Course syllabi and outlines are useful tools that I used as a student to make future plans and keep track of my own learning progress. I view the parts on class assessment and daily agenda as the most critical information from a syllabus. Because I like to make outlines of the entire semester and write down major due dates on my personal calendar, this information always helps to make my planning easier. In a writing course especially, I appreciated receiving information on assignment descriptions and the due dates of different drafts. I used this information to plan my own writing process and find time to make additional appointments with writing center tutors or the class instructor.
2. Course Plan, Students’ Needs, & Institutional Goals
One of the key functions of a literacy course is to accommodate students’ sociocultural and educational needs. Instructors need to take students’ background into consideration before assigning reading and writing tasks. For example, it would not be motivational for a group of EFL students who have no interests in studying abroad to read texts only about American pop cultures. It would also not be appropriate for international F1 visa students to write argumentative essays on U.S. presidential elections if they are not into American domestic politics. Moreover, students who have specific educational needs need to be addressed in a literacy course, e.g., writing cover letters and C.V.s.
A good course plan should also reflect an educational institution’s requirements and philosophy. Most higher institutions have a core curriculum requirement on basic literacy course on academic reading and writing. Depending on where this course is held, the ways reading and writing are introduced may also differ. For instance, a literacy course held in the English department may structure in a completely different way compared to one held in the linguistic department or a separate composition program. Attention to individual students also varies depending on the size of the institution; smaller institutions usually have a small student-to-teacher ratio in a writing class and therefore are able to realize more student-teacher interactions.
3. Different Planning Strategies in a Composition Course
A composition course usually requires different planning than a major content course due to different student population. Students enrolled in composition courses usually come from different academic areas (unless it’s a specialized writing course for one major, which needs to be treated differently). In designing a course which fits the needs of all students, the composition instructor needs to be flexible. Providing different types of texts and tasks for reading and writing can be a good start. Instructors should also remember to add a few options to the writing prompt or even leave some topics completely open. This, of course, may be viewed as a bit risky. You may ask, what if I leave the students to decide their own topics and they end up writing something I don’t understand at all? Well, it might happen, but that’s why composition instructors need to be more strategic. I often just say it frankly that I will not be able to understand complicated academic subjects outside my major area; therefore, it is the students’ responsibility to realize audience awareness—a nice concept for them to keep in mind from the beginning.
4. Components of a Successful Lesson
A successful writing lesson always starts with activating students’ prior knowledge. A warm-up activity in connection to the previous lesson is often a good idea. I like to provide my students an overview of the lesson before we get started (and I often write it on the board). Lecture time should be kept to its minimum. I always remind myself while planning a lesson that anything that I say longer than 20 minutes will not be getting into my students’ brain anyway. Having some activities built into daily instruction is also important, so students can practice the concepts that they have read/listened about right away. Finally, a successful lesson should end with a summary note. This is something I am still working on to do better—it’s all about time management. A ticket-out activity is another ideal way to end a lesson: In the last 5-10 minutes, stop the lesson and ask the students to take out a piece of paper, or you can give them notecards for them to write on to keep them in a more organized way. On the paper/notecard, ask students to write down a short reflection on what they have learned and what remaining questions they still have. This becomes the student’s “ticket” to get out from the classroom.
5. Hallmarks of Effective Classroom Instruction
Managing a composition classroom is somewhat different from other classrooms due to the fact that everything we do in composition is related to students’ completion of writing tasks. It is important to start a sequence of instruction in each writing cycle and follow it throughout the course (e.g., prewriting-writing-revising-editing-sharing). Instructors need to be well planned for daily lessons but also flexible to face unexpected changes. For example, what would you do if half of the class simply did not read the assigned reading before class time? Although this is disappointing, it actually happens to me quite often. Assigning reading-related homework is one way to solve this problem, e.g., a blog entry. In-class summary task is another option for teachers to use as a way to ensure their students read the text before coming to class, especially if they are told they cannot read the text while doing the summary. Creating an encouraging environment is also very important; often times we are too busy to remember providing sufficient positive feedback, but we need to remember that they are extremely important and sometimes work as miracle for student writers’ motivation and writing improvement.
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