Introduction: Academic language and research
Now that students have spent the first four months of the year intensively working with various texts (literature in particular), the second part of the Skola2030 course envisions that they now dive headfirst into the world of academic language. The sample course program envisions that the book they have read will become the object of academic research, and that students will analyze and interpret the text based on trustworthy sources they find. The students then produce three works of academic English — a research poster, an academic essay, and an oral presentation — that they will later present at an "international" academic conference somehow organized by the students themselves and also upload to the centralized VPS database in order to be able to take the exam in June. The idea is that this will prepare students for the kind of research they would eventually need to do at the university level and beyond, giving them some understanding first hand of what the world of academia is like. It also gives them a chance to engage with academic English, both in reading the sources necessary for their research and in producing the academic works.
How in the world this is actually supposed to work in real life: For first-time teachers getting ready for this part of the course, all of this can sound very overwhelming and confusing. Even among the authors of the course who later trained Latvia's English teachers to implement it in the classroom, there seemed to be a lack of consensus and sometimes conflicting interpretations about a number of key elements in terms of how this process is actually supposed to work. These include:
Do the students come up with a separate research question/topic for each of the three academic works they create, or do they create three different works based on the same research question? Even with six lessons a week, going through three entirely separate start-to-finish research processes in the two and a half or so months between the winter and March breaks (or even until the last minute before the works need to be uploaded) is quite intense to say the least. While there are advocates of having three entirely different research processes for each of the works, they often work at schools where the English II course starts already in the middle of the 11th grade. Additionally, I have found the quality of those students' research to be quite low, which is understandable given how little time they have to put everything together in addition to all of the other things going on at this point in their education.
I personally advocate for producing three works based on the same research process/question. The first main reason is that students can then focus their time and energy on going deeper into understanding one topic and actually carrying out quality research on it, finding and analyzing a number of trustworthy sources and conducting a well-designed process. They can then spend more time focusing on the conventions and nuances of academic posters, papers, and presentations in more depth without having to worry about constantly finding and analyzing new information.
The second reason is that in real life, it is quite common to orally present at an academic conference about a topic that you have written a paper on that will appear in the conference's proceedings. This is also true of bachelor's and master's theses; students pre-defend and defend their written papers, and may also create posters to help disseminate the research. While some have argued to me that submitting three works about the same research process could be an violation of academic honesty, I think this concern is misguided. Looking closely at the rubrics that VISC requires we use to grade the works, each of them focuses on somewhat different aspects of the research process and how it is communicated; this is far from submitting the same exact essay in two different subjects, for example.
Does the research need to be about the book they read together as a class, or can it be about a different book they have read — or a completely different topic outside of the world of literature altogether? According to the grading criteria provided by VISC, there are no specific guidelines in terms of what the topic of the research should be about — this means that, technically, the research works do not have to be related to any particular work of literature. For those who choose to have students conduct research about a book, there are a number of other things to consider — should the research be about a topic covered by the book in general, or within the specific context of the book? For example, if they have read 1984 by George Orwell and they are interested in the topic of totalitarianism, should they conduct research about totalitarianism in general or totalitarianism specifically as it is shown in 1984? If they do research the topic in the context of a specific book, should the information sources they find be specifically about totalitarianism in 1984, or totalitarianism in general and then somehow connect it with the book?
Personally, what I have my students do is pick a topic related to either the book/film we have covered together in class or one that they have read/watched on their own. Then, they conduct theoretical research about that topic and analyze the book based on what they have read about in the sources. For example, if the research question they have chosen is along the lines of "Does JD Salinger accurately portray depression in the novel Catcher in the Rye?" the student would first find trustworthy sources about depression, most likely written by medical experts. They might then come up with a list of behaviours that depression victims exhibit and then re-read the book, taking notes in a table when they come across an example from the text that corresponds with one of the behaviours. They can then make conclusions about how accurately the book portrays depression based on analyzing the notes they have taken.
I prefer using this method with my students because it gives them a chance to work with a wide range of topics outside of just literary criticism, but it is also still related to the books that they have read which is central to the spirit of this course. It is challenging for them to compile information from trustworthy sources about the topics and then analyze the books based on what they have found, but I believe it is an appropriate level of difficulty at this point in their education.
