Expectations eclipsed in foreign language education: learners and educators on an ongoing journey

Abstract

As for the writing skills covered on the course, students get explicit instruction on effective writing. The focus of these training sessions comprises of a clear thesis statement, a well developed argument, effective examples, transition between ideas, transition within/between paragraphs, unity between ideas, in-text citation and references, and use of language.A highly similar, focused instruction is given in Turkish Language and Literature (TLL) courses as well. Students are also expected to write an analytic paper of almost 2000 words as a requirement of this course in Turkish.Another course where they are required to write analytic papers is the History of Civilizations (SPS) course. However, over the years, it has been observed that, although students receive focused instruction on writing skills both in English and in Turkish, they do not produce well organized, effective papers for this course. The StudyThe aim of this study was to find out possible reasons for such a gap between courses. The Freshman ENG instructors and SPS instructors gathered to identify the problems and find solutions. ENG and TLL instructors had already Expectations Eclipsed in Foreign Language Education: Learners and educators on an ongoing journey Expectations Eclipsed in Foreign Language Education: Learners and educators on an ongoing journey 6 7given in the previous semester and two papers that received an A and a Cgrade respectively. Then we discussed the current task and brainstormed how they could go about writing a thesis statement. We also produced a mind-map on a potential introduction and how students could develop each of the ideas into paragraphs.At the time of writing this paper, the marking of the SPS papers had not been completed. Once they are complete, the next step will be to compare students' ENG and SPS papers and the grades they received in each course. This will hopefully give us some idea on whether the focused instruction for the SPS paper has been helpful. ImplicationsThe missing voice in this study is the teaching assistants (TAs). Involving them will not only satisfy triangulation purposes, but also give insights into how TAs guide students in the process of writing papers and how they mark papers. This may also lead to TA training in these areas.References Cummins, J. (1991). Conversational and academic language proficiency in bilingual contexts. Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquee, 8, 75-89. Snow, M. A., & Brinton, D. M. (1988). Content-Based Language Instruction: Investigating the Effectiveness of the Adjunct Model. TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 4, 553-574 Spack, R. (1988). Initiating ESL students into the academic discourse community: How far should we go? TESOL Quarterly, 22,. Zhu, W. (2004). Faculty views on the importance of writing, the nature of academic writing, and teaching and responding to writing in the disciplines. Journal of Second LanguageWriting 13 (2004) [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48] Language was another categor...