The College Writing Toolkit - Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing - Martha C. Pennington
10. Teaching Critique Writing: A Scaffolded Approach
The College Writing Toolkit - Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing - Martha C. Pennington
Nahla Nola Bacha [+]
Lebanese American University
Description
Working in an English composition classroom with Arabic speaking students in a Lebanese university, Nahla Nola Bacha, in her contribution, “Teaching Critique Writing: A Scaffolded Approach,” recounts how she teaches critique writing to develop first-year students’ critical thinking and awareness of text types.Bacha describes a staged teaching and learning process designed to provide scaffolding to help her students become independent learners. Their goal is to produce five-part essays based on contemporary critiques, working in small groups. In doing this, the students practice skills such as introducing a source, summarizing its main ideas, agreeing or disagreeing with those ideas, and using paraphrase and direct quotation to support their opinions. In an adaptive “bricoleur” use of technology, Bacha applies plagiarism detecting software not to check up on her students, but for the students themselves to evaluate the originality of their work and revise accordingly.