Ukraine

As I posted earlier, I went to Ukraine over the winter break to deliver a seminar to writing faculty. This time, the topic was "Distance Learning and the Teaching of Writing." As an added bonus, I was invited to attend a presentation of the final projects in a business communication class taught in English. The task was for the students to develop and explain to an audience of potential investors an idea for a new business venture. Topics ranged from new social networks for travelers and a nanny agency to an Italian restaurant and a stock-exchange news tracking service. The purpose of the task was not so much to teach these students how to pitch a business idea (although there was some of that too,), but rather give them practices in communicating their ideas in English.

I was very impressed, both by the quality of most of their ideas and by their English proficiency. Here is a picture of the group.

This past January, I delivered a WAC workshop to faculty of the National Technical University: Kharkiv Polytechnical Institute in Kharkiv Ukraine. Below are some belated photos. The most interesting part of this experience for me was realizing how similar writing teachers' concerns are in different countries: workloads, assignment design, integrating the teaching of writing into the teaching of the course "content," and so on.