Sally's CATESOL 2010 Highlights

These are brief write-ups of the two most interesting talks I attended at the recent CATESOL conference.
By Sally Teeple.

Promoting Academic Honesty in the ESL Classroom

I attended this presentation because I recently had a student in a writing class turn in an essay that was 100% cut-and-pasted from the Internet, so the topic of plagiarism and academic (dis)honesty was fresh in my mind. The presenter, Jessica Plotner, had many good ideas for introducing this topic in class early in the term, and for engaging students in activities to help them learn what is considered plagiarism and what isn’t. For example, she recommends spending time on a thorough discussion of the cheating/plagiarism policy of the classroom and of the institution. She also provided a handout with a number of plagiarism-related scenarios that can be used to do various activities. For instance, students could categorize them into “cheating” and “not cheating”, or they could do role plays of some of the situations. The presenter had many other great ideas, and I hope to be able to apply some of the her suggestions in my own classes in the future. In her presentation, she used a saying which is somewhat hackneyed, but nonetheless appropriate for this topic: The best offense is a good defense. I agree with her. If we engage our students early in a discussion of plagiarism, and show them what they shouldn't do, we will have to spend less time later in the semester backtracking and telling them what they shouldn't have done.

How IEPs and College/Universities Work Together to Prepare Students for Freshman Academic Life

Since I teach at two IEPs, I am interested in how students adjust from the comfortable ESL classroom to a large college or university (like SJSU or Mission College). I often find that in my classes, students don’t know basics like how to compose an email to a teacher (they often use lots of happy faces and text-type abbreviations), how to write an assignment heading (I’ve had students simply scrawl their name at the bottom of a paper in pencil), and what size and type of paper is appropriate to write an assignment on (Asian students often use cute, small paper), and I wonder how these students will fare in the “real world” of the university. The talk I attended was given by a teacher at CSU East Bay. She teaches in a program designed to prepare their IEP students to enter the university. In her presentation, she discussed how they designed the program and what sorts of skills they teach students. I really like some of the projects they have students do. One project is a sort of scavenger hunt on campus, to help students get familiar with places like the health center, library, book store, etc. They also have students make appointments with and interview professors and other faculty and staff on campus, so that when they become university students, they have had some practice visiting office hours and asking questions of their teachers. Many of the assignments they do in this program could be easily turned into shorter assignments in a listening and speaking class to help students become familiar with American college culture.