In collaboration with the staff from the Intensive English Institute at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, I developed a teaching approach that aims to alleviate cognitive load for the beginning writers in order to facilitate critical thinking (Chason, L., Loyet, D., Sorenson, L., & Stoops, A. (2014). 13th Symposium on Second Language Writing). The approach expands a 3-step Topic-Support-Return strategy traditionally taught to the beginning writers to a 5-step TBSIR strategy that offers a writer two specific opportunities for analyses (B-Bridge) and synthesis (I–Interpretation) of his/her ideas. The approach has been shown to be successful as a teaching tool (Chason, L., Loyet, D., Sorenson, L., & Stoops, A. (2016). TESOL Journal) and has been generating recently attention in the media from the writing practitioners in the field (Schmidt, A. (2017). ELT Research Bites).
Anastasia Stoops, Ph.D.
Anastasia Stoops, Ph.D. 