By Adam Turner W...Social bookmarkingis a process that allows users to collect their...

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The English Connection December 2006 Volume 10, Issue 4

Writing Tools on the Net By Adam Turner

Writing instructors are generally familiar with a number of web sites that are useful sources for grammar, quizzes, and writing tips. However, there are also an increasing

number of useful, free web sites that can enhance howyou and your students write, collaborate, and share theproduct of your writing. Many of these sites will also beof interest to those currently doing an online master’sdegree. I can only provide a brief sketch of thepossibilities here. To get a fuller explanation of eachservice, please go to the web pages mentioned below.

Many students have difficulty selecting reliableinformation on the Internet. The severity of thisproblem can be reduced by using “Google Scholar”(http://scholar.google.com/). It is a search engine fromGoogle that only searches academic sources in itssearch and omits personal web sites and other lessreliable sources of information.

Web 2.0 is a buzzword used these days to describe howmany software applications are moving online allowingusers to collaborate, share resources, and learn fromeach other. Social bookmarking is a process that allowsusers to collect their “favorites,” or “bookmarks,” ofweb sites from their browser and share them onlinewith others through networks. You can select multiplekeywords or “tags” to organize your information. Themost popular one, which I have just started using, isdel.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), but there are manyothers. If you want to browse hundreds of links onwriting, add me to your network once you have anaccount. My del.icio.us ID is “ifli” (http://del.icio.us/ifli). A more scholarly one, CiteULike, can be found athttp://www.citeulike.org/.

Colleagues working on curriculum projects couldcollaborate in the collection of online resources,students could use the service to do group research formajor presentations, and graduate students couldshare their research links on the same page. Membersof KOTESOL SIGs could share networks of links on atopic of similar interest, instead of just emailing themwhere they often get buried in a receiver’s inbox. Youcan also annotate the links so you can find them moreeasily. Those working on a specific project could sharethe same ID and password for an individual account tofacilitate the collection of materials in one place.

Working in teams is increasingly becoming the norm inmany organizations. Our students will probablycollaborate online in their work life in ways we cannotimagine now. To support this trend, there is anincreasing number of free tools that allow us to worktogether more effectively. Most readers will agree how

difficult it is to keep track of multiple revisions of adocument online when working with a team. Now,using “writeboards” (http://www.writeboard.com/tour/), the document can be stored online and showsall revisions as well as the latest version of a basic textdocument. Students could use it for collaboration andpeer editing, while KOTESOL could use it for editingand planning.

If you work with colleagues in different buildings andon multiple projects, you might consider putting allyour information into your backpack - your onlinebackpack, www.backpackit.com. This web serviceallows you to create pages for notes, put up “to-do”lists, and givey o u r s e l freminders, allorganized on ani n d i v i d u a lproject basis.Rather thanhaving all yourd a t a o nindividual computer drives, anyone in the project canview it online. Students could use it together forproject-based learning and dividing up group tasks.

Some teachers have asked their students to make theirown home pages for class projects. However, the learningcurve for making web pages was often a bit high andcould take away from generating the content. Google, in anew project still under development, has made thisprobably as simple as it can get. Not only does it generateweb pages that don’t require any programming, but theservice also hosts the pages, making web page workinstant. You will find the web page creator and otherprojects at Google Labs (http://labs.google.com/). AGoogle account, however, is required.

Finally, Colorado State University has created a writingstudio environment where you can organize your writingand get access to resources for writing, and especially,teaching writing (http://writing.colostate .edu/). Youmight also ask your students if there are any Koreanversions of similar online services they find useful.

The Author Adam Turner works at HanyangUniversity where he is the Director of theEnglish Writing Center. He has taughtundergraduate and graduate writingclasses at Hanyang. His main interests areteaching English for Specific Purposeswriting, learning strategies, and blendedlearning. Email: [email protected]

WritingRight

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The English Connection September 2006 Volume 10, Issue 3

Hobgoblin Handmaidens of ExpositionBy Jack Large

When one has reached a comfortable and confident level of personal writing skill, some practical disdain for some of the rules is not always a bad thing if one’s

writing is to be fresh and interesting. But “fresh” and“interesting” are not always the first adjectivesspringing to mind when listing necessary qualities ofwork outside the lumped genre tagged “creativewriting.”

Emerson’s oft-quoted aphorism, “A foolish consistencyis the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by littlestatesmen, philosophers and divines” seemsreadymade for us, who are generally satisfied bystudent writings that are compliant with theinstructions we give them. This is a defense of ateacher’s impulse to compel compliance with writtenguidelines from students; it is likely that the studentwho cannot will have difficulty complying with anycomplex written instructions, and not just those forwriting.

Consistency winds the armature of formal grammar.Grammar is structure, and structure requires nothing,if not coherence. Grammar has been used as ametaphor for the structure of an array of humanbehavior well beyond the defining one of language.There is more to justify language teaching than thatsubjects become capable of its use, and this is ourmotivation to practice, fueled at least in part by thesatisfaction we gain from observing students grow tomore completely understand themselves and theirworld.

Thus great harvest of benefit can be cultivated bymaking clear to writing students certain patterns thatare present in effective writing, i.e., writing thatachieves a desired (instructed) effect. We prepare theground for this almost without thinking when we talkabout such important elements as “agreement” ofnumber, tense, gender, subject-verb, etc. in buildingsentences. Likewise, when we explain to NNS studentssuch notions as parallelism (consistency) of form inrepetitive series of words or phrases or clauses or labelsof this or that sort, we reify the subliminal recognitionand cultivation of meaning each of us nurtures inourselves that, coupled with memory and recognition,enables us to communicate confidently. Confidentcommunication is our paramount goal, for ourselves,and for those we teach.

