Book review assignment

I am planning to read:

Hyland, K. (2004). Genre and second language writing. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.

L2 Literacy in K-12 context

“Overall, the pervading gloom of the research published between 1980 and 2005 on L2 students in secondary school suggests that, except for relatively rare cases noted above, in many instances L2 students and the schools they entered were not ready for each other” (Leki et al., p. 27).

I find this comment interesting, and at the same time, disturbing. Why? Because it speaks to the pervasive ideologies that continue to manifest themselves within the educational institutions in our country, as well as in society as a whole. Why are the schools not ready for L2 students?

Chapter one in Leki, et al., provides an overview of a variety of myths and teaching strategies that researchers “debunk[ed]” during the 1980s and 1990s. A few of these included: 1) the belief that “L2 writers must learn to speak before learning to read or write”;  2) the idea that “children should each work to develop their writing abilities and texts individually”; 3) “encouraging (or forcing) children to function in only the target language instead of making use of L1 borrowing or code-switching strategies” (12). In addition, the chapter highlights more recent research which has focused on “how writing develops in biliterate children and how being bilingual affects literacy development in both languages…of their differences, with the differences viewed as advantages rather than as deficits” (14).

Chapter two focuses on some of the problems faced by L2 learners in high school. I noticed some of these problems when I completed some practicum hours at a high school in Peoria during the Fall of 2009. Many of the students were older than the average students of their grade level; for example, two female students who had recently arrived from Vietnam were ages 20 and 21, and despite their extremely low proficiency level in English, they were placed in 12^th grade because of their advanced ages. Several juniors were 18 already, and they knew that they were “too old” to be in the eleventh grade, but they needed to learn English, so they stayed in the ESL class, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

In my opinion, some of the concerns the students had regarding their placement in the high school ESL classroom were valid. There was such a wide range of proficiency levels in the class that it reminded me of a one-room schoolhouse from the early 1900s. In this type of situation, it is a challenge for both students and teacher to negotiate an atmosphere that is conducive to real learning. The students I observed seemed, for the most part, to be teenagers that wanted one thing most of all: to be themselves without being marginalized, to be able to navigate the halls of this American high school without feeling that they could never quite measure up to the “regular” students, who didn’t have to have special help to use the English language. I noticed that the teacher, who was not a native English speaker herself, contributed to the attitude problems of some of the students by her words and her actions. I was confused to observe that some of the assignments that she gave amounted to copying the itinerary of the day’s activities into the student’s “journal,” but then sometimes the assignments seemed very communicative and group-oriented, resulting in projects that displayed a lot of creativity, imagination, and skill.

I understand the frustration felt by many of the students in that ESL class; it truly seemed to be a room in which they were “stuck,” and doomed to spend most of their days until they could hopefully perform well enough (or get old enough) to “con” a diploma out of the school district. I used the word “con” because even the two Vietnamese girls (I should say “women”) got a diploma at the end of the year. Obtaining that piece of paper did not imply that they could use the language much better than they could when they had arrived in this country, however. But at least they knew a few words of English, and could perhaps continue to learn more as they entered the working world.

The message from the Lam article seems to be that if we expect L2 learners to become literate in English by attending ESL classes in school we (and the students themselves) will probably be disappointed. Instead, by helping students find things that they are interested in, and can pursue on their own, teachers can equip students to find their own ways to succeed in learning the language, and become more actively involved and interested (!) in their own education. Almon, the student in the article, became a better writer by spending lots of his own time on the Internet, communicating with e-pals through email and internet chat, as well as creating web pages. Lam attributes Almon’s success to “actively acquiring, and also actively reproducing, the many discourses and narrative roles in the English networked electronic environment” (475). And, even though the English he acquired was “the global English of adolescent pop cultures rather than the standard English taught in ESL classes” (476), this language learner found that he could  express himself “much more easily” (468) due to his electronic interactions with others and his experiences of creating web pages on the Internet.

What can we, as teachers, glean from this example? For a long time, I have thought that if a teacher can provide students with access to interesting and useful materials, such that the students can see a rationale or purpose to an activity, they can teach themselves, and even figure out what they need help with and discover who to ask. This type of student-centered and student-directed learning seems more likely to “stick” and to be “acquired” than more formal, traditional types of teacher-centered instruction.

Sources:

Lam, W. (2000). L2 Literacy and the Design of the Self: A Case Study of a Teenager Writing on the Internet. TESOL Quarterly. 34:3, 457-482.

