Post by WIDboard on Nov 16, 2011 21:01:45 GMT -5
EWP #6: English Language Learners and WID
Welcome to the sixth installment of Essentials of Writing Pedagogy, the WIDboard original series on writing instruction. The topic for this post is English Language Learners and WID. As usual, what follows is simply meant to provide a guide to the issue discussed. Take from it what you find useful, and enjoy the read!
_________________________________________________________
A Brief Note on Terminology
Though most instructors will probably be familiar with the term ESL (English as a Second Language), the term is slightly problematic, because for many students English is not merely a second language but instead a “third, fourth, or fifth language” (CCCC). Consequently, educators have used a stunning variety of acronyms to refer to students whose native language is not English. For the purposes of this post, such students will be referred to as ELLs, or English Language Learners.
Major Challenges Faced by ELLS
English Language Learners enter college classrooms at a wide range of skill levels in their proficiency with English (CCCC). Accordingly, they face a broad variety of challenges to success in academic writing in English, including in WID courses. For WID purposes, some of the largest challenges will be:
Basic Principles of Writing Instruction for ELLs
Teachers Should be Explicit About Expectations
This is a generally excellent principle to follow for all instruction, but it is a fundamental necessity for teaching writing to English Language Learners. As the Conference on College Communication and Composition notes, some ELLs “may have difficulty adapting to or adopting North American discursive strategies because the nature and functions of discourse, audience, and rhetorical appeals often differ across cultural, national, linguistic, and educational contexts” (CCCC). What this means is that instructors working with ELLs must be extremely clear about exactly what is expected of academic writing. Because “textual ownership and the ownership of ideas” are conventions that are “culturally based,” these conventions are “therefore not shared across cultures and educational systems” (CCCC). In other words, instructors and assistants need to ensure—and not merely assume—that all students, but particularly English Language Learners, understand the goals of academic writing in English, the rhetorical approaches that it uses, and the concepts of plagiarism and intellectual property.
Students Should Write Frequently
The National Writing Project argues that ELLs should “Write from Day One,” so as to establish familiarity and comfort with writing in English in the academic context (NWP 39). While this is a principle that should hold up for all students in WID courses, it is particularly important for ELLs, who are likely more unaccustomed to English-language writing than their peers. It may sound clichéd to say that practice makes perfect, and it never will, but practice is extremely important.
Students Should Engage in Low-Stakes Writing
ELL students may find low-stakes writing and Writing To Learn activities particularly useful. As John M. Green observes, “The first goal of someone in the early stages of learning to use a new language is, very simply, communication -- getting meaning across” (Green). Accordingly, Green suggests that “for students who have not yet attained fluency…extensive writing in informal contexts such as journals” may be a helpful initial step prior to more formal drafts of academic papers (Green). In WID courses, ELL students will be focused on learning discipline-area content along with writing. This provides a great opportunity for ELLs to journal or informally reflect on the content of the day, simultaneously reinforcing the content and allowing an opportunity to practice writing about that content in English.
Students Should Write Multiple Drafts of Papers
This essential principle of the WID program is exceptionally important for ELLs. As ELLs learn to write in English, it will be vital that they have a chance to revise and re-write their papers in multiple drafts. When the goal is to communicate or demonstrate content mastery, or to make an argument about content, the opportunity to practice multiple drafts is extremely valuable. Teachers should make a special effort to encourage ELLs to set up conferences with instructors, assistant, or Writing Center/Language Center tutors.
Teacher Feedback Should Emphasize Writing Process, Organization, and Intellectual/Academic Content.
While language-level concerns are important, successful writing for students whose first language is English is dependent on the idea that the “first try need not be perfect” (NWP 40). John Green writes, “I make a point of telling my ESL students that in language learning, nobody reaches perfection on the first try, and that the person who never makes a mistake…is not trying to learn anything new” (Green). Instead of focusing on language-level concerns as the primary focus, instructors and assistants should spend their energies on the highest orders of problems: the process of writing, and the types of thinking that support effective writing. Instructors should focus on guiding ELLs toward the intellectual/argumentative conventions of the discipline first, and should only more on to linguistic conventions if the content of the paper is in order. As Green writes, “before making formal correctness our primary concern, we should help our students learn to develop, express, and organize ideas in English” (Green).
Students Should Visit the Language Center
The Language Center is a valuable resource for ELLs and WID instructors alike; the center exists to serve students who may need help with concerns of learning English. If ELL students conference regularly with the staff of the Language Center, then WID instructors and assistants can focus more on discipline-specific aspects of writing and subject-area content. This is not to say that instructors should entirely pass off the burden of teaching writing to the Language Center; instead, it merely means that instructors can focus instead on the content and intellectual focuses of writing, without worrying that ELLs have no recourse for help regarding linguistic problems.
