Motivating First-year Students to Acquire Academic Language

Saida Akbarova, Uzbekistan

Saida Akbarova (PhD in Linguistics, the Uzbek State World Languages University) is a senior lecturer at Westminster International University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She teaches Academic English. Her research interests include second language acquisition, discourse analysis, material development and blended learning. E-mail: sakbarova@wiut.uz

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Introduction
Background
Examples
Conclusions
References

Introduction

I am teaching Academic English (AE) course for the first-year students at Westminster International University in Tashkent (WIUT) and would like to share some ideas on how I motivate my students to become independent learners. In order to understand the educational context in which I teach better I will give you some information on the institution, the AE course and the students.

Background

WIUT is a unique university in Uzbekistan which offers courses designed in partnership with the University of Westminster (parental university), and are subject to the same quality assurance, and control regulations as those taught in the UK. In addition, the medium of instruction and communication is English, so students are accepted with the minimum IELTS band 5.5. However, English is not widely spoken in Uzbekistan and the Uzbek language is the official language. In order to empower students to acquire academic language, first-year students take a semester-long AE course. By the end of the course students are supposed to be able to demonstrate an understanding of academic vocabulary and use it appropriately; evaluate academic sources and use them in writing; demonstrate an understanding of different discourse genres; deliver a short oral presentation on a stipulated topic; write an academic essay and report based on research; as well as reflect and act upon feedback and actively engage in group work. The assessment strategy of the course is based on the criterion-referenced assessment concept that is designed to assess changes in performance due to learning, for examining what and how well material has been learned. The course strives to develop effective approaches to assessment, both formative and summative. The assessment strategy is based on principles of best practice such as validity in purpose (to measure the learning outcomes), reliability and objectivity (by the use of carefully designed marking scheme), as well as constructive and timely feedback to students (Course handbook, 2016, p16). Therefore, AE course strives to help the students to adjust to a new educational paradigm. Let me briefly describe students I teach and how they have helped me to organize engaging activities that have boosted their independence and autonomy.

The first-year student population is very diverse, some of them have competent language proficiency, which means that they are able to speak on various topics, to comprehend listening to various topics, to read texts on different issues and to write standard IELTS essays. However, some students lack this amount of proficiency and they need help to further develop their language skills. There are also students who are retaking the module; they also, need special attention. In addition, there is another important aspect which contributes to understanding our students better is culture. Our students enter WIUT from teacher-directed culture and they have the highest level of dependence on teachers. They enter an unfamiliar learning environment which believes that “learning is more effective when learners are active in the learning process, assuming responsibility for their learning and participating in the decisions which affect it” (Sheerin, 1997, p56). In addition to teaching Academic English outcomes, teachers need to guide students in taking charge for their own learning and to help them to become more autonomous in their learning.

Before starting any semester, I wonder how to develop both academic language acquisition and turn students into independent learns. Knowing students needs has helped me to identify possible adjustments to the learning process. Last semester, for example, from a diagnostic writing test and an informal conversation held in the first seminar I found out that the majority of students needed to learn about plagiarism and to enhance reading, grammar, and vocabulary connected to the academic discourse. In addition, some students expressed their interests to share news and information related to AE to class. Together with students we decided to include a fifteen-minute-student-led class time for every seminar and to use an online educational platform Edmodo for peer evaluation of essays and giving feedback.

Example 1 Student-led Class Students proposed to have fifteen minutes of each class for teaching other students grammar points, new words, phrases and report some interesting findings like news, events and other interesting information. A student leader was responsible to keep a list of students (one or a group of students) who were responsible to conduct a mini-lesson for each seminar. Students organized the process and we started to have students in the role of teacher. (I was pleasantly impressed by the quality work students produced.) During each seminar, students presented different information: some students concentrated on revision of phrasal verbs, sentence structures, article use, some students reported on oxymoron, metaphors, irony; some talked about interesting topics related not only to language learning but also to other academic fields. It is important to mention, that being teachers of their class, students asked other students to be active and take notes and the next seminar they checked other students’ notes and gave the class their feedback. Students enjoyed the process and when they wrote their reflections they confessed that they became better in communicating with other students and felt more confident in public speaking, also they mentioned that some of them became more responsible and attentive to what other students said. As a result of a fifteen-minute-student-led class time students have learned to be more independent learners and be responsible for their learning. As a teacher, I saw that from seminar to seminar students became more engaged in academic English and valued work done by their peers.

