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Writing Archive of Comments

Rita Seretti |
I have used the below website for many stories appropriate for my age of students, Adult ESL. We then answer questions that I write out on the board, sometimes we answer orally. But we learn to “dig” for the answers and use the words in the questions to help us to write a complete sentence in answering the question.
http://www.rong-chang.com/qa2/index.html
Apr 19, 7:08 PM — Question of the Week

Rebecca Tamondong |
Principle 12 – recognizing each individual’s uniqueness as a learner is something I consider very important in my role as a teacher. There are fast learners and slow learners, there are students who come to our classes with a wealth of experiences and/or educational background, and there are those coming in with a dearth of both (like the younger students and those who are recent immigrants). Consequently many of our classes in this sense are inherently “multi-level” and I enjoin my fellow instructors to consider their classes as such (regardless of the initial placement test results that incoming students take). For us instructors, this simply means addressing this “multi-level” phenomenon in our classrooms by providing a suitable variety of activities that explain, expound, support and elaborate on the lesson at hand. For instance in a Beginning level class learning about numbers, those in the very basic low level will benefit from a highly visual/tactile/sensory approach to learning about numbers (like actually counting objects/people found in the classroom, e.g. how many students are in the class? how many are men? how many are women? Or the teacher can bring in colored pencils and have the students count the pencils and then ask: how many are red? how many are green, etc? For the higher level students in the same beginning class, introduce a little math using the same topic. For instance, there are 30 students in the class, 20 are men, how many are women? Or with colored pencils: if there are 3 red pencils, 2 green, 4 orange and 1 blue, how many pencils do I have in all? This now presupposes that the above level students in the same Beginning 1 class are also familiar with colors and can do simple math, which may be new or a challenge to those coming in with very little or no background in ESL.
For my Intermediate I class, I make it a point to pose a more difficult challenge to those students who are fast learners and are above level. A writing lesson in this class may consist of focusing on the basic mechanics of writing for the pre-level students (capitalization, punctuation, spelling, correct verb tenses, basic sentence patterns, etc.) . Yes, believe it or not, there are students in Intermediate 1 classes who still need a lot of coaching on these basic mechanics of writing. On the other hand, at-level or above level students are challenged on how to express their ideas better using correct word choices and more complex sentence structures. This does require a lot more work for the teacher, but then whoever said that teaching writing is an easy task?
I find that Step Forward by Jamie Adelson Goldstein (I am using Book 3 for my Intermediate 1 class) is an excellent textbook with a complete teacher’s guide (lesson plan) on how to address pre-level, on-level, and higher level lesson presentations. You might want to check it out.

Apr 18, 11:37 AM] — What is Brain/Mind Learning?

Denise |
The obstacles . . . or rather, “challenges” are ones that we all face as instructors shattering the myth of how “easy” it is to teach adult ed. Alice’s point about good communication being essential is so key to success. Indeed the current lack of communication is a topic brought up often by teachers — the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing — which creates a fractured system for our students to muddle through. Good communication across all the facets that made up our community is something that doesn’t happen without real effort. We can’t expect good communication to be the result of wishful thinking.
What this Blog is about is communication. What the ongoing study circles are about is communication. The basic skills initiative itself is about more effective plans to help our students: That takes communication — Communication with each other about needs, challenges, ideas, motivation, support, experiences, knowledge etc. as a major pathway to finding effective ways to help our students and be better teachers.

Apr 16, 11:44 PM— Positioned by Discourse: Obstacles to Effective Teaching in a Community College ESL Writing Class

Rita Seretti |
Merry- You gave me a lot of great ideas I can use tomorrow for effective writing activities. The magazine pic idea is an excellent way to prepare them for writing in the ESL test. I also think giving them sentence patterns with open endings or blanks can help them develop perfect sentences which is what is needed on the test.
For example:
He is a __________ in __________.
He is a student in school.
He is a hard worker in his job.
He is a brother in his family.
For example:
What is she doing? She is _________________.
She is cleaning the house.
She is driving the car.
She is watching the children.
It’s never too early to teach sentence structure.

