advanced efl writing shahid beheshti university, 1391, 2012

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Advanced EFL Writing Shahid Beheshti University

Facilitator: Arman Abednia Fall-Winter 1391 (2012)

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Shahid Beheshti University

Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences

Department of English Language and Literature

Education is not an affair of “telling” or being told, but an active and constructive process (Dewey, 1916).

Advanced EFL Writing

(English Language and Literature compulsory)

Sunday, 10-11:30 AM Arman Abednia, PhD in TEFL

[email protected]

A culture of domination demands of all

its citizens self-negation. The more

marginalized, the more intense the demand.

bell hooks

NOTE: Make sure that you have this syllabus with you whenever you attend the class.

mailto:[email protected]

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The context of the course

The traditional principle that directs many courses but, hopefully, NOT this course is that education is meant

to merely transmit knowledge. In this dominant type of education, i.e. Banking Education (Freire, 1972), the main concern is the size of information transferred to learners at the cost of developing learners‟ ability to

construct knowledge and make sense of themselves and the world around them in their own ways. A very common product of this type of education system is Bill. How much are we similar to or different from him?

“Bill is one of life‟s plodders, conscientiously looking for and sticking to the one „right‟

method of working. It is a strategy which, unfortunately, pays off in many school

situations, and he will probably end up with a reasonably good set of grades and a school report which describes him as a „good student‟. His inability to adapt to changing

requirements and his lack of self-knowledge may start to be a problem when he is

expected to study on his own. But for the present, his teachers do not see him as a

problem and are quite glad to have a few like Bill in their classes.” (Nisbet & Shucksmith,

1991, p.3)

But the ideology which informs this course takes education as mainly aimed at raising people's awareness of

their existing abilities and social conditions so that they'll come to believe they can transform themselves and

their communities in a constructive and humanistic manner. Simply put, be critical of yourselves and change

yourselves for the better; be critical of the world around you and change it for the better. Based on this

interpretation of education, sometimes called “Libratory Education”, writing can be redefined in light of a

critical perspective toward education.

What is writing???

Writing, as traditionally defined and practiced, happens when a person writes a paragraph or an essay about

a topic given to them by a so-called expert such as a teacher or an author (most probably American or English as they know better what we must learn about writing and what topics we must write about) and in a

way dictated by these experts, e.g. a process paragraph amounting to a certain recipe for chicken soup (of

course, students may be given the freedom to choose their favorite dishes!) or a comparison and contrast one comparing living in a large city like Tehran and a small city, which can sound like a really trite topic to

some! Then students must wait for teachers' feedback which mainly, and in some cases, exclusively focuses on the language side of the writing at the cost of communication and appreciation of ideas, … as if ideas are not there to be communicated, appreciated, challenged, etc., ….. as if this is not going to be a communication

between two human beings. Thus, students write just to fulfill class assignments and teachers are happy out

of, dare I say, blindness. They don‟t care how "I think, so I am" can be realized in a writing class/task.

In a nutshell, they tell us what topic to like and write about and what way of writing about that topic to be

interested in and follow, or are our interests, likes, and dislikes important at all? And they don‟t care what we

write. Only how we write matters. And I even wish as little as this were done well.

… in this instrumentalist educational system which gallops across the world, we are not very much owners of

our own labor but, if you pardon the expression, the operatives told to act in certain directions. This is the philosophy behind most commercially produced writing textbooks. They are written mostly by some native

speakers of English who possess the sufficient expertise to outline our life agenda since we do not have a

clue! More precisely, we cannot think and draw up our life plan. So others very generously do so for us. And

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many of them may not really mean to impose the “Center” agenda. We prove to be too willing to adopt it in its

entirety.

But what is the reality ignored in this mindset? The reality is that those experts, many of whom humbly admit,

have almost no idea what is going on in our society, in our class, our university, our history, and our country

at different cultural, economic, political, religious and social levels. Notwithstanding this significant gap, teachers willingly become the slaves of thoughts handed down to them and weave this predisposition into

their students‟ fabric. Given these observations, which I do not claim to be the reality, but a version of it

constructed by me, I hope what we are going to do in our class will be way different from what was just

portrayed,

What is Critical Literacy? What I‟d like us to practice is called Critical Literacy. Literacy is the power to be a change agent, to be a real

person. And, critical literacy is a critical and challenging approach to textual practices like reading and writing which helps us challenge the status quo, choose alternative paths for individual and social

development and redefine ourselves and reshape society. Critical literacy attaches central importance to self-awareness, critical thinking, creative action and emancipation and considers writing as mainly a means

to such ends or some higher-order ends you can think of, BUT not as an end in and of itself.

Critical literacy generally deals with issues like the way a reader interprets texts in light of broader social

and political contexts and the effects of different interpretations. Such questions are attached high importance mainly because CL considers texts to be ideological and looks at literacy as a sociopolitical

practice and a means of social transformation since it is not just about reading the word but also reading the world.

By the same token, writing is not just writing about given topics in given ways but writing about what we like

the way we like but always in a critical, creative, and fair manner. Even, we can adopt frameworks proposed

by others but we need to adapt them based on glocal and personal considerations. And it should culminate in

creative action at an individual and social level, change I mean. Let's figure out the rest together throughout

the course but there are two important critical concepts which I need to introduce here as the atmosphere of

the class will be directly affected by them:

Problem-posing

Education is not only about problem-solving, i.e. developing our ability to think of and practice effective

solutions to the problems presented to us by others, but goes beyond it and aims at improving our abilities to

actively problematize situations, i.e. present the apparently "OK" situations as problem-situations and limit-

situations, critically and fairly scrutinize them, and, then, offer and implement socially relevant and responsible solutions.

