Collaborative Writing Project

We are glad to invite you to "Global Intellectual Conversations"  with Sharon Hanningan. Sharon holds a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from Boston University. Her international experience includes projects in Turkey, Viet Nam, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Russia. Sharon has taught English for Specific Purposes at Harvard and is currently working for New Economic School, Moscow. She is now a full-time Associate Professor at the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical School, Department of Foreign Languages.

During the workshop participants will focus on stages of academic writing and join a global intellectual conversation. Here's what Sharon writes about her sessions.
"In this session, I hope to accomplish two main goals:
            The first is to share the main assumptions of an academic writing course I designed, which culminated in pairs of students joining a “global intellectual conversation” of their own choosing. The course rests on the understanding that successful arguments are not generated in isolation, with the writer conjuring his or her thesis out of thin air.  Rather, they are seen as responses  – either in agreement, disagreement, or both – to another entity’s (e.g., person, group, organization, etc.) assertions, which may, themselves, be responded to.  It is precisely this back-and-forth conversation among concerned individuals – a social exercise in critical thinking played out across the page - which fuels the genesis of novel ideas, solutions, and questions within and across disciplines, institutions, persuasions, and borders.
            The second goal is to introduce the so-called Collaborative Writing Project (CWP), whereby students, in pairs, accomplished the overarching course objectiveof joining a live “global intellectual conversation”.  The project, carried out in six steps, culminated in a coauthored argument in response to an entity’s online claim – one that was ultimately situated in an electronic conversation; that is, uploaded to the entity’s internet site (blog, online forum, virtual seminar, etc.) for critical back-and-forth debate. In addition, students co-presented their CWP by (1) navigating to the electronic site harboring the entity’s claim, their response to that claim, and threads of both arguments; (2) showing and telling how the intellectual conversation they joined meandered in cyber -space and -time, and (3) trying to persuade their classmates of the importance of joining this particular conversation.
            The session will end with a reflection period devoted to possible variations and applications of the CWP in particular and on the approach to academic writing taken by this course in general."
 
Tutor:  Sharon Hanningan Associate Professor,
M.A. TESOL, Ph.D. Behavioral NeuroscienceI.
M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University
Sharon Hannigan is an Associate Professor at the I.M. Sechenov First Medical University in Moscow, Russia, where she delivers specialized English courses to medical students and doctors. Prior to her current appointment, she taught ESP at the New Economic School and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow at both graduate and undergraduate levels. Sharon earned an M.A. in TESOL from the School for International Training and a Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience from the Boston University School of Medicine.  She has considerable international teaching experience (CEFR proficiency levels A2-C1) at graduate (United States, Russia), undergraduate (United States, Turkey, Russia), and secondary (Cameroon, Japan) levels of instruction, with her first EFL experience having been as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa.  While an ESP instructor at the Harvard Institute for English Language Programs, Sharon was the recipient of an Excellence in Teaching Award (top honor) and three Honorable Mentions.  Her teaching interests center on problem- and community- based approaches to ELT, English for Science and Technology (EST) and English for Medical Purposes (EMP) course design, critical thinking frameworks that promote L2 acquisition and long-term retention, and English-medium course efficacy in the context of higher education internationalization. She is also currently engaged in applied empirical research investigating the effects of student and teacher metacognitive abilities on L2 acquisition.

Time: April 18, Tuesday, 6.30 pm - 9.00 pm
Location: Academic Writing Center, Myasnitskaya 24, bld. 3, room 424
Register at http://bit.ly/2ik18kh