the second idea? Does the second idea negate the first idea? Is the first idea the opposite of the second idea? The answer to all three of these questions is no. The second idea is more of an explanation of the first idea. As a result, the coordinating conjunction “but” doesn’t fit with this group of sentences.

Must versus Have to

2010-03-09T08:39:00.000-08:00

The modal grammar quiz is over. Actually, the students did really well on this quiz, but there is still a bit of confusion over some of the subtleties of using modals.

The first kinds of modals we looked at were modals of necessity. Although in essence “must” and “have to” mean the same thing, I noticed that sometimes must doesn’t really work in a sentence, and “have to” is better. There was a question similar to this on the quiz in which the students had to choose between “must” and “have to”:

Murray: I was surprised to see you taking the C-Train this morning. Is your car still not working?
Scott: Can you believe it? It’s still not working. I __________ take it to Canadian Tire to get it checked out, but I never seem to find time.

In the blank, a lot of student put in the word “must” so that the sentence reads:

I must take it to Canadian Tire to get it checked out, but I never seem to find time.

Although, must and have to both indicate necessity. In this case it doesn’t sound right. I think this is because “must” is a bit stronger than “have to”. “Must” really indicates the importance of the act. If you use the word “must”, you are really stressing how much you need to do something. It is absolute urgent and necessary to do it. However, in this sentence, the speaker goes on to say “but I never seem to find time.” If getting the car checked out was really urgent (i.e. “must”), then the speaker wouldn’t have said “but I never seem to find time”. As a result, I think that “have to” is the better choice.

We're Blogging!

2010-03-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

Here we are in the computer lab, and everyone is blogging away. I'm really happy. I think we have ironed out all of the problems we were having with the blogs, and now we are ready to blog all of the time. One of the biggest problems I found with setting up the blogs was the passwords. Everyone kept forgetting their passwords! I have learned a real lesson about this. I think from now on, I am going to make the students fill out a form. On the form they will have to write their sign-in email, their blog address and their PASSWORD!!!

Personally, I love blogging. I think it is a great way for students to practice their English writing without having to worry too much about things like spelling and grammar. The amazing thing about blogs is you can see what the students were writing like at the beginning of the project, and then you can see all of their progress by the end of the project.

Happy blogging!

16 Real Examples of Possessive Nouns

2010-02-23T11:39:00.000-08:00

Today we were talking about possessive nouns in class, and I think at one point it got a little confusing. These rules even confuse native speakers. I know when I have looked at the writing from first year university students who speak English as their first language, there is often a lot of confusion over when to use -'s and when to use -s'. Some common mistakes are sentences like:

The wive's flowers are on the table, and the mens' flowers are on the floor.

This should be:

The wives' flowers are on the table, and the men's flowers are on the floor.

After class today, I looked through the corpus of first year university level writing I'm compiling for my PhD research, and I found 8 examples of singular and 8 examples of plural possessive nouns written by native English speaking students. I thought it might be nice to have some real examples.

Here are the singular possessive noun examples:

1. the animal’s physical and mental health
2. a continuation of the province’s debt reduction policy
3. As each player’s skill level increases the level of competition increases.
4. Speaking from a university student’s perspective
5. At this point in anyone’s life
6. prepare them for life’s long voyage
7. needed so much in today’s world
8. Physical education is an important part of the curriculum in a child’s life

Here are the plural possessive noun examples:

1. Allowing women to play on men’s professional teams would be a great change
2. an opportunity to further broaden students’ experiences and knowledge
3. all of those people are affected by their leaders’ choices
4. tension within the parents’ relationship
5. facing longer waits in doctors’ offices
6. it would improve the students’ grades
7. an improvement overall in children and teenagers’ lifestyles
8. the intention behind doing this is to keep the animals’ behaviours the same

The Midterms are Over!

2010-02-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

I can't believe that half of the semester is already over for Winter 2010. It seems like time is just flying by. I was really pleased with the grammar midterms this semester. I thought everyone did really well. It was obvious that my students has studied a lot. Sometimes I worry that we are moving too fast through the grammar, and that people don't have time to think about it carefully and learn what we are going over in class. One of the hardest things about EAP 1 is that there is a grammar quiz every Monday, and there are 10 grammar quizzes in just one semester. That means the the students really have to work hard to keep up. However, I'm sure my students can do it. The results of the grammar midterm prove it!

We are also going to start blogging after the midterms. This is going to be an excellent way for the students to improve their writing fluency. I'm also hoping that we are all going to get to know each other just a little bit better.

Happy blogging!

Welcome Back!

2010-01-12T07:16:00.001-08:00

Another semester has started, and I am teaching the academic writing and grammar course in the first tier of our EAP program at the University of Calgary. I’m really excited to be teaching this class because writing has to be one of my favourite subjects. This semester I’m looking forward to blogging regularly about life, the universe and everything with my students. I can’t wait to get started. I think we are going to have a lot of interesting things to write about. This semester we are going to be looking at the topics of international business, art history, psychology, and health science. The students are also going to be learning about how to write perfect paragraphs and good solid academic essays. We are going to be spending a lot of time perfecting our paragraphing skills because they are the basic building blocks of everything the students are going to be doing during the next few years in university. I hope this class is going to be the foundation to a successful time at the University of Calgary. I know the students are going to be great!

TESL Canada Conference 2009

2009-10-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

TESL Canada 2009

I can’t believe the Teachers of English as a Second Language (TESL) Canada 2009 Conference that was just held in Banff from October 1 – 3 is over. We’ve been planning it for a year and a half, and now we can sit back and reflect on a conference well done. There were a few glitches at the start, but by the end, everything seemed to smooth itself out.

This year, I was on the planning committee working to help organize the Exhibition Hall with the publishers’ displays. This year there were 44 tables in the Exhibition Hall, with all the major ESL publishers doing business in Canada being represented. I was quite proud of us to be able to pull this off and put it together. I’d just like to say thanks to all of the publishers and people I worked with to make this happen. You are an amazing group of people!

On the academic side, I was involved in three events. The first event was a symposium on “Supporting Transitions: Assessment, Literacy and Academic Achievement”. I had the honour of sharing the stage with Drs. Janna Fox, Liying Cheng, and Hetty Roessingh as well as another PhD student like me, Christine Doe. I felt bad because I had to run in and out of the symposium (I was helping to simultaneously set up the publishers’ displays), so I missed the discussion part of the symposium. However, I’m posting a copy of my presentation to my webpage for people to have a look at.

The next event that I was involved in was the first ever poster presentations at a TESL Canada conference. I was very proud to be part of this inaugural event. My poster topic was on university level writing competence, vocabulary, and academic success, and it mirrored much of what I talked about in the symposium. You can have a look at my poster below.

Finally, I was involved in the first ever panel to bring together coordinators, managers and directors of EAP programs at the Universities of Calgary, Alberta, Athabasca and Lethbridge. It was very exciting to see what is going on at our various programs, and I’m hoping to do this again at the next ATESL conference in Edmonton, but this time also inviting the two new universities in Alberta: Mount Royal University and Grant MacEwan University.

Type Token Ratios and Success on the Effective Writing Test

2009-05-24T13:16:00.000-07:00

I was just reading about the components of lexical richness in John Read’s book Assessing Vocabulary (Read, 2000) when I thought I’d write about one aspect of lexical richness in relation to the performance of NNES students on the Effective Writing Test at the University of Calgary. One of my key findings is that while about 70% of native English speaking (NS) students pass this test on their first attempt, only 23% of NNES students whose first language is of East Asian origin (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Laotian) actually pass on their first attempt. Obviously something is affecting the scores of these NNES students. Roessingh’s work (2008) with NNES high school students looking at the role vocabulary plays as an underlying variable in determining success on the written response component of the Grade 12 English 30-1 Diploma examination is one of the factors that has led me to analyse the vocabulary use of novice undergraduate writers at university.

One aspect of my analysis is the type to token ratios of NS versus NNES students on the test. Type to token ratios look at the number of unique words students use in comparison to the total number of words that they use. In his book, Read (2000) explains how students with a high type to token ratio use a variety of different words in their writing. Students with lower type to token ratios are using a limited number of words repetitively in their writing. Through the use of low frequency words, synonyms, hyponyms, and specific vocabulary items, good writers are able to tap into their larger vocabulary knowledge in order to convey a more precise meaning. Another term for type to token ratios is lexical variation.

Looking at my own research into lexical variation (please see the chart accompanying this blog), I found that NS students wrote significantly shorter essays than NNES students. However, the number of unique words employed by each of these groups was statistically the same. This resulted in NS students having a higher type to token ratio than their NNES counterparts. In other words, the NS students were employing a greater range of expression than the NNES students in their essays, and this significant difference may be one of the factors contributing to the low success rate of NNES students on the Effective Writing Test.

It was interesting to see that the NS students were writing shorter essays with more variation than the NNES students. In addition to being repetitive, another reason behind why the NNES students were writing longer essays includes the necessity of using circumlocution when a precise term wasn’t lexically available. More words are needed than necessary to express ideas due to a lack of vocabulary. However, the NS students typically have access to a much larger lexicon, enabling them to employ greater lexical variation in their writing.

On the Effective Writing Test rubric, repetitious diction is one of the aspects of word use that markers are evaluating. While circumlocution isn’t overtly marked according to the rubric, the use of “too many words” is a key component of the word use category. This is what drew me to consider the lower type to token ratios as being a possible underlying factor to the overall quality of undergraduate compositions.

These findings seem to mirror the findings of Cheryl Engber (1995) who was looking at the relationship between lexical proficiency and reader judgments of the overall quality of timed essays. Engber found that reader judgements of the overall quality of these compositions did reflect lexical variation. This leads me to conclude that a similar effect may be taking place in the Effective Writing Test, with the lower lexically varied essays of NNES students having less success than the more lexically varied essays of their NS counterparts.

Some References:

Engber, C. (1995). The relationship of lexical proficiency to the quality of ESL compositions. Journal of Second Language Writing 4(2), 139-155.

Read, J. (2000). Assessing Vocabulary. Cambridge: CUP.

Roessingh, H. (2008). Variability in ESL Outcomes: The Influence of Age on Arrival and Length of Residence on Achievement in High School. TESL Canada Journal 26(1), 87-107.

Creating a corpus of first year university academic writing

2009-05-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

Preparing my corpus

This past Friday I presented at the British Columbia Teachers of English as an Additional Language (BC TEAL) conference. The topic was “Comparing non-native and native English undergraduate vocabulary in writing”. The first part of my talk dealt with the creation of the corpus that I used for my analyses.

The focus of my presentation was on what lexical frequency based analyses reveal about active vocabulary breadth of knowledge in novice native English speaking (NS) and non-native English speaking (NNES) undergraduate writing. By novice, I mean I am looking at first year students at the University of Calgary who have not yet passed the Effective Writing Proficiency Requirement (http://www.ucalgary.ca/efwr/requirement).

In order to investigate this question, I’ve gathered a corpus of writing, which I’m calling the Effective Writing Corpus. The writing samples in the corpus come from the Alberta Universities’ Writing Competence Test, also called, the Effective Writing Test (EWT). The EWT is a test administered to first year university students at the University of Calgary, the University of Lethbridge and Athabasca University. The test is designed to look for university level writing competence, and it is administered to all students who are entering university with less than a score of 75% on the English Language Arts 30-1 Diploma exam, or less than a blended grade of 80% on the blended grade of the diploma exam and the class score (50-50 split). Students who enter university with higher scores than these are exempt from the EWT. There are also other ways students are exempt, such as achieving a score of B- in a first year English course (http://www.ucalgary.ca/efwr/requirement/exemptions). In total the test is sat approximately 2250 times each year, with some of those sittings being repeated attempts to pass the test by the same students.

The EWT itself takes the form of a persuasive or expository essay answering one of four questions. These questions tap on a general body of knowledge, and no specialized knowledge is needed to answer the questions. An example of a question on the EWT might be along the lines of “Should the Government of Alberta institute mandatory physical education courses from kindergarten to Grade 12?” The essay answer written by the student should be around 400 words, and the markers are looking for university level writing competence. Some of the key points markers pay attention to include logical arguments, clear organizations, well developed paragraphs, well constructed sentences, accurate word use, and correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. English language dictionaries are permitted in the test, and the students have two and a half hours to complete their essays.