A good place to begin, after our students have achievedreasonable progress at elementary levels of vocabularyand comprehension and after we have established aninterpersonal basis for more complex interactions, is

with simple writing exercises that elicit compliancewith a written instruction. It helps to include somevocabulary, without defining specific terms. For Koreanstudents, a popular project has been to tell them to“describe the Korean national flag, taegukki, for aperson who wants to create one with paint or markers.Use these words in your description: side, top, bottom,left, right, diagonal, horizontal, length, width, black,red, blue, white, circle, bar, short, long, curved, spiral,center, middle, above, below.”

Another, morea d v a n c e d ,exercise is todescribe tabulardata, itemsordinarily foundin dailyn e w s p a p e r sdescribing the movements of stock prices, weatherforecasts, or television schedules. Any kind of schedule,train and plane schedules, for example, are veryadaptable for this. A big part of their usefulness is forpracticing the inclusion of time-sequenced or otherordered, sequential information.

One group of intermediate-level students becamequickly engrossed in an effort to write a listing for anEnglish teaching job at their school, following a modelreadily available on Dave’s ESL Cafe web site. This wasthe assignment after an initial list-writing exerciserequiring them to itemize the qualifications a teachershould have and a discussion in English and Korean ofwhy they picked certain characteristics.

When we remember that our students measure teachersuccess in terms of how much we contribute to theirfuture job fitness, we can justify coaching complianceand, yes, that old hobgoblin consistency in ourstudents. Those, especially, who go on to attainprofessional-level workplace status will do so in directproportion to their ability to correctly interpret variousrequirements set out in writing along the way, and tocomply with those written requirements as precisely asthey can.

The AuthorJack Large is a member of theKOTESOL Writing and Editing SpecialInterest Group. Jack is also Global IssuesSIG Facilitator, past Seoul Chapter Vice-President, and a fountain of inspirationfor the KOTESOL Poster Project beingheld at the 2006 International

Conference. Email: [email protected]

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The English Connection June 2006 Volume 10, Issue 2

Writing Role-PlaysBy Tasha M. Troy

Besides occasional study for the Test of Written English on the TOEFL, writing is largely a neglected skill in Korea. English learners are so concerned with studying the grammar and

reading skills they need to score high on school examsand TOEIC and TOEFL that they overlook productionskills such as writing. This is a great shame becausethrough writing, students can practice several aspectsof language, including grammar, vocabulary, andgeneral communication skills.

These days email has become one of the most commonforms of written communication. By using emailwriting, students can be encouraged to use Englishwriting in realistic situations. In my business writingclasses, I have used what I call “writing role-plays,”activities which I have used in a variety of situations. Ioriginally designed them to be used over a 10-weekbusiness writing course, with writing partners beingassigned permanently, but I have also adapted them to

four-week email writing courses with temporary orrotating writing partners.

Activity: First , I created several imaginarycompanies: a restaurant, a travel agency, aphotography studio, etc. I divided the class into pairsand designated each pair as a different company. Each“company” then interacted with the other “companies”in the class to accomplish a variety of writing tasksbased on my curriculum, for example, requesting orproviding information, inviting and arrangingmeetings, or complaining and apologizing. Forexample, the restaurant might want to createpromotional photos, so they contact the photographystudio. By creating realistic communicative writingtasks, the students become engaged in the activity.

Management: As you can imagine, an activity of thissort creates a lot of emails. I have found three ways tomanage such a class. First, you can have the studentsemail each other directly, having the students “cc” youin all of their emails. This is functional, but in myexperience, it often seemed that my class materialswere scattered over a dozen email boxes. Second, youcan use Yahoo Groups, which is the option I amcurrently using. Each time I start a new course, I set upa new group to be a focus point of the course. This

makes running the course much more efficient.However, every time I start a new course, I have tocreate and organize the group site as well as upload allof my materials. Third, you can use a coursemanagement system such as Moodle or Blackboard,which allows you to create a new course without muchtrouble.

Evaluation: Evaluation is another area that canbecome unmanageable if it is not well organized.G e n e r a l l y ,before class ord u r i n g p e e rreview time, Iread through thee m a i l s a n dselect sentencesor sections ofemails that maybe confusing, especially to native English speakers. Icopy and paste these into a separate document, then goover each point of misunderstanding or unnaturalwording with the class as a whole. That way, the wholeclass can benefit from the explanations. If you need togive a score to each student, you could assign one emailtask for more in-depth evaluation. My evaluationsfocus more on how successfully the students completedthe task and if they communicated clearly, rather thanfocusing on grammatical errors.

The concept of writing role-plays may soundinteresting to you, but if you don’t teach business emailwriting, what can you do? There are still many reasonswhy people send and receive emails outside of a strictlybusiness context. You could have students set upmeetings or arrange reunions among their classmates;give news to friends, family, or classmates; or askcompanies or universities for information. Anotheridea is to set up an online discussion where studentscan respond to each other in writing instead of orally,choosing one student each day or each week to start thediscussion. Hopefully, you can find a way that will suityour individual situation and your students’ needs, andat the same time, encourage them to write more.

The AuthorTasha M. Troy has been teachingESL for eight years, spending four anda half years in Korea. She currentlyteaches at the Samsung HumanResource Development Center inYongin. She has taught both academicand business writing. Email:

[email protected]

Through writing, students can practice several aspects of language.

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The English Connection March 2006 Volume 10, Issue 1

Teach Backwards, Let Students Fail

Teach backwards and let your students fail. It sounds like a recipe for losing your job, but it just might produce more effective results!

Give the Final Exam FirstRather than teaching students step-by-step, considerteaching backwards by having them produce a sampleessay or paragraph, before giving instruction, right atthe beginning of the course. If you grade grammar as amajor component of your course, consider starting thesemester with a test or “final”exam to see where yourstudents are at. You can also do this with specific skillslike paraphrasing and referencing assignments orcorrectly formatting business emails.

In the sciences, there is a trend towards knowledgesurveys. Students self-report their skills or level ofknowledge about a subject, and the results allow theinstructor to adjust the course or unit to focus more onproblem areas before starting to teach it. Ambitiousteachers could give students different assignmentsbased on their weak areas. This approach can also helpto teach mixed-level classes more effectively.

