On the afternoon of May 20th, the workshop entitled "How to Mimic and Mirror: Academic Writing" was delivered by Steve Pellerine in Teaching Building 1, Room 302. As the last session of the CLE@Residential Colleges Workshop Series this semester, Steve’s presentation focused on the concept of mirroring and its applications for language learning, which was highly related to his insight accumulated via his three master degrees in education and second language acquisition, as well as his teaching expertise in deep learning that promotes literacy development.
In the workshop, aimed at first year students and students in residential colleges at SUSTech, Steve introduced the notion of mirroring that he learnt back in 1991 in his first year of psychology studies and the idea of “Fake It till You Make It” presented by Amy Cuddy in her TED Talk, to help students shape their behaviors and become aware of their technological addiction to phones and computers as well as how this addiction can affect their test scores, resulting in low GPAs.
Steve stressed that once students were present in the classroom, and were more conscious of the importance of their attention, the challenge of presenting students with academic articles (self-selected) over their four-year experience at SUSTech was posed. He emphasized that if a student dipped into academic articles regularly over the course of their studies, and if they wrote regularly (self-assigned), they would be more qualified for higher level degrees, and would have more potential to contribute to the field.
During the interaction part of his presentation, Steve outlined that the main aim is to help focused students realize their visions, and to help non-focused students become more focused through extensive exposure to academic literature in a field of their interests. Ultimately, students will become masters of that area of study.
There were nine lectures in the CLE@Residential Colleges Workshop Series held during the spring semester, each of which covered a variety of topics co-hosted by the Center for Language Education and residential colleges. Please stay tuned for our upcoming activities next semester!
