Reconstruction of College English Writing from the Perspective of“New Liberal Arts”

Hetao College,Inner Mongolia,China Email:248727380@qq.com

[Abstract]The advocacy of New Liberal Arts symbolizes an irresistible trend which reveals the social index of the disciplinary construction.As a compulsory course,College English Writing has long taken the responsibility of cultivating students’writing ability of expressing and communicating with others in written English.From the new perspective,the teaching material in English writing can be interdisciplinary,the teaching method can be multiple-modality,and the evaluating system become more effective and efficient with the aid of the artificial intelligence.Teachers combining multiple roles must be equipped with interdisciplinary knowledge and modern information technology.Therefore,the course of English Writing is no longer what it used to be.It must be reconstructed and updated to keep pace with the time.

[Keywords]Course construction;English Writing;New liberal arts

Introduction

The concept of“New Liberal Arts”was proposed by Hiram College in 2017 holding that the students should be encouraged to conduct their learning across the boundaries of disciplines.(Fan,2019,p.10)Actually this concept was evolved from the word“interdisciplinary”which firstly appeared in American academic circle in 1920s with its initial meaning of“cooperation”.In 1985,the interdisciplinary academic seminar was firstly held in China and the article“Interdisciplinary Science”was published in the academic journalFuture and Development.(Liu,1990,pp.2-3)The concept of“New Liberal Arts”were officially proposed in China in August 2018 when the“Four News”—New Engineering,New Medicine,New Agriculture and New Liberal Arts were advocated to be the future direction of higher education.In 2019,Wu Yan,the director of the Higher Education Department pointed out that colleges and universities should improve the ability of serving the society and promoting the economy.Particularly he emphasized that only if the“New Liberal Arts”were well constructed,China’s higher education could fly far and high.(Wu,2020)

The Inevitability of the“New Liberal Arts”

Level of academic challenge is a core indicator to students’engagement in course learning.It’s reported that the degree of Chinese students’engagement in course learning is lower than that of American students.Our students in different types of colleges and universities see no challenge in some disciplines and teaching contents to some varying degrees;thereby they have no interests in and motivation for learning because they can neither obtain the interdisciplinary knowledge nor the application capabilities in it.This seriously impeded the target attainment of the talents cultivation.(Lin,2020,p.46)The current discipline settings are derived from the western discipline system,which is based on the fine social division of labor formulated at the beginning of the Western Industrial Revolution with the purpose of improving work efficiency and the economic benefit.However,our country has now entered the information age and the old academic system is no longer fit for the new situation.Just in time,characterized by the new horizon,new technology and interdisciplinary attributes,the“New Liberal Arts”rise to increase the disciplines’function of social service.Therefore,the disciplinary system must adjust itself to the joint and integration of the disciplines.With the popularization of the artificial intelligence,this integration is forming a reversed power against the barriers between the current disciplines.Inevitably,the implementation of“New Liberal Arts”will be a catalyst for the links between disciplines,technology and other social sectors.

English Writing in the“New Liberal Arts”

The proposal of“New Liberal Arts”has set the tune for the foreign language education,and it also inspires the teachers and researchers in this field to rethink about the talents cultivation objectives of each discipline,the curriculum positioning and the setting of foreign language professionals.As a compulsory course,Writing is set to cultivate English majors’ability of written expression and communication in English.Together with the other three courses－Listening,Reading,and Speaking,English Writing functions as a fundamental constituent of the English professional curriculum.In each of the common divisions of English education－Teacher’s Training,English for Special Purpose,and Business English,English Writing stands on an irreplaceable position,but due to the differential of the divisions,the burden of the same course varies from one to another.For example,in Business Writing,the teaching material may leave more space to the practical business scenario or the analysis of a company’s financial conditions;therefore the integration of Writing and Business are obviously manifested.Differently,the English Writing in the curriculum of English Education may shift its focus to the integrity,the systemic and academic features of the course.No matter what curriculum system it’s located in,English Writing must combine with the information technology which offers a great aid to both teachers’teaching and evaluating work.When the teaching content changes,the teaching method follows.When they two change,the assessment way of teaching and learning respond to the shift.In short,it can be concluded that the position of English Writing keeps the same while the connotations differ in each branch.Despite this diversity,the course itself is not what it used to be.It’s inclusive because without the aid of the IT the teaching aims cannot be reached;It’s interdisciplinary because without combining the other professional knowledge,the writing in ESP is meaningless;it’s new because the rapidly changeable era brings enormous social texts newer and fresher than ever before.

Reconstruction of the Features of English Writing

Like the other professional courses,English Writing consists of such elements as teaching material,teaching plan and evaluating work,etc.The classroom in Writing must be student-centered either in a physical classroom or some cyberspace.Teachers with interdisciplinary professional knowledge and new technical skills know well about the psychology and learning habits of the post-90s students who have grown up with online games and animation.The great challenge for the teachers is how to help their students recognize the vast resources and see them from a right point of view.Otherwise,the subsequent teaching design is futile and meaningless.Therefore English Writing in the“New Liberal Arts”must stress the following three aspects:

Teaching Material

It’s no denying that the inv?ention of paper making over 2000 years ago made a great contribution to the spread of humankind’s knowledge and the prosperity of society.However,with the advancement of science and technology,the media forms of communication have been iterated for several times,from tangible to intangible,from physical to virtual,and from finite to infinite.The era of one textbook and one course has been replaced by an electronic device connecting unlimited resources.For example,in a Descriptive Writing class,students can read the often-quoted lines in Zhu Ziqing’s prose“The Lotus Pond by Moonlight”(translated by Zhang Peiji)while listening to the soothing soundtrack,enjoying the bright moonlight and the tranquil lotus.In the blink of an eye,the students’attention may be drawn to the Walden Lake by the graceful arc of fish leaping and insects falling.They are instantly channeled through time and space,sounds and images.Compared with the traditional Writing class,the new one is characterized by multiple teaching mode and abundant learning resources which are newly discovered from the official websites,the authoritative Apps or the WECHAT public accounts,fresh and inspiring for the students to study and imitate.Teachers can also select the materials from English and Chinese classics,guiding the students to learn writing techniques from the experienced authors and translators.Fed on the fresh nutrition,students can get a sense of achievement because the point they are writing about may be just the key to some social problems,or they may provide a different outlook to the problem solving.To the least,they can get some social experience and acquaint themselves with the practical issues outside of the ivory tower,and in this way the meaning of writing activity is constructed.