Let the Students Fail OftenAnyone who has ever played a video game knows thatpart of the reason it is interesting is due to the desire tofinally succeed, after many failed attempts, inaccomplishing a challenging goal. Schrank (2002)argues that students should be able to fail withoutconsequences, just like in a game. In the traditionalwriting class, correcting students’papers is really moreabout assigning grades than making sure the studentshave learned what was taught. I no longer gradeassignments with percentage grades during thesemester, but only grade the final essay thatincorporates all the skills (assignments) that weretaught during the term. Using a mastery approach, youcan create more difficult and challenging assignmentsand allow the students to redo the assignment until theobjectives are achieved, which then gives them a fullscore. No percentage grades are assigned. This raisesstandards, and increases student interest andattention. Of course, you need to create anenvironment that does not point out to the rest of classan individual student’s failure to solve a task, andstudent learning must be supported like with any otherapproach.

For example, rather than teach web search skills first, Ihad an Internet treasure hunt for information fromwebsites that the students would need for their essayassignments. I was able to help students individuallywho were unable to find some items themselves, while

more proficient students were not held back, butallowed to complete the hunt. I knew that the class hadvarying levels of computer literacy, so that slowlyteaching each skill step-by-step would have beenwasting some of the time for half of the class.

Stress Your Students a BitIt is always interesting to me to observe how muchbetter most migrant workers from developing countriesspeak Koreanthan do mostEnglish teachersin Korea -i n c l u d i n gmyself! Is thisresult due tofun, scaffoldedlearning in asafe, supportive, stress-free classroom environmentwith kind and compassionate teaching; or is it more ofa case of sink-or-swim learning in a real immersionsituation with clear needs and goals?

We should create a supportive environment for ourstudents, and we can’t create a real immersionenvironment in a writing class, but we can create moreauthentic tasks. For example, I assign a business emailthat students have to really send to a person orcompany. If you are teaching how to write a resume ina writing class, you could simply not accept anyresumes that did not meet the minimum format andspelling expectations you set. This would simulate howan inadequate resume would be rejected outright by aninternational company. Students take writing moreseriously when there is a real, or even a perceived,“audience.”One of the best teaching moments that I

have ever had was when a student came up to me andsaid, “Thank you for pushing me.”This was after I hadrejected her resume assignment twice but helped herwith the third version, which was very well written andformatted.

ReferenceSchrank, R.C. (2002). Designing world-class e-

learning. New York: McGraw-Hill.

The AuthorAdam Turner is Director of theHanyang University English WritingCenter. He is also the founder ofKOTESOL’s Writing and Editing SpecialInterest Group. To join, visit http://groups.msn.com/KOTESOLWESIG.Email:[email protected].

WritingRight

By Adam Turner

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Poetry in the ClassroomBy Jack Large

Poetry is a receptacle for all that is primal in language. Poetic archetypes mirror, or signal, primal elements which are familiar in nature. Speculation about the origins of language use

in human evolution has not often included musingsabout the extent of influence that measured linguisticphenomena like rhyming and timing have exerted earlyin the evolution of speech, yet it seems that it musthave been considerable. After all , nature andenvironmental and behavioral phenomena,prehistorically, must have been the driving forcebehind the process of language building, with peoplefirst imitating sounds, and then morphing the soundsin subtle, but increasingly sophisticated, ways tocommunicate the facts of life as experienced by thespeakers.

In biology, the theory of recapitulation suggests that, asan organism embryo develops, its developing structuralforms hint of its evolutionary origins, eventuallyleading to the modern version. I regard poetry with asimilar sense of deep time in the presence of patternedformal features that are repeated from oldest to mostmodern, with examples to be taken from the mostdurable of poems through all the time in between. Thepatterned “feel” and “taste” and “smell” and “ring” ofmeaning-beyond-fact that one detects while reading apoem suggest that, by focusing language learners onand facilitating their exercise with these archetypalforms, we might help them move more rapidly from thestunting sense of “study” to a more natural andinteresting process that is closer to the organicacquisition process of the native speaker. There is nobetter place to begin than at the nexus of rhyming andtiming.

There is little question that the language of prehistoricpeople was replete with examples of sounds repeated,or rhymed as it were, and that the rhythmic expressionof these matched sounds first appeared in, and wassubsequently reified by, generation after generation inthe form of chanting and singing in all the many

ceremonial contexts that provided the glue that boundsocieties together. The excitement and spectacle ofsuch occasions would exert a mnemonic influence onthe young, and their playtime would consist to somedegree in imitating the forms discovered in thecelebrations. Likewise, the gentler forms would havebeen employed to calm the babies, to share insights

into the forces of nature, and to supplicate the godsthat held sway over those forces.

Later, with the advent of writing and its application tothe goals and motives of the various classes of civilsociety, therulers andmerchants andpriestly eliteswho held swayover thep r o d u c t i v eenergies of thec o m m u n i t y ,graphic representations of the patterned soundsbecame necessary in order to preserve and spread theirthoughts and ways beyond the bounds of the centralplace. Viewed in this way, it appears that an earlyconnection between the spoken and written word musthave been an expression of the forms that today areuniversally recognized as art. In fact, one might arguethat the only form that might have developed earlierwould be connected to the material dimensions of dailyactivity: counting, pricing, contracting, inventorying, etc.

Children learn verses before they learn to read (e.g.,“Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long as a telephonewire” for jumping rope, and Mother Goose standardslike Jack Sprat and Hickory Dickory Dock.) Songs withrepeated phrases, like “Here we go round the mulberrybush...,” remain with us long after the ideas and textswe learn much later will have been long forgotten.There are riddles, l imericks, tongue-twisters,palindromes... all of these provide an opportunity toteach and learn speaking and writing in ways that yieldthe most durable results.