Students Should Read Academic Writing in English
According to the National Writing Project, “the mix of reading, writing, speaking, and listening adds up to better learning” for English language learners (NWP 41). In WID contexts, this means that ELLs should not only be instructed in writing and listen to lecture, but be given opportunities to discuss content and writing, and perhaps most significantly, to read examples of successful (and unsuccessful) academic writing. Students can benefit greatly from modeling, through reading scholarly articles, or peer-reviewing others’ work. Exposure to conventional and/or successful writing can be very important to the internalizing of academic conventions, for native and non-native speakers alike.
Differentiated Instruction
Not all ELLs are the same. They do not all have the same academic experiences, nor do they have the same proficiencies in English. Some may be English-proficient in spoken language, but not academic writing, while others may be proficient in both or neither, while others may have hybrid fluidity, especially if they are so-called “Generation 1.5” students—those who immigrated as children and grew up in Spanish-dominated home cultures and English-dominated school cultures (Harklau). As with all students, what works for one student might not work for another. For ELLs, as students become more proficient in English it may become more appropriate to emphasize language-oriented concerns, once the fundamentals of academic writing have been internalized. That said, instruction at any level should be focused on meeting the student’s needs, not satisfying the instructor’s desire to read “correct” English grammar. Instructors and assistants should tailor their teaching to the individual needs of students, as Green writes, “to encourage students to keep writing and growing” regardless of their fluency with the English.
Don’t Try to Move Mountains All at Once
As Harklau notes, “it takes many years for literacy in a second language to develop fully” (Harlkau). A noble goal for some students might be simply that “at the end of the semester…their errors [will be] more advanced and sophisticated than the ones they are producing now” (Green). Acquisition of language and writing proficiency is a painstaking and slow process. There are limits to what an instructor can do in a given assignment, and in a given semester. Instructors should focus on building specific, important manageable changes, instead of making giant and sweeping reforms. Ultimately, the responsibility of language development requires the active effort of the student over the course of many years. Don’t try to move mountains overnight. They have to be moved one stone at a time. Try instead to teach students where the mountains should go, and how to move stones for themselves.
Implications for Assignment Design:
To accommodate all students, including ELLs, WID assignments can:
To accommodate ELLs, specific assignments might be modified (at the instructor’s choosing, of course) as follows:
Grading and “Fairness” with ELLs:
Many instructors balk at the idea of modifying assignments or grading policies to de-emphasize language-level concerns. Concerns generally center on the question of fairness—the idea that it is not fair to native-English speaking students if they are assessed on different standards from their ELL peers. Obviously, all decisions about grading and assignment design are completely at the discretion of individual instructors and assistants; however, those concerned about issues of fairness may want to consider the following points:
Grading Contracts
Some may be concerned about the possibilities for abuse and/or laziness within a system that treats students differently based on their learning and language needs. While this is possible, as it is in any grading system, Prof. Carol Hayes suggests the use of grading contracts, which explicitly spell out the modifications made for the student in question, and what that student is expected to do in turn. An example of such a contract is attached to this post.
Resources for Writing Instruction for ELLs:
“Responding to non-native speakers of English,” by Sheryl Holt, University of Minnesota.
writing.umn.edu/tww/responding/non-native.html
The Conference on College Composition and Communication Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers:
www.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/secondlangwriting
George Mason University’s Writing Center Resources for ESL Students
writingcenter.gmu.edu/resources-template.php?id=71
________________________________________________________
[CCCC] Conference on College Composition and Communication. “CCCC Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers.” National Council of Teachers of English, Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.
Green, John M. “Helping ESL Writers Grow.” Crosscurrents. 3 (1998): n.pag. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.
Harklau, Linda. “Generation 1.5 Students and College Writing.” Center for Applied Linguistics, Oct. 2003. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.
[NWP] National Writing Project, and Carl Nagin. Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006.
Welcome to the sixth installment of Essentials of Writing Pedagogy, the WIDboard original series on writing instruction. The topic for this post is English Language Learners and WID. As usual, what follows is simply meant to provide a guide to the issue discussed. Take from it what you find useful, and enjoy the read!
_________________________________________________________
A Brief Note on Terminology
Though most instructors will probably be familiar with the term ESL (English as a Second Language), the term is slightly problematic, because for many students English is not merely a second language but instead a “third, fourth, or fifth language” (CCCC). Consequently, educators have used a stunning variety of acronyms to refer to students whose native language is not English. For the purposes of this post, such students will be referred to as ELLs, or English Language Learners.
Major Challenges Faced by ELLS
English Language Learners enter college classrooms at a wide range of skill levels in their proficiency with English (CCCC). Accordingly, they face a broad variety of challenges to success in academic writing in English, including in WID courses. For WID purposes, some of the largest challenges will be:
- Overall limited proficiency in spoken or written English.
