Emmanuel Orozco Castellanos
Pronouns: He/Him/His
UROP Fellowship: Community College Summer Fellowship Program
Henry Ford College
Research Mentor(s): Pamela Bogart, MA
University of Michigan English Language Institute
Presentation Date: Tuesday, July 28, 2020 | Session 3 | Presenter: 7
Authors: Emmanuel Orozco Castellanos, Pamela S. H. Bogart
Abstract
In 2019, the Executive Committee of LSA entrusted the ELI with building a new “English for Academic Purposes” (EAP) program. The project is a response to the curricular gap in the undergraduate offerings at the University of Michigan. It incorporates the insights provided by a 2019 fall survey which was administered to U-M students who speak English as an additional language. This program is designed with and for students. As a result, ELI has envisioned a suite of courses. This project contributed to two of them. The first consists of a pre-arrival course: “Going Blue: Language, Campus Culture, and Beyond,” a four-week online class that prepares newly admitted students for their transition to the University of Michigan. The class is modeled after an existing graduate-level course but has been adjusted so that it suits the undergraduate context. It has the primary goal of supporting students in developing a strong sense of belonging. This is accomplished by prompting students to design a personal engagement plan, a holistic guide to help them get involved with their broader campus community and resources. After extensive research and planning, this pre-arrival course is finally in the implementation phase. Implementation encompasses the development of course objectives, structure and timeline, syllabus, grading criteria, conceptual framing, assignments, discussions, and the incorporation of external platforms such as Yellowdig. A second course that forms part of the new EAP curriculum is a vocabulary course, ELI 210. This customizable class allows students to be in charge of their learning process and it also emulates a current graduate course offered every semester by the ELI. In ELI 210, students decide how they will achieve their vocabulary goals, choosing the areas that they would like to focus on. Often, this level of freedom may be overwhelming. Therefore, adapting this course to undergraduate contexts consisted of generating tools to assist students in navigating the class content without limiting student choice. It is envisaged that both courses will run in 2021, two key components of a responsive EAP curriculum that international undergraduates at the University of Michigan have lacked.
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Research Disciplines
Arts and Humanities