Poetry is about writing the poem, of course, but poemsare written to be read silently and out loud, andlistened to in the poets own voice, if possible. Start bybrainstorming a subject for the poem, and then try towrite a catchy title. Often, the first line of the poem isthe title, and may display starkly poetic imagery all byitself, as with, for example, Dylan Thomas’ “The forcethat through the green fuse drives the flower.”

The AuthorJack Large is one of the founders ofKorea TESOL. Over the years, he hasserved in various positions. At present,he is the facilitator of the Global IssuesSIG, and is on the faculty of SeojeongCollege in Yangju, Gyeonggi-do.

Children learn verses before they learn to read.

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Writing Homework That Works

By Jack Large

At my age, a good writing homework assignment is one that I can remember without reference to my notes. Its best feature, aside from a fundamental simplicity,

is that it interests the students who must perform it. Itmust also be impossible to plagiarize. Something of theexperience of completing it should also remainindelibly in the students’ minds. Finally, it should beimpossible to get it all wrong if the basic requirementsare met. If a genuine effort is made to accuratelycomplete the assignment, the result must be regardedas acceptable (and graded accordingly), even when theEnglish is imperfect. Best for this is an authentic,unique, first-time experience in which the writers canrecognize themselves.

This project was tailored for 2nd- and 3rd-year travelbusiness majors within easy travel of Seoul, but it couldwork as a general writing assignment in other contexts.The Korean National Tourism Organization produces aslick, free English-language guidebook. In it is a list ofall the international consular offices in Seoul. Each of40 students had to approach a consular office and tryto interview a representative of a specific country. Thefinal task was to write a thorough description of thesteps taken, what they encountered in the process, andthe most interesting facts they learned about theirsubject country as a result of their efforts.

Some groundwork was necessary to prepare thestudents. A discussion of the kinds of things that makeKorea a tourist destination helped students toformulate a list of questions to ask about a country’sprominent features. Questions were evaluated for

grammar and word choice. After a week of research,the students practiced by interviewing each other androle-playing the country representative. Three featuresof the assignment helped to subvert Internetplagiarism and made the task more challenging andmore interesting. Three items: a photo of the student atthe entrance of the consulate, an audio recording of theinterview, and print items provided to visitors had toaccompany the submitted reports.

Support and preparation for the students to completethe assignment served a number of key objectives. Thefirst was to make the assignment relevant to the

students’ interests, i.e., it was about their field. Relatedto relevance, it set clear use-based parameters forvocabulary expansion: terms of description, place,nation and nationality, geography, climate, currencyand cost, etc. Akey componentof vocabulary toinclude was thatof reportedspeech. I used atask sheet toillustrate thisand tofamiliarize the students with the process of selectingalternate forms for speak (e.g., say, state, report,suggest, add, mention) and ask (e.g., request, beg,inquire, question, query, quiz, invite) in an effort todefeat redundancy.

To illustrate precise, descriptive method, an interimexercise completed in one class session was thedescription of the national flag of each student’srespective country. This helped to orient somewhat theuse of prepositions and terms of placement on a field,as well as shapes and colors, and to the extent that theywere aware of it, elements of symbolism in the flagdesign. Several students, on their own initiative, wenton to complete the additional exercise of describingtheir own flag, taegukki.

The resulting reports were the best possible evidencethat the assignment was a success. Part of the evidencewas the surprising number of positive comments aboutthe experience at the end of the individual reports. Thebest part of the experience, from my perspective, wasthe clear shift in student reaction from the all-too-familiar “It is too difficult!” to “I think this is very funand interesting.” A brief survey at the beginning of theprocess revealed that less than one-tenth of the classhad traveled outside Korea, and so, had no experienceof the sort that always precedes it , namely,communicating and interacting with real people. Iconcluded that this project had as much as it couldhave of the elements that I have cited as required forsuccess from the perspective of both the student andthe instructor.

The AuthorJack Large is a member of the KOTESOL Writingand Editing Special Interest Group. For moreinformation, see http://groups.msn.com/KOTESOLwesig. Jack is also GI-SIG Facilitator andhas most recently served as Seoul Chapter Vice-President.

Why do so many writingteachers correct everygrammar mistake?

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Lessons LearnedWhile recently reviewing lesson materials, I was struckby how differently I teach writing class now than whenI started out. In this column I would like to questionsome common teaching practices and suggest somealternatives.

Don t Confuse Teaching With LearningI am struck by how often teachers complain that theydon t have enough time to cover everything in class.However, I don t see why we have to. Most learning, asopposed to teaching, takes place outside of theclassroom, anyway. People get entire degrees onlinewithout attending a class. I now spend more timemaking materials on topics like formal email style thatcan be effectively learned through self-instructionalhandouts or webpages rather than on materialsdesigned to be used and explained as class handouts. Inaddition, self-instructional materials can be distributedto individual students to reflect their specific writingproblems. If, on the other hand, many students havedifficulty with the same writing problem, then I mayteach to those specific problems. This way, feedbackcan be more effective, individualized, and focused onstudent needs.

Let Students Choose Their Own Topic Many writing textbooks have interesting essay topicsand readings on current issues written by establishedwriters. Some textbook series are even supported byCNN videos, for example, to create rich learningresources for students. However, for most kinds ofwriting, essential writing skills include the ability tochoose an interesting topic, narrow it down, findsources, and come up with an original or interestingthesis statement. I suggest that teachers create theobjectives and evaluation criteria, but let the studentschoose a topic that interests them for almost every

assignment. Many students have little experiencechoosing their own topics and find this task verydifficult, yet rewarding. For example, I assigned a shortprocess writing assignment but did not set a specifictopic. One student wrote a recipe to make her versionof super ramen while another wrote instructions forcalibrating a laser range finder. Both met theassignment s objectives, and they were much moreengaged because they had ownership of their topic.

