I feel tired and pretty upset again. This week has been difficult because we had conferences on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday about their final draft of their comparison/contrast paper. I had worked step by step with them during the previous weeks to develop their papers and I thought that they were following pretty well. They seem to understand the activity we did with the two food articles and well, that will teach me to trust what seems to be instead of making sure that this is really what is going on. I had first explained how to find articles in the library, then how to write outlines and make summaries of these articles, then how to make a table with the main ideas of these articles to see how similar and different they are, and finally how to make an outline of their paper with all this information. Out of my 14 students, I think that a maximum of five had really done all this and written a decent draft by Tuesday or Wednesday. The others had not followed the steps and would come to their conference (if they would even come!) telling me that they didn't know what they were supposed to do, or that they couldn't find articles that were related or relevant to their topic, or that they knew what they were doing but really, they had not followed at all the organization I had asked them to follow. I had explained that when you discuss several articles, you can either talk about article 1, then compare article 2 with the first one, and then article 3 with the previous ones, but that this process was complicated and repetitive. The other way was to find out what ideas they had in common and discuss how the 3 articles discussed the first idea they had in common, then how the 3 articles discussed the second idea they had in common, etc. At least three students had chosen the first options and were lost. By reading these first draft, I also noticed that many students had discussed the articles but not their actual ideas: they would say things like "article 1 has convincing arguments but article 2 doesn't" but not actually explain what those arguments were and why they thought them to be more or less convincing. Finally, I noticed that about three students had not really started doing anything. One student even came to me and said, "I just changed my topic, and I am in the process of finding new articles... I'll bring you my first draft on Thursday and the final draft on Friday." The final draft was due Thursday, and I was really very shocked to hear this student simply telling me that he was not going to do what he was supposed to do and not even ask for a special permission to do so. I said no, that I would not make another exception for him because I already had for the previous project, but he still gave me his final draft today only. I am very saddened and scared to see what little authority I have over that kid. It is as if he doesn't care at all about what I say. He has been a troublemaker all semester and next time something happens with him, I will send him over to Tony. Maybe another man could scare him a little. So I got my final drafts yesterday (some of them...) and have started reading them but am not too impressed with what I read so far. We have started a new project, the interview report, and I believe that this will be the most fun project of the semester. Yesterday, after some free writing for 10 minutes, we started talking about this new project: they have to interview an "expert" or several "experts" about their topics, to get more information. An expert is anyone who knows more than they do about their topics, and we talked a little about what kinds of people they could interview. The topic of their research will determine who the expert is and we talked about interviewing your roommate or a doctor or a judge or another teacher or classmates, and what kinds of difficulties and advantages these would have. They can use the telephone, emails, and informal interviews, to gather information, but they must interview at least one person face to face in a formal interview. I told them that there would be no word limit on that project (usually, it's between 700 and 1000 words), and I don't know if this will be a good or a bad thing. We have also started to discuss about different kinds of ways to gather information. I had them write five questions about "the difficulties experienced by international students during their first semester at Purdue" and then asked them how they could get responses to their questions: a single interview, a survey, a questionnaire, an observation, etc. Finally, we talked about the different kinds of questions they would ask and their advantages and disadvantages: yes/no questions, open-ended questions, choice questions, etc. Today, after a little quiz on their reading about how to prepare for an interview, how to behave during an interview, and how to write a questionnaire, we continued talking about the different kinds of questions they could ask and also what to do during the interview: take notes, listen, ask questions, be grateful, be polite, etc. I had them "practice" on each other with the five questions they had written yesterday. They had to ask their questions and take notes while listening to the responses they got. While they were doing this, I was listening and watching them carefully and took some notes that I shared with them at the end of the activity: remember to have a professional attitude and not chew gum or slouch, give some feedback to the person ("that's interesting, thank you for sharing this with me, etc.), don't be afraid to ask follow up questions to get the information you need (can you tell me more about this, what do you mean by that, etc.), don't be afraid to ask when you don't understand something, ask your questions in a clear manner and be ready to rephrase them if your interviewee doesn't understand them, don't ask people's age, etc. I think my students really enjoyed this activity, not only because it was useful practice but also because it allowed them to talk to each other and get to know their classmates better. Next week, I want to either send them outside of the classroom to ask their questions or have some "strangers" come to my class and be their interviewees. I have also made a handout about different kinds of questions, good follow-up questions, and what they need to remember about their interview, and I need to review with them the grammar of "reported speech" (he said that he would do it soon, he asked if I knew about it, etc.). Then I will let them free to do whatever they want. I told them that I would not give them too much structure on that project and also that I would never repeat the same things twice anymore, especially if they are on the assignment webpage, because I am tired of repeating things over and over! So, this last project might have been a disaster (I'll see that this weekend!), but I am excited about this next project and I think that they all are too!
