Speaker
Description
Teaching writing to multilingual learners at a time when ChatGPT dominates is an enormous challenge as writing educators well know. How can teachers help to improve the English language and critical thinking skills of students when there is now an app that can do it all for them? This presentation will begin by sharing preliminary research data on AI usage of students collected at an English medium university in Vietnam. It will then go on to include six specific strategies which have been used successfully by professors to improve student engagement in writing tasks and improve their critical thinking skills. These strategies include the following: (1) use of multiple drafts and grading rubrics which include ‘response to feedback’ at a high percentage; (2) assigning writing tasks that require students’ firsthand experience of collecting information to be used as evidence; (3) use of in-class writing tasks that allow students to bring in one page of handwritten notes; (4) assigning writing tasks that focus on a local issue in the community that ChatGPT will have difficulty responding to; (5) designing writing tasks that require hand-written annotation of a reading and its use as evidence; (6) giving students writing tasks that require analysis through a ‘theoretical lens’ to address a local issue. Having been given real life examples that have worked well in the university classroom in Vietnam, participants will leave this presentation with a series of strategies to use immediately in their own classroom.
Biography
Amanda Bradford is currently the academic writing specialist at Fulbright University Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City. Prior to her role at Fulbright, she has taught EAP writing courses to multilingual learners at universities all over the world including in China, the UAE, Brazil, Mozambique, and in the United States where she is from. Amanda is a seasoned presenter at international conferences worldwide, having presented at TESOL in the U.S. and IATEFL in the U.K among many others. Additionally, she is a former English Language Fellow with the U.S. State Department where she served in the Amazon region in Brazil and is a former Peace Corps volunteer in rural Africa. Ms. Bradford holds an MATESOL degree from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She has published articles on a variety of topics within language teaching pedagogy and her professional interests include second language writing, intercultural communication, and second language acquisition.
