Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction
THE ‘ORAL PRESENTATION SANDWICH’ EVALUATING A CURRICULUM INNOVATION FROM THE INSIDE.
Hania SalterDvorak
Exeter University, Graduate School of Education, Exeter, England
This paper argues that, in order to develop evidence based practice for teaching and assessing argumentation in L2 academic writing, curriculum innovations need to be designed, piloted and evaluated through action research. I present an example: the ‘oral presentation sandwich’ is a pedagogic and assessment model for EAP at a UK university which aims to develop discourse features of academic writing (particularly argumentation) through a process writing approach. The innovation introduces an oral presentation between the first and second drafts. Drawing on Stenhouse’s view that evaluation should serve ‘curriculum betterment’ (1975), and Crabbe’s construct of quality in ELT (2003), I discuss a constructivist evaluation of the oral presentation sandwich which involved triangulation of student questionnaires, a student focus group, interviews with lecturers, notes from staff meetings, and an ethnographic case study of one student’s experience of the model. Findings reveal lack of congruence between students’ and lecturers’ value systems: first, while lecturers viewed the oral presentation as a vehicle for developing argumentation, students viewed it as an end in itself; second, while lecturers focussed on argumentation in feedback on drafts, students focussed on accuracy in their revisions. I propose changes to the model in terms of pedagogy, materials and assessment.
References
Crabbe, D. (2003). The Quality of Learning Opportunities. TESOL Quarterly , 37:1, 1034.
Stenhouse, L. (1975). An Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development . London: Hienemann.