The Faculty of Arts & Science’s English Language Learning (ELL) program kicked off its new Summer Reading eWriting intensive online course this week.
Open to all A&S undergraduates, the non-credit course offers students the chance to hone their reading and writing skills using popular articles and gain valuable feedback on their ideas, style, vocabulary and grammar from ELL writing centre instructors.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for students to get very precise feedback,” says Leora Freedman, coordinator of the program and associate professor, teaching stream. “Since these writings are short and not done for a course, our instructors can edit or ‘correct’ language errors, suggest alternate wording and give students examples of how to think critically about an author’s statements.
“It’s a little freer than a regular writing centre session because it’s purely for practice.”
Choosing to work from their previous course materials, popular articles from Arts & Letters Daily, Canadian literature, or articles chosen by the writing centre’s instructors, students are encouraged to set aside a minimum of 45 minutes daily to read and least another 45 minutes for writing through writing prompts, reflections, summaries, reading responses and more.
“I hope that students will feel more confident and comfortable approaching readings, thinking critically about them and expressing their ideas in writing,” says Freedman. “I especially want students to see that there is a whole world of high-quality popular material online and that reading some of it over the summer will help increase their reading speed, comprehension, vocabulary and background knowledge. This makes the return to scholarly reading easier.”
And while the early summer session is currently underway with a full cohort of 100 students, Freedman is planning to offer the course again later this summer from August 31–September 4, with full details on how to register coming soon.
“We’ve been running our summer courses since 2008. Students consistently say that they find them encouraging and helpful for their language progress,” says Freedman. “What surprises people the most is ELL’s special atmosphere, where we mix very challenging activities with a lighthearted, non-competitive approach.”
Visit the English Language Learning website for more information.