Feedback: Separate Higher-Order /Lower-Order ConcernsWhy do so many writing teachers correct everygrammar mistake (lower order) on a student s paper in

addition to giving general comments on organization(higher order) at the same time? I am not sure, apartfrom the fact that so many students (and teachers)equate writing with grammar. The only reason tocheck every grammar mistake on a paper is to get apiece of writing ready for publication. In contrast, thepurpose of a writing assignment is to make sure thatstudents havemet theobjective of theassignment. Infact, there is noc o n c l u s i v eevidence in ourfield thatg r a m m a rcorrection without extensive revision has any effect atall on writing improvement! This finding, I think, is anintuitively reasonable conclusion for most experiencedwriting teachers.

The more I teach writing, the less grammar feedback Iseem to give. However, I have been giving morefrequent feedback at a higher order of concern. Forexample, for major assignments, I comment on thestudents outlines, and they must submit a workingthesis statement to show they are on the right trackbefore continuing. Feedback on the first draft doesn tinclude any grammar correction unless it interfereswith communicating meaning. Indeed, most of thefeedback I give occurs before the final assignment isdue, not after. This approach helps to eliminatecommon problems in the early stages of the essay,thereby saving time and increasing learning.

Take a Mastery ApproachI may have fewer writing objectives in my classes thansome other writing teachers, but I expect the studentsto meet each of them. In other words, students mustresubmit assignments until they have achieved theobjectives, such as having a clear thesis statement orusing APA reference style correctly. I see assigning agrade, for example, 70 percent as an almost uselessactivity. What happened to the other 30 percent iswhat should interest us. Either the student hasachieved the objective we have set for the assignmentor they have not. If they have not, they should do thetask again until they have achieved what is expected ofthem. Admittedly, setting clear objectives is not alwayseasy to do, but it is definitely worthwhile. I take acumulative portfolio approach to grading to enable theprocess of revision, while also satisfying departmentaldemands for traditional grades. With this approach,students have an incentive to do a thorough job fromthe start; otherwise they will quickly find out that theyjust create more homework for themselves! This mayseem like more work, and admittedly, sometimes it is;however, I have achieved better results using thisapproach.

WritingRightBy Adam Turner

Why do so many writingteachers correct everygrammar mistake?

In the last issue, the first part of this topic discussed thegeneral problem of plagiarism in the Korean context. Thispart discusses practical strategies for dealing withplagiarism in the classroom. As a reminder, the termparaphrase will be used to mean "to rewrite anotherauthor’s text acceptably with citations." Citation is used torefer to "giving sources for direct quotations, a paraphrase,or a summary." Plagiarism refers to "unacceptable use ofsources ranging from outright copying to improperparaphrasing, even with citation."

Think PositiveExplain why students need to cite sources rather thandemand that they cite. A colleague of mine recentlywondered why so few books explain the whys and whens ofquoting. Although quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizingstrategies can go beyond the simple use of sources toprovide evidence for arguments, the range of reasons forquotes and paraphrase goes well beyond what most writingtextbooks describe. (Readers can email me for a handouton this topic for advanced students at [email protected].)

Teach How to Choose Quotations ExplicitlySurprisingly, some students do not have a clear idea of thecriteria for choosing citations. You may want to read aselected text together and have the students discuss whythe author chose a particular direct quotation, paraphrase,or summary. It may not be as clear to them as you mayassume. One WE-SIG member gives her students a usefulrule of thumb: limit quotations to no more than 10 percentof your paper.

Rethink Citing ParaphrasesI have found that students have greater difficulty withparaphrasing skills than with direct quotations. Onesolution is to ask students to give page references for theirparaphrases and summaries, as well as for directquotations. In fact, I think all paraphrases should havepage numbers! It can be unclear how many sentences thereader is including in a given citation. A citation mayunclearly refer only to the sentence it is a part of, orelements of the entire paragraph. Taking a processapproach, you may also ask students for their researchnotes or a photocopy or printout of the page they got theirquotation or paraphrase from. You can then check theoriginal source to see if they got it right. Unfortunately, Ihave found that doing practice examples in class has beenmuch less effective than having the students select andparaphrase or quote real sources in context.

Help Students Manage Their TimeCases of outright copying are just as likely to be caused bylack of time management skills as by a lack of citationknowledge. Some students know what plagiarism is, but,being short of time to complete their essays, they copy toshorten the writing process. Lecturing on plagiarism doesnot help much. If the students are doing a substantial pieceof writing, ask for outlines and a rough draft before the finalwriting is due. I have a first draft deadline as well as a finaldeadline for all assigned research.

Remove the TemptationIt is easy to copy and paste from the Internet. Consider notaccepting general or personal website

website information for sources and restrictingintermediate students to a list of well-known online sourcessuch as newspapers and encyclopedias. Many youngerstudents who have grown up with the Internet often relytoo much on Internet sources of dubious quality andgeneral search engines. See if your library subscribes toquality information services such ashttp://www.lexisnexis.com/. Also, print out a typicalplagiarism policy from a western university. Students,especially those who want to study abroad, will often besurprised and concerned about the consequences.

Have Students Watch You Actually Paraphrase aSentenceUsing a computer room so students could see me write, Itook a paragraph that I was working on and integrated aparaphrase into it. The original source was visible on thescreen while I was reworking the sentence. I took themthrough all of the choices from unacceptable paraphrase(simply substituting a few nouns) to acceptable paraphrase.Actually demonstrating the differences in real-timebenefited the students. While writing the acceptableparaphrase, I verbalized what I was thinking, how I madeword choices, how I changed the structure, etc.

A Final NoteThere has been a great deal of discussion in journals aboutawareness of cross-cultural differences in notions ofplagiarism and using sources. Some have advocated a moreflexible and understanding response to differences innotions of ownership of ideas in an era of English as anInternational Language. However, I find these discussionssomewhat irrelevant. There are currently no acceptablestandards for changing the criteria for acceptableparaphrase in English. Our students will have tocommunicate in professional or academic environments inthe future, and Korean faculty members have assured methat they want their students to adapt to internationalEnglish norms when writing in English, especially forpublication as future graduate students. I do not see that analternative is appropriate to meet their needs.

