Internet Learning Volume 5, Number 1, Fall 2016/Winter 2017 | Page 55

Internet Learning
of the year, and put an end to the informal
spoken English notes and lists
that the form filling encourages. Videos
from last year are available on the author’s
website. These seem to have little
effect. Personal videos to each student
give much more powerful feedback on
first drafts that show how students can
write short simple sentences right away.
The effect is that a jumble of draft ideas
becomes a formal plan of action that is
well-ordered and easy to understand.
Students take confidence in seeing the
comparison videos of their notes and final
well-structured written English.
The next task for the student is
to write a letter to a school for permission
to do their primary research. Students
are required to take note of their
new writing skills acquired in the proposal
form and transfer them to letter
writing. Most students have little or no
experience in letter writing. The sample
letter in the student guide book was ignored
by the students in the first year. A
typical opening “My name is ... .” and a
long sentence giving a string of information,
in an outpouring of conversational
style writing. This year, students will be
required to analyze why the sample letter
follows a strict formal structure. The
aim will be to demonstrate how a short
sentence of a subject verb and object,
with one idea per sentence, is all that is
needed to create a coherent story. Students
experience an example of clean
writing before they begin their main
dissertation writing.
Another video will explain cohesion.
The author will film a brick wall
of a house, where the bricks are sentences
and the mortar contain the most
useful academic linking words to form
a strong bond of the argument. These
link words will help with visualizing
possible phrases. The idea may work as
a visual metaphor message to help “fill
the remaining gaps” in the student academic
toolkit (Howarth, 2014). The
students should be far more aware of
their new formal writing skills by the
time the first real writing task of the literature
review begins: skills which they
now acquire at the beginning, not the
end, of the academic year.
Video encourages reflection. A reflective
style of video content will bring together
and illustrate common student
errors and solutions. The aim is to overcome
negative attitudes toward writing
caused by form filling. Another video
will ask students to compare their first
and second drafts of their permission
letter to identify reasons why the formal
letter is now readable.
Other teaching resources structures
and fast-track production methods
are being trialed, currently using
examples of student work such as writing
a title, aim, and objective of the proposal
form. The method is achieved by
compiling clips from the relevant sections
of the personal feedback videos to
all of the students into a short narrated
video.
The clips are loaded into Final
Cut Pro X. The text errors and solutions
are already highlighted in red, in
the video clips and the dark red rings in
mouse click focus the eye of the viewer.
The audio of the original feedback from
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