Leki, I., Cumming, A., & Silva, T. (2008). A Synthesis of Research on Second Language Writing in English. New York: Routledge.

Benefits of the Genre approach in Teaching L2 writing process

I appreciated the comments in the Hyland article regarding the need for explicit instruction of the structure of genre types in the L2 classroom. He also implies that some L1 student writers may benefit from this kind of explicit instruction as well. Whereas the process approach provides strategies for idea generation, for organizing ideas, and for analyzing drafts, aside from the consideration of audience, the process approach, in a sense, lacks the social aspect of writing that genre pedagogies address.

Johns points out that “process instruction alone may not provide enough direction or situational focus for the ESL/EFL student who needs models, who needs to discuss cultures and cultural conflicts, and who needs practice in writing under a variety of conditions and in a variety of genres” (212). Incorporating the study of the structure of various genres can offer students valuable insight into the ways in which texts differ depending upon their purpose and their message.

The genre approach seems to offer something for teachers as well. When I taught English Composition in the 1980s and 1990s, the use of the process approach seemed to transform my role as “teacher” to something like “coach,” “collaborator,” or “facilitator.” Incorporating genre pedagogies into the writing classroom allows teachers to provide needed support in the form of “scaffolding” for those student writers whose cultural background and/or language skills make it difficult for them to produce the type of texts required by course assignments (Hyland 26).

The concern that Hyland mentions is that by explicitly teaching the structures of various genres, teachers may inadvertently imply that students should adopt these examples as templates that they can use to create a text. Instead, the teacher’s goal should be that students will learn why certain genres tend to construct text in specific patterns, and that students will develop the skill to adapt that knowledge to their own writing needs and situations (26). 

Here are a few questions that came to mind as I pondered this topic:

1)      Is there a “hierarchy” of genres that should be considered in teaching L2 writing? (In other words, are certain genres more appropriate than others for presenting to English language learners at particular levels of proficiency?) 

2)      If teachers adopt a“genre pedagogy” in their L2 writing classroom, how do they add it to the existing process approach that they currently employ and teach? Is it included as an additional step? If so, at what point is genre to be considered and discussed?

References cited:

Hyland, Ken. "Genre-based Pedagogies: A Social Response to Process." Journal of Second Language Writing 12 (2003): 17-29. Web.

Johns, Ann M. "Genre and ESL/EFL Composition Instruction." Exploring the Dynamics of Second Language Writing. Ed. B. Kroll. 2003. 195-217. Print.

Plagiarism in the ESL context

The readings for this week took me back in time to the 1980s, when I was teaching English Composition at Indiana University. I was a young graduate assistant, and I had discovered my first case of plagiarism in a freshman student’s paper. It may sound crass, but I was appalled and somewhat nervously excited at the same time. I was not sure how to handle the situation, so I did what any good little grad assistant should do: I asked the director of the Writing program for his advice. After showing him the student’s paper and the passage in question along with a copy of the actual source (which I had easily found in the library), he told me that I should call the student in for a little conference about his paper. He suggested that I ask the student to tell me how he had come up with the ideas in the paper, and see if I could determine whether the plagiarism was intentional or unintentional. If the student admitted copying the passage, then he would be subject to the department policy of receiving an “F” for the paper and an “F” in the course. If I could determine that the copying was unintentional, and maybe done in ignorance, I could give the student an opportunity to revise this essay or to write a new paper.

What I heard was that I should “interrogate” the “defendant” to see if he would own up to intentionally participating in this “crime.” As the meeting time drew closer, I reviewed my planned line of questioning. I would ask the student how he had come up with the paper’s topic. I would carefully ask how his ideas had developed, and how he had researched the topic. Eventually I would broach the subject of plagiarism, and I would ask if he knew what it was.

Well, as it turned out, the student came right out and told me that he had copied the passage from the source. I recall that he did not seem apologetic at all; instead, he seemed rather shocked that I had sensed that the writing was not “original” and that I had been able to find the source material. This reaction was completely unexpected. I had assumed that the student would plead ignorance of how to paraphrase, beg for my forgiveness, and request a chance to redo the paper. I was appalled, and yet amazed.

I came out of that experience with a resolution to always do a thorough job of teaching students not only how to avoid plagiarism, but also how to work with sources: how to paraphrase; how to determine what should be quoted, and how to use the source material to help back up (or support) their own ideas.  What I have gathered from students over the years is that many of them do not believe that they have any ideas that are worth sharing, let alone valuable enough to sound authoritative on the topic.  When I tried to encourage students to try to adopt a more confident voice, some of them bravely responded and created decent (yet still tentative) sentences that could then be supported by authoritative sources.

