Week 13

Well, this was our second week off this semester. I had no grading and so managed to switch off work for practically the whole week. I say practically the whole week because I went to visit friends in Berlin - friends who were ex-colleagues and so from time to time our conversations turned to "work". Also, strangely enough for me, I did not log onto the Internet for the whole of the week. This was despite the fact that my traveling companion had his state of the art iphone with him and was constantly online himself. Also the friends I was visiting had their two laptops constantly on. However, I resisted the temptation and confined myself to living in the "real" world. Of course when I got back to Istanbul, one of the first things I did was log on and I'm pleased to say there were no disasters awaiting me. Having had a week off, I now feel inspired for that last push towards the end of semester - primarily because I have already started planning for semester break. There's nothing like the prospect of another holiday to get you through a busy and stressful time at work.

Week 12

The first lesson of this week was devoted to students writing their in-class assignment. I did try to make like as easy as possible by allowing a week and a half to read the text on which the assignment is based. I also made the actual task available a full week in advance. As a teacher, supervising the writing of such assignments during class time allows for some time to catch up on administrative work. However, it still means that whatever students write in class needs to be graded at a later date and it's never possible to grade a whole set of assignments in the same amount of time as it took students to write it. And so, after students wrote the assignment, I had to spend every available moment for the rest of the week grading. Although I succeeded in grading the assignments in time for the second lesson of the week, I did not give the results or provide feedback. My major concern at the moment is getting students prepared to write their second essay. Therefore feedback on the in-class writing will have to wait until the second lesson after the Bayram - the day on which students will submit the first draft of their second essay.

Although we haven't really spent a lot of time preparing for the second essay, I often find that it is best to get students started as soon as possible in actually writing something. They may do quite a good job, in which case everyone is happy. However, if I find that the penny hasn't dropped then I will be able to fit in an extra draft for those who are struggling to understand what it is they need to do. So...here's hoping that the concept of synthesis is grasped immediately and we all have a pain free end of semester.

Speaking of pain-free, we now have yet another free week to look forward to. Now that I have succeeded in grading the in-class assignments and because "the ball is in the students' court" (they are working on their second essay)I am in the blissful situation of having no grading and so can look forward to a worry free week.

Week 11

Although I began last week's blog by pointing out that I was awarding students' first big grade, I can begin this week's entry by saying that by the end of this week I will have awared 58% of students overall grades. Before they leave for Bayram therefore, they will have an extremely good idea of how well they are doing.

In the first lesson this week I brought students attention to the course schedule. I guess they don't look at it other than when the instructor draws their attention to it. Most students were therefore surprised to learn that they have an inclass writing assignment next week. In order to minimise the damage caused by this assignment, it will be worth only 10% of their overall grade (as opposed to 25% which each of their take-home essays is worth) and I gave them the task in advance. They have also had over a week to read the text and I gave them the task in advance. Does all this mean I am going to get wonderful essays? Here's hoping.

Also this week students were given the first stages in preparing to write their second essay. The reading of the texts on which the essay will be based is not actually expected until next week but this week we did lots of building exercises. Here's hoping that when students do actually read the text, a lot of what they are reading will sound familiar. As one of these building exercises, students had to write a story in which one of the main characters is having an online relationship while at the same time is engaged in one in real life. The stories ended up exhibiting many of the same characteristics of essays. Although students were provided with the basic scenario, including the names of the characters, some completely dispensed with such details and let their imaginations run riot. The inspiration for the prompt on which the stories are based, comes from the text the students have to read for next week. I wonder whether the original researchers found that many of their stories had nothing to do with the original prompt that they provided their subjects with.

As hinted at above, we have another week off soon. I am hoping to have the in-class writing assignments graded by then and so will enjoy the break. Students also, if they get organized should manage to take all/most of the week off. A lot depends on how well prepared they are for writing their second essay. So, all of us have something to look forward to at the end of next week.

Week 10

The highlight for me this week was collecting the final drafts of essay 1 and then grading them. I say highlight, not because it was such a pleasant experience but rather because it was "momentous". In other words this is the first big grade that I will give students although this is now week 10. It might be better for students if, because we are 2/3rds of the way through the course, they had already been allocated 2/3rds of their grades. However, with such a lot of input required early on, all the grades are announced only in the last 1/3rd of the course. However, within the next couple of weeks students should receive almost half their grades and hopefully that will help to motivate them for the final push to the end. We have another week long holiday coming up but I'm afraid, unless we are extremely well organized, most of us will need to do some work during it. Just before the break students will do the in-class writing assignment, which I will then have the pleasure of grading and students will have the deadline for the first draft of their second essay shortly after the break and so unless they succeed in finishing it way in advance, they will also need to consider doing at least a little work over the Bayram.

I haven't fully finished grading the essays yet but again there were no major surprises. Most students appear to have made a genuine effort and were very careful in editing. I wonder if this was because of all my threats or are they normally this careful?

As students handed in their final drafts of essay 1, I felt it was my opportunity to slip in a couple of lessons not directly related to either essay 1 or essay 2. Therefore the lessons this week were focused on the issues of plagiarism and the fact that vocabulary learning is a life-long process. I know students won't be pleased when early next week I start talking about essay 2 and assign work for that. Many in their last blogs commented on feeling the need for a bit of breathing space between assignments but I'm afraid with deadlines looming, we must keep going. Yes, I could move deadlines but the semester still must finish on January 9th. With Bayrams, Christmas, New Year etc. everything has been carefully worked out and so students will just have to trust that as much time as is feasible has been allowed for each assignment.