The corpus I am building focuses on the academic year of 2003/2004. Out of the approximately 2250 tests that were written that year, 561 NS students and 184 NNES gave permission for their tests to be used for research purposes. This is approximately 33% of the total amount of tests written in that year. Out of the NNES papers, 40 different languages were represented in the raw data. Out of these 40 languages, by far the greatest numbers of students had Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, and Punjabi as their first languages. Chinese was the largest group of all NNES students.

Breaking the students down into their constituent first languages reveals some interesting results in terms of performance on the EWT. 70% of all NS students who write the EWT pass on their first attempt. If we look at all the NNES students, except for those whose first language is of East Asian origin, 47% of NNES students (minus East Asian languages) pass the EWT on their first attempt. Finally, if we look only at students with a first language originating in East Asia, only 23% of those students pass the EWT on their first attempt. It is also interesting to note, that at the end of the academic year, there are about 700 students who still have not completed the Effective Writing Requirement. out of those 700 students, approximately 90% (630) are NNES. If approximately 75% of NNES students are of East Asian origin, that means about 470 NNES students of East Asian origin are still struggling to complete the Effective Writing Requirement by the end of the school year, and face being blocked from registering in their second year classes.

It is because of the struggles NNES whose first language is of East Asian origin face in passing the EWT that I have decided to focus on this group of students for my study. By focusing on this group of students, 79% of the papers in the NNES sub-corpus are written by students with Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin) as their first language. The rest of the NNES sub-corpus is made up of Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese and Laotian. The NNES students have varying lengths of residence in Canada, ranging from 14+ years, 10-13 years, 7-9 years, 4-6 years, and less than 3 years. Each of these cohorts contains between 11 and 20 students.

The two sub-corpora (NS and NNES) also revealed some differences in faculty enrolment and topic choice between the two groups of students. The top three faculties of enrolment for NS students at the time of writing were Communication and Culture, Science, and Social Science. The top three faculties of enrolment for NNES students at the time of writing were Social Science, Science and Engineering. The top three topics for NS students were Physical Education, Computers, and Urban Growth. The top three topics for NNES students were Physical Education, Computers, and Being Ready for the Workforce.

Before I could begin my analysis, I had to prepare the raw data. The EWT is a handwritten test in official University of Calgary exam booklets. All the tests were typed and converted into text files for computer storage and analysis. As the papers were being typed, they were corrected for spelling, with spelling errors being noted on the original raw data. Proper nouns, such as of people and places, were recategorized into the first one thousand most frequent words of English. Semantic and derivational errors were also recategorized into the first one thousand most frequent words of English. Doing this prepared the data for linguistics analysis using various tools found on the Compleat Lexical Tutor website (Cobb, 2009).

The U of C Graduate Conference

2009-05-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

This is the poster I'm presenting at the U of C Graduate Conference this May. I'm basically looking at the breadth of productive vocabulary in the writing of native English speaking and non-native English speaking first year university students. For the conference, I've had to weave in the themes of innovation and sustainability as well.

Possible Vocabulary Errors in Academic Writing

2009-04-25T18:18:00.000-07:00

Keeping in mind that I am looking at advanced users of English, all of whom have passed the English language proficiency requirements to enter the Univeristy of Calgary, here is a chart to go with a post I made a while ago when I was trying to think of all the different possible errors that can be associated with vocabulary in academic writing. I think I have basically narrowed it down to six categories: meaning, appropriacy, derivation, form, omission, and style. Out of those six categories, I think five of them have the greatest impact on the quality of student writing: meaning, appropriacy, derivation, form, and style. I'm thinking of leaving out omission from my final list when I begin to comb through the writing samples in my thesis project. I can then read through each of my writing samples, tagging the samples for five categories of vocabulary error. My plan to then to see if any patterns arise from the samples as a whole, and between the different groups in my corpus (native vs. non-native English speakers, different groups of NNES based on length of residence). I finally think I'm ready to start. Already, I'm fairly sure of what I'm going to find. So far, my NNES papers show are demonstrating a lack of depth of knowledge of vocabulary. The students seem to have a breadth of knowledge that stretches to about 11,000 word families of active vocabulary usage (compared to 17,000 for the native English speakers), but the problems lie in the categories of appropriacy, derivation, and form - in particular choosing the correct part of speech.

I'll keep you posted as to what I find. Enjoy my chart of possible vocabulary errors in academic writing.

P.S. It's May 4th. I just added spelling errors to my chart - I've decided orthography is an important part of vocabulary knowledge as well.

What University Student Corpora Reveal About Vocabulary

2009-04-10T20:23:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts of the TESOL Convention this year in Denver was the Doctoral Forum. The Doctoral Forum is a chance for doctoral students from all around the world to spend a day together presenting and getting to know one another and what sorts of doctoral research are going on around the world. This year the Doctoral Forum consisted of two panel discussions, two poster sessions (with a total of almost 60 posters being presented), and a networking session with professor-mentors from a variety of different universities from Temple University Japan, to the University of Texas to my own University of Calgary (my supervisor, Dr. Hetty Roessingh was one of the mentors).

All in all, it was a really great time. I did a poster presentation on my research in progress, and it was a great opportunity for me to focus my thoughts and to pause and think about where I am currently in my thesis research project. This poster is the result of that pause, and I even won second prize for the best poster at the Doctoral Forum. I was really pleased, but I realised that I still have a lot of work to do before I get finished.

Anyway, here is my poster - enjoy!

Lexical Error in Novice Academic Writing

2009-04-04T14:39:00.000-07:00

Lately, I have been thinking quite a lot about what can possible go wrong with someone’s vocabulary usage when they are writing an academic essay. I’ve started to keep a running tally of all the errors I can think of, and this is my list so far. I started off by looking at the detailed marking code for the Effective Writing Test (http://www.efwr.ucalgary.ca/markingcode), and I went on from there. I think some of the items in the list might overlap, but I think I’m off to a good start.

Semantic error
A word is used that had the wrong meaning for the context.

Miscollocation
Words are used in inappropriate combinations, as in the difference between a torrential rainstorm and a torrential snowstorm*, or highly educated vs. greatly educated*.

Topic constraints
Register constraints
Genre constraints
Certain words can only be used in certain situations, depending on the topic, register and genre.

Inappropriate synonym choice
Synonyms have different connotations. An example of this is the difference between Scott is a famous teacher at the University of Calgary, and Scott is a notorious* teacher at the University of Calgary. (or maybe I am notorious . . . )

Trite language
This involves the use of clichés and overused expressions such as rabbits are not a valid food choice because they are as cute as a button. Another example would be, it’s important to think outside the box when dealing with financial problems.

Excessive jargon
This occurs when overly technical and specialized vocabulary is used when writing for a general audience.

Pretentious word choice
Big words are not necessarily better words. Overly complicated words and language are not better than simple and precise more common words and language.

Immature word choice
This occurs when writing about daddies instead of fathers, bunnies instead of rabbits, and choo-choos instead of trains.

Over repetition
The same words are used over and over again. For example: Completing high school should be mandatory. Mandatory high school classes will keep young people off the streets. If high school becomes mandatory, students will learn more. If school is mandatory, society will benefit. If it is not mandatory, there will continue to be problems. That is why a high school education must be mandatory.

Artificial variation
Too many synonyms are used making the writing seem unnatural. For example, Cats are important pets for senior citizens. Without their kitties, many old people feel lonely. Once arriving in the golden years, a feline companion is a necessity. Without pussy cats, oldsters won’t have the same quality of life. Granny and grandpa can’t do without these mini lions and tigers.

Word form
The wrong part of speech is used. Scott is a success* teacher, instead of Scott is a successful teacher.

Derivational error
This occurs when words are put together incorrectly, usually with inappropriate affixes. for example: After completing my analization* of the problem, I realize there was no solution.

Inaccurate lexical bundling
Some words operate in lexical bundles that are fairly inflexible. For example: on another hand* vs. on the other hand.

Mixed metaphor
This occurs when two different metaphors are combined. For example: We need to stop swimming against the current and follow the herd.

Inappropriate metaphor
This often happens when metaphors are translated from the first language, but they don’t quite work in the second. For example: After making many mistakes the government took a different tunnel.

Omission
This occurs when the writing is lacking transitions and connectors.

Imprecision
This happens when a general type of word, such as people, humans, things and stuff, is used in place of a more specific word.

Omnibus words
This occurs when the writer tries to incorrectly bring together many different ideas into a single word such as factor, aspect, situation, or concept.

My New Favourite Book: Proust and the Squid

2009-02-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

I just read an amazing book by Maryanne Wolf called Proust and the Squid. Basically the book is about the history of reading, how people learn to read, the implications reading has on people and the development of their brains, and what happens when people have trouble learning how to read.

While a lot of the book really struck me as I was reading it, one part in particular I found very interesting in relation to my work in the area of undergraduate writing competence. I often wonder about what are the implications of not being a competent writer in university. One issue is that students who are not competent writers are not going to be able to convey their thoughts in a precise and meaningful manner. However, Maryanne Wolf takes this one step further when she discusses the ideas of Lev Vygotski and how he believed that the act of writing does not just convey thoughts, but when spoken words and unspoken thoughts are put into writing, this act releases and, in the process, changes the thoughts themselves. He felt that as people learn to use written language more and more precisely to convey their thoughts, their capacity for abstract thought and novel ideas accelerates. In other words, there is “a germinating relationship between writing language and new thought” (pp. 65-66).

I really was intrigued by the idea of a generative relationship between word and thought and how the process of writing down thoughts leads people to refine those thoughts and to discover new ways of thinking (p. 73). Writing enables students to think of new things that they would not have thought of if they weren’t able to write with academic competency. Taken further, being a fluent writer is going to aid students in generating new thoughts they would never have had if they weren’t fluent. Based on Wolf’s interpretation of Vygotski, writing isn’t just about reporting what people think, it’s about generating new ideas through the act of writing.

The implications for my research would be that if students haven’t reached a certain level of undergraduate writing competence, it isn’t just about them not being able to convey their thoughts in a precise manner. They will be missing out on the generative nature of the writing act. The less able the students can write fluently, the less able they will be to come up with novel ideas as they write. It is the transition from laboriously reporting thoughts to creatively putting together thoughts as they write. This idea of a continuum from simply reporting thoughts to generating creative ideas has cast a new light on the Effective Writing exams I’ve been looking at in my doctoral research. There always seemed to be a certain panache to the papers that did very well on the exam. I am always struck by their novel way of putting together words and coming up with ideas. I am particularly struck by how easy it seemed for the writer to write compared to papers which did not pass. Thinking about it again, it looks like the better writers were coming up with creative responses to the essay prompts during the act of writing, while the poorer writers were perhaps painstakingly trying to write down what was in their heads, or they were going at it one idea at a time. Hmmm, maybe as I write, I’m generating new ideas . . . . Anyway, I’m going to have to think a bit more about this, but I’m starting to worry that the repercussions of not being a fluent writer are much greater that I first thought.

Typing Away

2009-01-26T08:34:00.001-08:00

I can’t believe that it is already about two months since my last blog. It’s amazing how time flies by when you are working on your PhD. The latest thing that I have been focusing on is typing up hand written essays for my thesis project. So far, I have about 800 essays, with about 250 having been written by non-native English speakers, and another 550 written by native English speakers. All of the students in my study are first year undergraduate students. Right now, I am focusing on typing up the essays written by the native speakers. It’s so fascinating doing this because I am really entering into the mind of a first year undergraduate student. It’s been almost 20 years since I first went to university, and I think I had forgotten what it was like to be a first year student. What has struck me the most so far is the ease with which they express themselves. I guess that with almost 10 years of looking only at papers written by non-native English speaking students, it was surprising how fluid and unlaboured the writing of the native speaking students is. Although I am focusing on a comparison of the use of less frequent vocabulary items between the two groups of students, again and again, it is the use of the simple clear language used by the native English speakers that is standing out. In addition to that, I have noticed the use of lexical bundling and collocations that provide clarity and precision to the native English speaking writing that seems to be lacking the non-native English speaking papers. However, taken as single words, these are not low frequency lexical items. Instead, the native speakers seem to be putting together the high frequency vocabulary differently than the non-native speakers. Interestingly enough, it seems to be the non-native speakers who are trying to use the “big academic” words, and then slightly misfiring with the meaning, while it is the native speakers who are using a high frequency set of vocabulary, but in such as way to convey precise meaning. I’ll have to think more about this.

