I'm amazed -- Comments/Complaints

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Date Posted: 07:09:30 05/27/03 Tue
Author: sue gollagher
Subject: I'm amazed

Hello,

To begin, I would just like to say to Aisha and Ahmad that starting a website for International students is a really good idea. It should continue. If you are at uni next year, will you continue to administer it or will you pass on the responsibility to future students.

Next, I just want to say that I am amazed at the response to the web discussion I started. I want to repeat here that I had two goals when I started the discussion:
* The first goal was to be 'provocative'. However, I mean provocative in the sense that it would provoke students who never read and write in English or open their mouths in class to actually participate in an exchange of ideas.
* My second goal was to get students' feedback on the academic English course to help with planning for next year. You may not believe it, but we do take students' ideas into consideration when planning courses!

Unfortunately, I think it has been a failure. Why? For these reasons:
* GOAL 1.....the students who never express an idea in class are STILL not taking part in discussion. Aisha and Ahmad participate most actively in class and now they are participating most actively on the web. Where are the others????
* GOAL 2....we are not getting any real feedback that we can use to make changes. Comments like "my course is rubbish" don't help. What would help would be a list of areas that you think need improvement and suggestions to improve them. THAT would be helpful. In my first letter I wrote a list of problems that I am experiencing as a teacher. So far, very few students have actually responded to this. I would be really pleased if some one would.

Remember guys, all our lives we will give and receive criticism. We need to learn how to do it gracefully and respectfully.

Thank you, Sue

PS By the way, I agree with Denise that it's a little unfair to take quotes from teachers' letters out of context. What you should do is publish the whole thing and then break it down into individual points and respond to each one if you want to prove that they are wrong. Perhaps this is an exercise we could do in class.

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