State of the Field Entry

Vases in Downtown Charlottesville, VA. All serve one common purpose--to help things inside them grow!!

There have been many theories in ESL writing pedagogy. Many of them cannot be used alone. Not every approach is suitable for all classroom settings. After reading my colleague’s writing I saw a different variety of ideas that can be applied. My classmates have reviewed articles in different areas: collaborative learning, monolingualism, assessment, language transfer, and genre, feedback, second language acquisition, instruction, teaching materials, and English varieties all over the world.

In the realm of education teaching writing is seen as the most challenging task. In this particular area giving students instruction in writing compositions imposes a challenge which appears in one form after another. Although many scholars and researchers have explored and experienced ways to improve curricula and instruction in composition class, ESL writing is not limited only to composition writing.  

When it comes to writing (here it means writing anything) the first problem writers is if my writing grammatical. They do not think about content and the form of the message they intent to convey. When correction is too much, students are found to be dumb and less confident to venture. Then researchers try to find ways to give better feedback to students. When giving feedback is not satisfactorily working, teachers introduced collaborative learning. Students assess their peers’ work in the classrooms. Some go far enough as in not correcting their grammar at all. Yet many scholars remain on the side of giving corrective feedback to students in order to satisfy them as students expect to have their work fixed by their instructors. Peer correction saves time for both students and teachers. Students feel more engaged in the process. Of course their grammar is corrected whether they can recall why they make certain mistakes or not; they gladly stand corrected. Lee (2003) also suggests that unnecessary feedback may distract both the teacher and the students from reaching the goal of the lesson. It is important for the teacher to be aware of disadvantage of correction that would hinder students’ progress. Ferris (2003) also argues that instead of ignoring errors made by students, the teacher should find a suitable form of feedback. That idea actually sprouted out after Truscott (1996) argument that error corrections must be eliminated as they are an obstacle for the students.

The process teaching is a promising idea, but students’ work should and must be assessed. Assessment is necessary for their performance. Although ESL learning here is regarded as a process in which students learn from their errors and keep refining their works throughout the course, there is a point where their ability to write is judged. TOEFL and GRE test their ability to write impromptu essays and arguments. There is also a need to give feedback for students that are trying to take such tests.

Many students should realize that ability to write with clarity and facility does not come to them overnight. That is the reason why they have to believe in process learning although the test results are the outcome.

Yet there is another problem at the discourse level. They have to understand how ideas and thought are put to work. They need to understand the nature of relationship between the sender and receiver of a message. There are some things that they can say but they should not. A memo in an office should be like an office memo, a lengthy business report should be for an executive in a company. A story should be for readers who wish to enjoy reading it. Awareness of genre is therefore important for the learners to be aware of. Then it is the duty of instructors to help their students aware of such differences. Hyland (2003) argues that genre models are scaffolding of the social contexts of writing and the role of rhetoric.

After they have done their writing, students have tons of issues to work on. They expect to have their final grades. They are all that matter. Once the grades are given they tend to forget whatever they have done in their class. Therefore a new idea is introduced, product versus process. Therefore students are assigned or encouraged to come up with portfolios where they their progress can be seen and assessed by both the instructors and by themselves. Then they consider the different ways English is used in the different parts around the world. The discourse patterns differ from society to society. The North American version of English and the English that is used in the inner circle also have distinct features. Then there are Englishes around the world. Therefore it is important for the ESL instructor to be aware of the differences. That a message is sent in a different form does not mean there is no transmission of that message. Song (2011) therefore suggests training in cultural diversity for teachers. Another point is suggested by Song (2011) is the difference between the ESL and EFL contexts. EFL students do not immerse in the local community. Immigrant bilinguals have different goals.  In her article “Early Study Abroad English” students from abroad come to one of the countries in the inner circle, their English is neither native nor non-native English, which she calls World English.

Leki (1995) points out that students do not seem to apply what they have learnt in their ESL writing classes and they tend to imitate what their teachers suggest in the feedback. In the observation the writer notices that students have some forms of resistance to the teachers’ demand. When asked by the teacher not to write about their own cultures a student says “I am Chinese.” Yet what her professor wants is not realized. Therefore it is the ESL teacher’s responsibility to help the student accommodate herself by using different approaches.

That clearly reflects that, despite the fact that teachers should be aware of the cultural background, students are supposed to do their assignments right, and it is the ESL teachers that are responsible for them to show them the way.