Apr 15, 11:11 PM— “The Adult ESL Writer : The Process and the Context”

Merry Draffan | mdraffan@sac.edu |

The method used in the computer program “English Mastery” is to hear a story, study key words and phrases from the story, do some exercises with these words and phrases (crossword puzzle, put sentences in order), and finally listen to the story being dictated and typing it from dictation. There are answers at each step if you get stuck.
As students go through these steps, they are hearing correct grammar and sentence structure over and over.
Putting a little twist on this format, if a student has enough words and grammar to “speak” a piece of writing, they could tape record it and write it down from the recording.
The next step would be to correct it, and read it out loud.
If the topic is a class assignment, phrases and sample sentences can be written on the board and read aloud by several students.
A variation is to have a student dictate to another student or to a teacher. After their words are written on paper, they copy them and practice reading them.
If a student is stuck for ideas, a picture from a magazine can help, In its easiest form, the assignment is to write 5 sentences about what you see in the picture. For example: The tree is green. It is very tall. It is taller than the building. There are three people in the picture.
They are friends.
This can progress as far as writing a story about what is happening in the picture, making it a good muti-level assignment.

Apr 15, 10:13 PM— “The Adult ESL Writer : The Process and the Context”

Carrie Patton | Patton_Carrie@sac.edu |

We have found that we get the most out of a student’s writing when it is a personal response, and not fact generated. This seems to be true with both fiction and nonfiction writing. In a citizenship class this could be journaling about current events, putting themselves in the writing. ie: what would you do as a candidate? If they are limited by writting a lot, a list may produce the same result. We have also found that as the student gets older, they chose to write about their children and family members more often than themselves. Changing journal starters like “Where do you want to be in five years?” to “What do you see your children doing in five years?” has produced a positive result.

Apr 14, 8:35 AM “The Adult ESL Writer : The Process and the Context”
claudia lamb | lamb_Claudia@sac.edu |

Hi,
Great comments, good insights. I find purposeful or project oriented writing projects are very effective. As for topics, I think the students can choose them for themselves. My students are very interested in the elections and the economy.
Because I have been attending different workshops dealing with the brain and student learning, I believe student oriented activities are the way to go. After approximately 12 minutes of lecture no one is listening to the teacher. Hands on, each one teach one is very effective.
Claudia

Apr 14, 7:49 AM — [ Edit | Delete | Unapprove | Approve | Spam ] — “The Adult ESL Writer : The Process and the Context”

Malena Copeland | copeland_malena@sac.edu |

I really like the point about how writing should be seen as a voice. Students can develop a passion for writing if they learn to use it this way. It made me think about how my daughter’s first grade class writes daily journal entries, and how our students could benefit from this as well. I sometimes find it difficult to come up with interesting topics that would be appropriate for adults to write about. I usually have them write about current events, history, or politics because I teach Citizenship, but often my students don’t have enough English to express themselves very well about these subjects. Any recommendations?

Apr 12, 12:21 AM “The Adult ESL Writer : The Process and the Context”

alice jeong | alicejeong1@hotmail.com |

I totally agree with Merry that we should act together as a group, not as an individual, to influence the government representatives. I do
believe we at CEC are on the right tract. We just need to keep improving!
–Alice Jeong

Apr 7, 10:36 AM— Positioned by Discourse: Obstacles to Effective Teaching in a Community College ESL Writing Class

thachpham | tnpham12002@yahoo.com |
Most of our students in the Beginning levels cannot write a correct sentence, partly because they don’t attend the classes regularly, partly because they don’t practice writing at home. Therefore, we should spend 5, or 10 minutes of each class reviewing & writing the new words & sentences.
I teach my Beg. 2 students by giving the verbs on the board; then I show them some of the pictures asking them what the man/ woman, or girl in the picture doing. They practice speaking first; then write down the sentences.
Thach Pham
Apr 6, 8:05 PM —Home Page

Michael Ha | michaeldangha@yahoo.com |
As Jim Ryun said, “motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” Journal writing is a great way to get in the habit of writing. Journal writing not only help learners to overcome shyness but also encourage students to write more and make it become a habit. Students could express their ideas much easier because students can write about a topic with their interests and hearts. Journal writing is meant to jumpstart students’ creativities by providing a topic on which students could relate it to their personal experiences. The more students write, the more students learn from their own mistakes. It would be very helpful if instructors could help students point out the grammatical errors and structural mistakes. Students will learn their errors and mistakes to avoid them in the future.
Apr 5, 6:27 PM —Guidelines for Teaching Writing to ABE (Adult Basic Education) Students and ASE (Adult Secondary Education) Students

Mary Polychrome | marypolychrome@hotmail.com |
Hi Rita, Thank you for taking the time to condense this article for us. The art of coaxing students to write is not something I have mastered yet. In fact in our ABE class I sense the students are very hesitant about writing. It is difficult for them and they feel very threatened about it. I am very much looking forward to the program they will be developing in the fall to present reading and writing in a developmental and integrated manner.
Mary Polychrome
Apr 5, 2:22 PM— Guidelines for Teaching Writing to ABE (Adult Basic Education) Students and ASE (Adult Secondary Education) Students

