The paper reports on an initiative undertaken by the The University of Auckland to develop a non-credit course for Stage One Engineering students in an effort to help them further develop their English skills and become successful academic writers. The course, which includes an online and face-to-face (FtF) component, seeks to help students enhance the quality of their writing and improve accuracy and clarity. Students are required to work through online language modules and grammar quizzes before participating in a Language Laboratory (workshop), where they have the opportunity to assess their understanding of the online material. During the workshop, an error-analysis and editing task is implemented in a small-group format in order to a) raise students’ awareness of the (grammar and style) errors commonly found in student writing, and b) equip them with the knowledge they need to edit and proof-read their own writing. This workshop is based on the premise that error-analysis and editing tasks provide a means of initiating hypothesis testing and rule refining, which is essential to acquiring explicit grammar knowledge (Chuang & Nesi, 2007) as well as understanding the source of persistent errors in writing (O’Brien, 2015). Data have been collected over a five month period to learn about students’ responses to the error-analysis task and obtain their feedback about the FtF component of the course. In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the rationale and structure of the programme, and present data showing the nature of student-to-student interactions and students’ perceptions about the extent to which the language task supports their English language and writing skills development. Further, we will discuss the pedagogical implications for the use of consciousness-raising tasks when introducing students to disciplinary academic writing.
References
Chuang, F. & Nesi, H. (2007). GrammarTalk: Developing computer-based materials for Chinese EAP students. In A, Olwyn (ed.), New Approaches to Materials Development for Language Learning: Proceedings of the 2005 Joint BALEAP/SATEFL Conference (pp. 315-330). Pieterlen, Switzerland: Verlag Peter Lang.
O’Brien, J. (2015). Consciousness-raising, Error Correction and Proofreading. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Vol. 15, No. 3, June, 2015, pp. 85-103.doi: 10.14434/josotl.v15i3.13284