Example 2 Empowering Peer Evaluation

For the autumn semester, students are required to write three short essays of 500-word and one 2000-word essay and choose one out of five suggested topics using comparison, problem solution and persuasive structures. The essays are marked for the clarity of organization, the coherence of the argument, appropriate use of sources, and accuracy of language, referencing and academic style. Over a semester students produce a draft or several drafts and receive formative feedback from teachers that allows students to improve their drafts (Course handbook, 2016, p29). In order to make the essay writing process more engaging and interesting, I started looking for activities which would motivate students to writing essays. After reading some research papers, I realised that blending traditional and online teaching might help me. In addition, one of my colleagues at my department suggested using Edmodo, an online educational platform which lets teachers create an online class and register students for that class freely in a very short time. So, I designed an online class and registered my students.

During our face-to-face seminar, I explained the reason why they should have an online class and how to use discussion boards effectively; students liked the idea and our first-time-partially-blended AE seminars started. To my surprise, practically all students had relevant IT skills to have an online class and they did not experience any difficulties in uploading files, posting messages and articles. First time students posted their draft essays and I gave feedback for each student and asked them to read at least one draft of other students and post their comments. Very few students posted their comments. However, in the class students had a constructive discussion on feedback provided both by me and some of their peers. As a result, the seminar was very meaningful and valued by students, because they clarified needed information and what was more importantly they saw how other students did the same assignment successfully. For the second and third essays, I specified the task and asked students to provide their feedback to at least three students and post their comments on the discussion board. That time I was once again pleasantly surprised by the quality of feedback provided by some students; there was a student who I called “The Master of Giving Feedback” who read all of the students’ essays and gave detailed feedback for all students. Slowly students became accustomed to this online peer review activity and for the final essay practically all students posted feedback and were able to improve their final work.

I was curious to learn why some students did not follow the online task and did mostly class peer review. They confessed that they preferred face-to-face classes more and they had some technical issues with online class. However, those students who continuously provided and received feedback, supported blended peer review activity and gave positive comments in their reflective writing.

Here are some of the comments the students provided:

“via online class I’ve got feedback that helped me to improve my writing skills”, “thanks to our online class we can exchange ideas and give feedback to each other. It really helps us in developing our writing skills in academic style. After getting feedback, I understood my weaknesses and I tried to work harder and read more in order to improve the level of my essays”. Blending face-to-face seminars with online peer evaluation and feedback enabled my students to become more motivated, independent in writing academic essays and autonomous learners.

On the whole, the two engaging activities have turned to be successful for both students and me because they include four aspects of motivation which have been identified by several researchers namely competence (the belief that students are capable of doing something), autonomy/control (the ability to set appropriate goals and see a correlation between effort and outcome), interest/value (a vested interest in the task and a feeling that its value is worth the effort to complete it), and relatedness (the need to feel part of a group or social context and exhibit behavior appropriate to that group) (Murray, 2011; Pintrich, 2003; Ryan & Deci, 2000 cited in CEP, 2012). The table below summarizes the most important aspects of motivation:

(Bandura, 1996; Dweck, 2010; Murray, 2011; Pintrich, 2003; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Seifert, 2004 cited in CEP, 2012).

Conclusions

In conclusion, creating appropriate learning environment based on students’ needs, acquiring an academic language through a fifteen-minute-student-led class time and blending face-to-face seminars with an online educational platform might become motivating and rewarding activities that foster students’ language competence, and help students see themselves as successful users of English.

References

Center on Education Policy (CEP) The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development (2012). What is motivation and why does it matter? Available from www.cep-dc.org [Accessed 2 November 2016].

Course Handbook (2016/17). Certificate of International Foundation Studies. Available from http://intranet.wiut.uz:11619/SiteAssets/CIFS%20Course%20Handbook%20%28WIUT%29%202016-17Revised26.07.16.pdf [Accessed 28 November 2016].

Sheerin, S. (1997). An exploration of the relationship between self-access and independent learning. In Autonomy and independence in language learning, eds. P. Benson and P. Voller. London: Longman, pp 54–65.

Edmodo (2016). About Edmodo. Available from https://www.edmodo.com [Accessed 28 November 2016].

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