When and how do the students present the multimodal work (research poster) and the spoken presentation/public speech? How is it related to the "international academic conference" the students are supposed to organize? This is one of the biggest sources of confusion for first-time teachers after reading through the course sample program and the exam program. The criteria for both the multimodal product (research poster) and the presentation includes the students' ability to respond to questions, which means that in order to properly grade them, these need to be "presented" to an audience in some way before the prerequisite works are uploaded. Should there be two separate "conferences": one for the research posters and one for the presentations? Should there be one "conference" where all of the students present both works on the same day and get summatively graded for both at that point? Or should the research poster and presentation both be graded separately before the "conference" and then presented again since the Skola2030 sample program specifically says that the units of the course should be followed in precise order?
Having talked with many different colleagues and students from throughout the country, it seems that teachers have taken all kinds of approaches to the "conference," including skipping it altogether. Technically, if we are to properly follow the Cabinet of Ministers Regulations Regarding the State General Secondary Education Standard and Model General Secondary Education Programmes, it should be noted that curriculum standard VS.A.1.3.2. requires that each student, "actively participates in international video conferences and takes responsibility for their organization." However, since the conference outlined in the eighth unit of the course is not one of the three exam prerequisite works, there is a high degree of flexibility in terms of what can count as a "conference" and fulfil this learning outcome.
Personally, I have my students finish all three of the works before March break and then intensively plan for the "conference" as soon as we return from the break, having each of them take on different roles in the organization and running of it. Since they have already been graded for both the research poster and the oral presentation, they can choose one or the other, or both, to present the day of the conference and are not graded for either a second time. To read more about my experience at Jelgavas Spīdolas Valsts ģimnāzija organizing the conference with my students, you can read this page.
Should the research essay (and the poster for that matter) be written by hand or with a word processor such as Microsoft Word? Technically, VISC allows either option — students can upload a scanned handwritten essay or the file of a typed essay. However, there are two conflicting philosophies regarding which approach is better, and teachers can often feel quite strongly about one or the other.
Those who advocate for having students write the essay by hand argue that with the rise of free, widely available AI tools, it is virtually impossible to ensure that students have actually written anything that a teacher did not personally see them produce in the classroom. They would point out that students will need to hand-write their essays on the exam anyway, and that this can give them practice doing so. One method I have seen different schools use is having the students create a poster presentation, print it out, bring it to class, and then write the research essay by hand with the poster as their guide. Or, they might be able to bring some sort of notetaking sheet that is prepared ahead of time, such as what I suggested with the film review task in the previous unit.
The other viewpoint is that given the fact that in the real world, final drafts of research papers haven't been written by hand in more than a century (with typewriters being used before computers) and that this course is meant to give students an authentic academic experience, having them write by hand defeats the point of this assignment. Even before the rise of AI, students have always been able to hire someone else to write for them if they really want to cheat, which is even harder to detectable. The current state of AI is relatively poorly suited for writing this type of essay unless students are exceptional at writing extremely specific prompts, and the kind of writing that AI produces is usually fairly easy to detect, especially if you know your students' language level well enough.
Although I struggle with this debate every single year, the arguments in favor of having the paper typed win out for me, although I think that there are legitimate merits for either approach.
If the research poster is created digitally, does it need to be physically printed out? While some schools are fortunate enough to have color A3 and even A2-size printers that students are freely allowed to use for schoolwork, the reality is that in most schools throughout the country, this is far from the case. If your school does not have the resources for students to print out large, color copies of the posters, asking students to do this themselves could potentially lead to complaints by parents that this is a violation of education regulations. On the other hand, there is not much of a point of printing out black and white A4-sized posters. Personally, I do not require students to print out the posters unless they have chosen to present it at the conference instead of giving an oral presentation.
