Teacher-student Relationships and Academic Motivation: A Response to a Case Study Article

Being a full-time student for 13 years, the most familiar and unfamiliar profession for us is teacher. I can hardly count how many teachers I have encountered in the 13 years but I can still name some of them who changed me or had a great impact in my life. Why it is “the most familiar” and “unfamiliar” at the same time? The reason is quite simple, so many teachers we have met and so much time they have spent with us make it a familiar profession for us; whereas, different teachers apply different ways of teaching makes it also unfamiliar for us. Course teachers are specialize in teaching and helping students to learn a/some specific course/course. In other word, the familiar part is their duty, while the unfamiliar part is pedagogy.

No matter what pedagogy a teacher applies in his/her teaching, the better one is always the one works better for all students. Thus, there are a lot of professionals looking for better pedagogies by studying students’ performance. I found an interesting paper, Robert Drake’s “When Liking Your Students Empowers Them: A Case Study”, which is discussing a more effective teaching approach through case studying.

According to Felder’s “Student-centered teaching and learning” (2009), most class time is spent with the professor lecturing and the students watching and listening in the traditional approach of college teaching. Now more teachers focus on creating more effective teaching approaches, for example, student-centered teaching methods. These methods shift the focus of activity from the teachers to the learners, and therefore, they are more likely to take the initiative to learn. In his article “When Liking Your Students Empowers Them: A Case Study”, Robert Drake(2010) points out this approach is harder to realize as the class size is getting larger and limited detailed methods provided according to his personal teaching experience. Accordingly, he conducted a questionnaire survey for Historically Black University freshmen to prove his hypothesis that better faculty-student contact results in students’ good academic performance and self-esteem.

According to the author, a questionnaire was submitted to two groups of students who all attended the same course, one of which consisted of two sections where the professors tried to keep a good relationship with the students by making additional non-academic efforts and the other one was made up of six other sections where the professor made no extra non-academic efforts.

The questionnaire consisted of two parts: a closed-ended one, which shows the level of agreement / disagreement on some specific statements reflecting students’ attitudes towards the professor and the course; and an open-ended written comment on these statements. Drake concludes that the combined analysis of the questionnaire and the overall academic performance of the students on this course show that student-faculty relationship based on respect has a positive role in students’ confidence and academic performance.

Drake demonstrates a detailed background of the process of proposing this hypothesis and backs up the significance and operability of this survey with excellent use of all kinds of sources in the introduction. The potential advantages of the student-centered approach, combined with the author’s own teaching experiences, offer readers a better idea on the importance of this issue. Ideas flow from paragraph to paragraph smoothly and logically in this part as Drake organizes these materials coherently.

This survey succeeded in identifying and paralleling most characteristics for the comparison of the two groups, for instance, the elements of the study object, which were the students and the course, suggested by the author. Nevertheless, Drake has neglected to consider another essential element of the study object, the professors. Although at first it seems that non-academic efforts was implemented or not was the only difference between the two groups, it is questionable whether the academic methods used by the professors in different sections were similar to each other enough that these can be ignored when analyzing the data collected through the questionnaires.

Furthermore, the author obviously fails to balance each side of the comparison on quantity. The target group contains two sections while the other one contains six sections. Despite the method Drake used to analyze the data collected through closed-ended part, which was based on the mean of each specific category eliminated the effect on the conclusion caused by this difference, the responses gathered though the open-ended part on each group were imbalanced. Drake’s conclusion might seem more valid if he had equal groups.

The way Drake designed the questionnaire in favor of reaching a more convincing conclusion. It consists of two parts: a closed-ended four-point Likert scale one and an open-ended one, which complement each other precisely. On the one hand, closed-ended questions may draw misleading conclusions as limited range of option provided. In contrast, open-ended ones fix this appropriately by giving respondents greater freedom of expression. On the other hand, the disadvantage of the latter is responses are hard to sort and analyze and which of the former are easy coding and analyzing.

