Tutoring Tips for hearing impaired students

[Lisa Renery <renery@Bilkent.EDU.TR>]

I am sorry not to have prepared the tips I promised everyone yet -- I am
working on it (and will write a more specific article for the Newsletter)
but the most extraordinary thing happened in our department this week
which has set us all back.  As I have mentioned, I work in th Freshman
English unit of an English language medium university and I am in charge
of a very tiny Pilot Program, part of whose domain is the operation of the
writing center we established last semester.  Well, just last friday we
were all informed that, basically, our director of the whole freshman unit
was resigning because she had been replaced by a member of the English
Language Preparatory school who has started right away disregarding the
critical thinking, argumentation and process writing which were the
backbone of the program and has told all the instructors to start
providing grammar feedback for their students and opportunities to
improve their vocabulary! A writing course!!!

I am thankful that my little unit was left untouched and that we don't
answer to him or his philosophy.  For this semester at least. This
development certainly is indicative of a very widely held belief that
"teaching language" and "teaching writing" are one and the same - at least
on this campus.  Is there anyone out there from other such English
language medium schools who have similar programs or issues? I'd love to
hear from you.

And I will put those tips together, I promise.

Lisa Renery
Bilkent University
Ankara, Turkey
renery@bilkent.edu.tr