Ch.15 Considerations for Teaching Second/Foreign Language Writing

Chapter . 15

Considerations for Teaching Second Language Writing

SARA CUSHING WEIGLE

Presented By:

Lidy Bexabeth Lobo

Astrid Mitchel Godoy

Rosa Milagro Gutierrez

START

WHAT IS SECOND LANGUAGE WRITING?

To teach writing effectively, we need to understand the nature of L2 writing ability.

We can look at this ability from two perspectives:

a cognitive ability

a sociocultural phenomenon

sociocultural perspective

cognitive perspective

Second language writing is seen as part of a socially and culturally situated set of literacy practices shared by a particular community.

Second language writing can be seen as some combination of writing ability (perhaps learned in one's first lass language [L1]) and L2 proficiency.

• The cognitive and sociocultural perspectives can also help us understand the difference between speaking and writing.

• The fundamental differences between speaking and writing in the cognitive domain are responsible to a great degree for differences in the sociocultural domain.

• Teachers must have an understanding of both perspectives to plan and deliver instruction that addresses the writing needs of their students.

CONCEPTUAL UNDERPINNINGS

Student Background and Needs

As Leki, Cumming, and Silva (2008) state, Curricula for writing are also circumscribed by the purposes for which people are learning. (p. 76)

Student background and needs

age and educational background of the writers

difference between L2 learners and foreign language learners

"eye" learners and "ear" learners

for academic reasons and for career reasons

Teachers should be aware of what proficient writers do when they write, what distinguishes good writers from weaker writers, and what the specific writing problems of English as a second language (ESL) learners are likely to be.

Expert writers:

• Writing is not a linear process.
• Numerous considerations simultaneously.
• Set greater challenges.

Silva's (1993) extensive review of the literature concludes that L2 writing is "more constrained, more difficult, and less effective" than L1 writing.

L2 writers need more of everything. Writing teachers need to be aware that their students will not become experts over the course of few weeks or months.

The Process Approach

The dominant paradigm in writing instruction

Students produce more than one draft of each piece of writing for feedback and evaluation, and emphasis is placed on supporting students through the various stages of writing.

Reading and Writing Connections

The connection between reading and writing is an important consideration. Reading and writing are intimately connected and that one cannot easily be taught without the other.

Hirvela's (2004) three main areas of reading-writing connections:

Reading to Write

Writing to Read

Using reading as a source of input in creating a written text.

Reader Response Theory

Using writing as a way of interpreting and understanding a text.

Reader's active participation in understanding a text and ways to develop effective reading strategies.

Attribution of Sources and Plagiarism

Students are frequently told to "use your own words" and are warned about the seriousness of plagiarism and its consequences.

There are cognitive and cultural factors involved, and writing teachers need to understand what these issues are in order to help their students learn to incorporate source materials into their writing appropriately.

Intertextuality: all writing uses words and phrases that are preexisting and combined in new ways, referring to and building on what has come before.

Beginning writers may have difficulties understanding how to follow their instructors' guidance about using their words and paraphrasing.

Teaching students to paraphrase and summarize is only part of the solution to helping them learn acceptable citation practices.

The Role of Grammar and Error Correction in Writing

To point out and correct student errors To become frustrated by the amount of time for error correction.

Classroom Applications

By Astrid Godoy

What does a writing curriculum involve?

According to Leki, Cumming , and Silva (2008), a writing curriculum involves the organization of learning activities for students to develop abilities to produce:

(a) meaningful, accurate written texts, (b) by composing effectively and (c) engaging in the discourse appropriate to specific social contexts and purposes.

Three main considerations in designing a writing curriculum:

Tailoring Writing to a specific audience and purpose.

Writing Process

Writing Product

Kroll (2001)notes that the list of tasks that any writing teacher must accomplish is somewhat predictable:

1 Designing/implementing a syllabus

2 Planning individual class sessions

3 Providing opportunities for writing

04 Responding to that writing

Learning Outcomes

Written learning outcomes are useful for :

Learning outcomes should be written in the form of observable behaviors and products, so that it is easier to determine whether these objectives have been met by the end of the course.

Syllabus

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A useful way to begin formulating objectives is to write down in as detailed a fashion as possible what you hope students will know and be able to do by the end of the course and how students will demonstrate their knowledge and skills trough observables behaviors or products.

For a writing course, it is useful to think of three components of objectives:

(1) A description of the performance itself, or what the student is expected to write (e.g., essays, descriptive paragraphs, or business memoranda) (2) The conditions under which the writing will be done (e.g., at home or in class, and with or without feedback between drafts) (3) The level of performance that will be deemed acceptable, that is, the criteria for evaluation in terms of such considerations as organization ,use of vocabulary, or sentence types

Lesson Planning

Planning must be done on two-levels:

(1) Writing cycle : three phases such as pre-writing, writing, and revising/editing. (2) Individual lesson: five phases such as activation of prior learning, preview/warm-up, lesson core, closure, and follow-up/reflection.

Teachers should be mindful of maintaining a balance between teacher-centered and student-centered activities, providing enough time for students to practice and apply concepts, and leaving time at the end to make sure that students understand whatever homework is assigned.

