1. David McPhail, Francesca Ortona, Julie Hartill, Andrea Walker
Written English
David McPhail, Francesca Ortona, Julie Hartill, Andrea Walker
© Imperial College London

2. Context Imperial Value Added Materials Degree Core knowledge
The HE process
Context
Imperial
Materials Degree
Core knowledge
Transferable Skills
Industry
PG Research
Other (finance/ etc)
Maths & Physics ‘B’
English required
31% overseas SE Asia /China
employment
Value Added
admissions
graduation
Research led university (rewards)
Many overseas staff and visiting staff

3. Writing Skills

4. Writing Skills
Key points Our students find writing the most difficult of the communication skills. BUT over 95% of the marks in our degree course are associated with the assessment of written work by academic staff (so what are we assessing?). Outcome = Knowledge*Skills*Writing ability AND Employers (and most parents) expect our graduates to be able to write well after 17 years in the education system!
Potential Problems are:
Underachievement
Plagiarism
Failure
Damage to institutions reputation

5. Strategies for Improving Writing Skills
Objective:
To put in place a sustainable support system to demonstrate to each student the need for high quality written work, to identify weaknesses, and to provide the appropriate assistance.

6. The Challenge Students are:
not aware of the importance of writing skills to their degree and to their subsequent career;
convinced that the technical and numerical content in their work is all-important;
tend not to allow time to read through their work and correct it.

7. The Challenge Academic Staff:
Many do not consider the teaching of written English to be part of their job
Some are not suitably skilled to teach English
Apply different policies and penalties in their marking schemes

8. Assessment and Clinic
1st Year students (66) were assessed on the basis of a report they wrote on their first lab “Introduction to Materials”. Common faults:

9. Categories a Good overall, only very minor points need attention.
b Good but needs more attention to detail
c Quite good but too informal/clumsy needs more care and thought
d Careless - sometimes lacking in coherence, logic. Sometimes repetitive. Disruptions to the flow.
e Needs some help with English although not too bad. Sometimes misunderstands.
f Needs a lot of help with the English language both in expressing and in understanding

10. Categories Comment on Admissions Criteria
IELTS and TOEFL scores did not map precisely onto the test results
HOWEVER… Most of the students in the lowest ability groups did have low IELTS and TOEFL scores
Raising the IELTS and TOEFL bar will ameliorate the problem

11. Questionnaire Students’ suggestions for improving: reading more
writing more
greater
vocabulary
attending
English classes
Rating

12. Recommendations - targeted
Extra assistance for students that have problems through:
small-group tutorials given by specialists from English language Support Programme;
one-to-one advice from a member of staff or another departmental champion
peer tutoring

13. Recommendations - general
Marking and feedback
Enhances student’s motivation
Challenges:- staff inclination
- staff ability
- must be consistent
- can be a negative experience

14. Recommendations - general
workshops to increase awareness
1st Year: no marks allocation but good feedback
2nd Year: Up to 25% may be deducted
Alternative:
return any reports without marking if English is not adequate
student required to correct and resubmit work

15. Workshops 1st Year Workshop: half-day
Introduction including video clip:
Exercise 1 (Write a letter of Application)
Exercise 2 (Précis – summarise 400 words in )

16. Exercise 1
Write letter
Groups of eight
Look at each letter in pairs
Make written changes and comments
Group chooses a representative
Representative records good and bad points
Representative presents points to rest of class

17. Overall Conclusions on Written English
Raise student and staff awareness of the issue
Assistance embedded in the course through assessment
Explicit assistance through workshops, ELSP and departmental champion
Consistent staff approach
Departmental champion
Raise entrance requirements (cannot learn English and Engineering in parallel)
Useful Books before entry ?
Eats, Shoots and Leaves – Lynne Truss
Ten Steps to Perfect Punctuation – Jenny Haddon – September 2006

18. Support for current work
Imperial College London:
Research Grant
UK Centre for Materials Education:
Teaching Development Grant