Just a few days left with the two (!) Summer 1 courses I'm teaching. Although these are pretty intensive, cramming 14 weeks worth of work into 7 weeks, so far it has gone fairly smoothly. At first when I found out I was going to be teaching two different writing courses this term, I was a little horrified. But it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be; in fact, it was kind of nice to teach two different courses because there was some variety in the kinds of texts students were writing.
I just finished talking with one group from my business writing course that dropped in during my virtual office hours. It was good to talk to some people from my class. These online asynchronous courses have their advantages, but the disadvantage is that you can go for an entire term without ever meeting your students face-to-face. At times, I've required it, but this summer, I didn't because the term went by so quickly and quite a few of the students are located in various places around the world. (And I always feel that some people might be taking an online asynchronous course precisely because they don't want to talk to the instructor for whatever reasons. So I guess I should honor that!)
After I finish my grading for this course, I have to get back to my 3+ book chapters that I need to finish by mid-August. Fortunately, these don't need to be completely polished, though I suppose they should be as complete as I can make them. Since they're going to be translated into Chinese, I don't have to spend as much time struggling over stylistic issues as I would usually do (believe it or not!). I just have to make sure the sentences are clear and easily translatable. Out of curiosity, have any of my reader(s) had to work like this before--writing something that is specifically meant to be translated? How does knowing that it will be translated change your approach to how you write the text?