How exactly, if at all, should students be graded for their organization of and participation in the "conference?" Of all the questions and considerations regarding this part of the course, none likely raises more controversy than how, or whether, students should receive a summative grade for the conference itself if teachers choose to organize a separate conference once the academic works have already been completed. Although the Skola2030 sample program specifically mentions organization of the conference as one of the eight works that should be summatively graded as part of the course and a grading rubric is even included in the appendix of the program which corresponds to a self-reflection form that students fill out and teachers are supposed to grade, some course authors have advised that participation in the conference should absolutely not be summatively graded, causing significant confusion among teachers.
What I traditionally grade are two different components. The first is an abstract that students submit to the conference ahead of time and needs to be "accepted" by a committee of student organizers. An abstract is something which concrete, objective grading criteria can be created for, and is also an authentic genre of academic writing which is not difficult to teach how to write. All real-life academic journals and conferences require writers and presenters to submit and abstract to be either accepted or rejected, and having students do this helps create a more authentic experience which is the intention of the program in the first place.
With these key questions having been addressed, it is possible to start planning how (and the extent to which) all of this can concretely be implemented in real life. The most important thing, however, is to center this part of the course around the exam prerequisite works, the specific requirements of which all teachers need to become familiar with before going any further.
The exam prerequisite works
Regardless of if you choose to follow the Skola2030 sample program, the LATE program, or a different one altogether, in order for students to be able to take the exam at the end of the year, they must first produce three prerequisite works that need to be uploaded to the VPS centralized exam database. According to the 2024/2025 VISC exam program, these three works are:
A multimodal product that demonstrates the ability to conduct text research, combine and integrate various sources of information and forms of representation in a foreign language, and synthesize information — for example, a poster presentation or a multimodal presentation.
An analytical creative text (up to 800 words) that meets the requirements of academic style, demonstrating the ability to formulate a problem/question, find, analyze and evaluate information, comparing opinions about the object of study, summarize and describe research results, and formulate conclusions — for example, an essay (research topic, theoretical basis, data description, conclusions).
Public speech/presentation in which the student demonstrates the ability to publicize the results of their research, self-created texts relevant to their academic interests, as well as to use appropriate communication and collaboration strategies when answering questions posed by the audience. Instead of a recording of the presentation, the students must upload a self-reflection form similar to the one found in Appendix 1 (page 15) of this document.
The three works needs to be uploaded by students to the VPS system 8 weeks before the exam — that means that in the 2025 exam season, they must be uploaded by the 2nd of April. This is crucial, as students who do not upload these works will not be able to take the exam. Teachers then have an additional two weeks to enter the average grade of the three works into the VPS system.
Grading the prerequisite works: The three prerequisite works must be graded according to the rubrics provided by VISC in Appendix 2 (pages 16-21) of this document. The grades from the rubric should be converted into a 10-point scale based on the internal grading criteria of the school you work at. Especially since these grades do not count toward their final exam score, it is highly recommended to include each of the grades they receive according to the rubrics as a separate summative assessment for the English II course in the e-klase system. This way, you will have grades calculated according to the 10-point system, and they count toward the final grade they receive for the course. This will also make it easier when you need to enter their grades into VPS — since they have already been graded, unless anything has been changed by the time they are uploaded, you can just take the mathematical average of the grades you have already given and enter them into the system. If they have received less than a mark of "4" for any of the three works, they will not be able to take the exam.
Variations on the tasks: Although the original sample program developed by Skola2030 suggests a research poster for the first work, an "argumentative" essay for the second work, and an oral presentation for the third work, there is a high level of flexibility of what exactly students submit as long as the work fits the basic requirements in the VISC exam program and can be graded by the aforementioned rubrics in the appendix. In fact, despite being named as such in the original sample program, a traditional "argumentative essay" works quite poorly as something that can be graded by the required criteria. While an argumentative essay usually consists of a specific thesis that is being "argued" by a number of well-structured logical arguments justified by facts and examples, what the grading criteria actually describes is a research paper with an introduction, theory overview, methods, results, and conclusions.
The best advice I can give regarding these works, however you choose to implement them with the students, is to start working on them by the beginning of January at the very latest and to finish them by March break — this way, the students have enough time to produce quality works and you can turn your attention towards possibly planning a conference and definitely preparing for the exam.
