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Future Teaching Goals
There are three areas of my teaching craft that I would like to continue to develop in the immediate future. Chief amongst these is my understanding of students whose first language is not English. My experience at the University of California, Irvine has afforded me the opportunity to work with a large population of such students and I have learned a number of skills for helping such students on a day-to-day basis. Nevertheless, I often encounter students whose difficulties writing conventional English are so severe that I feel powerless. I also am concerned about the ability of composition instruction to have a lasting benefit on the writing performance of non-native speakers, especially those who work in disciplines where they don't get a lot of writing practice. Since by all estimates this student population will increase in the future, I feel it is important to learn adequate teaching techniques to meet the needs of these students.
Another of my goals is to continue to explore my interest in creative writing. In particular I want to explore ways of using creative writing to enliven the rather pedestrian nature of traditional academic writing. I feel that this cannot help but improve my teaching. Every time I teach writing I learn something new, and I am struck constantly by the fact that I could be learning so much more if I explored more experimental kinds of writing with my students.
The last major goal I have for the immediate future of my teaching is to continue to explore the pedagogical applications of information technology. Indeed I believe that doing so offers opportunities to address the two goals I have set out above. Information technology makes available valuable resources both for working with non-native writers, and for exploring the rapidly expanding world of electronic textuality in exciting and creative ways.