English Teaching Excellence in Qatar Conference
English Teaching Excellence in Qatar (ETE-Q) Conference,
Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q) and Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q)
9/10/2010, Education City, Doha, Qatar
On Saturday, the 9th of October 2010, I participated in the ETE-Q conference at CMU-Q in Doha with a poster presentation entitled “Academic Writing: Challenge, Inspiration, Engagement”.
The poster summarises my teaching approach to the challenges encountered in the academic writing course I teach at the Academic Bridge Program in Education City. The main challenges include student motivation and the quality of writing.
Based on the writing projects I have designed for students in my course, I find that an effective way of enhancing their motivation is through developing background knowledge, making topics relevant to their experience and encouraging them to practise self-reflection to gain a deeper understanding of their own cognitive development as it takes place through writing in English.
The quality of writing can be improved through an active and open-minded exploration of various topics of interest, helping students to develop their own ideas and opinions and become more familiar with different types of essay and other forms of academic expression. Practising constructive and cooperative criticism via peer revision and open critique of each other’s written work is an additional way of improving the standard of writing in terms of grammar, spelling and vocabulary.
Students produce better, more convincing and powerful, written work if they are inspired by a topic and become engaged with it. This is made possible by exposing them to a variety of sources of information (texts, documentaries, field trips, etc.) and enabling them to make/notice connections between their classroom learning and the ‘real’ world around them.
In my poster-based presentation, I used samples of my own course materials: a response essay based on a field trip to the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and selected written sources, including positive and negative reviews of the museum (from the NYT and the IHT); an argument essay preceded by viewing and discussion of a documentary “A Class Divided”; a comparison/contrast essay exploring linguistic and culture-related similarities and differences between Arabic and English, and examining how patterns of expression in these two languages may affect cognition and vice versa.
My presentation aroused a lot of interest and resulted in several lively exchanges with my Education City colleagues but also with local school teachers, mostly from newly established independent (‘charter’) schools where low student motivation is a particularly difficult and persistent problem, explained by many in terms of underlying social and cultural issues. Several independent school teachers also expressed their concerns regarding the insufficient amount of professional training and development they are offered, inadequate and haphazard teaching materials, badly designed curricula, low standards of students’ English, declining standards of Arabic as taught in their schools and other issues.
Following the poster session, I also took part in a workshop by Dr Katherine Gottschalk from Cornell University, on incorporating writing in content-based courses. After a brief introduction, we were asked to design a “learning through English” writing assignment for our own students. While discussing the results of the exercise, several points were made, including some cross-cultural issues, such as difficulties adapting western-designed curricula to Qatari conditions, building local students’ global background knowledge necessary for academic success in English language universities in Education City and abroad, and the growing pressure to use English as medium of instruction in Qatari schools.
I found the conference relevant to my research and interests, particularly that I was able to make new contacts with local school teachers whose views on current educational developments are essential for understanding the social and cultural background of my students’ perceptions of their learning experiences in the Academic Bridge Program.
The conference organisers are in the process of posting participants’ posters on the ETE-Q website. The website should be made available to the public shortly.
Magda
Developing background knowledge in an increasingly globalised setting – who knows what it really means… It is as confusing as it is vague. But, in my daily practice it is a continuous effort to make students interested in (and aware of the importance of) learning about things and cultures and values different from their own but not that distant from their own – with some risk involved.
In my literature classes, for instance, a short story by Frank O’Connor, My Oedipus Complex, requires some knowledge of Greek mythology and Freud’s psychoanalytic take on it. Who was Oedipus, my students ask. Why didn’t you check while reading the story over the weekend, I answer. Two issues pop up – their passive attitude to reading/learning (despite at least one active reading session with me and constant reminders about it) and reliance on the teacher simply to tell them everything they need to know plus their not knowing what they need to know, what they would normally be expected to know at this stage of their educational development.
So who was Oedipus? A guy who killed his father and married his mother. Telling them that is necessary and lethal at the same time because:
1) without that knowledge they will not be able fully to understand/appreciate/interpret the story – and my job is to ensure that they do
2) with that knowledge, they may
a) start questioning the functioning of their own family, society, their own feelings and thoughts and dreams and values and rules imposed on them by their culture and religion
b) tell their parents what they have been learning about in their English lit classes
We live and work in a state of almost permanent cognitive dissonance combined with the inability to address it openly. For instance, the Qatar Foundation is sponsoring, fronting and funding the ‘Think’ campaign. The city is plastered with posters, billboards and other visuals featuring the word ‘think” and other, related words and pharses: ask more questions (one wants to ask the question, about what?), create something (like what?), wonder, grow, learn, etc. At the same, a friend of mine has her contract terminated for teaching the ‘wrong’ book… Thinking cannot be institutionalised and monitored – just like freedom, as Foucault rightly observed. Education is a messy and dangerous business. And I’m in the middle of it.
Thanks for sharing this, Magda. Interesting how the issue of global vs. local keeps coming up in these posts. Having read your presentation, I am -for example- intrigued by what ‘developing background knowledge’ means in a globalised setting, and how this blends in with the political / religious imperative to protect the minds of the students from ‘harmful’ influences. I am also curious as to whether Arab writing genres can be (or should be) included in those ‘different types of essay’ you referred to. From my perspective, the fact that one cannot avoid such questions is one of the principal attractions of working in an academic environment such as yours.