A sample plan for how to implement this part of the course
In the 2024/2025 academic year, there are nine weeks between the winter and March breaks. Here is a basic overview that I plan on using for my own classes:
Week 1: Introducing academic English and choosing topics. During this week, my goal is for students to become familliar with the idea of academic language in general and how the overall process of research works. While some students might already have extensive experience writing ZPDs or other research papers, many times students have a hard time putting 2 and 2 together and realizing that what we are doing here is essentially the same thing. For those who have not done research writing before for one reason or another, this can be a particular challenge.
I have created a series of exam-style listening and reading tasks which not only practices their exam skills but also helps give an overview of what exactly this is all about and how this process works in the real work. Students should also discuss possible topics with one another and with you — it is of utmost importance that they receive feedback at this early stage so that if you can see that their research topic is relevant and focused. If it is too broad, narrow, or impossible to research, they need to know sooner rather than later to not waste time. By the end of the first week, they should have a research question. I have created a presentation with examples of research questions by my students from previous years that you are welcome to use. I have also developed a printable worksheet that students can use to organize their research, including places to write and explain their research topic/question and take notes from the sources they eventually find.
I also start working on grammar topics such as relative clauses and advanced usage of articles, since these are both very relevant to the style of academic writing. For ideas for tasks to do with students, I highly searching for the book Academic Writing for Graduate Students by John Swales and Christine Feak which you might be able to find online. Advanced forms of passive voice would be good to cover here, as it is used in academic style frequently by writers to distance themselves from the research and avoid awkward phrases like "the author of the paper" instead of using personal pronouns.
Week 2: Identifying trustworthy sources and summarizing. During this week, students need to focus on finding the sources they can use in order to conduct their research. First, it is important to cover how to identify trustworthy sources of information. Although this is something that they should previously have discussed in other subjects throughout their education, it is important to at least refresh their understanding. I have created an interactive presentation (using Kahoot) that you might use, as well as a printable guide to evaluating sources and a "checklist" where students can discuss whether different criteria are overall signs of trustworthy sources or not. Throughout this week, they should find as much of the information as possible
During this week, it is also important to discuss summarizing information from other sources without plagiarizing, either accidentally or not. Perdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) has a useful guide for summarizing information and also some sample tasks that you might be able to use with your students.
Week 3: Formatting a research poster. During this week, students need to become familiar with the specific format of a research poster in order to make their own. This would be a good time to show examples of research posters by students from previous years if possible, or to show examples from the internet. New York University has a good guide for how to put together a research poster that might be worth using with your students. Students need to understand the specific criteria for what should be included in their research poster and how it should be graded — I have created a modified version of the default rubric provided by VISC with specific clarifications of what is being graded in each of the criteria categories that you might find useful.
Either during this week or in the next week I usually have a traditional test about academic language which includes a task where students have to effectively summarize a short academic article and also complete tasks about aspects of academic English such as articles, relative clauses, passive voice, etc.
Week 4: Completing and publishing the research poster. By the end of the fourth week, I try to have fully completed the research poster. If you have not done so already, it is very important to talk about citing information sources both in the bibliography and in the text itself. I usually have students use APA style, which means that in the text they use the format of (Last name, year) whenever there is information that comes from a source. To create the bibliography, I suggest that they use the website Citation Machine, which makes it very easy to format APA-style sources. The students simply need to copy and paste the link to the source and then fill out any information that is not automatically found by the system.
Instead of presenting the posters one by one and taking and answering spoken questions, I have students upload their posters to a shared platform (we use Microsoft Teams but you could use Google classroom, Google drive, etc) and students spend a lesson reading through posters and are required to ask write questions for a certain number of them that are submitted to the author. The students then have to answer all questions that have been submitted to them in written form. This way, it is possible to grade the criteria "prasme iesaistīties dialogā/ polilogā, prezentējot produktu" and not repeat what will already be done anyway for the questions about the spoken presentation they will have to give.
Week 5: Introducing research papers. Instead of going through the entire research process all over again, we simply continue the research that has been already done and format it as a research paper. Although I previously require at least three trustworthy sources of outside information to be cited in the research poster, I require at least four for the paper since there is more space to write a more detailed analysis.
