Academic Strategies

Abstract

Introduction Once students reach college level, they are often asked to use English in various academic settings. For example, the students have to read a lot of academic materials for their major studies and further research. They are also required to have academic writing skills to deliver their ideas and thoughts intelligibly. Moreover, they need communicative skills to deal with in-class discussion and presentations. In other words, college students need academic strategies apart from their language proficiency. In this vein, this textbook is intended for college students who want to develop their English competence and academic skills. This textbook designed for college English classes in Korea and the students’ proficiency level is Intermediate-high according to the ACTFL. This textbook is mainly composed of authentic reading and listening materials covering current issues, relevant academic strategies, and writing tasks. Different topics from various fields will engage the target students from different majors. Also, the target strategies for each chapter will guide the students to develop integrated language skills and communicative ability. The writing tasks in this textbook include both academic writing tasks such as a persuasive essay as well as real-world writing tasks such as writing a resume. Methodology This textbook adopts Intensive Reading (IR), Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Process Approach to teach academic strategies and language skills effectively. Intensive reading (IR) is applied in my textbook to allow students to develop appropriate academic reading strategies. Intensive reading helps learners to get more opportunities to understand the meanings of the text under the instructor’s guidance (Nuttall, 2005). IR involves learners reading in detail with specific learning aims and tasks (Long & Richards, 1987). In my sample chapter, students will learn about one of reading strategies, skimming. Also, the students will apply the target strategy to match each subheading with its paragraph and to find out the grammatical features such as the present perfect. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is embedded in t my textbook to engage students to use the target language through interactions. CLT typically involves realistic communicative tasks which provide learners with opportunities to build up their linguistic knowledge and skill (Nunan, 1989). My sample chapter includes various pair and group activities where students need to communicate real meaning and cooperate with each other. For example, the students are asked to look at the pictures about different social networking sites and share the experiences related to social media before reading “Importance of Staying Connected”. For the final task, students make an oral presentation on “advantages and disadvantages of social media in the classroom”. Process approach is used in my textbook for the writing tasks. Process writing involves several steps: planning, drafting, revising, editing and evaluating. Process approach is effective to draw students’ awareness to how to improve their own composing process, as well as to practice writing in each stage of the writing process (Hyland, 2011). In my sample chapter, students are asked to write an advantages/disadvantages essay based on the articles and additional online research on topic of using social media. While going through the steps of the writing process, the students will be able to learn about how an advantages/disadvantages essay looks like, how to use linking words to make opposite ideas, and how to revise the rough drafts according to feedback. Expected Outcomes and Conclusion Each chapter of the textbook is designed to be more responsive to the target students’ needs, academic success along with language learning. Through this book, students will be motivated to read English materials with proper strategies. They will think about current issues and expand their knowledge on various topics. Communicative activities and tasks will encourage them to use the target language in meaningful ways. The students will be able to learn the non-linear nature of writing process and develop writing skills. Finally, students will work with critical and creative thinking through interactive and cooperative tasks and expressing their opinions.