Ecocomposition in the ESL Classroom: The Campus Space Compare and Contrast Assignment

Abstract

This essay showcases a place-based compare–contrast assignment originally designed for first-year ESL composition courses at a U.S. university. This ecocomposition assignment prompts students to research and compare the technological design and visual rhetoric embodied in two spaces or buildings in their learning community. Based on my experience using this assignment for three consecutive semesters in 2017–2018, this essay discusses the grounding of the campus space compare–contrast assignment in theories of content-based instruction and place-based ecocomposition, and argues for its suitability in intermediate and advanced language learning contexts.

The Making of MOBILLE a Year Later

“…There were also workshops for a longer, more interactive hands-on experience. All the session types are represented in this special issue: workshops (Dershowitz 2019), research-oriented presentations (Ho 2019;Eisenstein Ebsworth et al 2019), practice-oriented presentations (Lehtonen 2019), discussion-oriented presentations (Karttunen and Juusola 2019) and virtual presentations (Benabdelkader 2019;Nobrega and Rozenfeld 2019). All these papers underwent two rounds of peer review before getting accepted for publication.…”

“…Technological advancements add a multimedia dimension to language tasks, whether oral or written. Lehtonen (2019) illustrates a compare/contrast writing assignment about campus spaces that he designed for his ESL composition courses at a US university. Hadingham and Rappeneker (2019) show how Web 2.0 software like Adobe Spark Page and Microsoft Sway can be utilized to spur English learners' creativity and critical thinking in e-journal writing.…”