In terms of the format of the paper, I have students use APA format, which is an internationally-recognized and common format for a research paper (not just the references). APA's website has precise explanations of how everything should be formatted and also has a number of samples that students can look at and analyze before creating their own.
The sections I require are an introduction section which gives a brief overview of the topic as well as the research question and relevance, a theory review section which gives an overview of the at topic using the at least four information sources that they have analyzed, a very short methods section outlining what exactly they did to carry out their research, a results section explaining what they found from their analysis of the book or film, and a discussion section explaining key takeaways from their research, conclusions, and limitations. I have created a modified version of the VISC grading criteria explaining what specifically goes in each section that you are welcome to use here.
Week 6: Formatting and drafting a research paper. In order for all of the formatting to be correct, I usually have students download one of the sample papers from APA's website as a template for their own and then fill in their own information and continue writing form their. This is far more efficient than starting from scratch with a new Microsoft Word document. Students should have plenty of time to formulate their research in written form, as the amount of writing for this work is far more than what is required from the research poster which mostly explained the information in a visual form.
During this week, there should be an opportunity for students to review each others' work and give comments in order for them to have suggestions for improvement. This could happen by students exchanging computers with one another and writing comments directly into Microsoft Word, printing out copies of the drafts and having other students write notes with pens and pencils, or by uploading all of the essays to a cloud service like Google Drive and then having them write comments using Google Docs. It would also be ideal for either a draft of the full paper or at least a section to be submitted to the teacher for formative assessment so that they can have feedback and put back on the correct path if they need assistance.
Week 7: Revising and finishing the research paper. Based on the comments they have received from other students and from the teacher, they need to create the final version of the paper and submit it after revising their original draft. They should go through the grading criteria again and read closely through their paper to make sure that all of the requirements are met, especially the ones regarding citation of sources both within the text and the bibliography.
The reason that I have devoted an entire week to finishing the research paper in this plan is that in reality, this time of year we often get sick and miss classes and have other obligations and events going on that make it very likely that the previous six weeks will not go 100% according to plan. That is why I have added a bit of breathing room as a safety blanket. If everything did somehow go according to plan and you are able to finish the final drafts of the paper in the first part of this week, then you can already go on to the research presentation.
Week 8: Planning a presentation. Since students already have most likely had significant amounts of experience preparing and delivering presentations by this point in their academic careers, I do not spend much time going over presentation skills and expectations. However, this page has two great videos that I use to illustrate both examples of weak and strong verbal and non-verbal presentation skills in a humorous way that students enjoy discussing. Since they already have all of the information necessary to create the presentation and should be very familiar with the content by now, I only devote a few lessons to putting together the slides and practicing talking through it.
Here are the specific task requirements I use for my students for the presentations. In order to refresh signposting words and phrases that are necessary for an effective presentation, I recommend this webpage, although there are many other lists that you can find throughout the internet.
Week 9: Delivering the presentations. This entire week I devote to students giving their presentations, although if it is a larger group, I sometimes try to have at least one or two people present at the end of the week prior. In order to get through all of them, I suggest strictly sticking to a 6-7 minute time limit and possibly asking a colleague if you can "borrow" a lesson from them as long as it coincides with your timetable. Even though there is still technically almost another month until the works are officially "due" on the VPS system, I strongly suggest having everything done by now to give yourself peace of mind and be able to focus on special cases such as long-term illnesses, students with special difficulties, etc.
After March break: Upon returning, my students spend two weeks on writing abstracts and intensively planning the conference. Over the past two years, that has happened on the final Friday of March. I invite the 11th graders who will be taking the course the following year to participate as audience so that they have a better idea of what they will need to do both in terms of the prerequisite works and to organize the conference. You can read about how the conference is organized at my school here. These are the task requirements for the abstract that I use (which they must submit before the conference and is part of their grade), and here is the conference participation sheet that they must fill out (which also I have taken into consideration as part of their grade).
In following this plan way, all of April and May can be used to intensively prepare for the exam.