- Cultural difference in appropriate in-class behavior.
- Variance in cultural background that limits success in culturally-biased assignments (CCCC).
- Lack of familiarity with language-level conventions in English-language academic writing.
- Lack of familiarity with intellectual property conventions in English-language academic writing.
- Lack of familiarity with goals of writing in English-language academic settings.
Basic Principles of Writing Instruction for ELLs
Teachers Should be Explicit About Expectations
This is a generally excellent principle to follow for all instruction, but it is a fundamental necessity for teaching writing to English Language Learners. As the Conference on College Communication and Composition notes, some ELLs “may have difficulty adapting to or adopting North American discursive strategies because the nature and functions of discourse, audience, and rhetorical appeals often differ across cultural, national, linguistic, and educational contexts” (CCCC). What this means is that instructors working with ELLs must be extremely clear about exactly what is expected of academic writing. Because “textual ownership and the ownership of ideas” are conventions that are “culturally based,” these conventions are “therefore not shared across cultures and educational systems” (CCCC). In other words, instructors and assistants need to ensure—and not merely assume—that all students, but particularly English Language Learners, understand the goals of academic writing in English, the rhetorical approaches that it uses, and the concepts of plagiarism and intellectual property.
Students Should Write Frequently
The National Writing Project argues that ELLs should “Write from Day One,” so as to establish familiarity and comfort with writing in English in the academic context (NWP 39). While this is a principle that should hold up for all students in WID courses, it is particularly important for ELLs, who are likely more unaccustomed to English-language writing than their peers. It may sound clichéd to say that practice makes perfect, and it never will, but practice is extremely important.
Students Should Engage in Low-Stakes Writing
ELL students may find low-stakes writing and Writing To Learn activities particularly useful. As John M. Green observes, “The first goal of someone in the early stages of learning to use a new language is, very simply, communication -- getting meaning across” (Green). Accordingly, Green suggests that “for students who have not yet attained fluency…extensive writing in informal contexts such as journals” may be a helpful initial step prior to more formal drafts of academic papers (Green). In WID courses, ELL students will be focused on learning discipline-area content along with writing. This provides a great opportunity for ELLs to journal or informally reflect on the content of the day, simultaneously reinforcing the content and allowing an opportunity to practice writing about that content in English.
Students Should Write Multiple Drafts of Papers
This essential principle of the WID program is exceptionally important for ELLs. As ELLs learn to write in English, it will be vital that they have a chance to revise and re-write their papers in multiple drafts. When the goal is to communicate or demonstrate content mastery, or to make an argument about content, the opportunity to practice multiple drafts is extremely valuable. Teachers should make a special effort to encourage ELLs to set up conferences with instructors, assistant, or Writing Center/Language Center tutors.
Teacher Feedback Should Emphasize Writing Process, Organization, and Intellectual/Academic Content.
While language-level concerns are important, successful writing for students whose first language is English is dependent on the idea that the “first try need not be perfect” (NWP 40). John Green writes, “I make a point of telling my ESL students that in language learning, nobody reaches perfection on the first try, and that the person who never makes a mistake…is not trying to learn anything new” (Green). Instead of focusing on language-level concerns as the primary focus, instructors and assistants should spend their energies on the highest orders of problems: the process of writing, and the types of thinking that support effective writing. Instructors should focus on guiding ELLs toward the intellectual/argumentative conventions of the discipline first, and should only more on to linguistic conventions if the content of the paper is in order. As Green writes, “before making formal correctness our primary concern, we should help our students learn to develop, express, and organize ideas in English” (Green).
Students Should Visit the Language Center
The Language Center is a valuable resource for ELLs and WID instructors alike; the center exists to serve students who may need help with concerns of learning English. If ELL students conference regularly with the staff of the Language Center, then WID instructors and assistants can focus more on discipline-specific aspects of writing and subject-area content. This is not to say that instructors should entirely pass off the burden of teaching writing to the Language Center; instead, it merely means that instructors can focus instead on the content and intellectual focuses of writing, without worrying that ELLs have no recourse for help regarding linguistic problems.
Students Should Read Academic Writing in English
According to the National Writing Project, “the mix of reading, writing, speaking, and listening adds up to better learning” for English language learners (NWP 41). In WID contexts, this means that ELLs should not only be instructed in writing and listen to lecture, but be given opportunities to discuss content and writing, and perhaps most significantly, to read examples of successful (and unsuccessful) academic writing. Students can benefit greatly from modeling, through reading scholarly articles, or peer-reviewing others’ work. Exposure to conventional and/or successful writing can be very important to the internalizing of academic conventions, for native and non-native speakers alike.
