Instructional Development Research Projects
Creative Writing and Reading in Russian: Poetry in Focus
Polina Barskova, GSR, Slavic Languages and Literatures
My project involved the creation of a syllabus and lesson plans for a course to be offered in Spring 2004. The goal of this course is to improve student writing, reading and speaking skills through hands-on activities rooted in Russian literature. Participants will face issues central to Russian poetry of the last three centuries in a manner markedly different from customary approaches of critical literary analysis. Discussion topics will include elements of formal poetics (e.g., meter and rhyme), important recurrent motifs that sustained the interest of Russian poets for centuries (e.g., politics, city, and…mermaids), and the interplay of their poetry with other arts such as music, painting, and film. My presentation will focus on the various aspects of my preparatory work for this course.
Realistic Language Training for Prospective GSIs: Improving Chances for Success
Sargam Shah, Lecturer, GSI Teaching & Resource Center: Language Proficiency Program
For my project, I have written a textbook/reader that focuses specifically on the micro-skills that are the most important for graduate students planning to become GSI’s who are speakers of languages other than English. I am focusing on ways to improve their use of super-segmentals and phonemes that affect rhythm negatively, as these can create a challenge for the listener. My choices of language focus and activities are designed to allow Language Proficiency Program students to make the maximum possible progress in their communicative competence in English within one semester.
Teaching Literary Texts: From Spanish 4 to Spanish 25
Rakhel Villamil-Acera, GSR, Spanish
One of the central objectives of Spanish 4 is the development of the student’s ability to read
critically both literary and non-literary prose and to teach them how to write a coherent well-
developed, well-organized expository/argumentative essay. My intentions as a Spanish teacher
are to encourage students to think about short stories as a text and as a social and discursive
practice, which involves instruction in stylistics. The curricular changes I am proposing will
improve the transition from Spanish 4 to Spanish 25.
Introduction to Korean Short Stories – Fourth-Year Korean
Clare You, Lecturer, East Asian Languages and Cultures
The reader I am developing consists of twelve modern short stories. When considering what I
would include in the reader, I considered both what the students would be interested in reading
and what I think is essential for them to learn in an introductory Korean short story course. I will
discuss how I selected the short stories, describe the lesson plans for each story, and give a short
teaching demonstration of one of them.
Friday, December 5, 2003
3-5pm, 370 Dwinelle Hall