At the invitation of the English Writing Teaching and Research Center, Zhejiang University, Chris Traycoff from the Language Center of International Campus, Zhejiang University gave a lecture entitled “Reframing Writing: Are you Incorrect or Inappropriate” online on May 25th, 2022. As a teacher and researcher of TESOL, Chris Traycoff has rich teaching experience in English writing to international students. This lecture was hosted by Wang Yuhe, an undergraduate majoring in public administration from Chu Kochen Honors College, Zhejiang University.
After a good-humored greeting, Mr. Traycoff started his lecture with a review on students’ experience and some common structures in their English writing. By naming many impact factors in writing, such as structure, grammar, diction, style, and point of view, he said that writers should be able to control and reconstruct his text from a macro perspective. For students to have a whole picture of writing, he continued to define writing as a culture, a communication, and a community construction. Writing is a culture, because writing in some language requires obedience to the rules and ideas of some particular culture; writing is communication, for it bridges the writer and a particular group of people, puts the reader/listener at the center, and aims at meeting their discourse expectations; writing is a community construction, since its ultimate goal is to build a harmonious relationship with the audience by means of communication, so that ideas can be shared among people from different cultural backgrounds. Though a translation app can render one language into another, it fails to understand the meaning between the lines or the author’s purpose. Finally, Mr. Traycoff detailed about rhetoric devices in academic writing, and elaborated on issues such as how to choose a topic for writing, how to write in a single paragraph, how to write in five paragraphs, and how to summarize ideas. His lecture helped guide students to write in a disciplined as well as lively way.
The lecture attracted a large number of undergraduates and postgraduates from different professional backgrounds. In addition, students were inspired at the question-and-answer session, when Mr. Traycoff discussed rhetorical issues in academic English writing and attached importance to writing norms, proper styles, and appropriate rhetoric devices. The seminar was a great success.
Photo/Text: Li Xi and Wang Yuhe
English Writing Teaching and Research Center, Zhejiang University
Translated by Cai Zhengwu, Revised by Xu Xueying
