Category: Tsinghua University

To review, I am teaching Academic Writing this semester. I want to motivate learning using forces other than grades. Here is my plan.

On the first day of class, I’ll say: Don’t take this class unless there is some piece of writing you want to do. This class will be all about me helping you write whatever you want. Most of the students will want help writing a personal statement for graduate school applications. I’ll tell them there needs to be something else they want to write. Without that the class will be a waste of time.

For the first class — the course meets for 1.5 hours once/week — I’ll talk about writing a personal statement.

After that, the general plan will be:

1. I meet with students after class (in the same place) for however long they want, maybe 5-20 minutes. They choose the duration. During these meetings, they show me what they’ve written. I read it and tell them how they can improve it.

2. During the next class, each student who met with me will give a talk lasting the same length of time as our meeting. For example, if we met for 5 minutes, the talk will last 5 minutes. The talk will  be about what I said. After each talk I’ll give feedback.

3. In addition, students who meet with me will add my advice to a shared document (e.g., Google Docs).

4. Each week, one student will be assigned to spend a certain length of time (30 minutes) improving the shared document. For example, making it clearer or better organized. The next class they will give a brief talk saying what they did. Again, I will give feedback.

This accomplishes several things: 1. Customization. Each student can write whatever they want. 2. Doing. They actually write “real” material (in contrast to writing assignments). What they choose to write will probably be stuff like a paper for another class but at least it isn’t a writing assignment. 3. Telling. They will tell other students what they have learned.

Attractive elements of the plan for me include the fact that I never lecture and never grade. I never need to guess what the students need help with. I learn what they need help with by looking at what they’ve written. Even though there are no grades or teacher-imposed deadlines, I give lots of feedback — it really is challenging. Attractive elements of the plan for students are that there is flexibility, they can write whatever they want, they never have to take notes (yet there is a written record to refer to), and they are pushed to understand the material in a non-competitive way.

If a student doesn’t pay attention in class — the presentations when other students tell what I told them — he risks having me make the same comment on his writing I made earlier on someone else’s. Then he would have to tell other students that I made that same comment. The other students wouldn’t like that; it wastes their time. So there is pressure to pay attention. If you miss it during class, you can study the shared document.

More English is not my students’ native language, although they are quite good at it. I think that they are more likely to understand another student say X (in English) than when I say X (in English) because the student’s English will be closer to their English ability. I might use words they don’t know. This is a problem in America, too (professor knows a lot more than his or her students) but it is especially clear here. My point is that this is a good feature of having students give class presentations about what I told them, rather than me telling the class directly, which might seem better. If a presenter makes a mistake, I will fix it.

 

In January I blogged about teaching a class in a new way. The obvious novelty was that I did no grading, but I was also pleased by the high quality of the student work.

The class, at Tsinghua University, is called Foundations of Psychology. It’s required of psychology majors and is taken by freshmen. Last time there were about 25 students. The biggest assignment was a final project where I allowed students to work on their own interests. They could do almost anything they wanted related to psychology and they could work alone or with others. I “graded” their work via a checklist: X points for doing this, Y points for doing that, and so on, with the possible points adding up to an A. The checklist was different for every project. They had about five weeks.

Here is a summary of one project, by Vista Zeng:

In the Frontiers of Psychology class this term, we, a group of three freshmen (Vista Zeng, Joy Wu and Michael Wu) conducted an experiment on Fujoshi. Fujoshi is a subculture that started in Japan and spread in East Asia. It has influenced many of our classmates and friends. When recruiting participants, we found 14 Fujoshis out of about 720 female students in Tsinghua University. Continue reading “Why Fujoshi? Experiment by Tsinghua Freshmen”

I just finished teaching an undergraduate class called Academic Writing at Tsinghua. One semester, pass/fail, about 10 students. The last assignment was list six things you’ve learned. Combining the answers, I came up with this:

1. Don’t tell readers what they already know. This came up a lot when I discussed how to write a personal statement. “Your university has an excellent program in X” — no, don’t say that.

2. To make your writing moving, focus on your own thoughts and emotions. Moving = evoking emotion. Evoking emotion was enormously important, I said. Continue reading “How to Write: Lessons From My Writing Class”

In the Frontiers of Psychology class I teach at Tsinghua (Monday 3:20-4:55, Teaching Building 6, Room A113, visitors welcome) , the students will give several presentations each class period. So I decided to assemble a list of advice. I came up with Items 1-3, the students came up with the rest.

1. Give a presentation that you would like to hear. Don’t worry about following a formula.
2. Make your points by telling stories. Don’t just say “X is true”. Tell a story that will make your listeners think that X is true.
3. Stay within the allotted time (e.g., 5 minutes). In real life — presentations at scientific conferences, for example — most presentations are too long. Listeners rarely like this. They think the speaker is selfish. If one person speaks too long, this usually means that other speakers will have less time to speak.
4. Don’t read your talk.
5. Use simple, spoken English. Don’t speak fast
6. Smile and use body language to connect with the audience.
7. Pause before the most important points.
8. Ask questions to attract attention.
9. Show the big structure of your talk.
10. When telling a story, don’t go far from the point of the story (e.g., with unnecessary details)

To me, the most interesting item is #8 (ask questions). For example, instead of saying “Let us begin” I can say “Shall we begin?” Which is certainly an improvement over coughing, which is what one student said was the usual way officials began talks.

For example, which phrasing works better?

Why does question-asking work? I asked my students.

I asked my students why question-asking works.

The first way (“Why does”) grabs my attention more than the second (“I asked”). I did ask my students why it works. One said that when you hear a question you automatically try to answer it.  I cannot do better than that. I suppose we notice questions much like we notice loud noises.

This year I got two:

1. I taught a class about R and data analysis. On Christmas, one of my students wrote, “Thanks for what you taught us on the class. I love your class. I learnt a lot!” I hadn’t taught it before. A few weeks ago I had been abashed to discover a midterm exam from Phil Spector’s R class at Berkeley. I know Phil and like and respect him. His students had learned a lot more than mine, it seemed. I had consoled myself by thinking that I couldn’t answer some of the questions.

2. Cleaning a cupboard, also on Christmas, I found a “gift” derived from buying a water heater in March. (Buy the water heater, get the “gift”.) It looked like an ordinary glass teapot, which is why I had put it in semi-storage. When I opened the box I discovered it wasn’t. It has a basket where you put the tea and hot water; when the tea is ready you press a button that releases the water into the bottom of the teapot, stopping the brewing. I drink a lot of tea. A month ago I barely knew these things existed. Then I bought one and thought it was wonderful — but small. The uncovered one is the perfect size.