Anyway, that is what I am up to right now. I figure I’ll be typing away for the next month (hopefully I’ll be done by the end of February). As soon as I’m done typing up enough native English papers, I provide some examples to support my musings above . . .

I’m officially a PhD Candidate!

2008-11-24T11:52:00.001-08:00

These last few weeks have been really busy for me, but I’m really pleased. I had my PhD candidacy oral on November 4th, and it was successful. Now that I’ve finished that hurdle, I can’t wait to get started on the research for my thesis project. I’m just waiting for ethics approval and then I can begin.

For my candidacy exam, I had to prepare a paper based on one of three topics that were given to me four weeks before the paper was due, and six weeks before the oral exam. The topic that I chose was:

What arguments can you provide for focusing on vocabulary use as the underlying variable that may best reflect English language proficiency; how is lexical diversity and distribution measured and which measure (s) is most useful for providing the insights you seek for establishing thresholds for academic success at university both at entry and over time? What are the distal and proximal effects of vocabulary levels on student writing? What link do you expect to make to academic achievement as reflected in GPA over time?

In answering this question, I proposed that there is a rising awareness of the importance of vocabulary in the field of Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). This can be seen in the increasing numbers of presentations being made at conferences on teaching academic vocabulary, as well as the rise in the literature about vocabulary as an key aspect of English language proficiency. This rise in awareness of vocabulary is accompanied by a rise in the populations of non-native English speaking (NNES) students in the English Canadian school system from kindergarten all the way through the post-secondary years. As increasing numbers of immigrants come to the English speaking parts of Canada and enrol themselves, and more especially their children, in local educational institutions, their success or failure seems to hinge on their ability to muster the linguistic resources to cope with an academic load delivered in English. That their educational success is vital to their newly adopted country is obvious. The benefits accompanying a successful educational experience are a worthy goal of immigrants and their children. However, the road to these educational benefits is one fraught with challenges. Vocabulary is one aspect of these challenges that can be isolated and examined with the purpose of developing ways to overcome these challenges and ease the success of NNES students, when all things being equal, it is English language proficiency that is preventing a full expression of their academic abilities at the K-12 and post-secondary level. Vocabulary can be chosen as an area of research and examination as it appears that vocabulary use is an important underlying variable that reflects English language proficiency, especially in writing. Rich or poor vocabulary production has a number of proximal effects on a piece of writing, with a rich vocabulary giving rise to precise and nuanced meaning and cohesion, and a poor vocabulary contributing to a sense of vagueness and awkwardness. The ways to quantify this rich or poor use of vocabulary are numerous, with lexical frequency profiling offering the best insights for establishing thresholds for academic success at university both at entry and over time. Furthermore, once quantified, there is strong evidence that vocabulary and academic achievement are interconnected, as seen in studies carried out on the distal effects of rich and poor vocabulary production in writing on not only individual writing assignments, but also on GPA, positive and negative university experiences, and other measures of academic outcomes.

It is based on the above that I am soon to start my research into vocabulary richness in first year undergraduate writing for both native speaking and non-native English speaking students at the University of Calgary. I raring to go!

EAP 3 - 02 Winter 2008 Students

2008-11-18T13:51:00.001-08:00

Joanna
Ivy
Muhammad
Felix
Felicio
Nahid
Duaa
Yun
Richard
Nick
Anton
Suleman
Hadiza
Lisa
Martin
Lana
David S
Sharon
David W
Jack
Amin
Li

EAP 3 - 01 Winter 2008 Students

2008-11-18T13:50:00.001-08:00

Hisham
Abdul
Jack
Helen
Oksana
Mahmoud
Jen
Yusuf
John
Natallia
Slava
Sam
Behzad
Eric
Maaike
Selina
Yao
Yolanda
Camille
Fan
Jason

Spring Summer 2008 EAP 1 Students

2008-11-18T13:49:00.001-08:00

Nabil
Moutaz
Victoria
Faisal
Tabassom
Valentina
Roza
Fatma
Ahmed
Amran
Preet
Kohei
Kinki
Shabiha
Ines
Davaa

My Research Project

2008-09-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hello English for Academic Purposes Fans! Here is a poster that I am presenting next week on some of the research I'm carrying out for my PhD. Basically, I'm looking at the vocabulary that students use for general academic purposes in their first year of undergraduate studies. Enjoy!

Stampede Breakfast Time

2008-07-08T13:48:00.000-07:00

Oh no . . . I can't believe that the Stampede Breakfast and the pizza party are going to be on the same day. That's way too much high calorie food for a mere 3 hour period. Usually I love going to the Students' Union Stampede Breakfast. Oh well, at least I got to go to a Stampede Breakfast last Saturday. My local MLA was having his Stampede Breakfast right by my house at the Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Centre, and I got to enjoy one of the best free breakfasts in town. The thing that makes it so good is that the breakfast always has excellent all-beef sausages every year. They also have hashbrowns, pancakes will all the fixings, and juice and coffee. The coffee is also really excellent too. Usually, at Stampede Breakfasts it's kind of watery and weak, but at the Hillhurst Sunnyside Stampede Breakfast this year, Higher Ground Coffee House (http://www.highergroundcafe.ca/) donated the coffee so it was strong and rich!

Anyway, I hope all the students manage to make it to at least two or three free Stampede breakfasts before Stampede is over!

Happy Canada Day!

2008-07-02T06:43:00.000-07:00

It's July 2nd, and my legs are in pain! I went hiking yesterday to celebrate Canada Day, and I think this is the first time I have gone hiking in over a year. Anyway, I'm paying for it today. I kind of feel like an old man . . . maybe I am!

Yesterday I went to Lake Louise, and I climbed up to Lake Agnes. It takes about an hour an a half to climb to the top of the mountain, and it's so beautiful up there. There is a huge waterfall, and a lake. Once you get to the top, it feels so good to put your hands in the water and splash it all over your face. Also, at the top, there is a teahouse where you can get a pot of tea made with mountain water. After a long hike, it's amazing! It was the perfect way to spend Canada Day :-)

Back in Alberta

2008-06-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

Here I am back in Alberta in the computer lab with my students. I arrived last night at about midnight, and I didn't go to bed until after 1 am, so you can imagine I was kind of tired when my alarm went off at 6 am this morning!

Anyway, I'm really glad to be back. I was happy to go back to Montreal to see my uncles, aunts, cousins, and Granny, but it felt good to sleep in my own bed last night. Also, it was kind of a hard trip too because my Granny is 92 years old, and she had trouble recognizing me. It also made me a bit sad to be walking around Montreal and seeing all the old places where I used to hang out. Probably one of the reasons I was so sad was because I have finally realised that I'm not going to be moving back to Montreal. I think for the past 18 years (holy cow - I've been living in Calgary a long time!) I have been thinking I could always move back to Montreal. However, this trip, I finally realised that it is highly unlikely I'll ever be going back to Montreal. It's time to let go, and that's a hard thing to do.

So here I am back. Actually, my poor students, I told them today that the EAP program has found a new teacher to take over the class starting on July 2nd. That means they will have had 4 different teachers by the end of the semester! The problem is that the university needs me to go back to my "real" job (academic coordinator). Because of that, there is a new guy starting next week. I met him before I went to Montreal, and I think he'll be okay. It's always going to be hard coming into a situation where you are taking over from another teacher, but I know that my students are SOOOOOOOOO great that they are going to be perfect model students for him :-) Plus, I'll still be around helping out in the background. I won't totally abandon EAP 1!!!!!

Also, I know they are going to blog and comment lots before the end of the semester . . . right???

Orange Julep, Smoked Meat, & Bagels!!!

2008-06-20T16:12:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Montreal. I wonder if my students miss me. I hope they are all blogging lots! As for me, I am having a great time. I got to visit my 92 year old grandmother this afternoon. It was good to see her again. She is getting to be kind of forgetful. She asked me a couple of times who I was, and then she was amazed at how much I had grown. She also told me Uncle he was getting a big belly, so it was kind of funny.

Anyway, besides getting to see lots of cousins, uncles, and aunts, I'm also eating all the different kinds of food that I miss so much. Today I got to eat/drink the big three: Montreal Bagels and Cream Cheese, Smoked Meat, and an Orange Julep. The orange julep was so great. Orange julep is a kind of drink with some sort of secret ingredient that makes it so good. The restaurant itself is in the shape of a giant orange. You can't miss it. I have been going there since I was a little boy. The first sip of my orange julep brought back lots of memories!

Say tuned for more blogs about Montreal food . . . but now I have to go and check my students' blogs!

I'm Blogging Again!!

2008-06-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

Hello EAP 1! I can't believe I'm teaching again this semester. I thought I was going to have a semester off teaching so that I could work on the curriculum for the EAP program at the University of Calgary. Unfortunately, the EAP 1 teacher who was supposed to teach this class is no longer teaching in our program, so I had to suddenly step in and start teaching EAP 1. However, I don't mind because this EAP 1 class is totally awesome! So far, I have only been teaching them for about a week, but I think we have already learned a lot together. Naturally, I had to get all of my students blogging!

Anyway, so far so good. It was a bit of a surprise for me when I found out that I had to teach this semester, but I guess it will be a good thing for me before I take my year off from teaching. Starting on August 2nd, 2008 I'm going to be taking a whole year off to finish my PhD. I hope I can get it done in just one year.

Anyway, I just wanted to welcome all of my new students to my blogging universe. I'm really happy that you are here!

Taking a loooong break

2008-05-09T07:07:00.001-07:00

Hello World! I guess this just might be my last blog for a while. You see, I'm not teaching this semester. Instead I have been assigned to work full time on developing curriculum for the EAP program and also to be the full time "Academic Coordinator". That doesn't mean that I won't be popping in here from time to time to blog, but it just won't be as often as in the past. I can't believe that I have been blogging constantly for over four years now. It's amazing. Anyway, as for me, I'll be working in the EAP program for this semester as the academic coordinator, and then I am taking a one year "assisted study leave". It is kind of like a sabbatical for me to finish my PhD. Then, I 'm not sure what I'll be doing. One day at a time, eh?

Anyway, stay tuned for updates on the curriculum project I am working on for the EAP program!

The End of Another Semester

2008-04-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

Well, this is the end of another semester. I’m going to wait until tomorrow to read the last blog entries of all of my students as I gave them until midnight tonight to finish their blogs. I really can’t wait to read them tomorrow. Usually I really get a sense of satisfaction at the end of a semester reading the students blogs and seeing their growth from the beginning of the semester until the end. If I ever do another presentation on blogs, I’ll be really proud to show off what my students did this semester. When I was in New York, a lot of people were very impressed with the work of my students from past semesters, and I think I may have even inspired some people to start blogging with their students. It’s amazing to think that I have been blogging for over 4 years now. That’s a lot of words written by both me and all of my students. It’s even more amazing for me to think that I have had 100’s of students since I started blogging 4 years ago, and I got to know them all so much better because of the blogs. I’m sure I became closer to my students because of the ability the blogs gave me to see into their world.

I guess the biggest news for today’s blog is that the final exam for the EAP 3 writing and grammar class is already over. I haven’t even looked at the final exams yet for my class, but I have finished looking at the term papers, and I was pretty happy – much happier than with the first term papers. With the first term papers, I had to come up with an emergency solution to prevent most of the class from failing (I wonder if the class knew I was giving them a “free” chance to pass). However, for this term paper, the vast majority of the students did quite fine. That made me happy because it was real evidence that the students were growing as English writers. My next job is to finish marking all of the final exams, and then enter everything into blackboard so that I can calculate the final grades. I have to get all of the grades into the office by the end of next week, and then it is up to the registrar’s office to process all of the marks.

After all of that, I have to get ready for next semester. It is going to be my last semester of teaching for a while because I am taking a year off from teaching in order to finish up my PhD degree. The big surprise from the spring summer semester is that I’m not going to be teaching EAP 3!! Instead, I’m going to be teaching EAP 1. It’s too bad because I was really looking forward to teaching all of the EAP 2’s from this semester. However, I’m sure I’ll have a great time with the new EAP 1’s. Also, Murray is going to be teaching EAP 2, and Regina is moving to EAP 3 instead. Oh well . . . they say change is a good thing!

