DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Tonya Eick

ENG 107 & ENG 312 Teaching Associate

 

 

Tonya teaches  ENG 194 and ENG 312 (a course that "incorporates L2 concerns in the larger context of American English from a sociolinguist perspective") for the ASU Writing Programs. You may also recognize her as the Assistant Director of L2 Writing.

Read more about Tonya below!

 

How would you describe your work with L2 students? What do you enjoy about students and the job?

 

I love finding ways of getting what’s in my students’ heads out into the world. One of the reasons that I decided to pursue linguistics is because I wanted to better understand why I felt lost learning and using my own L2. I had a pretty awesome language instructor for six years while living abroad. I realized that most of my lessons with her were filled with the sort of content questions that helped me expand my discourse. It was this sense of questioning, knowing that she never considered my questions inane, that she laughed with (and at) me, and helped me grow at my own pace that made the learning seem more natural. 

 

Her example is what I try to use in each and every class. 

 

Tell us a little bit about yourself. 

 

Outside of teaching, I love immersing myself in pop cultural exploits with my husband Brian. Both of us are comic book nerds to different extremes. This means I am a bit of a collector by default. A little bit of everything from small corners of material culture, not just in comic culture. I love the smell of old books; I love modern graphic design and illustrations from everywhere; I paint; I have a strange collection of toys; I have objects that representative of spiritual traditions. All of these things come from my experiences in various fields – theater production; vocal performance (I trained for opera for eight years and I’ve been a voice over actor); business administration; Asian cultural research; and teaching all ages (some of you have heard me talk about how my kindergartners were some of my best students). 

 

Tonya chose to share an activity she uses in ENG 107: The Question Cycle.

 

When I think about the foundation of my own pedagogy – it all goes straight back to questioning, and using questioning to help students create, expand and connect their ideas in their writing. Strangely, I envision of the lyrics from an old Arlo Guthrie song, Alice’s Restaurant when working with my students on what I call the ‘Question Cycle’: “they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was…” 

 

For me writing is all about asking questions. The students build their writing based on connected, ever-expanding sets of questions from a singular, basic phenomenon. 

 

I use PowerPoint during classes to help the students see and follow along with discussions, but also to refer back to outside of class time. I have narrated specific slides in the file to help explain how the ‘Question Cycle’ is used and perpetuated throughout WP1. 

 

You can view Tonya's PPT (narrated for your convenience!) HERE.

 

CONGRATULATIONS, TONYA!!

 

For more information, or if you have any questions, please contact:

Kat O'Meara - kdaily@asu.edu

Associate Director of L2 Writing, Sarah Snyder - sesnyder@asu.edu

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.