My colleague Monica Farling and I published a short piece in the April 2018 TESOL Connections based on our 2017 conference workshop on collaborative writing. Check it out and let me know what you think!
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Grammar Choices, 2nd Edition
Hi blog followers and casual tourists: I’m working on the second edition of Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers. What would you like to see added or changed? Continue reading “Grammar Choices, 2nd Edition”
(Reads, reading, has read): 5 smart tips for teaching grammar through extensive reading
Here’s a blog post I wrote for the OUP Global site on teaching grammar through (extensive) reading. It’s loosely tied to Q:Skills for Success, but I’ve been batting around these ideas for some time. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Source: (Reads, reading, has read): 5 smart tips for teaching grammar through extensive reading
Conferences 2017
Here’s my speaking schedule for the coming year. Come join me!
Kansas State University Intensive English Program (professional development workshop), December 15
EAP Conference at St. Andrew’s University, Scotland, February 24-25, 2017
- Workshop, “Genres That Work in the Writing Classroom”
- Plenary speaker. “Go with the Flow: Creating Cohesion in Academic Discourse”
AAAL Conference, Portland, March 17-19, 2017
- Connecting Process and Product: Mixed-Method Research into Collaborative Writing
TESOL Convention, Seattle, March 21-24, 2017 (handouts & slides here)
- “Myths of the Five-Paragraph Essay.” Second Language Writing Interest Section Academic Session, with Dana Ferris, Christine Ortmeier-Hooper, Luciana de Oliveira, Deborah Crusan, and Ann Johns.
- ” Argue, Contend, Exort: Teaching the Language of Argumentative Writing” with Silvia Pessoa, Ryan Miller, Tom Mitchel, and Sandra Zappa Hollman
- “Many Hands Make Writing Work: Planning Engaging Collaborative Writing Tasks” with Monica Farling
New book! Supporting Graduate Student Writers
A new collection which I helped edit has just been published by the University of Michigan Press. Supporting Graduate Writers: Research, Curriculum, Program Design (Simpson, Caplan, Cox, & Phillis, 2016) is the first edited volume to discuss options in designing writing support for graduate students writing in English both as their first or additional language. You can find it on the Press’s website, amazon.com, and all fine booksellers. The blurb is below the break. Thanks and congratulations to editors Steve Simpson, Michelle Cox, and Talinn Phillips as well as the amazing cast of contributors. It was a fascinating project to work on.
Continue reading “New book! Supporting Graduate Student Writers”
EAP is like riding a bike
My article from earlier this year in Modern English Teacher on integrated skills in EAP, which starts with a rather strained metaphor about learning to ride a bike, is now available online. Don’t be surprised to find a little bit of genre pedagogy sprinkled in, too, of course.
Introduction to SFL for K-12/ELL teachers
I just discovered this fantastic recording of a lecture by Mary Schleppegrell of the University of Michigan in which she introduces the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and argues convincingly for the incorporation of SFL metalanguage in order to give ELLs access to grade-level disciplinary texts. I’m going to use this as part of a blended course for Delaware K-12 teachers as they start to read Luciana de Oliveira and Mary Schleppegrell’s Focus on Grammar and Meaning.
New resource: Grammar books for teachers
I’ve started a page of grammar books for ESL/writing teachers as an antidote to answering student questions with “It just is …”. Please feel free to suggest good books and links I’ve missed.
Updates from the anti-5-paragraph essay campaign
I’ve spent much of the winter break typing up students’ papers for my dissertation research. The task was descriptive writing — first describing the student’s house, apartment, homestay, or dorm room, and then (after the intervention) writing a featured home article about a house for sale as if for a local newspaper. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was still struck by the number of students who tried to shoe-horn one or both tasks into a pseudo five-paragraph essay, and this despite the fact that neither prompt mentions essays or even paragraphs! In fact, the featured house article is taught as a genre with a regular structure that has little to do the so-called English theme. Some of the results are awkwardly amusing: Everyone has a house, even animals. I’m going to describe my house. Or: this house has two floors. First of all, the first floor. You can imagine the rest.
For anyone still harboring a sentimental attachment to the “ahrehtorical” (to quote Christine Ortmeier-Hooper) and ageneric (as I keep misquoting Christine Ortmeier-Hooper!) teaching of a universal form of bland, banal writing, here are some recent articles fighting the good fight for teacher genre-aware, context-specific writing skills:
- “I cannot prepare students to write their (history, philosophy, poli sci, etc.) papers” by John Warner in InsiderHigherEd
- “Finding a voice for argument in ELT” by Elizabeth O’Dowd in TESOL Connections
- “Let’s bury the five-paragraph essay” by on Talk With Teachers
- “Kill the 5-Paragraph Essay” by John Warner (again) –spot a theme here?
Plus a few of my previous thoughts on the subject:
- Who’s teaching my students to write rhetorical questions?
- From generic writing to genre-based writing
- (Yet) Another anti-5-paragraph-essay rant
Update: Well, this is getting interesting. Over on the TESOL blog, Rob Sheppard has written a spirited defense of the 5-paragraph essay in which he usefully critiques Brian Sztabnik’s rather over-enthusiastic piece. But we couldn’t let that stand, so Luciana de Oliveira and I have written a rebuttal, “Why We Still Won’t Teach the Five-Paragraph Essay.” Let the games commence!