The article is organized effectively with a clear focus, which is the hypothesis that better faculty-students relationships benefit academic motivation. The organization follows the pattern of recognizing a problem, putting forward a hypothesis and verifying it by analysis of the data collected though the survey. The decisive factor of this survey, the questionnaire, was properly designed by the author. The whole survey would have been more credible if Drake parallelized significant elements for the comparison of the two groups, which are academic methods supplied and the section number. This verified hypothesis would contribute to a more detailed student-centered teaching approach. Extra non-academic efforts made by the professors can create a better faculty-student relationship, and what’s more, the students may feel being respected by their professors. Therefore, students can gain greater academic confidence and a willingness to study though this positive relationship. 

女足世界杯第四支冠军队诞生——日本缔造亚洲历史

       德国女足世界杯决赛中，赛前不被看好的日本女足面对美国女足，虽然她们两度落后，但顽强的大和抚子们两度扳平。并最终在点球大战中击败对手，日本女足创纪录的夺冠，她们超越了1999年的中国女足，成为第一支获得世界杯女足冠军的亚洲球队，也是亚洲第一支获得世界杯冠军的球队。

Japan are FIFA Women’s World Cup™ champions for the first time after a penalty shootout victory over USA. They are the first Asian football team that win the World Cup.

GRASSHOPPER

I’m going to tell a funny story happened to me about more than half a year ago. My friends in China think that my oral English would be great after learning here in the UM for almost a whole year, which is obviously not the truth. When I was in China, I share the same idea as my friends and now not only my Chinese is worse, but also English (not relevant stuff),

Well, anyway, back to my story.

There is a signature drink in Bert’s Café of Shapiro Library, or UGLI called grasshopper, which is one of my favorites.

Hey!!!!!!!! NOT THAT GRASSHOPPER…like the one in the picture.

This grasshopper is a sweet, mint-flavored, after-dinner drink. 

Here is a dialogue between the sever of Bert’s café and me on that day.

"A blueberry muffin and a small grasshopper, please." said me.

"Here you are."

The guy gave me one muffin and …. a cup of transparent unknown liquid with ice instead of a cup of normal grasshopper, which is obviously cheaper than normal grasshopper.

I was really surprised and took a drag at it. It tasted like…water.

WTF…………

Finally, I realized what happened was:

grasshopper & glass of water

I was really shocked at that time…It is a really interesting experience for me although makes like me an idiot.

话说自从来了米国，汉语日渐退步，英语也无进步，倒是蛤蟆语日益熟练了，再修炼两年，就可以张口就呱呱叫了……好几个朋友都说我讲话越来越有喜感，很少听正常人像我这么讲话的……我想说...试着和K多交流一下就知道我说话极其正常了……TRUST ME！！

来来，正题...今天又有football了，外边吵得我心神不安，网速又不给力到这种境界...于是乎，发个蛋疼的日志怀念一下几天前的杯具.....

ugli的bert's cafe 的grasshopper是我的必点饮品之一，原因第一个就是因为它本是“蝗虫”的意思，想我当年生物竞赛剥离的蝗虫口器（上唇、下唇、大颚、小颚&舌~~^_^）我就快感自脚后跟油然而生，灌满口腔= =....第二个就是它的味道就像是急支糖浆兑了cappuccino，特别有爱，灰常喜欢

"A blueberry muffin and a small grasshopper plz." 极其正常的一天开始了，就像以前一样我又要了这两样，然后....我看了眼卡机上显示的价格愣了一下，便宜成这个样子了？！$3都不到？我人品爆发成这个样子？！...我的蛋说，多少年修炼的RP最终换来这卡机上梦游一般的价格...就在这个时候……

柜台小哥们儿递给我一个muffin和一杯漂浮着两块冰屑的透明液体

我想，哇塞，grasshopper居然出这种前无急支糖浆，后无念慈庵的新品了？！雅蠛蝶，这也太传奇了吧，就好像你点了剁椒鱼头，服务员上的盘子里的东西却有一对毛乎乎的翅膀的感觉一笔啥的那个一样.....

拿到手里我端详了一下,这个透明度，这个粘滞度，这个质量...WTF？！……这是一杯吃果果的冷水……一杯冷水……水……

grasshopper……glass of water?!

当时只有一个念头...天空一声巨响，老子闪亮登场..一个天降响雷劈得我外焦里嫩，脸上泛着牛逼闪闪的反光………

我了个去去去去去去去……怕全天下把grasshopper要成glass of water的独我一个了吧......

