Kirjahaku

This text was written for students who want to live, study, and/or work in an English-speaking setting or are already doing so. Its goal is to help students survive interactional English in a variety of social, academic, and professional settings—for example, how to make small talk with recruiters at a job fair or when invited to dinner at their advisor’s house. The text provides language to use for a variety of functions as they might related to life on a university campus: offering greetings and goodbyes, making introductions, giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, using the phone, offering assistance, asking for advice, accepting and declining invitations, giving and receiving compliments, complaining, giving congratulations, expressing condolences, and making small talk. Users are also taught to think beyond the words and to interpret intonation and stress (how things sound). Each of the 10 units includes discussion prompts, language lessons, practice activities, get acquainted tasks (interacting with native speakers), and analysis opportunities (what did they discover and what can they apply?).

The university office hour interaction is new to everyone who attends a university. Not knowing what to do or when to go is not unique to international students. Office Hours: What Every University Student Needs to Know sets out to demystify the entire process of office hours—the purpose and goals of these meetings, how to plan for them, and even determining whether to visit the professor or send an email. Information about “group” office hours, which are becoming more common, is also included. This task-based book also describes the five moves, or parts, of an office hour interaction and provides many examples and tasks to help guide students through this important communicative aspect of academic life. It seeks to ensure that every office hour interaction ends on a positive note. Reflection questions for new teaching assistants are included throughout, making this ideal for TA workshops. Four analysis tasks are included to accompany the four videos that explore various student-professor interactions. The videos are available online at www.press.umich.edu/elt/compsite/officehours.

The ability to lead a successful discussion in a seminar or course, or as part of key project team, is critical to success in and beyond higher education. Leading Academic Discussions describes the six moves, or parts, of a typical academic discussion and provides many examples of language that can be used to accomplish these moves. A variety of tasks then offers practice for students in the roles of participants and leaders because, to be a good leader, students must first be good participants. Although discussions are heavily reliant on words, they are also influenced and affected by pronunciation, stress, pitch, and tone. Because speakers need to both notice and use these cues to make their messages clear to other participants, the text addresses these factors as well. Additionally, non-verbal communication plays an essential role, so one chapter is devoted to it. Throughout the text, reflection questions about leading discussions are provided for those who are or hope to be teaching assistants (TAs) and project leads/managers. Video analysis tasks are included to accompany the six mini discussion videos that are open and available at www.press.umich.edu/elt/compsite/leading.

In Flipping the Classroom, Robyn Brinks Lockwood explains the educational phenomenon of flipped classrooms and dispels some of the common myths about flipping (e.g., “Flipped classrooms don’t use textbooks” and “Flipping requires me to make videos of myself”). The book defines flipping and answers questions teachers may have about the role of textbooks, technology, and class time. Lockwood also discusses the benefits of flipping for teachers and students and talks about lessons she’s learned from her experience flipping her own classes. In addition, she suggests ways ESL/EFL teachers may want to implement flipping in their classrooms.

The ability to give a successful presentation in an academic setting is critical to success both on and off campus. Making Academic Presentations describes the five moves, or parts, of a typical presentation and provides examples of language that can be used to successfully accomplish these moves. Although language is vital to giving a good presentation, the book also addresses other factors that influence the success of a presentation, such as overcoming nervousness, nonverbal communication, and pronunciation and paralinguistics. The book includes a variety of tasks that will help students practice developing and analyzing presentations as well as practice projects for applying these lessons. In addition, rubrics and evaluation forms are included for instructors to adapt and use for evaluation purposes.