20081008_Interactive Nurturing -- Dr. Foster's teaching on First skills in Literature Review

Dr. Foster's first lecture on Wednesday afternoon RMs class demonstrated a guiding, nurturing type of teaching. Giving an explanation of why, what and how about literature review, the students are giving exercises, including :

1. Class discussion of good and bad titles. A good title is given clear concepts and relationships. Even with clear distinguishing of characteristics, there are vague areas. Good and bad titles seem to be debatable issues, yet more practice would improve the judgment. This feature also makes research writing both scientific and artistic.

2. Exercise I – evaluating a research paper – self point, pair discussion and pair point, then class discussion. This exercise teachers students how to read : Title, Abstract, introduction, Literature, Methodology, Findings, Discussion and Conclusion. A summary of strong parts and weak parts are provided and discussed.

3. Exercise II – evaluating a literature review – give two example and reasoning for each of the good reviews and bad reviews. Individual work and class discussion.

To most of the students, this is the first encounter with a non-native speaker professor in their class. The students are very exciting yet anxious. Dr. Foster’s teaching in a way of interactive nurturing seems to work in the first class.

For the set of successful skills in literature review, being able to tell the good and bad writing is the first and important awakening move. Being able to tell good and bad lit review is helpful in preparing self to improve lit review skills. Other successful lit review skills include reading, note-taking, synthesizing, and bibliographic management. Hoping more opportunities to share and to polish these skills.