With all of these areas explored there is no single approach for EFL/ESL writing teachers to steadfastly hold on to. All approaches may be useful at a point. Truscott may state that grammar correction is not at all useful. Others may try to prove him wrong. The point here is not to argue over subtle similarities and differences among theories. Teachers are practitioners; they deal with their students physically and mentally. It is all their duty to fulfill their students’ wishes. Truscott’s idea of treating students as clients inspires me. Of course they are some sheepish creatures that we can train or blame. The outcome is either a reward or an ordeal depending on how instructors translate the seen and heard theories into practice. They may inspire their own ideas for their students. Individuals are unique. Even if there are standardized test to diagnose students’ ability or proficiency to put them in a particular class, individual students may have different needs and different background cultures. Their uniqueness is, like a kaleidoscopic picture, never the same. It is the teachers who have to see to the need in the classroom and exploit the theories that he has learned from books.

These two people   in Louisiana would have lost in their quest without the Indian girl. Grammar helps students understand better what they are doing and why they are doing it. 

Duffley, Patrik J. The English Infinitive. New York: Longman, 1992. Print 

I chose this book for this week since I think it would be useful to ESL/EFL teachers teaching advanced level classes such as college composition. Many areas in the grammar of English such as tenses, prepositions, definiteness etc. have been explored. I am in favor of explicitly explaining grammar to ESL/EFL students as I am an ESL student myself. Subtle and not-often-seen-or-heard grammatical patterns are not widely known to ESL students who usually end up learning vocabulary words in isolation. Therefore it is important for ESL/EFL teachers to inform their students who are at a level where they need to know unfamiliar grammatical points in the English language.

This book at first glance seems to attract only linguists and grammarians who share the same interest. English by its nature is unique to EFL/ESL learners. They use synonymy, ellipsis and substitutions. Many grammar textbooks are now focusing on such new items, including the use of infinitives, which the writer of the book focuses on. But the grammar simply does not simply stay there. It takes meaning to make sense. Even with the meaning represented by words and phrases, it may not be represented as dictionaries define them. Without context sentences do not make sense. But some patterns stand out alone to reflect the context at the semantic level. An example explained in the book in the use of “know” with and without the use of “to” as in

“Jane knows her to be intelligent.” and

“Jane knows that she is intelligent.” is particularly of interest to me. 

I do not want to exploit all the areas covered in the book. My idea is to use the explanations in the book in the teaching so that students become familiar with the use of the verbs mentioned. I went to a TESOL conference last year in Richmond, Virginia. The idea introduced in a book promotion program by the representative from Cambridge University Press was to teach grammar in context and in reading. Whenever there is a new pattern or use in a particular genre, the teacher can make use of it to the fullest extent to help his or her students become familiar with the new language. I would use the ideas and examples in the book in helping my students understand better because students in Asian countries want thorough explanations. It is possible to say something like, “Well, it is the way English speaking put it.” But in my opinion language learners learn better if they think they are satisfied. 

Of course it is not advisable for non-native ESL/EFL teachers to glorify themselves stupefying their students with seemingly unexplored niches in the study of grammar. It would be best to help students become communicative in the classroom, regardless of the skills which are the focus of the teaching. This is just to help knowledge-thirsty students with what they think they need so that they will be learning more efficiently. 

Blog Entry # 4

Time Square, NYC: People, each of them one of a kind

Miller, D. “Promoting Genre Awareness in the EFL Classroom.” English Teaching Forum 2 Apr. 2011: 2-15. Print 

I chose this article for it is related to what we will be discussing in the class. It is also part of what I am trying to do with the project. Its emphasis is on EFL, yet I find no reason why it would not be appropriate for ESL settings. What I like about this article is, like the ones I reviewed before, that it contains first-hand experience of the writer with review of the previous works. The writer is a regional English language officer in Senegal. I can see clearly what she means as I have worked with some English language fellows back in my country. I found their outreach programs resourceful and applicable. I even had run a follow-up program after they had trained us in Mandalay, Burma aka Myanmar, in the year 2003 when activities that were carried out in collaboration with the US embassy under surveillance of the police of the regime. Teachers who came to the training sessions were constantly harassed by undercover police. Yet we managed to survive until now when things look promising in the decade-old hermitage. In short I have seen something working under such Peace Corps programs.