Anyway, I want to wish the best of luck to this semester’s students. I’m sure you are going to take the campus by storm next semester!

One Down One to Go!

2008-04-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

Today I finished my first presentation on vocabulary in university writing, and it really went well. You see, today I was part of a doctoral forum where doctoral students like me from all over the world presented their thesis proposals and the research they have been doing. I am still in the early stages of my research, but there were some people who are almost finished, and it was really interesting hearing what they had to say. It was a great opportunity to get some feedback on my research. It was also funny to hear that some Phd students hated APA citations!! It reminded my of my students in my writing class!

However, the best part of the conference so far has been the food! I have been to a deli every day I have been in New York. The sandwiches are amazing! I had a corned beef sandwich on rye bread with mustard that must have been one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten in my life. Corned beef is this slowly cooked meat that is cooked with spices and pepper. It is so good it melts in your mouth! I also have had pieces of New York style cheese cake as big as my head. They were the perfect balance of sweet and tangy cheese . . . so good! I have also had Matzo Ball soup, which is one of my most favourite kinds of soup, but you can’t find it in a restaurant anywhere in Calgary. On top of all that, I have eaten about 10 bagels and cream cheese since I got here. The bagels are so good and so chewy. I think I’m going to miss all of this great food when I get back to Calgary.

Last night, I went to the Broadway Musical “Chicago”. It was really amazing. I went with my doctoral supervisor and another grad student from the University of Calgary. I really felt like I was seeing a piece of real American culture. To be honest, I have never really understood musicals, and how every five minutes people seem to just burst into song for no reason, but having said that, I really enjoyed myself.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m not giving any presentations, but I’ll be in a lot of workshops. Friday is the big day for my presentation on blogs! I can’t wait to show off what my students have been doing this semester! And don’t worry, I’ll make sure I take time off from the conference to look for souvenirs for everyone (cheap ones!)

Going to New York Tomorrow!

2008-03-29T13:06:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow is the big day when I leave for New York! I feel bad for leaving my students for a whole week, but on the other hand, I’m really excited to get the chance to go to the largest conference of ESL teachers and researchers in the world. Hopefully, I’ll learn some cool teaching tricks I’ll be able to use with the students back home.

Basically, I am going to New York to do two presentations. The presentation that I am most excited about is the one that I am doing on blogs. I think that this going to be my last presentation on blogs for a while, so I really want to do a good job. I have been doing presentations on blogs for four years now. I can’t believe that I have been blogging for four years. That’s a lot of words. Anyway, for this presentation I continued with my blog survey that I have been doing for the last little while, and I analysed the vocabulary in the blogs my students did in the Fall 2007 semester.

The results from my vocabulary analysis were really interesting. I chose 10 students at random from last semester, and I then put them though a vocabulary profiling tool created by Dr. Tom Cobb (http://www.lextutor.ca/). The vocabulary profile told me how many of the words my students wrote were from the first 1000 most common words of English, the second 1000 most common words of English, the academic word list (570 word families – Coxhead, 2000), and words that aren’t on any of those lists. In order to see if there was any change in the way my students use vocabulary, I took approximately the first 500 words they wrote at the beginning of the semester, and I then compared that profile to approximately the last 500 words they wrote at the end of the semester. What was interesting was that 8 of the students showed that they were using a higher percentage of the academic word list at the end of the semester compared to the start of the semester (one student stayed the same, and one student used less). When I saw those results, I felt it confirmed my initial suspicion that blogs are a way for students to grow and consolidate their vocabulary over a semester. This is just a pilot study, and so far, I have only done a graphical analysis. The next step would be to run a statistical analysis to see if what happened with my students’ use of vocabulary is significant. However, in the meantime, I’m pretty impressed! Keep on blogging – it works!

I’ll report on the results of the survey in my next blog.

Wish me luck in NYC!

Blogging for Academic Purposes

2008-03-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

Gosh, I'm starting to realise more and more that it is really hard to take over a class half way through the semester. There are a lot of little things that I take for granted, that maybe another teacher wouldn't even be concerned about. I guess one of those things would be how I see the role of blogs in an academic writing course.

For me, I take it for granted that blogs are a complete different genre than normal academic writing. That means, all of the rules and conventions that the students are learning in class might not necessary apply when they are writing their blogs. For one thing, blogs are a totally informal forum for the exchange of ideas. When writing a blog, it isn't a one way flow of communication like it is in an essay. Hopefully, in a blog, I can get lots of comments so that this blog is more like a dialogue between me and the world. Also, while the stiff formality of the traditional academic essay has it's place, I feel that worrying too much about academic vocabulary and formal ways of expression will stop the flow of ideas, which is the whole point of the blogs. Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is okay to use your everyday language in a blog, and you don't have to worry about stuff like thesis statements, and topic sentences. Also the point of blogs is to get your ideas out of your head. Thus, I don't want people worrying about stuff like spelling, correct grammar, the perfect vocabulary word, or the right punctuation. The most important thing is just to get the ideas down into the blog. In fact, when it comes to vocabulary, if you can't think of the perfect word, just keep typing. You can type around the word, for instance. What I mean is, if you want to say the word "ladder" but you can't remember it, you can say this: I put a thing like some stairs up against the side of a tree and climbed up to pick an apple. See . . . it's the same thing, everyone knows what you are saying, and you don't have to waste your time looking words up in the dictionary.

Also, I find that when students type directly into their blogs, they tend to think in English. There isn't enough time to translate back and forth between their native languages and English. This helps to increase the speed the students can think in English, and it helps them get used to approaching writing tasks in English. However, if they start to worry too much about what they want to say, they might be tempted to start to think of their ideas in their native languages first. If that happens, I generally find that the grammar problems start to get worse and worse.

Anyway, I guess the point of this rant is that I take it for granted that blogs are an informal fun way to practice English and read what the rest of the people are thinking about in class.

Keep it fun!

Reacting to Student Concerns

2008-03-10T12:12:00.000-07:00

It’s the first day of a new schedule today, and I wonder what the students think about it. I know that the administration here in the EAP program thought a lot about how to address the concerns of the students and create the optimal conditions for learning, and this is what they came up with. Basically, I am now teaching each writing class for about five hours per week, and the other teacher is going to teach the grammar class for about five hours per week. We are going to alternate the days that we teach so that the students can have a full two hours with one instructor on any given day.

It will be interesting to see how this works. On the one hand, I like the idea that I now have a full two hours to focus purely on writing. There is a lot of work that we can get done in an hour. I’ll also have more opportunities for writing in class. On the other hand though, I used to like the flow I sometimes was able to create from the one hour grammar portion of the lesson to the one hour writing portion of the lesson. While I totally believe in teaching grammar, I like to mix it up and take an untraditional approach to teaching the grammar in that I do a lot of activities that force the students to use the grammar structures I am targeting that day rather than traditional “grammar exercises”. It is almost like we are doing a lot of different activities, and the students are unconsciously focusing on the grammar targets for that day because of the activities themselves. After that, I like to then see if the students can apply the grammar I have been targeting in their writing. If I notice that the correct grammar structures are being produced, then I can move on. If I notice that the correct grammar structures are not being produced, then it is time for either more activities, or even some old fashioned grammar lecturing where I explain the grammar rules to the students on the board. More than any of that though I also like forcing the students to come up with their own questions about the grammar. The sneaky thing is that half the time I don’t answer their questions. However, I like to set up the conditions where the students are able to articulate the questions and truly understand what it is that they don’t understand. Once they really know the questions, they should be able to find the answers on their own. I need to do this, because once the students are working by themselves in their regular university courses, they aren’t going to have the benefit of a grammar teacher to answer their questions, so they need to teach themselves how to learn on their own. Additionally, it is impossible to truly understand the “answer” if you don’t really know the “question”. Remember . . . . the answer is 42! What is the question?

Anyway, despite what I have written above, we’ll try this new schedule and see how it works. Naturally, there are arguments for the other side that say that some pure focused and concentrated grammar instruction is just what students need if they wish to speak English accurately and fluently. Anyway, I’d love some feedback!

2008-02-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

Recently, I carried out an activity in my class that I like to call the “compliment sandwich”. Here are the questions I asked:

Top Bun:

Something I like about the EAP 3 Writing Class
Lettuce:

General advice I would give to my EAP 3 Writing teacher
Patty:

Something specific I wish were different about EAP 3 Writing
Onions:

How I would make my wish come true
Bottom Bun:

Something else I really like about the EAP 3 Writing Class

While the students had some very valid comments on class size, table shapes, teacher personalities and the time table, I thought I would focus in this blog on the specific comments the students made that related to the EAP 3 Academic Writing and Grammar curriculum. I also thought I would leave out summarizing the compliment part (the bun) of the sandwich. However, I would like to say thank you to all the students who took the time to give me some compliments and brighten my day! It was good to know that some of you like my shoes. Anyway, what you will find below is a synopsis of the important points the students made from both classes of EAP 3 (lectures 1 and 2)

The students provided some interesting feedback for the writing and grammar class. First of all, students are looking for more flexibility choosing their own topics for the writing assignments. This could mean, choosing their own topics for the term papers, or finding new topics that could be added to the topics in the textbook. Some of the students felt that some of the topics were boring and that because the topics were boring, this sometimes made the class boring as well.

Students are also looking for more feedback on their writing assignments so that they can fix their mistakes and perfect a piece of writing before they move onto the next assignment. Thus, the students would like grammar errors not only pointed out in their essays, but also identified so that the students know exactly what their weaknesses are. The students felt that more specific comments on their papers would contribute to greater learning.

Additionally, the students would like to find a balance between writing and grammar instruction (some want more grammar, and some want less). However, basically the students are specifically looking for instruction that will lead to direct improvements in their writing. One example that was mentioned was that students would like to learn more about writing effective introductions and conclusions. While studying skills such as effective introductions and conclusions, the students would like to see a large number of clear examples they can learn from and use as models for their own writing. They would also like to see samples of essays from past semesters that earned top grades, and samples of essays from past semesters that failed. They could then compare their own writing to those essays and identify the gaps between what they are doing and where they need to be.

Along with finding a balance between writing and grammar, the students would like to spend more time writing in class, as opposed to doing the writing assignments strictly for homework. By writing in class, the grammar the students study can then be immediately applied to their writing. In other words, the students would like to see the grammar topics covered in class feed directly into the grammar they need for their writing assignments, and they want the chance to practice it in class. By covering specific writing skills and having grammar instruction to support those skills, the students feel they would be better prepared to analyse their own essays for mistakes. Students would also like more instruction on how to find the errors in their essays and learn how to fix these errors themselves. This means, the grammar curriculum needs to be flexible enough to react to the grammar issues that are arising in class. In other words the problems identified through the writing assignments would be addressed by the grammar instruction.

A final theme that came up more than once in the compliment sandwiches was the time the teachers have for students outside of the regularly scheduled class time. The students have a strong desire for more individual instruction, more time for questions, more personal advice for each student, and for more help after class. This could mean having more office hours, or simply making the teachers more accessible after class. Students indicated that they wanted help specifically from their writing instructors, and didn’t want the writing centre to replace being able to see their own teachers.

Phew, I think this is one of the longest blogs I have ever written! However, I really got a lot of interesting feedback from the students, and now I am trying to think of what I can do to enrich the learning experiences of each and every student enrolled in EAP 3. What I would like now is some more positive advice on how we could address the issues raised in the above blog so that we can put into practice some of the things the students would like to see changed in the EAP 3 curriculum. Feel free to make comments!

P.S. I still love the writing centre!

I forgot!!

2008-02-24T19:55:00.000-08:00

I forgot . . .

I was also an usher for Cineplex Odeon Theatres in 1992. That was a great part time job. I got to see all the movies I wanted to see for free. I could also get free passes to movies for my friends. On the other hand, the uniforms we had to wear were humiliating (burgundy polyester blazers), and once I really embarrassed myself. All the new ushers were told that during the course of each movie, they had to do a "screen test" which involved going up to the big screen at the front of the theatre right in the middle of the movie, and putting your hand on the bottom right hand corner of the screen and feeling it to make sure it didn't get too hot. Needless to say, I only did this once. The audience yelled at me, and the screen itself was totally cool. Gosh, I was stupid!!

