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.