When it comes to talking about writing teachers and students alike tend to focus on the structure of the content and mechanics like grammar, punctuation and spelling. They do not usually discuss they way text is constructed with context and audience. In the beginning of the article is a brief explanation of what genre is and some backgrounds of genre theory. She mentions about the two schools of thought about teaching genre—the one that encourages explicit teaching and the other that supports implicit instruction. Based on what I have read in the article she seems to stand on the side of the latter. 

Her pedagogy of teaching genre is raising students’ awareness. She suggests three genre awareness activities. The first one is a five-step approach. She calls it genre and context awareness activities. The steps are explaining the different ways of writing for different purposes, having students read different types of texts, helping them define audience according to the writing that they have read, asking them to find out the purpose of the text, and getting them to think about why the texts are written in different ways. 

The second one is genre and discourse awareness activities. They involve working on three different types of text. They all have a discourse structure with a move that has a situation, a problem, a response, and an evaluation of response. The last one is optional. The steps are created to help students become aware of cohesive aspect of text and the order of sentences. Then they are asked to compare their work that they created during the previous activities. The last step is encouraging them to notice how genres are organized and to learn those patterns, which will help them become better writers. 

The next one is genre and language awareness activities. In the process students are advised to take notice of the spoken and written discourse. After getting them to get exposed to video and reading materials created according to the same topic, students are asked to compare the written and spoken texts. Then they engage in identifying different kinds of video clips or TV programs such as weather reports and complaints. They are then asked to write all the procedures that they have just seen. 

What I found useful here is that materials used are authentic and reflect the structure and organization of text they are going to deal with in their ESL/EFL learning. The possible setback could be the constraints of school curriculum and the time consuming nature of teaching writing. In order to prove it useful, this kind of awareness raising activities should be introduced to the class from time to time throughout the school calendar, and we have to bare in mind that genre is the form of writing while grammar and other mechanics are building blocks of the form itself. Giving student writers only bolts and nuts simply cannot satisfy the need, they also need to have a blueprint, which is essential in constructing a form.

Blog # 3 

Witbeck, Michael C. “Peer Correction Procedures for Intermediate and Advanced ESL Composition Lessons.” The TESOL Quarterly 10.3 (1976): 321-325 JSTOR. Web. 19 September, 2011

This week I found this article that I had retrieved last year in my collection of reference materials. Although it was written in the 1970's, the ideas and techniques introduced here are still new to me as an ESL/EFL teacher who has been in the US for barely more than a couple of years. The reason for picking this article is to learn how a class works when students are assigned to correct their fellow students' work in an ESL composition class. Instead of articles where writers and researchers focus on macro level challenges, I would rather select the content which is usually about the first hand narration and inspiration reflected by the teachers who are actually teaching in the classroom and facing challenges in their daily lives. That research was carried out at UCLA, but the demographic is not stated in the article.

The writer introduced methods for peer correction in the classroom to the teachers of ESL composition. He argues that peer correction is innovative and traditional teacher correction uninteresting, time consuming, and tiring.  Peer correction can enhance students' ability to edit and revise their papers. It will also facilitate the student-student and student-teacher oral communication. (What I would take advantage would be helping students with metalanguage skills which would later help students understand and use them to improve their future writings.) Mistakes are seen as part of process, not failures.

Witbeck proposes a set of procedures to cope with the problems that a teacher my encounter. One procedure is followed by another which could help the teacher overcome setbacks in the previous one. In the first procedure is the idea of making a selected essay visible for the students in the class. The selected essay is then corrected by the class as a whole. The disadvantage pointed out by the author is that there could be some overzealous students who dominate the class during the session. The second procedure is students correcting the papers finished by their classmates. Students are paired up and given two essays to do corrections, but unfinished papers are shared by students who have finished earlier so that time is spent efficiently. It also encourages students to get immediate feedback, which I think teachers cannot usually do during classroom hours.

The third approach is problem solving, which is the teacher giving students the task of finding particular mistakes or weaknesses the students should work on. It is, as suggested by the writer, better to pair up students according to their varying levels. Weak ones are often paired up with better students to help in the fourth approach. They are assigned to work individually and then they are put in groups or pairs to work together. It was proven to be productive by the writer.

The setback anticipated then was handwriting of the students. I hope this approach could be refined by using some Internet application where students can do corrections at home so that writing to learn becomes meaningful to student writers as part of the journal writing that I read last week. I hope to incorporate this approach to my future writing class as part of their journal writing with a few modifications.