I have changed my schedule and the time when my students need to turn in their final draft of the comparison/contrast paper, because we needed to work on a few more things before they could write a decent paper. First, I wanted them to practice comparing and contrasting articles, and also looking for information to compare or contrast, and so we worked with two articles I had found that talked about eating meat or not. I was very lucky to have found two nice articles which were very different: the webpage design, the ideas, the arguments, the statistics offered, the language, etc. So we spent a couple of days discussing these two articles. We had a nice discussion and I wish we had had more time to discuss it more, but it was something that I will definitely do again. At the same time, Tony told the 106i teachers that two additional questions were going to be on our student evaluations: this class taught me to use technology well, and this class taught me how to evaluate websites or something like that. I think that working on these two articles was useful for them because many had no idea how to write their paper. The other thing I wanted to work on was APA. I told them how to do the general formatting of a paper at the beginning of the semester and they did it quite well on their first paper but then started to forget how to do it... so we first did that... and then one day we talked about how to cite sources in the text, such as "According to this author (year)..." etc. or how to cite the author and year after having summarized or paraphrased someone's ideas. The idea of plagiarism seems so foreign to them that I had to talk about that repeatedly. It is not that they intentionally plagiarize, but they just do not know how to not repeat someone's ideas without copying the words, the sentence structures, and sometimes whole sentences. That makes me think that for them, it is a question of admiration and respect to copy the words and sentences of people who are the "expert" at doing it. The following day we worked on how to do a reference page at the end of the paper. This APA manual is really nice because it actually shows examples of how to do it all, and so that's mostly what I told and showed to my students because I didn't want them to actually memorize rules. I want them to become accustomed to using this APA manual and to know where to find what kind of information. They all had bought their books, they all had brought it to class on those days, and they all seemed to understand how to work with this quite well, so I was happy. On Thursday, I had two people who observed my class for other classes, other 106 teachers, and one of them told me, at the end of class, that if she did this APA thing with her students, they would all fall asleep, not listen, not care, and not learn anything, and she was very impressed with my students. It is true that I often complain about them and I tend to forget that I have very high standards and expect a lot more from my students than other teachers do and so overall, I really have great students! They pretty much all participate, all try, all talk to me, all learn, and pretty much everyone's writing has improved! The first 6 weeks were tough, I think for everyone, but since then, this class has been going quite well and I feel good about that. We will see if I still say that after I get their final drafts of their comparison/contrast papers. On Wednesday, I brought some bagels and cream cheese to class, and on Friday, I gave them the day off. It is the time when they have tons of exams and projects due, when everyone is tired (me included), and when we all need a break somewhere. This is why I also changed the schedule for this paper and decided to do one less project than I had wanted to do. After all, it is more important to do a few things well than several things in a rush and not so well. And in Tony's class we read how most international graduate students didn't know how to summarize and analyze ideas and how that penalized them later when they wanted to write articles and find good research assistantships, so I am hoping that what we're doing right now in our class will be useful in the future and I told them that they had to work twice as much as English-speaking students if they wanted to succeed now and later... and they seemed to believe me!