杯具啊啊啊啊啊啊啊啊……握着手中的杯具，我蛋定的冲柜台哥们儿微微一笑，have a good day......

English writing, Chinese writing, what's the defferences?

There are huge differences between writing in English, which is my second language and in Chinese for me; and I believe for a lot of people. Not only because what I have said in my first blog that I am more comfortable with my first language, but there is a huge gap between these two languages, even more, two cultures.

It is true that I can control my words and let them service for the feeling I would like to express or the argument I would like to support much more skilled in Chinese than in English. But still it takes intense time and much thought to develop a well-planned essay even in Chinese.

When I was in junior high school, there were various writing assignments that our teacher asked us to do, such as character analysis essays, persuasive essays, and compare and contrast essays. I have to say that most of them are not that fun, because we were just regurgitating the stuff given by our teacher to fulfill specific content requirements. While it is undeniable that all these practice makes me more skilled in language controlling and builds a firm foundation for my own creating work in the future.

I was in my senior high school when facing the challenge of “speak your mind”. No more checklists guided us anymore; only a subject given to us. Sometimes we even did not know what type of composition we should compose. Argumentation, prose, descriptive prose or even poem was acceptable only if you can convince the reader that your article satisfy the subject. In other word, we had to learn to “play the language” since normal narration was not hard for almost everyone and it was really a “hard thinking” stuff to make your essay shinning before teacher’s eyes, at the same time, we had to process a clear mind.

Making normal words in Chinese shining is hard. One of the biggest limitations to my English writing is vocabulary; “significant is always lighter than important”, told by my high school English teacher because most of us use “important” instead of “significant”. While in Chinese, shinning words are somehow limited for high school students in one class as we almost have the same vocabulary in Chinese. Thus, stylistic techniques played an important role in our compositions. Simile, Metaphor, Allusion, parallelism, repetition and rhetorical questions (Practical Argument, p78) were mentioned by our teachers again and again. Let’s say, the time I spend on looking for a substitute for “purpose” in English was what I used to compiling a sentence of repetition in Chinese.

There are a lot of templates for essays in English and I used them when I was in China. First of all…Secondly…Moreover…In addition…However…Thus…Therefore…Last but not least…Stupid but helpful. The first thing I was taught on English writing class is “always make your idea clear and never try to write an English essay with your Chinese mind.”

What? Why?

Moreover, there are no templates for these kinds of writings in Chinese. The first reason is old-school stuff, we are good at using 虽然…但是…(However…but), 尽管…但是…(Even though…but)…This is not a big deal for us, very basic conjunctions. The other one is much more complicated, that is, the differences of how people think between English and Chinese.

I learned two abbreviations from a blog, LCC (low context culture) and HCC (high context culture), which are really useful in explaining the other reason and my idea.

LCC refers to relying more on verbal communication and HCC tends to use fewer words to express a same idea. Eastern culture, specifically, China is a HCC, whereas Western culture is more like a LCC.

In respect of writing, the feature of LCC is that the idea is explicit and it is the writer’s duty to give all the facts and conclusion, specifically, causes always come before effects; by contrast, for HCC, the idea is implicit and it is the readers’ responsibility to interpret the meaning, that is, “the message is behind rather than in the language itself”. The preferred method of thinking in China is deductive and not inductive as in the West. Most Chinese students, including me, would like to place background or related evidences first and the main point later due to the belief that the latter hard to be understood without the necessary background or evidences provided. In other word, it is hard for a reader of a normal Chinese composition to catch the main idea by only skimming over the first sentence of each paragraph. Meanwhile, this technique is always used to scanning normal English essays. Therefore, meaning hidden behind words and no statements given first make the Western readers frustrated.

According to the features of Chinese compositions illustrated above, templates are not possible to use. If the writer does not want to provide a clear structure and statements in the first place, the template only restricts the writer instead of helping him/her. Thus, there are no Chinese templates for student compositions.

If an English essay is composed in the way a Chinese composition is composed, the English tutor would be really frustrated. This is the huge gap I mentioned in the first paragraph. Just like this essay, I tried to write it in a Chinese way. Readers are hard to catch my idea until now I suppose. I’m sorry for that and hope it doesn’t bother you too much. Although I made this “mistake” intentionally in this one, I do always make this kind of mistakes when writing an English essay unintentionally.

