Textbook Madness

[joe]

I have a text book for Writing class. Ironically it is exactly the kind of book they need. It deals with exactly the issues that plague Chinese students of Written English, and treats them to saccharine texts of the right sort, pitched directly at mother love and school responsibility. And it has really good exercises that develop the theory required.

But the answers to every exercise are in the back of the book.

And yet, every week I set up and then set 10-20 minute exercises directly from the book, using the book, and every student has the book,... and they go ahead and do them. (And why it should be true that they follow my instruction is somebody else's guess).

Out of five classes of a total of about 160 students I think there literally might be 2 students who know they can shortcut the work by going to the back of the book. I continue to be amazed each week that this happens. I have even told one class that the answers are in the back of the book. Three weeks later they are following instruction just like everyone else.

And I know they aren't feigning activity because when they go ahead and work, the right kind of Bell curve of right and wrong answers shows up. And I pay attention, watching to see who is flipping pages and who isn't.

Madness!

I thought about it today because I got audited by the Dean, the Foreign Affairs Officer, and some idiot European who is also teaching English here. Fortunately, they came to a class that has always been more responsive than the others. (They got the answers less right than the best class, but they had more fun with it.)

It seems like the only person who really uses the back of the book is me, so I don't have to actually do the exercises when planning class.

[con's fly is open]

They'll catch on, Joe. Slipstream their innocence while you can, but prepare yourself for that moment when you'll have to crank out your own tests.

And keep your eyes peeled for the signals...

[MK]

You might be working at a good school with students who genuinely want to learn (happens now and again) or you might have had to work for it, I dunno, but it sounds to me like they respect you.

[Dr. Gonzo]

Strange days indeed.
I got used to the situation where, if the answers weren't in the back, the students would indignantly flounce down to the nearest bookshop and buy the Teachers' Edition.

[Ruth]

Seems like a rare situation, Joe. I'm impressed.

Where I am, getting the right answer is more important than how that right answer is obtained. Or that anything is learned in the process.

[Mr Nobody]

Yeah, I have the same trouble as Ruth. I can't get them to understand that for many things there is no 'right' or 'wrong' answer, just speaking. Had an issue with an exercise today. They couldn't find the response to one of the questions in the example in the text. It was "How long have you been in business?"

It took a while to explain that it was a make beleive exercise and they could be anybody or anything, not just the people in the example, discussing business.

[Lotus Eater]

How can a writing textbook's exercises have the right answers in the back? Surely the act of writing is to create, (even if it is just a resume, letter or description of mother) not to regurgitate someone else's words in the correct order?

Or is it more of a grammar of writing book - what is the right word stuff?

[joe]

Aside from yer basic grammar issues, the big problem Chinese students of Written English have is coherence of presentation: vague or non-existant topic sentences; absence of introductory paragraphs; non sequiter discussions; a gigantic tendency to airy generalised statements; and a general lack of flow to reasoning, if a presentation of reasoning exists at all.

The text book deals with paragraph and summary writing. It starts with the idea of a topic sentence and supporting detail sentences, moves on to types of paragraphs (yer basic narrative versus descriptive distinction), treats of paragraph "unity" and paragraph "coherence". Paragraph coherence is defined to be: topic sentence plus supporting details plus linking words between supporting details and/or topic sentence and zero extraneous fluff; and an example exercise provides three passages and requires the students to say which of them is coherent and which not. One of the passages is not coherent by virtue of badly ordered but otherwise good sentences. The exercise was then to re-order the sentences and add linking words to make a coherent paragraph. The required coherent paragraph is printed in the back of the book. The exercise done properly with set up, actual work in pairs, class feedback and correction can run to 30 minutes.

As an addendum, I have always graded Writing students on how well structured was their writing, but have never had such a direct means to teach it. And this stuff sounds like it should bore the poop out of any reasonably lively student, but it seems like it doesn't. Plus, when it comes time for the students to write their own actual essays, they can and will be graded largely on how well-structured was their writing as compared to the text book theory and class exercises. A syllabus and a means to provide scoring that reflects learning: woohoo! The content of their writing, within the scope of a particular essay question, is up to them.

The book is Contemporary College English: First-Year Writing, Book One: "Summary & Paragraph", Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2004. It works best to an audience of University level language majors in a dedicated writing class.

[Mr Nobody]

I have to teach all this stuff on top of oral English, since they don't teach it here. It doesn't take too long. I just have to beat them over the head until they remember. The kids quite like it, too.