Recommended Sources on Sourceshttp://www.dartmouth.edu/~sources/contents.htmlhttp://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/electric/trainingmods/plagiarism_test/main.htmlhttp://www.plagiarism.org/

Writing and Editing Special Interest GroupAny KOTESOL member can join our online discussions by requesting to join the sitehttp://groups.msn.com/KOTESOLWESIG/

Remove theTemptationIt is easy to copyand paste fromthe Internet.Consider notaccepting generalor personal

The English Connection March 2005 Volume 9, Issue 1

23

Avoiding Plagiarism


This is the first part of a two-part column describing whatthe intermediate or advanced writing class teacher in Koreaneeds to know about their teaching environment, especiallyregarding referencing and plagiarism.First, a definition of terms: Plagiarism is the use of othersources unacceptably ranging from copying withoutcitation to excessive borrowing of the words of anotherauthor but with citation. Paraphrase is the rewording of ashort piece of text written by another author with a citation.

Know Your AudienceIn North America, the standard undergraduate "termpaper" common in the social sciences and humanitiesdevelops a thesis and properly cites scholarly sourcesaccording to a style guide such as APA. In Korea, this is rarein undergraduate education, as no particular style ofreferencing is usually required.While this does not excuse the prevalence of plagiarism, wemust try to understand that some of our students really,honestly, do not know how to write a research paper usingWestern criteria. This can even apply up to the graduatelevel. According to my students, a Masters Degreeprogram, either here or abroad, is often the first time thatmany Korean students learn how to properly cite and usescholarly references.

Note Cultural DifferencesClaiming the existence of cultural differences in misusingsources is valid. However, it does not mean that we cannotinsist on the appropriate use of writing standards. Since

most Korean students know that the overt forms ofcheating are unacceptable, focus on paraphrasing skillsfirst. It could be said that an unacceptably high number ofKorean students - right up to the doctoral level and evensome faculty - believe that it is acceptable to copy either anentire sentence, or most of it, and then paste it into an essaywithout quotation marks as long as the citation is clearlygiven. This is simply not ethical from a Westernperspective. However, in Korean writing, it is generallyacceptable to paraphrase liberally or use larger chunks ofother's writing as long as the citation is clearly given. ManyKorean writers do not fully understand that the wordsthemselves, not just the ideas they contain, are the"property" of the author, and must be acknowledged. Thisis a particularly Western concept.

Take One Step BackIn order to teach citation skills, it is a good idea to take onestep back and discuss why we use citations. Students maynot fully understand that citations are used as evidenceand/or support for the thesis of the paper. They may seecitations simply as a way to show that they have done theresearch and know the topic. Finally, complex historicalreasons might help to explain the cause of plagiarism. Intraditional forms of East Asian writing, the key point was toshow mastery of the classical literature rather than developan original thesis. This factor may still be influencing ourstudents¡¯ writing.

Know your University PoliciesMost universities in Korea do not have a plagiarism policyor a clear process for dealing with plagiarism. Andaccording to some foreign teachers and Korean professors,if you have a serious problem with plagiarism, you mayhave to solve it privately with the student instead of relyingon established policies for guidance and support. Studentswhose essays have sections obviously copied are usuallygiven lower grades. The answer to the question of whythere is so much plagiarism in Korean universities may, infact, be very simple: the students are not punished severely.

Know Thyself Native English speaking teachers, especially with anEnglish or English Literature background, may be relyingtoo much on MLA or APA styles as their frame of referencefor teaching advanced composition. It is also important forteachers to get a better sense of the types of writingstudents really need; for example, why isn¡¯t formal emailwriting taught more often as an essential writing skill?What about in-text citations or the choice of reportingverbs such as ¡°suggests¡± and ¡°claims,¡± etc.? Whatabout the use of direct quotations? In the hundreds ofengineering papers I have read, I have only seen two casesof direct quotation!To be more effective EFL teachers, we should try tounderstand the environment we work in. Also, it should benoted that plagiarism has gone global. Some foreignteachers who have been teaching in Korea for many yearstend to underestimate how prevalent plagiarism hasbecome in Western countries. To combat plagiarism, manyNorth American universities now subscribe to services suchas http://www.turnitin.com/, an Internet search tool, tocatch students who are plagiarizing.In my next column I will outline specific strategies andactivities that can be used in class. In the meantime, go tohttp://www.ohiou.edu/esl/help/plagiarism.html for agood, general resource on plagiarism.

21


research and knowthe topic. Finally,complex historicalreasons might helpto explain the causeof plagiarism. Intraditional forms ofEast Asian writing,

the key point was to show mastery of the classical literaturerather than develop an original thesis. This factor may stillbe influencing our students' writing.

Know Your University PoliciesMost universities in Korea do not have a plagiarism policyor a clear process for dealing with plagiarism. Andaccording to some foreign teachers and Korean professors,if you have a serious problem with plagiarism, you mayhave to solve it privately with the student instead of relyingon established policies for guidance and support. Studentswhose essays have sections obviously copied are usuallygiven lower grades. The answer to the question of why thereis so much plagiarism in Korean universities may, in fact,be very simple: the students are not punished severely.

Know Thyself Native English speaking teachers, especially with anEnglish or English Literature background, may be relyingtoo much on MLA or APA styles as their frame of referencefor teaching advanced composition. It is also important forteachers to get a better sense of the types of writingstudents really need; for example, why isn't formal emailwriting taught more often as an essential writing skill?What about in-text citations or the choice of reporting verbssuch as "suggests" and "claims," etc.? What about the use ofdirect quotations? In the hundreds of engineering papers Ihave read, I have only seen two cases of direct quotation!To be more effective EFL teachers, we should try tounderstand the environment we work in. Also, it should benoted that plagiarism has gone global. Some foreignteachers who have been teaching in Korea for many yearstend to underestimate how prevalent plagiarism hasbecome in Western countries. To combat plagiarism, manyNorth American universities now subscribe to services suchas http://www.turnitin.com/, an Internet search tool, tocatch students who are plagiarizing.In my next column I will outline specific strategies andactivities that can be used in class. In the meantime, go tohttp://www.ohiou.edu/esl/help/plagiarism.html for agood, general resource on plagiarism.