Small week #8 because of October break. Therefore, we started on Wednesday only, and that is when my students had to turn in their summary. 400 words summarizing an article that they chose and which relates to their main research topic. With such small assignments, I hope to force them to find several articles and other resources that will be useful for them in the end, when they have to write the big final research paper. I am grading these summaries right now and see that they all have difficulties in using their own words and not copying words and sentence structures from their original article. I need to work more on that. On Wednesday, I told them about the 106i student Gigi had to already give an F to because he had plagiarized and lied several times about it. This makes me sad and doing this to one of my students would really break my heart. So I told them the whole story, including the fact that I do NOT want to have to do this to one of them, but I see that this is a difficult thing to do, or not to do, and that we need more work and practice on this issue. Other than that, their summaries seem OK overall. It is hard for me to grade since I have to read all the original articles and do a small summary of them in my head, in a way, to see if they included all main points and arguments of the original, did not forget some important information, and did not copy parts of the text. I do not think anyone will get a very high grade on that one, but so far, no one has gotten a very low grade either. On Wednesday, I also introduced the next paper: a comparison/contrast paper of three articles. This is very difficult too, and to show them one way to do it, I had them get in small groups of three or four students and compare and contrast each other's lives. They had to make a table where every student was represented and every idea was defined in details. For example, they would look at food habits and ask which kinds of food they did not like. Student A would give his/her answer, then student B, and C, and they would record their answers and see if they were similar or different, and in what way, etc. They had to find both differences and similarities between the members of their groups, and could be as creative as they wanted to be. I saw some tables where they had compared their liking of our class, just to make me laugh. As I was going around and listening to their discussions, I learned many interesting things and noticed that they did too. At first, they mostly compared food and hobbies, but then started to really think about what made them unique or similar. On Thursday, I asked them what they had learned and some students said that they had noticed that all the countries are very different but sometimes united by sports, because of the way sports are becoming a universal hobby. I think they had not always realized how different their lives were from other people's, and that exercise proved to be not only fun but also culturally enriching for everyone. On Thursday, I first gave them a little quiz about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. I wanted them to learn about this because many of them use a lot of Pathos in their writing and need to use a bit more logic, so I had them read a nice handout prepared by Mike Kapper about rhetoric. For the quiz, I simply asked them to write two paragraphs explaining me why they could now have done their homework for today: one which would convince me with Pathos, and one with Logos. I think they liked that and some did really well. I did not grade the quiz but simply used + and - marks to tell them which paragraph was the most convincing and which technique they needed to learn more about. I then worked with them on the differences between summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. I know it is a bit late to do it, but it will still help them for their next projects. I also had to readjust the schedule for the project because I see that it will be a difficult one and they need more time to do it than what I had thought initially. I am always trying to reconcile the needs of the students with what the other 106i teachers are doing, and they are going fast! The three Chinese teachers seem to go a little slower, but I cannot possibly understand how Gigi or Brita seem to give so much information to their students and make them work so fast. Normally, my students will give me their comparison/contrast paper next Monday, but I see how I might have to change that deadline again to allow them to go to the writing lab and work with one more draft. But then I want to start a review paper of one article, and then there is the interview report... what else? Besides the final paper, this is it, so we will have enough time to do it all... hopefully. On Friday, I explained to them how they could organize their comparison/contrast paper. They can either discuss all the ideas of article A and then all the ideas of article B and then all the ideas of article C, but that requires a lot of work and the reader needs to memorize a great deal of information to remember what A said when reading about C. So the best way to do it, in my opinion, is the back and forth method, where you discuss idea 1 of articles A, B, and C, and then idea 2 of articles A, B, C, etc. This is why using a table to see how all the ideas compare and contrast will be useful. Next week I want to look at their tables and explain that they don't need to compare/contrast ALL the ideas of ALL the articles but select maybe four main ideas discussed by all three articles and discuss them in their paper. Well, overall this week went well and I was happy and not too stressed out. It seems like we are finally getting along and understanding each other's expectations... a little... On Wednesday, everyone was in class and on time, which is a real miracle! The student who went to England is back and doing fine, and the students who struggled on their first projects are still struggling on their new projects, which shows that I won't revolutionize the whole world in one semester. The students who have been doing well are still doing well and I am learning a lot from everyone. I think we are finally understanding where this whole thing is going and the point of doing all this work.
