Portfolio

Thinking, Writing, and Research at Baylor

I've included here a PowerPoint tour of my EN1304 class from Spring 2007, noting the reasons for various deployments of Blackboard features within my general pedagogy for writing.

Full Version for WinXP users

(self-extracting executable with voice and video clips)

Limited Version for any Windows machine

(self-extracting executable w/o voice and video clips)

Full Version for PowerPoint users

(requires a PowerPoint installation, MS Office 2003+ recommended)

Let me also invite you to peruse the documents generated for that course:

Syllabus

(in .PDF form)

Syllabus

(in MS Word .doc form)

Sentence Patterns Handout

(in .PDF form)

Sentence Patterns Handout

(in MS Word .doc form)

There are many more documents in the directory tree, if you feel like exploring further. In my experience, teachers share freely!

Cloze to You--Children's English Program

Here's a Powerpoint illustration of the use of music and singing, along with visual review and cloze testing, to quickly acclimate beginner EFL students (sixth graders) to English speaking and EFL classroom methods.

Ready-to-run Windows version

(self-extracting executable for any Windows machine)

Full Version for PowerPoint users

(requires a PowerPoint installation, MS Office 2003+ recommended)

Sing-Along Cue Sheet

(in MS Word .doc form)

The full teaching of the segment (a single installment of a monthly beginner's program) involved team teaching, projection & sound timing, whiteboard, working through translation, and the handout above in addition to the presentation which provided the main exercise. Students quickly recognized the song (the Carpenters are very popular in Japan) and were eager to learn its words; the visual reinforcement of the words, fitted to the timing of the music, made the Cloze exercise of singing the song without certain words (and saying the words to fill in the blanks) easy and memorable even for beginners.

Multimedia Conversation Starters: Oral Communication

"Oral Communication" is actually one division of a complex set of core corses at Baiko Gakuin University. Here, let me simply put one simple but profoundly helpful use of digital video before you.

Listen-and-Read clip from Batman Begins

(clip--this was "fair use" in Japan--pauses so students can read what they heard)

Discussion-starter for group conversation

(MS Word .doc file. Notice the interrelation of themes between video and handout)

A series of these, among other exercises (in discussion, here, and in the parallel writing class as a group project, we supplied new words to fragmentary, erased versions of Buffy ecomics), help us to elaborate a theme which encourages students to build new conversation strategies based on social success as well as listening.

The listen-and-read video clip supports that strategy in two important ways: first, it provides a content example which is also a sample conversation, so students can both reflect and imitate. Beyond that, this improves on subtitling by allowing students' listening skills (which are often weak in Japanese EFL classrooms) and reading skills to complement each other, rather than competing for the student's attention.

Along the way, this reading also socializes the mostly-female class in a more favorable opportunity environment than Japanese women have often found in their culture; this encourages them toward excellence, both as students and as human beings.

Here are a few related conversation-starters, and a planning document from my time on the faculty at Baiko:

Self Evaluation for EFL Oral Communication

(students need to be able to "own" their learning process in order to grow. Could automate this!)

Discussion Handout from Christmas Songs

(use of listening and singing plays on natural strengths and interests, while rhythm and memorable context help build components of conversational fluency)

Proposal for an Honors Program

(speaking of building patterns of aspiration!)

Kicking and Screaming: EGSA website

English graduate students are not, it seems, the "early adopters" for most forms of electronic technology. The English Graduate Student Association had no web page until I generated this old page which, despite my having been out of the country, was still posted (and forgotten by even the Tech Committee) upon my return. Here is the stub EGSA page which shows some of the improvements in basic layout/design (see the CSS here) and semantic HTML that make even this sadly static page in a draft state a vast improvement over the old design.

Curriculum Under Construction: Saturday Class

Similarly to the presentation of other materials here, let me invite you to look over these planning documents and exercises from the "Extra English Class" I team-taught with three other Foreign English Teachers. I'd be happy to discuss these at greater length, a bit later.

Topic breakdown

(planning and teacher-training based on vocabulary/grammar introduced in graded reader series)

Early Quiz

(one of the first all-English quizzes the students will take--open book, of course. The real purpose is to send them scanning through the reader, improving their "fuzzy reading" skills)

Exam on Romeo and Juliet

(the last junior-high level exam the students take--and pass easily--with their rapidly growing skills)

Webbing the World: US/UK Culture

I would like to discuss this work with you in person. For now, please feel free to take a look at the US/UK culture class blog from Baiko University, locally or on the US/UK class Blogger page.

Please also take a look at a few of the multimedia elements we used in this class, one of five I taught partly or principally in computer classrooms--a method still experimental for most at Baiko (computer labs were used for computer-skills training, email, and as audio language labs).

"Getting Started with Blogger" Tutorial

(self-extracting executable--I projected this while guiding students through setup)

Tutorial in PowerPoint format

(requires a PowerPoint installation, MS Office 2003+ recommended)

"European Tour" Student Presentation

(self-extracting executable--this is an example of work students produced for this course)

Student Presentation in PowerPoint format

(requires a PowerPoint installation, MS Office 2003+ recommended)

I look forward to walking you through some of the methods, experiments, and pitfalls I discovered in working with this class.