I could relate to many of the concepts in our readings this week. The concept of plagiarism as a “crime” had been drilled into my head during high school and college, and while my teachers held us responsible for proper use of sources, I do not recall much instruction at all during our English classes. I asked my children (ages 25, 23, “almost” 13, and 10) whether their English teachers (or any other teachers, for that matter) had taught them how to paraphrase from sources, how to use direct quotes, or how to incorporate citations into their original texts. None of them gave a positive response; on the contrary, the two that have already graduated from high school reminded me of how much time I had spent helping them with research papers that required multiple sources and proper citations. (My excuse for not remembering all that—out of sight, out of mind!)

So now the question of plagiarism is being examined in the context of second language writing. As our readings pointed out, many questions arise (and must be carefully considered) so that English-as-a-second-language writers can approach the writing of researched papers with confidence instead of with fear.

Here are a few questions that occur to me:

1)      How should teachers of ESL approach the teaching of incorporating source material into research papers?

2)      Some writers have alluded to the idea that perhaps the Western notion of original writing as “intellectual property” needs to be reconsidered, especially in this era of easy access to the words of others via the Internet. Alastair Pennycook seems to wonder whether it is really that important “to know who really said them originally[?].” He further comments that “…the adherence to supposed norms of authoriality are becoming increasingly hazy” (216). My question is: Are we (writers and teachers of writing) becoming increasingly lazy?

3)  Is it possible for teachers or administrators to develop a policy regarding plagiarism as it may occur in the writing of students whose L1 is other than English?

Source:

Pennycook, Alastair. "Borrowing Others' Words: Text, Ownership, Memory, and Plagiarism." TESOL Quarterly 30.2 (Summer 1996): 201-30. Web.

Writing across borders

Several messages were clear in this video. As we have previously discussed in class, international students face many challenges in writing academic essays in English. In some cases, their cultural background dictates how they handle grammar issues, such as clear reference of pronouns (such as he, she, or it). Another challenge involves the difference in writing style taught in their native country, which may differ from the approach used by the majority of American students. Still another challenge mentioned in the video is that of plagiarism and the need to cite sources in academic papers. Students who were raised in countries that highly value the sharing of all resources often find it difficult to understand the need to specifically credit the source of a particular idea or quotation.

I found it interesting that one of the students on the video was surprised by all the format guidelines she had to follow in writing papers at an American university.  She had thought that because there is more freedom in America there wouldn’t be such strict rules for writing.

The brief discussion of L2 writing assessment asked whether all students, whether native English speakers or non-native English speakers in a content-area class or an English composition class should be held to the same standards. The consensus in the video seemed to indicate that teachers should ask the following questions when analyzing L2 student writing: 1) Is the grammar getting in the way of comprehensibility?  2) How many of the errors detract from the meaning? 

The treatment that is suggested is that teachers should allow reasonable accommodations for non-native English speaking students, whether that means additional time to complete in-class assignments or overlooking errors in grammar, especially those that the teacher considers inconsequential or unimportant, such as the use of articles and prepositions. What seems to be important to the teachers and researchers in the video is whether or not the intended meaning is conveyed adequately to the reader. In terms of teacher feedback on student writing, it was suggested that teachers ask students what kinds of feedback they prefer and what helps them the most. One student indicated that receiving a graded assignment covered in red ink was rather discouraging and de-motivating, and that he would prefer more sentence- or paragraph-based comments instead of every individual grammar or lexical error being marked.

Another interesting pedagogical issue that the video brought out concerns lesson planning and testing methods. Students in the video indicated that teachers should re-think topics for class discussions and writing assignments, steering away from anything that might be offensive or too dependent on cultural context for international students to be able to manage. Testing and assessment strategies should also be evaluated. If the class includes any English language learners, perhaps teachers should reconsider assignments and tests which require lengthy, critical writing to be done in-class.

I think my favorite suggestion was to ask students about their previous writing experiences early in the semester. What do they consider “good writing”? Did they consider themselves “good” or “experienced” writers in their L1? What kinds of writing have they done in the past, in their native language, or in other languages?  Questions such as these can help teachers relate to the student’s identity as a writer, as well as helping students recognize their voice in their L1 or L2.