Danny Pittaway | Pittaway_Daniel@sac.edu |
Rob – Good idea to position this topic as to how FLEX Week can address it. Perhaps if we invited composition instructors from SAC to join a panel of non-credit ESL teachers, we could have some fruitful discussion there about bridging the gap.
From my experience in teaching credit ESL (academic writing), I would say that many ESL students first need to establish a habit of pleasure reading in order to familiarize themselves to common expressions and “chunks” of language that native speakers use when writing or communicating in speech. This alone may help smooth out the “awkwardness” of many students’ compositional writing.
Moreoever, it would seem that many ESL students who enter a community college may be technically competent in terms of mechanical grammar concepts, but they lack familiarity with common expressions, formulaic utterances, and other routine phrases. This results in lots of errors with prepositions, sentence fragmentation, and verb tenses. And it also results in many awkward sentences that might be grammatically sound, but “strange” because native speakers don’t “say it that way”. I’m sure anyone who has had experience dealing with higher-level ESL writing courses can relate to what I’m saying here.
Apr 3, 2:27 PM— ESL Teachers vs. Writing Teachers

Rob | jenkins_rob@sac.edu |
Great ideas. I like what you said Malena about a vocabulary strand in the ESL curriculum.
It sounds like one of the ways to strengthen all the programs is bridge the gap between ESL instruction and composition instructors. I think a Flex workshop conducted by both a composition teacher and an ESL instructor to push collaboration would be good. Also we need to open a discussion between the two groups.
Any ideas on how we might do this?
Apr 3, 3:16 AM— ESL Teachers vs. Writing Teachers

Malena Copeland | copeland_malena@sac.edu |
What wonderful recommendations. Teaching our students to think like a thesaurus is a great idea. What if we had a weekly school-wide vocabulary list based on level. One thing that we see in the Basic Skills Literature review is the importance of centralizing developmental education and highly coordinating the program. I think it would be wonderful if there were a monthly structure, writing concept, or grammatical point that our teachers could focus on. For example, in May we could all focus on commas. Beginning ESL teachers could talk about where we use them in dates and lists. More advanced classes could give more extensive lessons about them.
Apr 1, 11:25 PM— ESL Teachers vs. Writing Teachers

Rita Seretti | ritamseretti@yahoo.com |
I have taught ESL Writing, Community College Basic Skills and Education classes in Writing to prepare for the Praxis(equal to the CBEST in Pennsylvania) I do see a difference in the needs of each kind of learner, but I also see a difference in each individual learner. Their writing experiences depend on previous learning, primary language and their feelings about writing. We need to become more student centered and first acknowledge how difficult and risky writing can be to our students. Once that is established then we can center in on the format of a paragraph , a 5 paragraph essay and beyond. They need a lot of instruction on those more common errors: two,too, to and they’re, there and their. Then comes the task of beefing up the vocabulary to college level. Even now in ESL I try to give them two English words to add to their English vocabulary instead of a translation into the primary language. This is very powerful at any level. Get the students to think like a Thesaurus instead of a dictionary. This is a strategy I learned in teaching test prep instruction.
Apr 1, 3:08 PM— ESL Teachers vs. Writing Teachers

John Tashima | jtashima@hotmail.com |
I’ve noticed a division between the composition and ESL circles as well. In my composition theory classes, the only essay I came across that addressed ESL Writing was Matsuda’s “Composition Studies and ESL Writing” – which pretty much talked about the division between the two disciplines. Professionally, I’ve noticed the way teachers’ eyes narrow when they talk about “those other teachers” across the Composition/ESL divide. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I think each group of instructors does find the other’s methods pretty mysterious. I think, particularly in the case of composition instructors, people will need to start crossing that line. In the two college-level composition classes I teach, I would say roughly 1/3 of them have ESL issues. From what I hear, this is a pretty low number.
I also agree with your view on process, Denise. While we shouldn’t intentionally overlook an ESL learner’s grammar needs, by teaching process (prewriting/revising), we are giving our students a strategy – a plan of attack that can help them overcome that fear of filling up the blank page.
Apr 1, 2:23 PM — ESL Teachers vs. Writing Teachers

michele volz | volzmichele@yahoo.com | yahoo |
I like to use the questions we’ve been practicing in the chapter.(I’m using Side by Side right now).
I have a smart board in my class, so I write my personal response on the board and we read that. Then, using that as an example, the students write their own. We also sometimes write our responses, and questions, to another class-a level up or the same level. They respond, which makes it fun!
Apr 1, 7:54 AM— Question of the Week