Elizabeth Whalley

Dr. Whalley is a very good ESL teacher, but I hesitate to recommend her graduate TESOL classes with some reasons. First, she has terrible organization skills; her time management is very bad, class organization is poor even though she writes her schedule for the day on the blackboard, and she has lost a couple of students' papers. If you go to her office, you get an idea why. Secondly, she has strong philosophy of teaching. If hers doesn't match with yours, you will have difficulties in her class througout of a semester (regardless of classes). Thirdly, her quantity and quality of feedback is very poor compared to other TESOL professors. This contradicts her idea of peer reviews; she asks us to write good reviews for classmates, for example, she says,"don't just write 'good' but tell why it is good etc." But often times, she just writes "good" on exams, error analysis, and grammar lesson plans without mentioning why. Fourth, if you want to learn the theoretical side of pedagogical grammar, you should take other professors. Dr. Whalley does not talk about it at all. You have to learn it from textbooks and basically by yourselves. I also should mention her good aspects. Basically, she is friendly, usually available, and flexible about due dates. She is a bit late to return assignments, but because she is flexible about due dates, let's not complian about it. She also encourages students' participation in class, therefore, her class is usually interactive and has a relaxing atmosphere. What I wrote here is almost consistent with her other classes, so I guess you could take it into your consideration when choosing her class.

Discussions often drifted to a tangent in this class. The teacher needed to focus discussions more. However, she knows the material well and presented it in a variety of ways. The research paper will take a good deal of your time. Choose your topic carefully, work with others, and don't spend too much time on transcriptions. The teacher can be disorganized. Be sure she understands whether you want a letter/credit grade option. Clarify things with her via phone messages and e-mail or office visits. The text is fairly clear and interesting and is covered well in class.