Paul Lege
Nagoya University, Graduate School of Law
About
R. Paul Lege, PhD, had been teaching a wide number of cultural courses and academic writing in Japan for twenty years. For the last ten year, he has been primarily teaching academic writing to graduate students from a diverse number of countries who attend Nagoya University either directly or online. He has taught in various modes and through different platforms including face-to-face, hybrid, online, and in remote classes. In addition to various interests in the Humanities, he has mainly sought ways to improve the online and remote learning experience.Sessions
On-line presentation (research report on practice and activities) (30 minutes) The Importance of Culture in Designing Academic Writing Lessons for the ESL Student more
Sat, Nov 27, 13:20-13:50 Asia/Tokyo
Understanding what ESL students bring culturally to the learning experience is extremely important to designing any aspect of a language course. Moreover, learning to write effectively in English can be quite a challenge for the ESL leaner who may carry over many cultural approaches that conflict with learning to write in English. A well designed course will need to consider how these personal skills, habits, and motivations affect learning how to write a clear and coherent research paper. This session looks at quantitative data collected from 180 ESL students from diverse countries who have participated in learning academic writing while attending the Graduate School of Law at Nagoya University between 2012 and 2021. In addition to general language skill levels, the data indicates that personal writing skills in one's own language, deference to writing (motivation), as well as writing script (habit) can all play a significant role in just how well a student may adjust to and acquire an understanding of what is expected in academic writing. Such a study helps the writing instructor to design lessons based on a diverse understanding of the needs of the ESL student.