Just before the start of the academic year (2022-23), I found out that I would be teaching IEM2 – a second-year, content-driven academic writing module offered to students in the University Town residential colleges – to a class of four students. IEM2 had run its course and the two-tier Ideas and Exposition (IEM) programme consisting […]
Effective Instruction
IMPLEMENTATION OF ONLINE WRITING SUPPORT THROUGH TRAINED PEER TUTORS IN A WRITING AND COMMUNICATION HUB
Doreen TAN Sarah Priya SOMARAJAN Amelyn Anne THOMPSON Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND The Writing and Communication Hub (WCH) by the Centre for English Language Communication (CELC) is created to help students from any discipline improve and increase their confidence in their […]
Less is more: a simple lesson design that elicits complex exchange
by Derek Wong In SP1541, students discuss in groups how popular science book chapters appeal to their audience. After 4 weeks, I found the classroom atmosphere quite interactive, and I wanted to challenge students with more open discussion in the class. So, during the group reporting stage, I added impromptu follow-up questions based on […]
A Supporting and Engaging Learning Experience: Creating a Supportive Environment for an Engaging Online Teaching and Learning Experience
by Nadya Shaznay Patel This semester I took on the opportunity to join the Open Networked Learning (ONL) course, organised by facilitators from Swedish universities and other IHL educators and professionals from around the world like, CDTL, NUS. ONL is an open fully online course that “offers participants opportunities to explore and gain experience […]
Engaging Students with Hypothes.is- Hypothes.is: An Online Social Annotation Tool for Engaging Students in Webpage Reading Tasks
by Marissa K. L. E The effectiveness of online social annotation tools (SA tools) has been shown in a variety of studies exploring its use in reading tasks assigned to students (Novak, 2012). The reasons for this effectiveness stem from how annotation acts as a means to document student thinking and learning, while anchoring […]
Motivating the Anxious: Considerations for the EAP Classroom
by Chloe Wong Introduction Effective academic writing skills are pivotal for student success in the university setting, as most institutions continue to rely heavily on written discourse as an assessment tool (Hyland, 2018; Wingate & Tribble, 2012). This past spring, I taught first-year students in a university-level English for Academic Purposes (EAP) writing course. […]
What Goes into an Introduction?
by Wong Jock Onn Introduction Academic writing is an important set of skills for students to possess. For example, it allows the student ‘to have agency in the world’ and ‘to express oneself and participate in dialogue with others’ (Solbrekke & Helstad, 2016, p. 963). Although most students are able to construct well-formed sentences, […]
Experience is the best teacher: Developing teaching philosophy through in- and out-of-classroom experiences
by Rowland Anthony Imperial Introduction In higher education (HE), English language teaching (ELT) practitioners often struggle to meet the ever-increasing demand for English language/communication (EL/C) or EMI courses due to the limited availability of teachers. This is often challenging for novice ELT practitioners who have to conduct EL/C courses in area(s) outside of their […]
Who Knows Academic Vocabulary Better? Which is more Supportive for Developing Academic Vocabulary – Instructor or Computer?
by Daron Benjamin Loo The development of academic writing at the graduate level is a process affected by many variables (see Lee & Murray, 2015; Nygaard, 2017). To cope with the complex process, and to meet academic expectations, student agency may come in handy. Student agency in writing may be understood through students’ intentions […]
Group work: Making it work- Preparing students for a positive collaborative experience
by Coleen Angove and Anuradha Ramanujan Introduction In the spirit of collaboration – the topic of this blog – teachers of the tier 2 Ideas and Exposition modules responded to residential college requests for assessments that allowed for a less daunting introduction to the module content. One amendment was the shift from an individual […]