Happy Reading Week

2008-02-19T12:32:00.000-08:00

It's reading week, and all of my students are working hard on their term papers that are due next Monday. I can't wait to read them. I have just finished marking the mid-terms, but I will save comment for a later blog . . . . . . nothing to worry about though!

As for me, I am now officially 38 years old. It was my birthday last Sunday. I can't believe that I am already 38. Since I started teaching full time, I have had 8 birthdays. Amazing. Even more amazing is that I have had the same job for such a long time. Before I became a teacher, I used to change my jobs quite regulary. In order, going backwards from teaching, here are a few of the jobs that I have had before the year 2000:

Flea market vendor (on and off from 1992 - 2000)
On-line antiques dealer
Pub manager
Bartender
Waiter
Magazine editor / graphic designer
Barnwood furniture carpenter and marketer
Purchaser for a large oil and gas company
Owner of a souvenir / food shop in Eau Claire Market & Chinook Mall
Assistant for a British important shop and company
Real Estate agent for Royal LePage
Customer Service / Marketing Agent for a tablecloth and linens company
Salesman for Futureshop
Computer assembly technition for an electronics company
Snack shop manager
Activities monitor for the ESL program at the University of Calgary
Bookshop clerk for WHSmith / Classic bookshop
French tutor
Cook for Dairy Queen
Waiter in a Chinese restaurant

I wonder if I missed anything out there . . . gosh that's a lot of jobs. Basically, that lists what I did roughly from 1988 - 2000. As you can see, not many of those jobs lasted more than a year. Now, what is my point for all of this . . . I guess my point is that it took me a while to "find myself", but once I had found myself I stuck with it. Now look at me . . . I love my job, and I'm pretty happy. Or at least I will be happy until I read all of the term papers . . . . just kidding!!

ALTHOUGH versus BUT

2008-02-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

Today in class, we have some good grammar questions! Sam asked me a question about “although” and “but” and it really demonstrated to me how hard it is to explain English grammar sometimes. I mean, because I am a native speaker, I can feel what is correct and what is incorrect. However, to articulate why something is correct and why something is sometimes incorrect can be very difficult. Because of that, I often want to say to my students “trust me – I can feel that this is correct” or “just memorize the difference”, but I know that can be very frustrating for my students! Anyway, I have spent a few minutes thinking about what Sam asked me in class, and this is what I came up with.

The adverbial “although” means the same thing as “despite the fact that”. We use “although” at the beginning of a clause which contains information that contrasts in an unexpected or surprising way with information in another clause. For example:

Although it was raining, we went for a walk.

If it is raining, it is surprising that we went for a walk. The walk happened despite the rain. You can also feel that first it was raining, then we went for the walk. We cannot say this:

Although we went for a walk, it was raining.

If we went for a walk, it wasn’t surprising that it was raining. We probably already knew it was raining. The rain did not happen because of the walk. The rain was not an unexpected result of the walk.

Now let’s try but:

It was raining, but we went for a walk.

The coordinating conjunction “but” emphasizes the joining of two contrasting ideas. In the above sentence, you can feel that the two ideas contrast with each other. As a result, you can flip the sentence around.

We went for a walk, but it was raining.

You can add “but” to either of the clauses, but you can’t add “although” to either of the clauses. The coordinating conjunction “but” joins together two equally contrasting ideas. The adverbial “although” does not join together two equal ideas – one of the ideas is an unexpected result of the other clause.

Phew . . . that was hard! I hope that clears up the difference between “although” and “but”. If anyone understood my grammatical explanation, I’d really love some feedback!

Thanks for the great questions in class!

Textbook Trauma

2008-02-04T14:24:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is, only February, and I’m already thinking about what textbooks to use in September. The worst part about picking out textbooks is trying to figure out the exact level of textbooks to match the level of the students in EAP 3. If the textbooks are too easy, they won’t prepare the students for university. However, if the textbooks are too hard, then the students won’t learn anything because they will be struggling too much with the material. There’s that, but then there’s also the fact that there seem like millions of different textbooks available. Some are good at one thing, but others are good at other things. The problem is that none of the textbooks seem to be good at everything.

I guess my dream textbooks would be textbooks that covered everything that we need to cover in class, had lots of Canadian content, and weren’t too expensive for the students. Having just those three criteria, however, still doesn’t help me because I don’t think there are any textbooks that fulfill all three of those requirements. s i g h . . . what to do . . . .

Anyway, this is turning out to be a really boring post all about textbooks. I wonder what my students think of as the ideal textbooks . . .

cold cold cold cold cold cold

2008-01-29T07:40:00.000-08:00

Holy cow, it is cold outside. I guess there are hundreds of blogs across the Canadian prairies all saying the exact same thing right now, but boy is it cold! Whenever we have cold weather like this, I always freak out about my students, because I'm worried they won't dress warmly enough for the weather. I'll never forget the one time when one of my students got frost bite on his cheeks and nose. Both of his cheeks turned black along with the tip of his nose. It was really terrible to look at and very painful for the student. In the end, the tip of his nose fell off and now he has a frost bite scar on end of his nose. What's the moral of this story? Cover your nose with your scarf!

Anyway, that's enough about the cold . . . . let's talk about title pages instead. I was a bit dissapointed yesterday. Yesterday, both classes of EAP 3 had good copies of their essays on language learning due. In Ilana's class, all of the students except for one had an APA syle cover page, and they all counted how many words they wrote. You could translate that into the statistic that 95% of Ilana's students followed the proper format for a good copy in EAP 3. In my class, only 7 of my students had an APA style cover page and counted the words. That means only 32% of my students followed the proper format for a good copy in EAP 3.

Ilana 95%
Me 32%

What does this mean? Anyway, I'm handing back the incorrectly formated papers to my students today so that they can do a cover page and count the number of words they wrote. I have to admit I'm a little dissapointed because this year I wrote out an entire sample essay for them to follow. Or is it that I am too lax with my students, or I don't explain myself well enough? I know it seems a bit neurotic to harp on about something like a title page, but if students do follow the conventions set down by the instructor, it reduces their credibility in the eyes of that instructor. Oh well, I have decided not to freak out this time . . . but if it happens for the term paper . . . . . .

I LOVE the Writing Centre

2008-01-18T14:42:00.000-08:00

I know, I know . . . perhaps most of my readers aren't quite as convinced as I am as to the wonders of the Effective Writing Centre here on campus, but it seems so cool that there is a place where students can get FREE help with their writing. Personally, I would charge between $150 - $200 an hour for private tutoring. Why spend all that money on a private tutor, when there is somewhere to go on campus? Also, I just found out that there are FREE drop in tutoral sessions available in the library. Here are the details:

Free Drop-in Writing Consultations
Starting February 1, 2008 Drop-in Writing Consultations are available in MLB 205 (located in the Information Commons in MacKimmie Library) at the following times:
Mondays 6:00 - 9:00 pmTuesdays 12:30 - 3:30 pmWednesdays 5:30 - 8:30 pmThursdays 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Appointments are not necessary for the drop-in sessions and may be limited to 15 minutes depending on demand. Sign up is at the IC Service Desk.

I copied all that directly from the website: http://www.efwr.ucalgary.ca/efwr/writingcentre

Anyway, I hope all my students take advantage of the writing centre and use it as much as possible. I bet my students don't know this little fact about me. When I first went to university, my writing was terrible. I actually went to the writing centre a few times, and they quickly showed me how to punctuate correctly and how to format an essay in an academic manner. So you can imagine, if I went to the writing centre when I was an undergraduate student, there is absolutely no shame in going there.

Well, I think I have pestered my students with information about the writing centre enough for today :-)

Another Semester Has Started

2008-01-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

Here we are - it is now Winter 2008 already, and we have started a new semester here in the EAP program at the University of Calgary. I wanted to list some of the blogs from the last few semesters here in this post. I hope people check them out from time to time and see what former students of our program are up to. I'm sure that some of them are going to keep blogging. It really makes me proud to think that some people really embrace this format and keep blogging for years after they first started. In fact, for me, I have been blogging for almost four years. That's a lot of words!

Fall 2007 EAP 3
Ghazal
Matheus
Ahmed
John
Lisa
Haruna
Noor
Hadeel
Chinedu
Zahra
Eric
Lisbeth
Gennady
Charles
Julia
Mark
Allen
Inna
Bill
Ella
Wei
Maja
Joy
Tina
Megan
Theresa

Past Blogs
Hussain
Mohammad
Gerard
Loreta
Betsy
Estella
Yulia
Nikolay
Carlos
Amy
Nick
Leslie
Alif

Past Blogs
Becky
Sang Min
June
Kevin
Ted
Rayna
Edward
Sabrina
Kenneth
Serenity
Yichen
Steven

14 Minutes Left!

2007-12-07T15:17:00.000-08:00

Holy cow . . . there are only 14 minutes left in the EAP 3 writing final exam. I'm trying to type as softly as possible so I don't disturb the people who are still in the exam. I can't believe the course is over. It's been a good 13 weeks. I actually feel like everybody's writing has improved, and that makes me feel good inside :-) I can't wait to put nice checkmarks beside all of the perfect thesis statements, topic sentences and concluding statements!

Anyway, now comes the big job for me . . . I have to mark everyone's final writing exams, calculate the course grades and then submit them to the registrar's office. I think I'll be drinking a lot of coffee this weekend. Usually the way I tackle the final exams is first I just mark them for grammar - making note of all the grammar, punctuation and word use problems. Then I read the exams again for content and organization. That way, I read each exam twice before I come up with a final mark. I hope people chose a lot of different topics. That makes it more interesting for me while I'm marking. The worst thing in the world is marking 25 essays all on the same topic. For example, if everyone writes about solar energy, I might just go crazy!

Well, I hope all my students stay in touch with me through the blogs. It's been a great semester. Good luck everyone!

The Pain Has Gone :-)

2007-12-02T14:16:00.000-08:00

Phew . . . the pain from my root canal has finally gone. Today I celebrated by going to a Japanese restaurant for hot soba noodles and curry rice. It was so good. I went to a restaurant called Shikiji (http://www.shikiji.ca/). It is totally one of my favourite restaurants. It always reminds me of when I used to live in Japan. The lunch special that I had cost $12.85, but it is a huge amount of food. I'm always really stuffed afterwards. I guess I am not very classy because I judge how good a restaurant is by how full I feel afterwards, but still I think it is a good deal for the price. Anyway, for those of you that don't know, soba noodles are made from buckwheat. They are delicious and nutrititious :-)

Hmm, this blog isn't very serious today. I guess I am delirious because of the lack of pain. I better go back to planning the final exam . . . .

Abscessed Tooth!

2007-11-24T11:36:00.000-08:00

Holy cow, have I been in pain that last few days. I wonder if anyone noticed at the Glenbow Museum how much pain I was in. It was totally killing me, both physically and mentally because I had been looking so forward to going to the museum, but then I couldn't enjoy it as much I would have liked to because I was concentrating so much on not showing any pain. You see, I have an abscessed tooth. Oh the agony. About 3 years ago, one of my teeth cracked, but I never got anything done about it because I didn't have any dental insurance. When I finally got dental insurance at the University of Calgary, I went to the dentist and they cleaned out all the rotten stuff and capped my broken tooth. However, I guess they didn't notice that the damage was much deeper than it seemed because I guess for the last year, my tooth has been slowing rotting from the inside out. Finally, last week my lower left jaw was killing me, and my face was getting swollen. I was worried that I had the mumps, so I decided to wait a few days and see what happened. By Wednesday, I was in agony, and it seemed like a toothache gone crazy, so I decided to see a dentist. The dentist took an x-ray of my tooth, and told me I had an abscessed tooth. Now, I'm on antibiotics because my entire lower left jaw was infected, and I have to go for a root canal operation on Wednesday afternoon. So, I'm taking huge amounts of ibuprofen, and tylenol with codeine trying to kill the pain while I wait for the infection to go away. Actually, the pain seems worse now than it did on Friday, and all the pills are making me nauseous. Anyway, if you are wondering why I'm kind of weird in class . . . blame it on the abscessed tooth!