Blog Entry # 2

Baxter, Scott J. “Journals in the Language Classroom.” English Teaching Forum 4 Nov. 2009: 22-26. Print

I picked this article as it is useful for me to see a theory translated into practice. In the article the writer presents his ideas that were actually practiced in the classroom where he taught. He puts emphasis on writing journals in ESL writing proposing the idea of writing to learn.

Writing to learn is distinguished from writing to communicate as the former generates discovery thinking and develops ideas helping students brainstorm freely. In short, journal entries are designed to be personal and less formal so that learners feel comfortable engaging in the activity. Writing as process is not usually perceived by L2 students as part of learning to write. Freewriting is usually introduced in composition class. Students are encouraged to write down anything relating to the topics they are going to be assigned to.

Here the writer’s idea for his students is to write freely as the term implies. The writing does not have to address the lesson of the day. They are free to choose any topic ranging from scrap to haiku as they like. This allows students to venture without worrying about being their points taken away or fear of getting sneered by their peer. However, the instructor makes sure the topics are coherent throughout the course so that they will learn to gather their ideas and assemble them in order creating a piece in the end. I like this approach as it could be applicable to Asian students who are generally cautious about their performance among their own linguistic communities.

As freewriting is not usually graded in the class, the writer points out that the instructor should keep track of the students’ activity in their journals so that they take it seriously. When asked by the instructor, one of his students says he enjoys writing without worrying about making mistakes. Others say the activity has helped them stimulate ideas and reflect what they have done throughout the course. I find it very useful as telling students to write down anything without any grade will not draw much attention from students. In the article how to make students engaged in writing to learn becomes part of process. They may not have noticed during the course, but their achievement at the end makes them realize that what they have done in the class could be indeed useful in the long run. 

Fregeau, Laureen A. “Preparing ESL Students for College Writing: Two Case Studies.” The 

           Internet TESL Journal, October 1999. Web. 23 January, 2012 <http://iteslj.org/>

For my blog entry this week I have found an interesting research article from the Internet TESL Journal. It was written by Laureen A. Fregeau of University of South Alabama. She had been an ESL writing teaching for three years when she wrote this article in 1999. To me as an ESL student myself it is a first-hand experience of an ESL writing teacher explained by the teacher herself.

The researcher picked two students from her own class and analyzed the situation very carefully. Through her writing I can vividly see the underlying problems of an ESL composition writing class which are hard to be heard of from other forms of publication. Her qualitative research cannot be said to be subjective since she is trying to picture the tree rather than the woods. It can also be seen that she successfully translated the ideas into actions in her article. It should also be noted that the points she presented in the article abound in everyday teaching practice.

I am also trying to look into some process-based teaching in ESL writing as I had never experienced that at home until I took up teaching college composition last semester. That article sheds lights on the area that I may have missed in my study. That is the reason why I picked this particular article. 

Initial Entry

I am Naing Tun Lin, a graduate student studying applied linguistics with emphasis on TESOL at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. I am from Burma aka Myanmar and I know Burmese, which is my mother-tongue, and English. I was an EFL teacher and teacher trainer in my country. Writing is considered widely as the most difficult of all four skills in Learning a language. 
In Burma writing composition is hardly taught. Students are encouraged to swallow whatever prescribed in the textbooks and regurgitate what they have in their passive memory. As a result they fail when it comes to writing creatively or presenting their argument effectively. 
I noticed in the first few months as a student in the US university that there is so much difference between Asian rhetoric and the North American counterpart as I found myself in the American eyes beating around the bush. It then occurred to me I was only following the pattern that I had long been used to. I presented my ideas in the last part of the essays or assignments that I had to submit to the professors. In English speaking American culture they tend to present their ideas in the very beginning of their writings. Then they are followed by support and refutations. This is the issue that I have to deal with besides grammar and other mechanism in writing.
However, it cannot be denied that Eastern discourse is not appealing to the general reader in an Anglophone society. Regardless of the different rhetoric patterns in the East and the West and the rest of the globe, all the bedtime stories that we heard from our parents have the same order of presentation. It is only arguments that are presented in different ways. They are shaped by attitudes, outlook and social conditioning of peoples. When they want to avoid saying no, their honesty is misunderstood. Yet I have to see how the North American comes up with his or her rhetoric in the academic community as I am studying how they write and I will have to train writers in Burma to write to look and sound educated to the American, because the first impression is almost always the first interpretation of how or what someone is.