End of week 7 and it is the first time I do not finish a week exhausted by the stress and worries caused by my students! Let's see... This week we worked on summaries. The ultimate goal is to have my students write comparison/contrast papers and reviews of the articles they will choose for their final research papers, but from what I have learned last year, something as simple as writing a summary can become difficult. So I first chose an article from CNN/education that discussed the fact that American high school students really do not have that much homework to do compared to students in other countries, and used a worksheet that another 102 teacher gave me last year (a bit adapted for ESL students and our context). That form took the students step by step through the process of responding to the text, finding its main ideas, finding what support was given to prove the author's assertions/arguments, making an outline, and finally writing a summary. First, we had a great discussion about what should go or should not go in a summary, and then worked on that CNN article. The final little exercise on that worksheet was to write an exactly 100-word summary of the article, and from what I read so far, they all did it very well and in 100 words exactly. I then asked my students to select their own article, something related to their research, and go through the same steps on the worksheet to understand this article they had chosen. It is interesting to notice that they seem to do pretty well so far, and yesterday and today, I read their first drafts and was quite happy with what I saw. The hardest thing to do, of course, is to "step outside" of the text and discuss it from an "outsider's perspective," that is, to not discuss the ideas as if they were our own ideas but to use attributive tags such as "according to such and such..." or "such and such explains that..." but these international students seemed to understand the idea better than my American students. Maybe it is because I explained it better... maybe it is just that it is a different group of students... maybe it is because those students are just more mature... I don't know... but it is nice to see that they understand what I am explaining, at least! I am also having them learn how to ask very specific questions (other than grammar), such as "how should I quote this, is this well paraphrased, etc." instead of asking, "how can I write a better summary?" This is a little off the topic here, but I am not too happy with the theorists who say that students of the same age should be at the same cognitive level and therefore able to understand and learn the same things and think the same way. I entirely disagree. I believe that education and life experiences make a huge difference in the way people learn, work, think, and perceive the world. My international students have the same age as my American students from last semester, and yet they don't think the same way AT ALL, don't encounter the same difficulties in learning how to write, don't see life through the same eyes, and are definitely NOT able to understand things the same way. I do NOT agree with the people who told me that I was trying too hard with my American students because they were "only 19" and therefore not able to think critically. No, sorry, it is not because you are 19 that you cannot think critically, it is because no one has ever taught you how to do it intelligently. And no, it is not too early to learn, and yes, you will be able to learn, because thinking critically is not something that comes with age like wrinkles, but something that comes with age like knowledge: because you work to acquire the skill. And if no one will teach these kids how to do it, then I will try my best. On Wednesday, I also explained how to use the different conditional tenses in English, since many of them seem to have difficulties with that: if I had had a choice, I would have done this... I would study if I had enough time... I wish you were here... It is a tough construction! I think even the native speakers of English were interested, probably because they had never realized that these tenses existed as such and were so complicated. Overall, I am just taking things slowly and in a more relaxed way. I think I will give my students a choice for the next project, because I would like them to do both a review and a comparison/contrast paper, but we don't have the time for these two things if we really want to work in depth with them, so I'll propose either an in-depth comparison/contrast paper or two smaller projects. Then there is the annotated bibliography... which I am not sure I can squeeze in there... too much to do! But so far, so good, I am starting to get to know my students (yes, I know, 7th week, mid-term!) and to appreciate them, and I think it is a mutual thing. The blog entries on the feedback page were not bad at all today, and I know that they are learning a lot because I can see the progress they make and the direct improvement in their writing. I hope that they realize it too. On Wednesday I also showed them my money collection and told them I would really appreciate the addition of money from Pakistan, Indonesia, India, and other countries... I already received something from India (how beautiful it is!) and from Saudi Arabia (how cool!). It is a nice way to discuss about other countries and places we sometimes didn't even know existed! I really wish I had more time to work on culture. I wish we could share our knowledge about our languages (with only 14 students plus me, we speak Tamil, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese, Taiwanese, Sindhi, Urdu, Korean, Arabic, Telugu, Spanish, French, Malay, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi... and I'm sure I'm forgetting some!), because we are such a culturally rich group and could learn so much from each other’s experiences. OK, that was an easy and fun week, really. No major problems except with one student whose father had serious health problems and who is flying to England tomorrow... We will work through that. I told him not to worry at all about this class and that he should only be thinking about his family right now. I don't know how I could survive such a situation, especially if it were my first semester in this country, so if there is ONE thing I can understand, it is his need to concentrate on more important things right now. So, I worry about him... and hope his semester will not be a complete disaster. This was my week. There is progress. We are all going somewhere. Stay tuned for more next Friday!