2007-11-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

It’s official . . . there are basically three weeks left until final exams. I can’t believe it. It seems like this semester has just flown by. I think it has been getting more and more interesting as well. I was really excited to be able to do the story “The Man who Planted Trees” with the students. One of the benefits of this semester, is the students are able to handle challenging materials that push them to their limits – like the story about the man who planted trees. With all of the challenging things we have been doing, I actually think the students are gaining new vocabulary and fluency this semester, which are two of my main goals. I think we still have a ways to go with grammatical accuracy, but I figure that as long as they are able to understand the world around them, and as long as they are able to make themselves comprehensible to the people around them, they are on the right track to success at university. I guess that is the two fold mission of the EAP program – facilitate the students understanding of the world and their ability to make the world understand them. In any case, I feel this is one of the most successful semesters so far.

Another exciting thing we have been able to do this semester is see the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. The best part about this is that no one fell asleep during the movie! Teachers are often hesitant to show videos during class time . . . especially longer movies. Usually I follow the “20 Minute Rule” which is that teachers should never do more than 20 minutes of anything because they students will start to drift off and become bored . . . or worse . . . unruly! However, I only had two days to show “An Inconvenient Truth”, so I had to divide the movie up into two one hour segments. That’s almost triple my 20 minute rule for each day. The great thing was though that Al Gore was such a compelling speaker, and the students were so interested in the topic, that no one drifted off. Now the fun part begins on Monday when we decide if we believe Al Gore or not . . .

Assignment Schedule has Changed!

2007-11-06T14:40:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone got the memo today about changing the due dates for all the assignments. I'm going to paste it in here so that everyone can see it again.

Changes in due dates:

Essay #4: Thursday November 8, 2007
Essay #5: Friday November 23, 2007
Essay #6: Cancelled
Annotated Bibliography #2: Friday November 9, 2007
Annotated Bibliography #3: Cancelled
Book Report #3: Monday November 26, 2007

Remember – no classes Monday or Tuesday November 12 – 13, 2007

Combined Listening & Speaking Classes

All classes will meet together for the first hour after the grammar and writing class

2:30 – 3:30 Thursday November 15, 2007
2:00 – 3:00 Friday November 16, 2007
2:00 – 3:00 Friday November 23, 2007

I hope that all makes sense. It was hard for me to decide on doing this, but I think it is for the best. It seems like a lot of my students are suffering from "homework" shock, and may be it's time to ease back a bit on the official homework. My only worry is that the students will stop studying all together or that all studying will sink down to the lowest common denominator. One of the reasons we instituted the assignments as we did was so that the students would be using as much academic English as possible outside of the class. The goal was to push their learning to the next level. In the past, I used to give lots of suggestions for studying, but I found that if there wasn't a mark attached to an assignment, often the assignment wasn't done. However, the minute a mark was attached to an assignment, most of the class would at least make an effort at doing it. Thus, it becomes a fine balance between grading homework and encouraging students to do things on their own. Ideally, I would have a system where no grades were given, rather I would tell people if their work was poor, developing, satisfactory or outstanding. One of the drawbacks of grading things such as the essays is that if one person gets 85% on an essay, and another person gets 88% on an essay - does that mean that the person with the higher score is 2% better at English than the person with the lower score? I don't think so. I think we are trying to cut things too finely when we are using percentages. Rather, we should have broad bands.

Anyway, this is what is going through my mind at the moment. One thing that has driven all of these thoughts is the fact that I have such a large class this semester. Now I know why my French Professors in my undergraduate studies only assigned one essay per semester!

2007-10-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

A Tell Tale Heart

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4s9V8aQu4c

2007-10-29T18:57:00.000-07:00

Yahoo, the mid-terms are marked - and there were no major disasters! Phew! I noticed that the students really get quite worked up at mid-terms time. People start to worry a lot, and they get nervous and stressed out. I feel kind of bad putting my students through this. The funny thing is that when I was a student, I never felt nervous during exams. I guess I just kind of accepted them. In the EAP program, when I first started noticing how worked up students get over the exams I started trying to think of ways to lower the stress. The way I thought I could do that was by being as explicit as possible about what is required for the exams. I really wanted the students to feel that there was a method to the mid-terms and they way that the exams are marked, rather than feeling like they (the students) are being buffeted about by forces beyond their control. What I mean is, too often, it seems like the students felt that the process of being evaluated on the mid-terms is random and arbitrary, when actually, we try to reduce the abitrary nature of the grading as much as possible through rubrics and collaboration between the teachers. At least, that is how it is supposed to work in theory. Anyway, the mid-terms are over now, and there is only half a semester left. I guess mid-terms are going to be stressful no matter what we do. I guess part of the problem is the nature of EAP itself. When I was teaching ESL, there were really no consequences. If the students weren't able to write an essay in English, it never really was a big deal, as long as we had lots of fun during the process of learning how to write an essay. But now, here in the EAP program, the consequences are really high. I mean, if the students don't pass, they don't get to go on into their faculties for regular studies. Also, there is the added bonus of being able to skip the effective writing exam if the students get a B+ in the writing course. Anyway, all this adds up to major consequences that you don't normally have in a regular ESL course. S I G H. I miss taking students to the zoo and having homework which involved deciding which animal was the cutest one at the zoo and drawing posters depicting just how cute it is. Now, it's all about transitions and adverbials . . .

However, one day all my students will be engineers, scientists, doctors, and teachers. I guess that's more important than picking out cute animals at the zoo . . .

2007-10-21T17:49:00.001-07:00

The 2007 Alberta Teachers of English as a Second Language Conference is over! Wow, I never knew volunteer work could be so much like . . . well, work! You see, I was the Publishers’ and Exhibitors’ Committee Co-Chair, which basically means that I was in charge of getting the publishers to the conference, helping them while they were at the conference, and then sending them away happy at the end. That meant that I had to be at the conference at 6 am on the Friday of the conference to help the publishers set up, and I didn’t leave the conference until 7 pm that night. That was a 13 hour day. I was totally exhausted by the time I got home. On top of that, I also ran a workshop on blogging on the Saturday of the conference. It’s hard to believe that I have been blogging for almost 4 years already. I first started blogging with my students in April 2004, and I haven’t stopped since then . . . I think I have also done about 10 presentations and workshops on blogging since I started as well.

Anyway, the conference was actually kind of fun because it was great catching up with teachers from all around the province. The only problem was that the timing of the conference wasn’t so great. It fell this year right in the middle of mid-terms for the EAP program at the University of Calgary. This meant that I had to abandon my students on Friday so that I could be at the conference. I hope they did okay. I’ll be seeing their exams on Monday . . . fingers crossed.

Actually, I’m really glad that it’s mid-term time. This is a great time for us all to take a moment and reflect on how the courses have been going so far, and there is still time to make a change in direction if necessary. I think I’m going to focus on getting some feedback from the students after mid-terms about what we can do to maximize their language learning in the last six weeks of the program. In fact, if any students have any great ideas, don’t be shy to comment on this blog!

As for the teachers who came to my workshop last Saturday, thanks very much for coming. It was a pleasure sharing my experience and blogs with you! Please keep in touch!

Ogopogo

2007-10-13T12:53:00.000-07:00

Ogopogo is the name of the moster that lives in Lake Okanagan beside Kelowna. But don't worry . . . I didn't see him (or her) while I was in Kelowna. I guess I spent too much time at the college. I got to visit Okanagan College on Friday to talk about ESL programs, and how our EAP program at the University of Calgary compares to their ESL program at Okanagan College. It was really interesting to visit another institution and talk about what is going well for us, as well as some of the pitfalls. Right now, Okanagan College is evaluating their ESL program, and they asked my PhD supervisor to go to their college and chat about what they are doing. I was lucky enough to get invited along by my supervisor so that I could sit in on the meetings.

The part that was the most interesting for me was the discussion about the validity of ESL programs, and how to establish that validity. By validity, I mean, are we really doing what we are saying we are doing. In my case, that means, is the EAP program at the University of Calgary really preparing students for undergraduate studies and raising students English to a level high enough so that their relative problems with English won't be the cause of failure in University. Does success in the EAP program mean that students are likely to be successful at University?

I guess if we want to know that, first of all we need to know that what we are teaching and what we are testing are the same things, and that they are all relevant to the academic English language proficiency needed for undergraduate studies. Are the appropriate language, concepts and strategies being covered in the EAP program? The curriculum would need to be checked against the final exams.

Next, it would be good to check what we are doing with another accepted method of assessing language ability. That would mean carrying out a study in which students who graduate from the EAP program take another accepted test and we compare those marks to our marks. That could mean seeing if students who pass the EAP program also pass a TOEFL test, or the like.

After that, it would be nice to know what is happening to our students once they get to university. We could do that by checking on their GPA's one year, three years, and upon graduation and comparing those scores to their exit scores from the EAP program.

If we did all that, I think we could be fairly confident is saying that yes, the EAP program is preparing students well for university (that is if all the results are positive).

Anyway, those are the kind of things we were talking about in Kelowna. Fun stuff!

Blogging!!!

2007-10-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

I'm so proud of my students. Everyone is blogging really hard right now. Phew. I think we had kind of a shakey start this semester. However, I hope from now on that everyone is going to blog a lot. I guess the reason we had a shakey start this semester is that I totally left it up to the students to start their blogs. I guess I'm trying to test their "independent" learning skills. Actually, most of the students were able to do it no problem . . . but with others it took a little prompting :-)

Anyway, now everyone is blogging!

Hmmmmm . . . I wonder if anyone wants to come to my office hours today. You see, somebody threw a rock through my back window at my house. Can you believe it? I didn't even wake up when it happened. It happened last Saturday night, and when I woke up on Sunday morning, there was glass all over my back room. I couldn't believe it. It is a pretty big window too - about 4 feet by 4 feet so it is going to cost me around $500 to get it fixed. I'm so annoyed because it is not like I am a rich person living in a rich person's house. Not that I'm advocating throwing rocks through the windows of rich people, but at least they could afford to get their windows fixed. Ah well, I guess I'll have to eat less Swiss Chalet take out chicken this week. I even called the police, but there was nothing they could do to help me because they said it is basically impossible to catch the people who through the rock through my window. They did ask if I had any enemies . . . I wonder which student might be mad at me!

Ignore the Last Blog!

2007-09-30T12:31:00.000-07:00

Okay . . . so my office hours have changed already. Here are my new and offical office hours:

Tuesdays 2:30 - 3:30
Thursdays 3:30 - 4:30

I promise I won't be changing them any more!

Last Friday I gave all of the students the day off because I had to go to the memorial service (funeral) for my grandmother. Gosh, I think I would have rather have taught. It was a really hard day. I was pretty okay until I got to the church and I had to sign the card that went with the flowers I bought for my Nana's (that's what I called my Grandmother) service. I started to write "Dear Nana . . . " and then I just lost it and started crying. It was also hard when my Dad delivered the eulogy. He talked to each person at the funeral individually during his eulogy, and pretty much got all of us crying a lot. My aunt especially was weeping the whole time. She tried to read a poem by William Wordsworth, but she couldn't go on and my Mum had to get up and help her to read the poem. They had asked me to read a Psalm during the service, but I declined. I just felt that I couldn't. It all felt a little bit weird for me anyway, because my Grandmother had requested an Anglican (a form of protestant christianity from English) service for her funeral, and there was a lot of talking about Jesus, etc. It was also weird because this was the first funeral I had ever been to. Isn't it amazing that I made it to the age of 37 without having ever gone to a funeral. When I was a kid, my parents didn't let me go to my grandfather's or uncle's funerals because they felt I was too young. Anyway, the last part of the service consisted of a piper playing "Amazing Grace" on the bagpipes. The bagpipes always send a shiver through me. I guess they are touching something deep and ancestral in my soul as if thousands of years of history suddenly are welling up inside of me. However, for me, the hardest part of the funeral for me was after the church. After the church, we went to the cemetary, and suddenly my Dad gave me my Nana's ashes to hold. It freaked me out a little to be standing there with a small box containing the ashes of my grandmother. By this time, the weather had turned cold and cloudy and it was lightly raining. It was exactly like a funeral in the movies, with people dressed in black, huddled around a hole in the ground in the rain. I also had to put the ashes into the hole in the ground, and I had to get down on my knees to put it in. I got dirt all over the knees of my black suit, but I didn't care, I just wanted to put the box into the grave. Then the minister threw some dirt on the box and said a prayer. Finally, we put roses on the gravestone while a piper played a lament on the bagpipes. Once again, it was eerie hearing the bagpipes playing in the cold wind while we all stood there around the grave.