Teaching Design

Writing is an activity related to the cranial nerves that requires students to spend time thinking and teachers to launch their brainpower designing and performing.Teachers are supposed to work out the effective ways to organize the class and to utilize the materials for optimum output.Therefore,they need to clarify the requirements and writing purpose first so that the students can have a clear mind of the perspective they may see the material from,the details they may select to support its theme,etc.Second,brainstorming is very necessary in writing class because not all the students are familiar with the selected topic,or some of them may have no idea of the starting point to the writing task.Along this train of thought,students are encouraged to work in groups and share their writing products; in doing so they can receive the feedback from all directions－teacher,peers,group members,and the computer system.The comments are all-embracing from theme,language proficiency,organization,word choice,coherence and cohesion,detail selection and to the word number,etc.“Sharing”and“integrating”are the subject words because to serve all the students is the largest proportion of the education purpose.Therefore,the design work should also be found in the evaluating step.Such small encouragements or awards as an approving look in a real classroom,or a little red flower in the cyberspace should be transmitted instantly to the active participants.

apart from all the above,the most important role of course is the teacher him/herself who is the chief director and designer.Taking scenery description of“The Lotus Pool by Moonlight”as an example,the group members are encouraged to express how Zhu Ziqing expresses the“stillness”of the moon and lotus,and the“movement”of cicada and frog;and how Zhang Peiji,the translator,performs the equivalent translation to achieve the writing effect.The teacher needs to design how the students can be drawn to discuss and how the groups can work harmoniously to explore the essence of the objects or scene they are describing.To sum up,the Writing class under the vision of“New Liberal Arts”is open and flexible.Blessed with the modern science and technology,it is definitely a more equal and efficient combination of tradition and modernity.

Ways of Evaluation

In a narrow sense,the current evaluating methods of students’writing include machine review,peer review and teacher review.They each have their own strengths and weaknesses.In the Iwrite reviewing system,four dimensions are configured to monitor the writing quality:language,text structure,content relevance and mechanism.Compared with the manual marking system,the computer allows the students to make multiple revisions and receive instant feedback.Peer evaluation in Iwrite enables students to act as a judge and to examine others’writing products,which can improve their sense of responsibility and introspection ability.This exchange of identity facilitates the students to learn from each other.However the disadvantage of the computer review system is that it can only detect the low-level errors,but overlook those lying in thoughts and logic in advanced writing.(Zhao,2020,pp.131-133)So the most significant way of evaluation are still from the teacher who can point out the problems from the high level and provide the concrete suggestions for students to modify their writing.They may help them with the content’s continuity,the topic’s narrowing-down,the essay style,the writing perspective,the rhetoric usage,the logic,and the writing techniques.Hereby the comments from the teacher,peers and the computer work complementarily to improve the students’writing level.

In a broad sense,evaluation on students learning effect includes process assessment and summative assessment,and they two evenly take the halves of the total score.The former distributes its score to students’attendance,classroom performance,assignment and the latter to the final exam.Thanks to the modern technology,more than 2/3 of the evaluating work can be performed by the computer who receives the instructions from the teacher.For example,the Writing class can move onto the learning platform Chaoxing where all the students’learning activities are recorded,including students attendance,learning hour,assignment completion and even the score of final examination.Students’learning reports can be automatically generated.What teachers need to focus is to assign proper value to each activity.For example,if the teachers find the participants’performance in“Subject Discussion”are below the expectations,they can increase the score allotted to each participant.This adjustment can effectively push the students to engage in the discussion because out of the honor sense,none of the young adults would like losing face in front of their teachers and classmates.The similar story takes place in the Commenting Zone where those making no comment may be encouraged by the pertinent remarks from their classmates who have already completed the commenting task.Peer evaluation on line can help the students discover problems,trigger ideas,and improve mutually.Then who on earth contributes most to the improvement of the students’writing level,teacher,peer or the computer?The only sure answer is the cooperation of the three.The deeper integration of human and computer in Writing class will be an important feature in the perspective of“New Liberal Arts”.

Conclusion

The teaching of English Writing in the view of“New Liberal Arts”reflects new vision,new technology,and new teaching goals that the students can proficiently write in English to communicate on various social platforms.To achieve the goals,the course elements must be up to the standards.First,the course materials should reflect the subjectivity and practicability; that is,the materials should keep pace with the times and can really help the students in real situation.The teachers should notice the materials from the ideological perspective,and tap positive energy from it.Necessarily,teachers must clean up the online information and eliminate some inappropriate content.Second,the teachers are supposed to employ diversified teaching methods and to make good use of the appropriate writing Apps where the students can get immediate feedback and be evaluated objectively.In short,the reconstructed course must bring a great challenge to the teachers who are not faced with a single matter of teaching,but a more comprehensive and complex job.Therefore,teachers play the most important part in this curriculum revolution,and only in this way can the graduates of English be empowered to answer the call of the“New Liberal Arts”.