Dialog

All said above won‟t come true unless our attempts are dialogical. This course takes the position that writing

is a dialogical process and the way we write somehow determines the way we live. Since learning happens

through social interactions, dialog, which is honest, based on love, critical, and fair, is a very important educational tool. For this course to work, we must be able to use this tool in each and every moment of our

class.

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Course objectives

This course mainly aims at

1. Unlearning those traditional writing skills which do more harm than good, or, at least, understanding

where they apply and where they don‟t

2. Improving our critical and creative writing skills (e.g. developing ideas, reasoning, rebuttal/reservation,

etc.)

3. Learning to recognize topics and writing genres that are personally and socially relevant and useful

4. Developing and continuously revisiting our intrasubjective and intersubjective understandings of

different genres and moves in writing as well as what a good writing is

5. Learning to have honest, fair, critical, and creative dialog with others

6. Learning a number of useful writing strategies

7. Improving our language knowledge and metaknowledge

Course procedures 1. In order to expand our knowledge of the topics we want to write about and activate the knowledge we

already have, we select readings and, if possible and where relevant, video clips, go through them, and

use them as stepping stones for writing practices and generation of ideas. 2. Also, we use readings or, rather, writing samples, as models for writing in different genres. So, we

carefully analyze different relevant expressions, cohesive devices, moves, etc. in order to equip ourselves with adequate linguistic and stylistic knowledge for our own writing practices.

3. You write essays on the topics of your own based on genres we focus on and have self-assessment at the end of each essay since the greatest fault is to be conscious of none. Moreover, we do need to be

aware of our strengths. You should focus on both in your assessments. At times we might decide to choose topics together. I provide some topics for those who, for whatever reasons, can‟t think of one,

while the main aim is to improve the ability to generate ideas of one‟s own. 4. You comment on each other's writings focusing on all of the above-mentioned dimensions and those of

your own. 5. Following an in-class discussion about the comments, you revise your writings. 6. I comment on the revised drafts focusing on ideas, reasoning, coherence, comprehensiveness,

accuracy, naturalness, etc. 7. We have group discussions about the writings of group members, my comments, and your peers'

comments, as well as effective solutions for improving writings. You change teams so that you will stand a high chance of being challenged by different attitudes.

8. You revise your writings accordingly but you don‟t have to incorporate all comments into the revised version as long as you try to provide convincing counterarguments. And, if necessary, depending on the

comments on the 2nd version, you write a 3rd , 4th,… version. 9. The format you must follow to write each is as follows:

a. The name which you give to the file must be as follows: Advanced Writing, 1st name and last name, number of writing, number of revision. So, if I have written the 2nd version of my first

essay, I should save the file with this name:

Advanced Writing, Arman Abednia, 1, 2.

b. The format to follow at the top of each essay is as follows:

Course: Advanced Writing Name:

Essay: 1/2/… Version: 1/2/…

Topic:

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10. To facilitate the process of giving feedback, I use the following abbreviations: G (grammar mistake); P

(punctuation mistake); ? (there is something wrong or something is missing, and I expect you to try to

self-correct); C (miscollocation); and V (it is vague and needs clarification. I can‟t follow.).

11. You keep all of the versions of all of your writings in a portfolio, choose one as your best writing sample, if possible, and hand them all in in the last session of the course.

12. You will write a critical, detailed, and fair class assessment, due Mehr, 30. The assessment should focus on whatever you like, including the relevance, usefulness, and interestingness of the materials, the

effectiveness of the class procedures, e.g. pair/group discussions about writings, peer feedback, teacher feedback, the way the materials are worked on, etc., my teaching style, student-student

interaction, teacher-student interaction, and evaluation procedures. Following the discussion of any shortcoming, you are expected to offer a solution/suggestion.

13. You will write a general self-assessment, due Aban, 21. In this assessment you will focus on the ways in

which you have made progress, e.g. in terms of your attitude to writing and what it involves, your perception of your ability to generate ideas and write well, and your insight into what you should do

following the course to improve your writing skills. Also, you should write about any skills or abilities which worsened as a result of participation in this course.

14. We might have discussions and practices about international tests such as TOEFL and IELTS, if necessary.

Course materials

1. "Patterns Plus. A Short Prose Reader with Argumentations" (10th edition) by Mary Lou Conlin

(2011). Depending on your perceived needs and my perceptions, we select some of the genres and read

the introductions as well as one sample essay.

2. Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy PeterClark (2008). Depending on

the needs which emerge from the essays you write and the class discussions, we read and discuss some of the strategies.

3. Oxford Collocations Dictionary: I assume you all are familiar with this dictionary and actively use it

when writing.

Course rules Academic discipline requires that:

1. we respect each other and ideas different from our own. Any scornful behavior in any form (e.g.

inappropriate comments and laughter) is absolutely unjustifiable and will be appropriately reacted to by the facilitator.

2. we be in the class on time. Latecomers will lose marks for long and frequent delays.

3. we meet the deadlines for all assignments. Marks will be deducted for delays.

4. we avoid dishonesty and plagiarism. Plagiarism is the conscious and deliberate copying from a source

without giving credit to that source. An act of plagiarism carries disciplinary reaction in this course.

Evaluation

1. Active classroom participation and preparation (10%)

2. Writing portfolio: All versions of your writings as well as the best sample (70%)

3. Self-assessment (10% of your total score)

4. Class assessment (10% of your total score)

Note: Everything is open to negotiation in this class. I do listen to you, but I have to be the final arbiter.

Good luck!

advanced efl writing shahid beheshti university, 1391, 2012

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