Citation Skills and Avoiding Plagiarism (Part 1)

"We should try to understand the environment we work in."


Many writing teachers are increasingly using onlineresources and software to improve the correction andfeedback they give to students. This article will give anoverview of some of the resources and techniques availableto writing teachers for giving feedback online. A fullexplanation of exactly how all of the software mentioned inthis article is used is not possible here so feel free to contactme with any questions you have.

Establishing a CommunityAs the amount and quality of Internet resources hasimproved, teachers are increasingly using webpage supportfor their traditional writing classes. See KOTESOL memberDavid Kim’s website for an example http://kkucc.konkuk.ac.kr/~engteacher/course7.html.Many commercial services exist to help teachers organizetheir courses online such as www.webct.com orwww.blackboard.com. These services allow the creation ofcourse sites with content, quizzes, and bulletin boards foronline interaction with and between students. However,these services can be expensive for individual teachers. Anexcellent alternative used by KOTESOL Special InterestGroups (SIG) is free “Groups” sites fromhttp://groups.yahoo.com/ or http://groups.msn.com/. I favor MSN Groups because it can be used to createwebpage content without any programming to givefeedback for problems that come up in class. The Writingand Editing SIG site is an example of how this function canbe used: http://groups.msn.com/KOTESOLWESIG/.

Getting to Know Your SoftwareThere are a couple of essential functions of Microsoft Wordthat not enough KOTESOL teachers are aware of. The firstis the “Track Changes” function. You can search “TrackChanges” in Microsoft Word Help to see how this is done.This setting allows the student or colleague to see thechanges that have been made to a Word file on the screenin a different color. It can also show the changes in differentcolors that each editor has made to a collaborative effort aswell. This option allows the student or colleague to see thechanges as well as the original text and allows the user toaccept or reject the changes.

The other essential function that many teachers andstudents should know more about is adding “comments.”This function allows you to add comments on the side orbottom of the text, depending on the version of Word youhave, in much the same way that you would normally addcomments in the margins while correcting student essayson paper. To find out how this works, search “comments”in the Word Help function.

Better, More Efficient FeedbackMany of the comments that writing teachers make onstudent essays concerning paragraph organization orsentence grammar errors come up again and again. Tomake the process of correction more efficient, I have aWord file of some of the most common comments I makewhen correcting. I simply copy and paste the text into theComment function of MS Word and modify it as necessaryto reflect the individual student’s paper.

For common grammar errors or writing problems, you canalso paste active links into the Comment boxes which

WritingRight

By Adam Turner


33

allows the studentto go directly tomore extensivee x p l a n a t i o n s ,resources, orquizzes onlinethan you couldpossibly write in

the margins on a student’s paper copy. To find useful linksto a number of sites for these purposes you can view theKOTESOL Writing SIG website at http://groups.msn.com/KOTESOLWESIG/ or my homepage at www.adamturner.net.

Another tool that can be used is macros. Macros arefunctions that allow you to automatically program asequence of keyboard or mouse commands by assigningthe steps to a single key or word. It can save a great deal oftime with repetitive tasks such as correcting essays. With asingle key you can open up a comment and paste in pre-assigned text. It is an incredible timesaver. For moreinformation have a look at http://www.macros.com orsearch “macros” in the Word Help function.

Quiz CreationOne of the most effective ways to give feedback is to makequizzes from common student errors. Quiz generationsoftware can now allow you to create online quizzes withoutany programming skills whatsoever! Hot Potatoeshttp://web.uvic.ca/hrd/hotpot/ and www.quia.com are theleading services. Here is a sample of how I have helpedguide my students through the problems of names andtitles in English in formal email using these programs:http://hanyangwriting.tripod.com/email/.

Sound AdviceJames Trotta, facilitator of the Computer-AssistedLanguage Learning SIG has given audio feedback tostudents by recording sound files of comments on their

Online Resources for Writing Teachers

Continued on page 34.

producing routine documents. Most of us probably use itregularly for typing and spell-checking documents. Butwhat you might not know is that Word is actually apowerful tool for busy, creative teachers.

If you use MS Word to do more complicated tasks such asmaking tests, tables, and puzzles, Word can become time-consuming and frustrating. Excessive mouse maneuveringand clicking may someday lead to a bad case of carpeltunnel syndrome. Luckily, there is a tool available toshortcut the clicking - a macro. A macro is like a mini-program within Word that automatically performs thesecomplicated tasks quickly and easily so you don’t have to.Since writing mini-programs for making macros may bebeyond the technical grasp of many of us, there are anumber of websites that offer unique macros fordownloading - many of which are free and cater to theneeds of teachers or researchers.

To give you a better sense of the handy-dandy macro,consider your needs as a teacher. Are you interested inmaterials development? Do you often create student

worksheets? Do you lack the technical prowess and time todesign flashcards, gap-fills, multiple-choice questions,word scrambles, sentence jumbles, pronunciationexercises, and much more? Look no further than Teachers-Pet at http://www.teachers-pet.org/index.html. Thiswebsite provides free software to help with all of the abovetasks and more. A similar tool, also free but with feweroptions, is available from Web-Enhanced LanguageLearning at http://www.well.ac.uk/wellproj/workshp1/macros.htm. After downloading the free software andenabling macros in your “Tools” menu bar, customizedicons are conveniently loaded onto your MS Word toolbar!