Week 9

Once students hand in the first draft of their first essays, the real work begins for the teacher. Last week was spent grading and the main focus of this week was seeing each student for a 1:1 tutorial. By the start of this week I had graded practically all of the essays that had been submitted the previous week. When I went to my office on Monday morning I did of course know that there were four or five students who had not yet submitted their essays and so I was expecting to find that that number of essays had been slipped under my door. Unfortunately there was only one and even now – two weeks after the deadline there are still 3 students who have not yet submitted an essay. These same students have also missed their 1:1 tutorials. So, if one can’t get them to so some work or even come and talk about what their difficulties are, what is one supposed to do?

Both lessons this week were spent giving feedback on the essays. Students have now received feedback in 4 different ways – comments have been written on their essays in the form of an error correction code indicating grammatical/stylistic/content problems. They also have a rubric indicating how successfully they have fulfilled basic requirement such as writing a thesis, organizing their essay in a logical way that is clear to their reader etc. This rubric also contains detailed comments on specific points related to their own essay – the kinds of comments that wouldn’t fit in the margins of their essay. As mentioned above, both lessons (ie. 150 minutes) were spent giving feedback based on common problems that most students experienced in the writing of their essays. Finally, each student has received personalized feedback in their tutorials. Based on all this feedback, they have been warned that I am expecting to see quite dramatic improvements in draft 2.

My overall impression of essays was that they were pretty similar to what I receive each semester. In other words, this year’s students are not dramatically different from any others. Again there were quite a few students who appear to have learned nothing on the course. They have continued doing things that they have done in the past. In other words, in high school they may have written lots of essays on literature, giving their personal response to what they have read. Often this response involved copious amounts of quotation. They completely ignored any instructions they had been given but just continued writing in the way they have always written – thereby failing to demonstrate that they have learned something new. They just don’t seem to get the point that there are different types of writing for different purposes. They are now doing a different type of writing with a different purpose but no matter how many times you tell them this, they revert back to what they’ve been doing for years because that’s more comfortable and most of them probably received good grades for what they wrote in the past. It’s a similar problem with students who have spent the last year of their life practicing for the writing assignment for the TOEFL exam. However, as I keep reminding them, a lot of what they wrote would fall far short of the requirements for TOEFL. Some students are still presenting essays without a thesis of with a single body paragraph. This would indicate retrogression rather than progression. I am sometimes described as being “picky” and having standards that are far too high. Surely a thesis or at least three paragraphs in a three page essay isn’t asking for too much!

Week 8

The day of reckoning came at last - the deadline for first drafts of essay 1. It is now a week after the deadline and I still haven't received essays from some students. This morning I received a podcast from a student three weeks after the deadline. Implementing the rule that 10% is deducted for every 24 hours or part thereof that the work is late, this student of course will not receive a grade. I wonder if she realises this. Likewise these other students who haven't yet submitted an essay, 7 days after the deadline, are now down to receiving a maximum grade of 30% - assuming of course that they submit an essay today. I wonder what their strategy for passing the course is.

Those essays that I did receive were no more surprising than those I received in earlier semsesters. There were some students who didn't attain the minimum requirements with regard to length, there were some who didn't answer the questions they were asked and there were some that I just simply could not understand. However, none of this is new and I have to keep reminding myself that I get a fresh batch of students each semester; students who are learning things for the first time and although I may be teaching something for the umteenth time, they are struggling to master it for the first time.

Week 7

This was another extremely short week. The whole nation will know about the fact that Wednesday was Republic Day and a national holiday. As is customary, people are given a half-day prior to national holidays in order, I believe, to allow them to travel home and be with their families. However, given the location of its campus, Koc university tends to not expect students to travel to campus for just 2 1/2 hours of lessons and so, as well as having Wednesday off there were also no classes on Tuesday. As an instructor this works out well as all classes miss an equal amount of lessons. It can be difficult when one section misses a class and another doesn't. Things run much more smoothly when classes are in sync.

With the deadline for submission of the first essay next week, my main concern this week was to ensure that students were equipped to address the task they were given. Last week we dealt thoroughly with the first part of the task and so this week I wanted to focus on the second part. It basically requires students identifying what it is that a writer can do to make his/her writing more convincing. In effect this is what teachers are trying to teach them to do but from time to time it is useful to get students to closely examine someone else's writing and identify how in practice, a writer utilizes all these techniques that the teacher is constantly on about. Here's hoping that students will themselves employ some of these techniques when they write their own essays. Yes, I acknowledge that there is a third part to my task but I am leaving it up to students themselves to decide how to go about responding to that. In effect this is their opportunity to respond in a more subjective way to the ideas being presented in the text. The main thing is that they will need to back up their response with evidence. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

I feel somewhat guilty in how I spent a considerable amount of my extra free time this week. I must have spent at least 10 hours organizing my itunes library. This primarily involved tracing stray songs and labelling them. I also got album art for everything. I have done this before and ended up losing my library and having to recreate it. Here's hoping that I will never have to do this again. Despite having album art for everything on my computer, when I synced the ipod there were many albums without artwork. I have also discovered how to get audiobooks to appear under audio books and having transferred everything over, I discovered that they were better where they were and so I moved them all back to music. Each individual track in "audiobooks" is treated as a separate audio book and there is no way of grouping them. Now, how clever is that. However, if you put them in with all your other music you can at least group tracks as if they were albums.