Today I want to share a fascinating project being developed by Lin Zhou, a graduate student at University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa, which I think will be interesting for writing teachers and other TESOL professionals. Lin is a PhD candidate in Second Language Studies and holds an MA in TESOL from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She grew up in Anhui, China, and attended secondary school in Singapore. When working on her MA degree, she developed an interest in L2 writing because she saw it as an area that offered her broad opportunities for future teaching and research. Her goal after finishing her PhD is to be a professor of language teacher education or writing.

This blog post is an interview with Lin about her dissertation project. Several years ago, she made connections with a high school in China where the students were preparing for a national English language contest. One of the more challenging tasks for the students was writing an essay that asked them to think critically and respond within a short time limit. Working alongside the schoolʻs English teachers, Lin designed a flipped classroom where the students would learn about writing concepts at home so that during class time they could collaboratively play an interactive role-playing computer game she created to engage them in critical thinking and preparation for academic writing. I asked her to explain her design process and reflect on how L2 writing teachers might draw on the ideas in their own teaching. Continue reading →