Anyway, after the funeral we went back to the church and there was a tea with little sandwhiches with the crusts cut off. It was all very English (My Nana was from English, as are my parents). I ended up sitting beside my high school physics teacher from grades 10 and 11, trying to make polite conversation, when all I really wanted to do was go home. It was strange being surrounded by so many people that I hadn't seen for so many years. After the tea, we all went back to my parents house where my Dad opened up a bottle of expensive Scotch. You see, my Nana used to like to have a Scotch now and then, we we were drinking it in memory of her. In fact, I remember being a little kid and mixing my Nana a Scotch and water. Anyway, it was 16 year old Scotch and supposedly very expensive, but I couldn't finish mine. It tasted like burnt wood and it made my lips numb. I guess it was wasted on me.

After that, we went out for dinner, just the family. There were 10 of us, and we went out for Chinese food. My Nana always liked Chinese food, so we went to a local restaurant in Olds. After that, I went home. It was a very strange day.

Spread the Word!

2007-09-26T14:11:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone! I have office hours!

Scott’s Office Hours

Wednesdays 3:00 – 4:00 pm
Thursday 2:30 – 3:30 pm

Please make an appointment if you want to see me.

The EAP Barbecue!

2007-09-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture of me playing my guitar at the EAP barbecue just before the microphone broke and I couldn't play anymore. Hmmm, I wonder if someone broke the microphone on purpose . . .

Just about two weeks have gone by since the barbecue, and now we are entering the second week of classes. I'm really looking forward to this semester. I think I have a really good bunch of students in my class, and they all have a huge amount of potential. I'm sure that we are going to see a lot of language growth. The thing that excites me most about this semester, is that everyone seems really eager to learn. Some years I have been quite challenged by apathetic students who didn't really want to be in the EAP program, and couldn't care less about learning English, but this year, I think everyone is really motivated to learn. We did an activity in class where everyone had to write down their motiviations for learning English, and it seemed like the students were, in fact, actually motivated.

Here's to hoping this is the best semester ever!!

Taking a Semester Off :-)

2007-05-08T12:57:00.000-07:00

It's the second day of the new semester, and I'm not teaching :-) Wow, in a way it feels kind of weird not being in the classroom this semester, but in another way it's really excellent because I can finally focus on all of my PhD stuff. I have already done a whole bunch of errands that I have been putting off for months in just one morning. Now, I'm just planning out how to make use of my time to the fullest over the next four months so that I can get as much done as possible for my PhD while I have time. The problem is that I know it is going to be so tempting to sit in the back yard and relax.

Anyway, I just wanted to let people know that I won't be posting as regularly as usual in this blog. If I start up a new blog, I'll let you all know.

Have a great spring and summer!

Final Exam Week

2007-04-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

Final exams have started at the University of Calgary. There are a few things that can tell you this. The first thing I noticed this morning was that the parking lot (the cheap one on the edge of campus by Scurfield Hall) was full, even though it was only 8 o'clock in the morning. Secondly, when I went to get my omelet and cheese bagel in the social sciences building, there were students everywhere studying. There were also quite a few students sleeping on the benches. I think some of them must have been there all night. I even bumped into some of my own students when I came back to the Education Tower, but I think I freaked them out because I told them that it was too late to learn anything for the exam. They just looked at me in horror and fear. Ooops, I guess there is no such thing as a sense of humour before final exams :-)

I think part of the fun of going to university are midterms and finals. They really help you bond with your classmates, and it gives you a real sense of being a student. I remember hanging out with my friends, madly trying to study. I even remember we would look for places to study all night on campus, and then at about 5 am we would go to Denny's for "Moons Over My Hammy" and fourteen cups of coffee so that we would be ready for our 8:00 am exams. Although it may have seemed like hell at the time, whenever I bump into friends from university we always look back sort of nostalgically to the days when we were students. Now, when I talk to my friends it seems like life for a lot of them is only about mortgages and stressful jobs that are crushing their souls (myself excepted . . . my soul hasn't been crushed, yet!)

Anyway, I guess what I am trying to say to my students is ENJOY exam week. Study with your friends and eat pizza every night while drinking a six pack of pepsi cola. When you look back at all of this, it will be with fondness :-)

The Case of the Disappearing Scott . . .

2007-04-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

Hello all . . . it's almost exam week! Eeep! I know that some of the students are freaking out, but I hope they are able to relax a bit before the exams. There is an optimum level of freaking out . . . you need to freak out just enough to drive you to study for the exams, but you don't want to freak out so much that you make yourself sick, and you can't perform at your best during exam time. There is a fine line between enough and too much!

I wonder if any of my students have ever taken a moment to think about where these exams actually come from. What I do in LEAP 4 is I take a survey of all of the reading we have done in the text book. I look at how long they are and how difficult they are. In order to do that, I use the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Readability_Test). That gives me a rough idea of what grade level a test is at. Once I have had a look at the type of readings the students have been doing, I then survey the tasks that they have been doing with those readings. After that, I match those readings and tasks to the Canadian Language Benchmarks (www.language.ca, I'm looking at CLB 8 and 9) and the course objectives for LEAP 4. Now I know what I am looking for and what I need to be testing. Next comes the hard part. I have to find a text. Now I do an exhaustive search looking for readings that are of the appropriate length, difficulty and topic. I also try to look for something Canadian. Once I find some articles, I share them with my fellow teachers to get their imput. After we decide which article to go with, I then begin to develop the test. In order to do that, first I re-write some of the sections / sentences of the article in order to make them more accessible. I then look at the vocabulary and choose academic words that the students should be able to guess from context. Then I pick and choose tasks from the textbooks and apply them to the reading in the text. As you can see, there should be no surprises on the final exam. The tasks all mirror tasks the students will have done in class (or at least, should have done - but they are in the textbook, so it is the responsibility of the student to study the textbook and be familiar with all of the tasks). Now I create the exam. Once that is done, I pass on an answer key and a good copy to the other teachers for their input. They come up with their feedback, and I adjust the final exam as necessary. This entire process takes about 6 - 10 hours. Crazy stuff, eh? And it's not over yet, once the students have finished the exam, I then have to check it over again and see if it worked, but that is a story for another blog . . . . . .

Study hard :-)

More Pictures of Seattle

2007-04-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

Pictures of the Poster Presentation

2007-03-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

Random Pictures from Seattle TESOL 2007

2007-03-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

Seattle is Amazing!

2007-03-22T21:53:00.000-07:00

I am having such a great time at the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) Conference, that I don't even know where to start! Today was day two of the conference, and it was the day of my poster presentation. I couldn't believe how many people came to see my poster. I ran out of handouts in three minutes, and I brought 100 of them! I felt really bad for everyone who wanted one of my handouts, so I have posted the handout on line. It can be found here:

https://webdisk.ucalgary.ca/~sdouglas/public_html/index.html

One good thing about not having enough handouts is that I have finally worked out how to use my webspace at the University of Calgary to make a webpage. It's funny, because so many people think that I am some sort of internet expert, but actually, all I do is just muddle along one step at a time. I think that should be the title of my presentation for next year's conference, how to muddle your way through the net.

Anyway, I really enjoyed having the chance to meet and talk with so many people. It was fascinating to hear what people are doing with their blogs all around the globe. I hope many of the people that I spoke to today will have a chance to drop me a line and let me know how they are doing with their blogs. Over the next few days I'm hope to post more and more information to my U of C website so that people can access more information about blogs and how to use them in their classrooms . . . exciting stuff!

English Only ESL Classes - Great Rule, Necessary Evil, or Oppression?

2007-03-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

I wonder why I am so crazy about English only in the classroom. I am sure that is comes from a number of sources ranging from the way I was taught French as a kid and as a young adult, and from the different ideas I was exposed to while I was in graduate school studying Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL).

You see, when I was a kid studying French, English was FORBIDDEN in the classroom. In fact, if we spoke English, our teacher would have a fit and we risked being sent into the hallway or even the Principal's office. This way of teaching didn't stop as I got older either. When I was 17 years old my parent's sent me away for the summer to Trois Rivieres - a city halfway between Quebec City and Montreal. I guess you could call it the Red Deer of Quebec. Anyway, while I was there I went to CEGEP to study French - it is like a college. Can you picture me? I little 17 year old guy all by himself for the first time? It kind of reminds me of some of my students who are studying here in the LEAP program right now. Anyway, not only was English forbidden in the classroom, it was forbidden EVERYWHERE! That's right, I could drink beer (illegally), smoke cigarettes and ignore doing my homework, but if I ever spoke English anywhere in the city at all and I was caught, there were huge consequences. And I mean huge! You see, the CEGEP had not only teachers, but also monitors who hung out with us after class. On top of that, many of the local people in the city knew that Anglophones came to study French every summer and they kept an eye on us to. If we were caught speaking English at any time, we would get a warning. You only got three chances. If you were caught on the third time . . . you were put on a plane back home! I'm serious. I personally know people where were kicked out of French programs for speaking English too often. Even me, your teacher got caught speaking English one time. I remember I was in a pool with some friends and we were swimming. As some of my students probably know, I love talking, and suddenly I just started shouting to some friends in English to come and jump into the pool. Right behind me was a monitor! Holy cow, did I get in trouble. It was really serious. They had me totally freaked out that I was going to be sent back home. From then on, it was French only for me.

So you can see that from a young age I have been indoctrinated that the best way to learn a langauge is through the immersion method. It is almost like a Canadian way of doing things. I guess that it has affected me a lot,but you know what is amazing . . . . I speak French :-)

Going to Seattle :-)

2007-03-16T08:46:00.000-07:00

There is less than one week before I go to the annual TESOL conference in Seattle! I'm really looking forward to going this year. For those of you who don't know, TESOL stands for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. It is probably the largest ESL type conference in the world, and there are going to be some really famous professors and researchers there. I don't know if any of you are familiar with the grammar book used in LEAP 3, but the author of that book is doing a big presentation. I can't wait to go . . . gosh, I sound kind of like a geek, don't I?

Anyway, I have the honour of doing three things while I am in Seattle. I'll be doing a poster presentation on the Thursday of the Conference, a hands-on showcase of my students' blogs on the Friday, and finally a workshop teaching teachers how to use blogs with their students on the Saturday. It's going to be fun :-)

What I would like my students to do is please complete this survey (please click when you are ready):

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=957272685523

I'd like to share your opinions with my colleagues in Seattle.

Thank you in advance to everyone who does this survey!

Me and My Mum

2007-03-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of my mother and I :-)

It was recently my mum's birthday, and we went to the Palliser Hotel in downtown Calgary for their Sunday Brunch. I think this must most definately be the best Sunday Brunch in all of Calgary, if not Alberta (well, actually the Banff Springs Hotel would be a close second). This brunch is absolutely fantastic. It has a mix of breakfast items and lunch items. For example, you can have a gourmet omlet made for you while you watch, or you can get Belgian waffles made fresh in front of your eyes. There are also other amazing things like eggs benedict and eggs pacifica. Eggs pacifica is one of my favourite breakfast dishes. It is an english muffin with smoked salmon on top. Placed on the smoked salmon you have a gently poached egg, and it is all topped off with a sauce that is out of this world. Yum. Actually, I kind of go smoked salmon crazy when I go to the Palliser for Brunch. I take huge amounts of smoked salmon. I just can't get enough! They also have lunch items like roast beef, and things like that, but I usually stick to the breakfast items. Finally, there is a large variety of cakes and desserts. It is all amazing. Unfortunately, it is a little bit pricey. For one person, brunch is $40 and there there is tax and tip, so if 4 people go, you can end up spending around $200. However, it was my mum's birthday, so it was worth it :-) If anyone ever has their parents visiting town and they want to splurg, I recommend the bruch at the Palliser Hotel.

International students frustrated by LEAP program??

