Week 1- How to conceptualize daily life experience??

This is my first time to try translingual approach to teach academic writing. Honestly speaking, I am a bit anxious because I used to be a “prescriptive” writing teacher who teaches writing conventions, rules, forms and trains students to conform. It would be hard for me to "intentionally ignore” students’ “errors” that deviate from the conventions of English academic writing. It would be quite odd for me to teach them rules on the one hand, but encourage them to break the rules on the other. It would also be challenging for students to not to focus on rules and grades but contexts, purposes, rhetorical negotiations, and audience. These are the concepts that are too abstract and far-fetched to them.

Past experience shapes
who we are and what we are

In the first week, I briefly provided a course orientation explaining my curriculum and syllabus. Then I asked my students to introduce themselves and share their English learning experience. Almost all the students started their introduction with similar ideas that their English learning experience is nothing special, that learning English requires persistent efforts and practice. I was quite worried because the first writing project is an autobiography in which students need to narrate/describe their English learning experience and generate unique insights from the experience. All the theories emerge from human’s experience; however, theorizing experience is a sophisticated mental work involving higher-order thinking and metacognitive knowledge. I was pondering how I can teach students elicit insights from everyday experience.