Pre-writing activities

One of the greatest challenges in writing is getting started. Pre-writing activities can be targeted toward linguistic development, fluency, idea generation, building up knowledge about a topic, or combination of all of these. A starting place for writing are readings. → Writing teachers need to think carefully about how they will use readings in their courses. → Some questions for writing teachers:○ What will students do with the reading in their writing? ○ What challenges might this reading pose to students? ○ How can I exploit this reading to teach something about writing?

Writing Tasks

To help students develop a wide range of writing skills, they should be asked to respond to a variety of tasks, some graded and some not, some impromptu and some planned, in a variety of genres.

Ferris & Hedgcock, 2004; A. M. Johns, 1997; S. McKay, 1994). Williams (2005) notes that the nature of writing tasks will depend in part on learners' proficiency and provides a wealth of suggestions :Activities appropiate for students with lower profeciencies include picture descriptions tasks,giving advice or instructions;and collaborative activities such as dictoglosses,in wich students take notes in a short text.

For students with higher profeciencies, several task types typical os autenthic academic writing include summaries,proposals,reading responses ,case studies and annotated bibliographies .

One argument in favor of devoting substantial time in class to writing is that it reinforces the fact that writing takes a lot of practice and that one cannot be a good writer without writing a lot; another advantage of devoting time to writing in class is that the teacher can be available for one-on- one help while others are working.

Feedback, Revision, and Editing

In a process approach to teaching writing, once students have a working draft of a paper, they need to receive feedback and then revise and edit their paper (for global and local issues, respectively) on the basis of this feedback.

There is less consensus on how feedback should be given, when, by whom, and what sort of feedback is most useful. Ferris & Hedgcock, 2004; Williams, 2005) recommended, commenting primarily on content before commenting on language issues. Based on this notion of content first, a common practice in writing courses is to require three drafts of a paper with two cycles of feedback and revision. → first focusing primarily on global issues of content and organization second on language issues.

Peer Feedback

The process of reading others works develop critical thinking skills that can transfer to students own writing .

Students have authentic audience to write for other than their teacher and can try different writing approaches.

Peer may focus on issues that teacheer do not have time to comment on or choose not to address.

Peer feedback reduce the amount of teacher workload.

Oral comments, Written comments, and recording comments in Feedback.

(1) Written feedback: to reinforce the strengths of a paper or indicate areas where improvement is needed.→ time-consuming, open to misunderstandings and different interpretations. (2) oral comments: to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the paper. → not being possible in some setting such as on office hours or unavailable outside class. (3) recording comments: faster and easier for teachers, additional practice in listening comprehension, oral-aural channel such as vocal inflections and pitch.

How to deal with errors in student writing

- errors that interfere with comprehension. - errors that are stigmatized - errors that are current focus of instruction. - errors that occur frequently.

Self-correcting by students

- indirect approach - using coding sheets containing symbols and abbreviations such as WF for "word form". - not to be effective. - be difficult to implement with complexity.

Being taught by teachers

- a grammar mini lesson. - text analysis/discovery activities, a brief deductive explanation. - consistent and clear explanation.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Types of Teacher Feedback on Writting

Types of Feedback

Written Comments

Individual Conferences

Recorded oral feedback

Adventage:

Adventage :Endnotes and margin comments can reinforce strenghts of a paper or indicate where improvement is needed

Adventage:

May be faster than providing written feddback;provides opportunities for listening comprehension;students can listen to comments multiple times;nonverbal information can promote a positive interpretationof comments.

These provide an opportunity to clarify and negotiate meaning through discussion; they may be less time consuming

FUTURE TRENDS

Numerous changes in writing instruction have been brought by rapid expansion of technology over the past 20 years.

Warschauer (2007), discusses three main technological issues with regard to writing instruction: synchronous, asynchronous, and hypermedia.

Improvements in natural language processing have led to the introduction of automated system for scoring writing.

Summary

1 . Writing is a complex activity that involves both language ability and composing ability.

2. Writing teachers need to consider the cognitive and sociocultural aspects of writing.

3. Writing teachers need to understand the role of other skills.

Conclusion

As the world becomes interconnected, writing is the skill that may ultimately the most critical, and the need for skill writing teachers will only increase. Writing is perhaps the most challeging and time-consuming skill.

REFERENCES

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. M., & Snow, M. A. (Eds.). (2014). Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (4th ed.). National Geographic Learning.

Hirvela, A. (2016). Connecting reading & writing in second language writing instruction (2nd ed.). University of Michigan Press.

Leki, I., Cumming, A., & Silva, T. (2008). A synthesis of research on second language writing in English (1st ed.). Routledge.

Lincoln Learning Solutions. (2020, April 30) The Writing Process [Youtube]. https://youtu.be/fsffR-cu00k

Museum of the Bible. (2016, January 22) The History of Writing [Youtube]. https://youtu.be/z3TKNR0kUAk

Silva, T. (1993). Toward an Understanding of the Distinct Nature of L2 Writing: The ESL Research and Its Implications. TESOL Quarterly, 27(4), 657–677. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587400

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