Macros are also useful for writers and researchers. Those ofyou who write research papers may need your references toconform to (APA) American Psychological Associationformat or style. Macros can even automate this task of APAreferencing. A freebie can be had at http://www.myzips.com/download/APA-Referencing-Macros.phtml and ashareware version at http://www.gold-software.com/download 213.html.

And finally, if you make online tests and quizzes for yourstudents, read http://iteslj.org/Articles/Tuzi-Tests/ forfurther information and ideas.

These are just a few websites that may be of interest toteachers. Googling “macros for teachers” will likely bringup many more.

Microsoft Word isthe ubiquitousword-processingsoftware includedin Microsoft Office.As a word-processor, Word isconvenient for

Web Wheres

By Jake Kimball

34

Microsoft Macros to the Rescue


writing that the students can store and listen to. MS Wordalso allows you to insert sound files in WORD documentsand newer versions also have a Voice Comment functionthat allows teachers to give audio feedback to students. Theonly drawback is the large file size.

Building a CorpusFinally, by having students submit their writing via email,you can build up a rich source of authentic material to minefor example sentences and common writing problems. Forresearch purposes these files can be searched for patterns

with software such as concordance programs. For moreinformation see http://www.iei.uiuc.edu/structure/structure1/conc.html.

Adam Turner is the facilitator of the KOTESOL Writing andEditing Special Interest Group (WESIG) and the Director ofthe Hanyang University Writing Center. KOTESOLMembers can join WESIG online athttp://groups.msn.com/KOTESOLWESIG/ or contactAdam Turner at [email protected] for more information.

Continued from page 33.

This is the first installment of a regularcolumn on tips and suggestions forteaching writing. Unfortunately, manyEnglish teachers in Korea are firstintroduced to "Teaching Writing" bysimply being told that it is their turn toteach the writing class!

Most writing teachers would also agreethat the workload can be significantlyhigher than teaching a conversationclass. The challenges are great, but theKOTESOL Writing and Editing SpecialInterest group (WESIG) is here to help.The topics and content in this columnwill be taken from our online bulletinboard, face-to-face discussions andWESIG events. The first column willfocus on pen and paper approaches tocorrecting while the next one will showyou how to take full advantage of onlinetechniques for correcting and givingfeedback.

Choose Your BattlesOne of the most common mistakesteachers make when they first startteaching writing classes is to think thatdoing a good job necessarily meanscorrecting "all" student errors.Research has shown and experiencedwriting teachers know that this type ofcorrecting is not only incredibly time-consuming, but also ineffective.

KOTESOL member David Kim, in hispresentation on teaching composition,even argues that once the students haveenough basic knowledge of Englishsentence structure to write, grammarshould be taught separately fromwriting class. Probably the best thingyou can do for yourself in terms ofsaving time, and for your students interms of focusing their learning, is tochoose the skill or key point that is theobjective of the lesson and correct onlythat part. If students are graded only ona specific area, they are much morelikely to pay attention to it.

Rather than directing your students towrite a comparative paragraph, youmight tell them that the assignment willbe marked only on how well they usecomparative transition phrases incontext, for example. Watch thedifference in the motivation andattention of the students to the point of

your lesson.

Editing vs CorrectingIt is also a good idea to try to separatethe "editing" process from the"correcting" process. In the first pass, Isometimes mark all of the papers onlyon the basis of the content or logic ofthe argument, and then when that isdone I come back to the first paper andlook for the grammatical or sentencestructure point of the assignment andcorrect that. Separating higher orderediting from lower order correcting canimprove the feedback you give. It canbe distracting and difficult to try to doboth well at the same time.

Underlining Reveals AllI have never used most proofreadingmarks, such as “agr.” for subject-verbagreement, when correcting. I simplyunderline the grammatical mistakes,and let the students correct themistakes themselves. This method hasa number of advantages. It can oftenenable you to see the differencebetween what the students do notunderstand and what mistakes aresimply the result of carelessness andwithin the student's ability to correct ontheir own. However, students find"wrong word choice" or "awkward"phrasing proofreading commentsfrustrating because they often havedifficulty correcting these types oferrors for themselves. In this case,simply providing a better word choiceor phrasing is more effective.HeidiVande Voort suggests correcting thefirst instance of a given error and thenonly underlining the subsequentexamples of the error for the rest of thepaper.

A Dictionary of One’s OwnTeaching writing can sometimes befrustrating because many studentsmake the same errors over and overagain. Students should collect theirrecurrent errors in their owncustomized dictionary of commonerrors. They can then refer to it in thefuture, and it helps them to review andfix their mistakes. Teachers could alsocollect the notebooks and create quizzesfrom these common errors.It is also handy to type out a sheet of

common comments in a numbered listincluding textbook page numbers oronline sources for student reference.When correcting, you can include thesheet and just write the number of thecomment on the student's paperinstead of writing the same commentsagain and again.The time saved allowsyou more time to write commentsspecific to the content of an individualstudent's paper.

The Colorful PenOne of the low technology tools that Ilike to use is the multicolored pen.Seeing a page filled with red can be a bittraumatic for some students. Green inkis a little easier on the eyes. I use blueink for praise and red ink for carelesserrors or mistakes that a student ismaking repeatedly. The colorful resultactually creates more interest in thecorrections!

Correction ConfusionDuring my first year in Korea, I almostgave a poor student a heart attack bynot understanding the Koreanconventions for correcting papers. Shemistook 90% for 10%! In Korean, acheck mark indicates an incorrectanswer and circling the number of aquestion indicates that it is correct. InEnglish, it is the opposite. Proofreadingmarks to insert text or letters can beabove as well as below the text in Korea.

The AuthorAdam Turner is the facilitator for theKOTESOL Writing and Editing SIGand has recently been appointed theDirector of the English Writing Centerat Hanyang University.

Send your questions about teachingwriting to [email protected]

Join WESIG at http://groups.msn.com/KOTESOLWESIG/

WritingRight

By Adam Turner

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Teaching Writing Classes


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