Dr. Ruwaida Abu Rass is an EFL teacher educator. Currently, she is the UNESCO Chair-Holder for Multiculturalism in Teacher Education and the coordinator of the program Accessing Higher Education to Arab students at Beit Berl Academic College in Israel. Previously, she headed the English Department and the English Forum of English Department Heads in teacher training colleges in Israel. Her main research interests are challenges facing Arab college students in writing in English, EFL teacher education, and multiculturalism. Dr. Abu Rass is the author of several articles related to these three fields. In addition, she won different scholarships for professional development like the International House Training and Development Scholarship, and the International UNESCO IITE Competition.
Topic: Extensive Experience of Teaching a Preliminary Academic Writing Course
In this presentation, I will share my extensive experience of teaching a preliminary academic writing course with the conference’s participants. This course focuses on paragraph development, adopting the process approach, which follows a number of stages such as planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. Following this process approach requires generating ideas, prewriting, outlining, producing first drafts, editing, and revising. Each draft is submitted three times. While revising, the learners answer the raised questions by the instructor and follow the provided comments, corrections and feedback. During class time, students are actively engaged in-class activities by working in small groups, using technology, specifically the Padlet, to analyze the structure and content of short paragraphs, compare and contrast them with paragraphs in Arabic, their L1, analyze their mistakes and correct them. Instruction also includes explicit and descriptive grammar and vocabulary. Freewriting, which means jotting down ideas continuously for a set time from ten to fifteen minutes without thinking about what words or grammatical items to use and without reviewing the sample for modification is also part of classroom activities. Submitting dialogue journals with topics of personal choices is practiced frequently, aiming to bring students closer to their writing teachers, to lower their anxiety, and to increase their motivation. Due to the advantages of providing comprehensible input for improving students’ language proficiency, classroom activities include reading and discussing short newspapers articles and watching the news. At the end, I will show evidence of students’ progress and samples of their course evaluation from different years.
Summary
This presentation focuses on the employed effective teaching techniques and activities for teaching a preliminary course of academic writing that focuses on paragraph development, adopting the process approach, which requires planning, drafting, revising, and editing. Students are engaged in free writing activities, text analysis and error analysis, using the Padlet.
Topic: Extensive Experience of Teaching a Preliminary Academic Writing Course
In this presentation, I will share my extensive experience of teaching a preliminary academic writing course with the conference’s participants. This course focuses on paragraph development, adopting the process approach, which follows a number of stages such as planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing. Following this process approach requires generating ideas, prewriting, outlining, producing first drafts, editing, and revising. Each draft is submitted three times. While revising, the learners answer the raised questions by the instructor and follow the provided comments, corrections and feedback. During class time, students are actively engaged in-class activities by working in small groups, using technology, specifically the Padlet, to analyze the structure and content of short paragraphs, compare and contrast them with paragraphs in Arabic, their L1, analyze their mistakes and correct them. Instruction also includes explicit and descriptive grammar and vocabulary. Freewriting, which means jotting down ideas continuously for a set time from ten to fifteen minutes without thinking about what words or grammatical items to use and without reviewing the sample for modification is also part of classroom activities. Submitting dialogue journals with topics of personal choices is practiced frequently, aiming to bring students closer to their writing teachers, to lower their anxiety, and to increase their motivation. Due to the advantages of providing comprehensible input for improving students’ language proficiency, classroom activities include reading and discussing short newspapers articles and watching the news. At the end, I will show evidence of students’ progress and samples of their course evaluation from different years.
Summary
This presentation focuses on the employed effective teaching techniques and activities for teaching a preliminary course of academic writing that focuses on paragraph development, adopting the process approach, which requires planning, drafting, revising, and editing. Students are engaged in free writing activities, text analysis and error analysis, using the Padlet.