2007-03-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

I have been feeling a little down lately because of an article I read in the Gauntlet. I wonder how many of my students read the student paper here at the University of Calgary. When I was an undergraduate student, I read it every week. Anyway, just for fun the other day I picked up a copy to read while I was reading lunch, and right there on page 7 was an article about the LEAP program. However, this certainly wasn't the LEAP program that I know about. Basically the article was arguing that the LEAP program wasn't fair to international students because it was a waste of their time and money because they are not learning anything. Eeep. Students were also claiming that they were learning things in class that they were already familiar with. I guess they mean stuff like they had already studied how to do the present perfect tense, so why study it again?

Anyway, this is the online link to the article http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/story/11102, but if you pick up a current issue of the Gauntlet, you can read the article there too. I wonder what my LEAP 4 students would think of this article. I really hope that now, because of the program, they are able to do things in March that they could not do in January. I guess that is the real measure of a program. If a student can say "now I can do this, but I couldn't do it before" that would be a way of demonstrating that they have learned something. Anyhow, I won't let this article get me down, but sometimes I do feel that I am faced with an almost impossible task compared with a normal professor at the university. It almost seems like if students fail in the LEAP program it's the teacher's fault for not teaching, but if they fail in normal university it's the learners fault for not learning. Complex stuff . . .

I Miss the Cat!

2007-03-02T08:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, okay, I know. At first I totally didn't want to babysit my friend's cat. But for 10 days I got to know this kitty, and now that his is gone, I feel there is an empty place in my heart . . . s i g h.

On the other hand, there is no more kitty litter all over the floor of my kitchen, and my toes are safe from night time commando attacks!

It's weird, it was really nice having Rocky around for 10 days. I think the funniest thing that happened while Rocky was staying at my place was when I was renovating the upstairs apartment in my house. I had just painted the floor leading up to the stairs of the upper apartment. Anyway, I was upstairs working on the bathroom when suddenly I heard this weird meowing. I looked down the stairs and there was Rocky standing in the middle of the fresh paint. Poor Rocky, I ran downstairs and picked him up. His two front paws were totally green on the bottom. I was really worried because I didn't want him to lick his paws and get sick from the green paint, so I carried him like a baby to the kitchen and tried to clean his paws. Unfortunately I couldn't get all the green paint off of his feet, so he had green paws for about 3 days . . . . poor Rocky.

Also, I totally spoiled this cat while he was living with me. For instance, if I was having a bagel with cream cheese and lox (smoked salmon), Rocky would get some creamcheese and lox too. However, he didn't like bagels, so I ate his for him. Also, once I got sushi from T&T Supermarket, and I let Rocky pick off the raw fish from the tops of the nigiri sushi, and I would eat the rice. Hee hee. I don't think he is going to like the hard dry cat food he is going to get at him Mommy's house :-)

Oh well . . . no more cat for me. But it was fun while he was here!

Babysitting Rocky

2007-02-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

I wonder if any of my students noticed how exhausted I was today! You see, I am babysitting a cat for a friend of mine. The cat is totally adorable, but he is kind of nocturnal. He was up all last night, running around and making funny noises. His favourite noise is "mrrrrrr mrrrrr". Sometimes he just goes "meOW MEoooow". Last night, one of his preferred games was to play "attack the toes". Everytime my toes stuck out from the sheets on my bed, the cat would pounce on them and try to chew them. After this happened about ten times, I tried putting the cat outside of my bedroom and closing the door, but that just started up a slow wailing sound "mmmmmeeeeeeeeooooooooooowwwww" until I let him back into the room. He was good for a while then, but I woke up in the middle of the night to find two eyes glowing 1 cm in front of mine. It freaked me out, and when I freaked out, the cat freaked out and jumped on my head to escape. Anyway, I woke up this morning exhausted to find the cat sleeping peacefully on a pile of my clean laundry. I hope he is enjoying his nice relaxing day at home so that he can stay up all night again attacking my toes and jumping on my head.

2007-02-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

I have decided that I blog waaay too much about food, so I thought I would blog about some of my favourite things to do in Calgary. I have to say that in the winter, it really easy to become a couch potato in this city. Sometimes when it is cold outside, all I want to do is sit at home with a blanket and a hot cup of TV and watch television. However, there are some things that I like to do in this city, and one of them is skating at Bowness Park. Bowness Park is a huge park on the Bow river in the NW. It is my favourite park in the whole city, and I go there all the time both in the summer and in the winter. In the winter, the pond at Bowness Park is frozen, and you can go skating on it. There is also a frozen creek and a frozen canal, so you can skate all over the place. The best part of course is that it is free! Sunday was only my second time going skating this winter, so it took me a few minutes to get used to it again, but soon I was zooming all over the place. The weather was so great on Sunday too. There were tons of people. There were even mothers skating and pushing their children in baby carriages on the pond. I think the cutest thing is the little kids with their snowsuits and helmets.

Anyway, I highly recommend that everyone try skating at Bowness Park. They even have skates there that you can rent (I think they are $5, but they may cost more money now), so there is no excuse for not going. Also, students can rent skates from the outdoor recreation centre here on campus.

Happy Skating!

2007-01-31T13:35:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! It's great to see that everyone is starting to blog all the time. I hope that you are all enjoying it.

Hmmm, what should I blog about. I have been so busy lately! In fact, I have been so busy that I don't have time to cook lunch or supper any more, so I have been eating all of my meals here at the university. If I can get the special in the Education Cafeteria, that's not so bad because they have a daily lunch special that is only $4.99. Usually it is pretty good. The only problem is that they are sometimes late getting the lunch ready, and I don't have time to eat it, or it isn't ready when I have my lunch (I have to eat my lunch at 11 or 11:30 because of class). When the special isn't ready, instead I have to spend almost $8 for my lunch. Yikes!

Supper isn't so bad though because usually I have time to go to Mac Hall, and there are lots of choices there. Lately, my favourite place to eat is "Opa!". That is a Greek place, and it has amazing food. I really love the lamb slouvaki. My other favourite places are the place with the Vietnamese subs and the Vietnamese Noodle place. I've also seen a lot of my students working there, so it's fun to see them out of class.

Now, the only problem is that I'm worried all this university food isn't healthy for me. I wonder where my students like to eat on campus. Maybe they know some better and healthier places . . . . .

Here we go . . . . . .

2007-01-19T11:44:00.000-08:00

Yahooo! Here we are in the computer lab. All of the students are blogging about what they think about the LEAP program and what they think about blogging. I can't wait to read what they have to say about the LEAP program and what they have to say about blogging. Personally, I really love blogging. I think it is a great opportunity for students to practice their English in a non-threatening situation - especially because they don't have to worry about their grammar or their spelling. The main point is just communication. That's what's so fun about it. Plus the students get to pick their own topics instead of me saying "okay class, please write an academic essay about cheese" zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Anyway, I am sure that they blogs are going to be a big success this semester and that everyone is going to benefit. I can wait to get feedback from the students later in the semester.

Happy Blogging Everyone!!!

2007-01-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

These are my students from last semester - good luck you guys!

www.saliaahrabian.blogspot.com
www.gahvln.blogspot.com
www.chenzhenfei.blogspot.com
www.tonysheep.blogspot.com
www.caleb9999.blogspot.com
www.kevinjiang1028.blogspot.com
www.kevinleap4.blogspot.com
www.amancila.blogspot.com
www.anpan172.blogspot.com
www.roywanghang.blogspot.com
www.elephant0713.blogspot.com
www.sabrinazone.blogspot.com
www.bluemaster121.blogspot.com

www.almuqate2006.blogspot.com
www.corradeyour.blogspot.com
www.jjj-joy.blogspot.com
www.mitra1977.blogspot.com
www.ryan-potato.blogspot.com
www.wenli2006.blogspot.com
www.weimysteryviking.blogspot.com
www.teddyinleap.blogspot.com
www.nikolayplotnikov.blogspot.com
www.cici2980.blogspot.com
www.michael-85.blogspot.com
www.agnes-wss.blogspot.com
www.sxue.blogspot.com
www.nickyang4b.blogspot.com
www.sese527.blogspot.com

An Important Aspect of Academic Life

2007-01-18T09:42:00.000-08:00

It's time to talk about an important aspect of academic life - going to the pub! This is a picture of my favourite pub in Calgary . . . can you guess where it is?

I hadn't gone to a pub in ages, but recently Calgary has gone totally smoke free in all bars in pubs, so I thought it might be time to try one out again. You see, I used to smoke. In fact, I smoked cigarettes for 16 years, but I finally quite for ever on April 17, 2003, and I haven't touched a cigarette since then. Because I don't smoke any more, I always avoid places where people smoke. That means that I could never go to the pub. However, now I can! As of January 1, 2007 all pubs and bars in Calgary are complete smoke free. It's so great because now I can enjoy pub food like the steak in the picture without having to worry about breathing all that nasty second hand smoke.

You know, I don't really like drinking either (I am the king of ginger ale), but at least if someone is drinking beside me, it doesn't really affect me the same way as if someone is smoking beside me. Anway, I really recommend that all my students try out the pubs here on campus (Dinny's Den) They have great food. They are a good place to meet new people, and remember, you don't have to drink. You can always order a ginger ale like me :-)

I'm back on campus!

2007-01-03T11:41:00.000-08:00

Hello world,

Here I am back on campus after a nice long break. I have officially been on holiday since December 22. That was 12 days of pure relaxation! Mostly I just hung around the house reading books and watching TV. I did go skating once on Bowness Pond, but the ice was really rough so I stopped after just 20 minutes. I guess the most exciting thing I did over the holidays was visit my parents in Olds, Alberta. My parents have an antique shop in Olds, and I got to see all the stuff they are selling. Some of it is pretty cool. I also got to play with my parents two dogs and their cat. All in all, it was a great visit.

Anyway, I'm back, and I'm raring to go. I can't wait to start teaching again. See you soon!

On a more positive note . . .

2006-12-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

Now, I may have come across as "slightly" negative in my last blog, so I want to point out that, actually, a lot of students did more than the required amount of blogs. I guess my problem is that I always focus on the negative stuff. I have decided to focus a bit on the positive stuff from last semester:

I learned a lot about different cultures.
I met some really nice people, and I will always remember them.
Some of the students improved quite a lot! It was amazing to watch their English growing over the semester.
The students gained some valuable skills that are going to help them in their future studies.
The students made some new friends in the class.

See, there are lots of positive things from last semester . . .

From now on, I am going to try and focus on the positive things.

When life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade!

Concerned . . .

2006-12-05T10:52:00.000-08:00

So once again it is the end of the semester and I find myself tabulating marks. It always astounds me how some students just seem to give up, or not complete activities as required by the course. Blogs would be the perfect example of this. Here is a quote from the handout all the students received on how the blogs would be evaulated:

You will write approximately one entry per week (minimum 12 entries) with a minimum of 200 words for each entry. Students are encouraged to write more.

You are also required to read and make comments on two other student or teacher blogs every week for a total of at least 24 comments. Students are encouraged to make more comments.

The final due date for the blog project is Friday December 1 when you should have a total of at least 12 blogs and 24 comments. You need to do at least 12 blogs and 24 comments in order to get full marks. Your blog contributes to your final participation mark.

Please note that you are only allowed to write one blog entry per day. Multiple entries made on the same day will be counted as one entry.

I went over these parameters with the students in class. They all had the handout, so they could have read the requiements. However, many students didn't write the requisite 200 words per blog! It was right there in black and white! Also, many students missed the requirement that they only write one blog per day. How depressing. I think some people are going to be shocked by their blog marks. 12 blogs x 200 words per blog = 2400 words. That means if you only wrote 1200 words over the course of the semester, you only received 50%. That mark is then calculated as part of the final participation mark.

The most interesting aspect of all of this is that many of the students who received low marks on their blogs, also are receiving low marks in class. There seems to be a direct correlation between the amount of effort students put into their blogs and the grade they receive on their essays and exams. The irony of all of this is that students come to me a week or two before the final exams, and they ask me "what can I do to get a better mark". Well, you could have blogged at least 200 words every week like you were supposed to.

I'm so curious . . . don't the students see a connection between doing homework and getting a high mark on the final exam? I guess not. That is why they end up failing. My job is to try and get them to see the connection. You can't expect to be a great pianist if you never practice. You can't expect to be a great writer if you never practice.

ugh.