GOs are used to introduce low-level students to summary writing and recognizing rhetorical patterns, important basics in academic language development. The presenters report on a study on teaching research writing skills to freshmen students. Their purpose is, first, to report on three attitudinal questionnaires that analyze teachers' and students' views on the research writing course, and, second, to describe steps to undertake to teach that skill effectively. Waterfront Ballroom A Concept circles are useful tools for extracting important lexical information from reading. Furthermore, these graphic organizers help students develop various reading and thinking skills-isolating main ideas, summarizing, guessing meaning, and studying vocabulary by domain and lexical hierarchy.
Presenters show how students use concept circles to facilitate independent reading.
In freshman composition, refugee and immigrant students' language and cultural differences set them apart from their NS peers. However, these two groups have some characteristics in common. This presentation examines similarities and differences between basic writers and refugee students at a large urban university. The presenter shares the results of an action research project designed to assess the use of e-mail dialogue journals as a method of needs analysis in two different ESL courses. The presenter also discusses details of the project, along with applicability of this type of communication to other classrooms.