OK, let us start with some positive comments for a start. Monday, I did not teach because I was in Michigan cleaning my sister's house and cooking for her because she was sick. Before leaving, on Friday night, I had written an email to my students telling them that we wouldn't meet on Friday and that they had to do their review of a paper about Japan electronically instead of on paper and send it to me by class time on Monday. The good news is, most students did read their messages and did do their homework on time! In fact, more than expected! The funny thing is that only two students did not read their email or do the assignment and it was my two Korean students. And on Tuesday, surprisingly, they were all ready with their first draft of the second project! Tuesday was really an interesting day. I had them bring three copies of their second draft, and they had to get in small groups with 2-3 classmates. First they had to read the whole paper once and then go back and present it to their classmates, explaining where they had discussed their personal experience, where they had put the research question, etc. The classmates could also make comments, and I had written some ideas of questions to discuss on the board. The comments they gave to each other were interesting, in general and from what I heard, and they asked smart questions. The only problem was, because they were all having the same problems with their paper (lack of conclusion, no specific questions asked, no good link with a personal experience, etc.), it was difficult to see these problems on other people's papers. I am still amazed by the fact that I have posted both the project assignment and the grading criteria online but that much of what I said HAD to be in the papers is still missing! But, this is a positive entry, so... a few days later I asked them what they had thought about this different way to do peer-review, and I got some good feedback. I think that it is great for them to realize that their "audience" does not know what they know, to read about other people's lives, and to see how other people write. The only question that was not addressed and should have been addressed after this activity is: do you need to make all the suggested changes and trust all the comments made by classmates? This is a tricky question... and even as they were giving comments on other people's drafts, I heard and saw some who contradicted argued or contradicted other's comments by saying things such as "don't worry about what other people said, I think your paper is great and you don't need to change anything!" So, great peer-review activity, but I still need to work out the details. Wednesday and Thursday were conference days, and as usual, those days are frustrating for me, but, on the very positive side, as I am reading the final drafts of project 2 that I just got today, I see that those who came to conference have written a significantly better paper than those who didn't! So, these conferences are NOT a waste of time and I am getting better at giving useful feedback! This gives me hope. However, two out of the three students who struggle the most did not show up again! On Wednesday, I had asked those students who had received 84% or less on project 1 to come to conference, and I knew this should have been four students... but only three came. The good thing is that I had an hour to take care of three students, the ones with the lowest grades in class overall, and that was great! The fourth one "slept through" class. On Thursday, I wanted to see the students who had received a 94% or less on their first project, and had also said that the rest of the students were free to come if they had questions. I knew that I should have seen at least four students, but three showed up, plus a few who did not have to come. The fourth one thought that it was optional for everyone and so didn't come, when HE SHOULD HAVE COME even IF it had been optional because he needs SO MUCH HELP! Ok, let’s stay calm, I have not read his final draft yet, and maybe it will be amazingly good! Friday, today. Oh, that was a good day! It is the first time that I enforced my new "late=absent" policy and I think they might have gotten the idea by now. When the two students entered the class late, I simply said "you can come to class, because you'll learn a lot today, but I'll still count you as absent." Ouch! I know this is so mean! But honestly, there is nothing else I can do. I have tried it all. And I told them, “this is the way it is, because I am pissed off!” Now, if I start using such language in class, I wonder how I will talk to my students by the end of the semester! So, today, after the little “late crisis” and a 10 minute free-writing exercise (about trees, goodness!), we started discussing about the third project. This project is a review/critique of three articles about their topics. The thing is, though, I am not sure they know how to summarize an article, and so before explaining the “reviewing”: process, I want to go through a short pre-assignment: choose an article discussing your topic and summarize it. This afternoon, I talked to Jessie and noticed that she is doing the same with her students, which makes me happy because then I do not feel like I am torturing my students for nothing. For the learning process, I was looking for a good article to practice on, and Jessie told me that there is a nice article on CNN about the homework load of American students! Good, we will use that! For the review/critique learning activities, I think I will use the movie Gattaca, and we will probably watch it together in class and analyze it together. This part was a great assignment with my 101 class last fall, and I hope it will go well this semester too. Gattaca is really a nicely controversial but great movie. So, after explaining the project 3, I asked them to write a summary of a movie they liked, in 7 minutes, no more, no less. Then, I said “now, write a summary of that same movie in only 1 minute!” And finally, I asked them to write a one-word summary of that movie! I think it proved my point well, and then I put them in small groups and had them write down a lit of ten items they thought should or should not go in a summary. We did not have time to finish the activity, but they wrote their lists on the board and we started going through what they wrote. I have to say that they had more ideas than my 101 students last fall, and we had a very nice discussion to understand what kind of geographical and temporal details should go in a summary. My students were arguing… they were proving their points really well… it was great! I will finish this activity on Monday. It did not take long with my 101 students, but I think it will take more time with these students because they have such different perspectives of life! Overall then, this week went fast and rather well. I discussed with one of the three students who struggle the most today too, after class, and he told me that he hates writing and that the grades he gets in this class do not make him happy. I was rather strict and direct, and I told him that he had a choice: either come to class but do nothing and get a D, or come to class, try to work and participate, and learn something. I also told him that I was frustrated because I wanted to help him but he would not let me do this by not coming to conferences, by not participating, and by not doing his homework! I said, “ I don’t want to fight with you and I don’t want to make your life miserable. I will also not call you home to tell you what the homework is or to check your emails! It is YOUR choice, your decision, and if you make the decision to learn as much as you can, you can count on me to help you as much as I can!” Today, I also got their final drafts of project 2. Time goes fast! I think that the grades of those who did not come to conference will not be good, but that those who did come will see a nice improvement in their grades. I hope it will motivate them and show them that they ARE becoming better writers.
