WRITING CRITICAL REVIEWS IN A CONTENT-BASED LANGUAGE CURRICULUM

Having students write book or film reports is a common pedagogic practice in second language instruction. Christie and Derewianka (2008) characterise the report as a genre involving interpretation, where learners are asked to describe or explain. Many learners are likely to have encountered this kind of text before,and may therefore be able to call upon their pre-existing knowledge. The challenge is much greater when learners are asked to review books or films. Rose and Martin (2012) identify how reviews require that learners respond to a text (or film) and evaluate it through critiquing, something few are equipped to do. Instructors can help their learners through explicit instruction of the response genre. The presenter will describe how a project on European cinema used staged instruction to help students create film reviews. Examples of the stages taught to the learners will be provided. The results are given, focusing on ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings. Details of a functional analysis of the texts are highlighted, with reference to examples of students’ work. Those attending will be able to take away materials to help with language curriculum development

Improving nanopore read accuracy with the R2C2 method enables the sequencing of highly multiplexed full-length single-cell cDNA.

High-throughput short-read sequencing has revolutionized how transcriptomes are quantified and annotated. However, while Illumina short-read sequencers can be used to analyze entire transcriptomes down to the level of individual splicing events with great accuracy, they fall short of analyzing how these individual events are combined into complete RNA transcript isoforms. Because of this shortfall, long-distance information is required to complement short-read sequencing to analyze transcriptomes on the level of full-length RNA transcript isoforms. While long-read sequencing technology can provide this long-distance information, there are issues with both Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) and Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) long-read sequencing technologies that prevent their widespread adoption. Briefly, PacBio sequencers produce low numbers of reads with high accuracy, while ONT sequencers produce higher numbers of reads with lower accuracy. Here, we introduce and validate a long-read ONT-based sequencing method. At the same cost, our Rolling Circle Amplification to Concatemeric Consensus (R2C2) method generates more accurate reads of full-length RNA transcript isoforms than any other available long-read sequencing method. These reads can then be used to generate isoform-level transcriptomes for both genome annotation and differential expression analysis in bulk or single-cell samples