Criticality in Genre-based Professional Communication Programmes 3 June 2017 15:00 – 17:30
Professor Vijay Bhatia City University of Hong Kong
Discourse and Genre Analysis has played an important role in the planning, development of teaching materials for Professional Communication programmes in English. In the light of the some of the key research findings from current engagement with Critical Genre Theory, I would like to illustrate and argue for a reconceptualization of some of the key aspects of the planning, designing, teaching and assessment of English for Professional Communication programmes.
Recording and Analysing Workplace Interaction to Assist ESL Learners 3 June 2017 15:00 – 17:30
Professor Janet Holmes Victoria University of Wellington
This workshop will illustrate the distinctive characteristics of the methodology developed by the Wellington Language in the Workplace Project team. Following a brief outline of our theoretical model, we will discuss the practical steps involved in collecting good quality workplace talk, and then analyse some data using the analytical approaches we have found useful. Some applications in the workplace and the classroom will be evaluated.
Using the Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP) as an EAP Resource 3 June 2017 15:00 – 17:30
Professor John Swales University of Michigan
MICUSP is a freely-available electronic collection of over 800 students’ “A” papers from 16 disciplines (covering humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering). The website includes easy-to-use “search” and “browse” functions. The central issue that the workshop will address is how MICUSP might be used by students and instructors as a vehicle for revealing disciplinary and genre conventions and expectations. After a brief demonstration of how three MICUSP projects were carried out, participants will undertake in groups a series of tasks. These involve linguistic and rhetorical consciousness-raising, tracing the function of key phrases, comparing genre exemplars from various disciplines, and planning student MICUSP projects. At the close of the workshop, participants should feel confident about adding MICUSP activities to their tool-box.
Integrating Sources into Texts: The Virtues (and Drawbacks) of the Document-based Question 3 June 2017 15:00 – 17:30
Professor Ann Johns San Diego State University
In this workshop, participants will explore the DBQ (“Document-based Question”), an assessed assignment which requires secondary and undergraduate students to analyze a prompt, classify 5-7 short relevant texts (print and visual), and select from these texts appropriate information as they plan and produce a written response. While working through the DBQ writing process, the group will discuss what classifying and integrating several sources into texts requires of students and why a DBQ assignment may be valuable for learners in a variety of academic contexts at most proficiency and maturity levels.
