“The Adult ESL Writer : The Process and the Context”
April 11, 2008 by Rita Serretti
“The Adult ESL Writer : The Process and the Context”- by Diana M. Diaz
Summary by Rita Seretti
This report began by comparing the process of writing in both L1 (the native language) and L2 (the new language) students.
The three emphases of native language writing as we remember from our English composition classes are to focus on grammar and syntax, to work on error correction and to produce an end product.
The three emphases of writing for both native language and English as a second language should be meaningful topics, student- centered instruction and a communicatively- based process instead of emphasis on rules and structure.
Some classroom strategies that are beneficial to all English students include
free writing such as daily journaling and peer writing groups. Teacher assistance, one on one, is a very effective way to help in their individual needs while still keeping writing a bit confidential. I find students in the ESL classroom are much more inhibited in sharing their writing for fear of mistakes. I stress the importance of the communication that they are conveying rather than the importance of it being error free. The instruction can become more student- centered by offering the students a pick from a list of topics or having the list generated from their choices. The use of group work for peer discussions on grammar and syntax and the use of a student generated rubric for assessing assignments can also be very effective.
To develop a classroom environment of minimal stress in writing, it is necessary to make the writing meaningful and communicative. The writing should be a process rather then always leading to an end product. We, as teachers, need to convey to the students the purpose of the writing, so that they can see writing as a voice. In other words, there should be emphasis on the purpose, the audience and the topic being voiced. Over time this process then leads to students who can become effective writers in all their future endeavors.
Diaz, Diana. The Adult ESL Writer: The Process and the Context. 1986-11-23 ED281235
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/3a/3b/c1.pdf
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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?
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
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.
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.
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.
Wow, what a lot of great ideas. I found Rita’s idea about a student-generated rubric for evaluating assignments very interesting and helpful.
The comments about personalizing the topics to the student’s lives resonates with the keynote address given by Tom Vander Ark at the TechEd 2008 Conference in Ontario, CA this week. He spoke on “The Personalization Revolution” in education. Tom Vander Ark is President of the X Prize and is seeking ideas for a $10 million prize in education.
I attended several great workshops at the Conference. I’m especially excited about using podcasts (or videocasts) as a writing and speaking project.
One of the reasons makes students afraid of writing is English grammar structures. Most native English speakers can write a sentence as how they say it. On the other hand, ESL students not only know the words but also remember the form of the words (such as noun, verb, adjective, etc…) in order to write a correct sentence. In Vietnamese, for instance, a noun usually (99.9%) stands before an adjective. In contrast, an adjective always stands before a noun in English. Spanish, Chinese, or other language also has its own grammar structures. In order to avoid these mistakes, ESL students need to learn the form of the words when they study new vocabulary. Additionally, students need to speak and practice writing with teachers. Eventually, students will make it become a habit.
I would like more information please on student generated rubrics for assessing students’ written work. Have you tried it before and what positive results did it produce?
One way to get students writing when they are still developing vocabulary is to present a work bank on the board with vocabulary about the topic being discussed. This way the words are there to help guide them into developing their journal ideas.
Another technique that I use is the open- ended sentence. I give them a possible journal write but leave out words for their completion. For example, here’s a possible journal write about a scar they have( from a unit on health)
My Scar- I once had an accident when I was ______________. I ______________. I had to go to the emergency room at the hospital. At the hospital they _________________ and _________________. I got __________________. In a month I was better.
I really enjoyed this example and am inspired to make several of these journal exercises for my Citizenship class. I will do one for each lesson. I can easily write these for the Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Michael; those are some good comments. I did a grammar assignment that made the students distinguish between the nouns, verbs, and adjectives, etc . Some had difficulty but most were so focused on it that i was amazed. I think it finally clicked in their minds and they were able to write a grammatically correct thought. They were able to use much of the vocabulary that they had learned.
My beg. 3/Int.1 class just completed their first “real” writing assignment where they used their own thoughts and words. I think they were surprised with the results. When I first told them about the assignment, they looked really frightened and seemed to doubt that they could accomplish it. It was a group project and it was wonderful watching them help each other with the task. I’ve been striving towards this all semester, giving them small assignments where I provided models, or a fill in the blank format, but this was completely their own “voice” as someone called it in one of the earlier entries. I’m very proud of them.
It was really exciting to follow this discussion thread and see it deveolop from abstract concepts to suggested activities to an actual report of taking the actions. It worked and the students were energized and and I think from Mary’s report they were actually empoweredand gained confidence. Great work guys.
Mary Polychrome
I must agree with Michael. My English students are so afraid of making a grammatical mistake that their writing is very inhibited.
Getting them beyond their fears is one of the most difficult parts of teaching writing.
Thank you for the summary, Rita. Many great ideas have been generated here. I agree with Malena and really like the point about seeing writing as a voice. Seeing your written word as a way of addressing the world and your own life in it is an impassioned way of encouraging the writing process.
Regarding Carrie’s comment, I too see that the adult learner often prefers to write about their children and family and see this as a way to reach some students who may not otherwise want to write.
Malena- Please share with us how we can get our pic connected to our name. It looks great! Rita
I enjoyed reading Rita’s summary of the article and agree with many of the comments. At the beginning levels of writing, we really need to focus on communication and purpose. Like the scoring for the ESL post-test (Beg. 3), make sure they have a subject and a verb and their writing has something to do with the picture.
Rita, you have an account. I will email you your password. For those who don’t have an account, you simply go to http://edublogs.org and click on “sign up here.”
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There is of course the matter of uploading your picture onto the site once you become a user(Rita, pay attention to this part):
To do this, login. You will see the dashboard. In the top right hand corner, by your name, click on “my profile.” Then on the third blue band at the top, click on the words that say, “Your Avatar.”
Then click on browse and select the file with your picture. You need this picture to be small. Otherwise, you will only have a small section of it showing. To make it small, edit it in Photoshop or something like that and re-save it under a different name.
Then click on upload image and move the box to crop the section of the picture you prefer. Submit it and you’re done.
I’m a participant in the writing circle, and the research we are reading, tells us that a first step in writing is writing about one’s own life. Only later, when their English skills become stronger, could the learners be encouraged to develop “process” writing skills, such as prewriting, and editing. At that point they could advance to persuasive writing (to convince others of their point of view), or interactive writing (writing to inform others about a topic).
With my own students, I can see that they are stuck on that first level–I would like to take them beyond that.
What a wonderful set of guidelines. I will keep this in mind with my students.
I agree with Donna that my students get stuck at that first level of writing–telling their life story. I have started (on Mondays) asking my students about their weekend. They will then write a sentence on the board–eventually I have them writing a paragraph in the past tense about their activities on the weekend. We then read them. They seem to like it.
Rita, I agree adult students should be encouraged to develop their writing by adult ESL instructors while guiding them in selecting fascinating topics to write on, that is, fascinating for each student. The attention ought to be placed on the student drafting written accounts that portray the student’s flow of thought while the instructor promotes academic writing. Sometimes students perceive classroom writing as a type of exam, but as adult ESL instructors, we have the students’ rich life experiences to draw from and to help students find forms to express themselves through writing. I believe one good approach with adult students is to first motivate them to write as they would verbally tell a story. Then, invest time in the process of teacher-and-student, one-on-one revising, expanding, and modifying the writing into academic language. This is where the adult ESL instructors come in, as writing coaches instead of writing judges.