Therefore, using templates are stupid but it is definitely a good way for Chinese students who are beginners of writing English essays to avoid “the Chinese mind”. Figuring out the differences would not only benefit Chinese students like me but also English writing teachers, who can emphasis the importance of providing introductory and thesis statements to their Chinese students.

This blog is also a reminder for me. Next time I would try to formulate the introductory and thesis statements first, establish the basic structure in first paragraphs to inform my readers the points to discuss orderly and pay attention to the transitions of different paragraphs.

Hope you can tell me what do think about this issue and provide more advice for me to make progress on my English writing!


PS, here are some pictures of my former university and current university~

my former univ.'s badge

haha~

one of my former univ's stadiums &
    one of the Olympic  Venues in 2008

Go Blue~

Why "savannah-yang"? Who's that?

Hey all!

Last time I introduced my reading and writing habits and my purpose of keeping this blog. This time I would like to give more information about me.

My name is Yang Yong in English and 雍扬 in Chinese. The first character is my last name, which is Yong and the second one is my first name, Yang. We put last name first in China. In addition, "Yong" and  "Yang" are Pinyin of “雍” and “扬”, respectively. Seriously speaking, I do not have an English name like "Jenny" or "Katy" but "Yang" is simple and unique; thus, I prefer using this instead of named me another one. It sounds like "young" in English.

I come from northern China. My hometown is a city of Inner Mongolia, Ordos, which is famous for cashmere sweaters and so-called “Modern Ghost Town” named by Time Magazine. I am currently an undergraduate student with my sophomore/junior standing at the UM. I transferred from China Agricultural University almost a year ago. I major in CMB, which is short for Cell and Molecular Biology, and math is my minor.  I declare CMB as my major has something to do with my childhood dream. My dream is to become a biologist devoted conquering cancer because several relatives of mine were diagnosed with cancer and they suffered a lot.

China is a big country which consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly administered municipalities, including Beijing, and two highly autonomous special administrative regions and an island.

Inner Mongolia is one of the autonomous regions. Despite the fact that we 1.3 billion people are all called “Chinese”, there are 56 distinct ethnic groups existed. Most of them are the Han nationality and they speak and write Chinese language, literally Chinese language. The other 55 minority ethnic groups have their own culture and life style and some of them even have their own language, which are not Chinese language. Even though lots of young people of minorities are more familiar with Chinese language instead of their own native ethical language due to lots of reasons, for example, education and employment, Chinese government is committed to protect these intangible heritages of humanity. Thus, a special kind of province, autonomous region appeared. 

Inner Mongolia has a higher population of Mongols and it is a traditional homeland of them as well as some other ethnic groups such as Manchu, Evenks and Oroqen, and is inhabited by considerable numbers of Han people. 

Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation.

Wow! Two Mongolias!! Well, you are right!!!! That’s why my hometown is called “Inner”, which refers to in the boundary of China literally.

Mongols has their own language, which is Mongolian language and it does not look or sound like Chinese language at all. Here is an example:

English: Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

Chinese: 内蒙古自治区

Pinyin of Chinese: Nèi Měnggǔ Zì Zhì Qū

Mongolian

Mongolian cyrillic: Өвөр Монгол
Japanese：内モンゴル自治区

Russian：Автономный район Внутренняя Монголия

Unlike Beijing, HongKong or Tibet, Inner Mongolia is neither a center of politics or economics, nor “a piece of desired meat” of Western countries. Not only few foreigners have any idea about this region, but also lots of Chinese are not really familiar with it. Inner Mongolia is famous for savannah in China. 

Anytime I tell my friend who do not come from Inner Mongolia that I come from Inner Mongolia, they would ask me if I live in a yurt, ride a horse on grassland….


Ooooo…. Maybe????? Check this linkage~It's a video

Traffic in Inner Mongolia

Awesome!!! Right?

Well, the truth is that this is not the truth.

