To give an inside look into my teaching style and course design, I have included a collection of syllabi that I have created for my courses over the past few years. I prefer to collaborate with my colleagues; therefore, many of the syllabi here are the fruit of joint efforts, but also reflect my own personal touch and modifications to fit my students.

Academic Listening

My academic listening courses at Purdue University Calumet are CALL-based, designed to incorporate authentic media to help students develop academic skills such as note-taking, summarizing, and critical analysis.

Speaking

I have taught speaking for several semesters now, from low-beginning to the advanced level. I design my courses to be more or less task-based, with the focus on authentic language use. For instance, my advanced conversation course for this semester models speaking in academic contexts, including group projects, group discussion, and presentations. Furthermore, in all of my courses, I implement technology as a core practice for homework assignments, class activities, and error correction.

Integrated Listening/Speaking

At Brigham Young University, there is a focus on integrating the themes and content of the Listening/Speaking courses and Grammar courses. The topics from the Listening/Speaking tasks are used to provide content in the grammar courses. At the same time, the grammar principles learned are easily applied to authentic language use.

This first syllabus I've included is for my low-intermediate listening/speaking and grammar classes, which are taught with integrated themes. This syllabus reflects my philosophy on grammar teaching. I believe that explicit grammar is helpful and needed along with meaningful practice. This is why I have separated the grammar units from our textbook according to our Listening/Speaking tasks. Each listening/speaking task, therefore, is complemented with appropriate grammar concepts.

Academic Reading

Although I haven't taught it as much as listening and speaking, I enjoy teaching reading as well. My syllabus for Advanced Reading emphasizes extensive academic reading to prepare my students for their university programs. Also, I have incorporated the use of subtitled international films on a weekly basis. This has been very popular with my students, as it helps them increase their reading fluency.