I have been marking a lot of work recently - about 70 EMAs and a large number of final TMAs.  Something that strikes me is issues around use of sources and referencing.

One issue is that many students overquote and some even seem to think that there is only a need to reference if they quote.  This seems a quite ineffective way of referring to knowledge of the course.  The references are often too wordy for the point they need to make.  Sometimes they do not make sense out of context - e.g. writing "now" or even "yesterday" when the student's work is about the situation a few years later. 

Another issue is that many students put a full stop before a reference when the reference finished the sentence.  Sometimes students even put a full stop before and after a reference.  This seems to suggest that they consider the reference as being apart from the rest of the sentence rather than an integral part of the text. 

These perhaps suggest that there need to be new ways of presenting how sources are used in academic contexts.

As most of my OU courses only run from October to June, I need to do other work to "keep the wolf from the door".  

This year I did two.  One was at Reading and involved working with teachers of EAP from Chinese universities.  I have done this several times before and it is always interesting and enjoyable although the teachers are from such diverse institutions and backgrounds that it is difficult to know how much impact there is.

The second course was a pre-sessional at Warwick.  I have done many pre-sessionals in the past (at Manchester and Bristol) but this was my first one for more than five years.  It was similar to previous ones in that it was largely based around a small scale study project. 

It was, however, quite different to previous pre-sessionals in that it was very specific.  All of the students will be studying for a Masters degree in Supply Chain Management.  We were given relatively light teaching loads so that we could design quite specific materials and I quite enjoyed working with content on the topic and helping to scaffold students to cope with articles using content that was relevant. 

My teaching was "Text based studies" (ie reading and writing).  We worked with three articles and there was variation in the style and formatting.  One made much more use of diagrams than the other two and one of the others described the research methods in more depth.  If I did the course in the future, I would also like to make more use of student writing such as responses to the kinds of assignments students would write.

Working towards a Study Project seemed quite focused and authentic but the final week of the course consisted of tests that seemed less valuable.  Some students on the course (this were mainly from other groups rather than the one I taught) seemed to be very disappointed with their results and I wonder how much of a blow this would have been to their morale as they are about to enter their courses.

Following on from the last posting on a video on processes, I found there is also one on noun groups at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf2waNDHnEo

I have been having interesting discussions with some students through email and OU Live about academic writing.  These relate to issues of avoiding being too informal and personal while also being evaluative and developing a point of view.

Part of the issue is that academic writing tends to value concision and personal markers tend to use words that would be better used for other things. 

However, it is important for students to show stance.  They can do this by using a variety of evaluative words such as "major/partial").  Epistemic modality ie modal verbs for likelihood (eg "might/will") or deontic modality ie modal verbs used to express desirability ("should/must") are ways that students can show their stance without being too personal in style.