 In some pasture regions of Inner Mongolia, traditional Mongolians are still live in yurt, ride horse and live on savannah. 
Here are some photos of savannah and traditional Mongolians in their traditional ethical clothes. I'm not good at describe the beauty of nature just like what I said in my last blog, but the real Savannah is one of the most fantastic landscapes that you should not  miss in your life. 

Nevertheless, most areas of Inner Mongolia are normal cities or towns just like others in China. The capital is Hohhot and the largest city is Baotou. However, Ordos should be and definitely is the most famous and amazing one! Here are some pictures of it and I will spend some time on introducing the real Ordos some time in my blog.

THE BEGINNING!

“It is the first step that is troublesome.” “Everything is difficult at the start.”

These are two translations of one Chinese proverb (“万事开头难”). I choose this proverb as the start of my first blog because not only this is my first blog, but also it symbolizes THE BEGINNING of the writing class, English 125, which is a challenge for me I suppose.

Honestly, I HATE writing, more specific, writing for writing class, especially, in English. My mother tongue is Chinese and I hate writing class in Chinese as well. Not for the same reason though. For Chinese, I’m good at the basic of this language and hence what I want to express and how I express it are the main issues I’m dealing with. The reason I do not like Chinese writing class is that sometimes or even half the time we have to handle some topics that nobody really cares or do not know what to write. Moreover, somebody always grades your work and these writings take a long time to finish. To make our teachers happy or to get a high mark I pretend to be enthusiastic on that topic and make my words full of passion and hopeful no matter how down I really am. It’s like cheating to me but it seems that people have already got used to that. Once we were asked to write a composition with an assigned topic: “Those Flowers”. I forgot what I wrote but I still remember that those who write literally about the flowers were laughed and criticized by our teacher. Those model essays are about the flower of life, the flower of hope, the flower of diligence and so on. I don’t think my classmates who chose to write flowers were like what our teacher said, naive and lazy; they just saw things in another way. “The flower of diligence” sounds lame and weird to me to boot.

But I like writing some blogs in Chinese. I used them to release my negative emotions, record special stories and exchange my idea on some critical events with my friends. First of all, nobody judges my stuff and there is only “like” and no “dislike” on the screen (kidding). Secondly, all the topics are chosen by me. In addition, I don’t need to follow any rules to organize my language. I can use fashion and not-approved-by-adults words. I can even use some four-letter words which I have never spoken out to convey my anger. Above all, those people who read my blogs are my friends who care about me. I like reading their comments and reply them. I’m alone in America and sometimes this kind of interaction makes me feel like being with my friends in China. Sometimes I read my own blogs and I can touch me at some specific times to taste my growth.

The reason I don’t like writing in English is simple, I’m not good at this language and I’m afraid of making mistakes. The English topics I have to handle now are somehow easier than Chinese ones, they have clearer requirements like giving a summary of this paper or providing some reasons why you support it instead of “those flowers”. However, they are much harder to me because of the gap between my limited writing skill in English and my thinking. I know what to write but I don’t know how. What words should I use, what kind of sentence should I compose, are these sentences grammatical correct, is this the best way to illustrate my idea…these problems bother me a lot. In addition, my improvement on this issue is blocked by my fear of making mistakes. Thus, this class is really a good opportunity for me to conquer my fear and improve my writing and thinking in English as well.

I hate writing but I love reading, which is one of my limited hobbies and enriches my life. I have difficulties in appreciating poetry on describing the beauty of the nature or affections of people though I admit they are elegant. The problem is that they are too delicate to me. I prefer more tough things, like science or facts. Besides, I love those hard-to-understand philosophical pieces, most of which are vague and I can crystallize these views based on my own personal experience and nobody would judge them. And I hate reading economical or political works, the excuse of which is that I am too stupid to figure them out…

I like exchanging opinions with my friends, but illustrating them promptly and adequately in English is a challenge for me. I should overcome this because only in this way can I have more opportunities communicating with more people from different areas, therefore, completing and enriching myself and my friends.

Attending this class is the beginning to achieve my goal of preparing myself to be a qualified "college-level writer, reader and thinker". This blog would be a very useful tool. I look forward to people reading my blogs and I believe I can learn a lot from your comments!


PS: My blog's name is Ordos Dream,here is a photo of Ordos, my hometown. And I'm going to talk more about me and my fantastic hometown.