Differentiated Instruction
Not all ELLs are the same. They do not all have the same academic experiences, nor do they have the same proficiencies in English. Some may be English-proficient in spoken language, but not academic writing, while others may be proficient in both or neither, while others may have hybrid fluidity, especially if they are so-called “Generation 1.5” students—those who immigrated as children and grew up in Spanish-dominated home cultures and English-dominated school cultures (Harklau). As with all students, what works for one student might not work for another. For ELLs, as students become more proficient in English it may become more appropriate to emphasize language-oriented concerns, once the fundamentals of academic writing have been internalized. That said, instruction at any level should be focused on meeting the student’s needs, not satisfying the instructor’s desire to read “correct” English grammar. Instructors and assistants should tailor their teaching to the individual needs of students, as Green writes, “to encourage students to keep writing and growing” regardless of their fluency with the English.
Don’t Try to Move Mountains All at Once
As Harklau notes, “it takes many years for literacy in a second language to develop fully” (Harlkau). A noble goal for some students might be simply that “at the end of the semester…their errors [will be] more advanced and sophisticated than the ones they are producing now” (Green). Acquisition of language and writing proficiency is a painstaking and slow process. There are limits to what an instructor can do in a given assignment, and in a given semester. Instructors should focus on building specific, important manageable changes, instead of making giant and sweeping reforms. Ultimately, the responsibility of language development requires the active effort of the student over the course of many years. Don’t try to move mountains overnight. They have to be moved one stone at a time. Try instead to teach students where the mountains should go, and how to move stones for themselves.
Implications for Assignment Design:
To accommodate all students, including ELLs, WID assignments can:
- Value content over language. Assignments should place the highest value and emphasis on intellectual content (discipline-content, organization, argument, research, etc), and not on linguistic problems.
- Maintain cultural neutrality. Unless the focus of the course is on a specific cultural or historical setting, assignments should not assume or require that students have a common cultural background. For example, try to avoid pop-culture or US-specific references when setting up essay questions, unless those details are relevant to the course content.
- Provide explicit instructions. Students should know exactly what is expected of them in an assignment. Even if the assignment is open-ended or free-form, that should be made clear. If teachers provide instructions in written form, non-native speakers can reference and process those instructions at their own pace, instead of at the disadvantaged pace of having to listen to instructions given only orally in a foreign language.
To accommodate ELLs, specific assignments might be modified (at the instructor’s choosing, of course) as follows:
- Allow opportunities for additional revisions. An ELL student might be allowed the opportunity to submit an additional draft in advance, to work on larger issues (particularly applicable to new writers. Alternately, an ELL might be given the opportunity to submit an additional draft after the standard submission has been returned, to be allowed an opportunity to resolve language-level concerns.
- Reduced penalty for language-level concerns. An instructor might choose not to dock points from an ELL’s assignment for language-level concerns, or might modify/cap the amount of penalty that could be assessed. This allows the student to focus on larger issues within his/her writing.
- Give credit for consultation with the Language Center. If penalty is given for language-level problems, an instructor might allow an ELL to earn back some (or all) of the points lost through a documented conference with the language center.
Grading and “Fairness” with ELLs:
Many instructors balk at the idea of modifying assignments or grading policies to de-emphasize language-level concerns. Concerns generally center on the question of fairness—the idea that it is not fair to native-English speaking students if they are assessed on different standards from their ELL peers. Obviously, all decisions about grading and assignment design are completely at the discretion of individual instructors and assistants; however, those concerned about issues of fairness may want to consider the following points:
- Fair and Equal are not necessarily the same. If we care primarily about fairness, we must ask the question: is the task of learning and studying in a foreign language equal to the task of learning and studying in your native tongue? If the two tasks are not equal, then a push for fair grading would require grading not on a completely equal standard, and instead conceding that the task of the ELL may be in some ways more difficult than the task of the native speaker.
- Is Fairness the ultimate goal? If instead of “fairness,” we focus on learning as the primary goal of our instruction, then emphasizing and rewarding productive advancement toward advanced thinking, content mastery, and large-scale development in writing becomes vastly more important than penalizing the language errors of all students equally.
Grading Contracts
Some may be concerned about the possibilities for abuse and/or laziness within a system that treats students differently based on their learning and language needs. While this is possible, as it is in any grading system, Prof. Carol Hayes suggests the use of grading contracts, which explicitly spell out the modifications made for the student in question, and what that student is expected to do in turn. An example of such a contract is attached to this post.
Resources for Writing Instruction for ELLs:
“Responding to non-native speakers of English,” by Sheryl Holt, University of Minnesota.
writing.umn.edu/tww/responding/non-native.html
The Conference on College Composition and Communication Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers:
www.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/secondlangwriting
George Mason University’s Writing Center Resources for ESL Students
writingcenter.gmu.edu/resources-template.php?id=71
________________________________________________________
Works Cited
[CCCC] Conference on College Composition and Communication. “CCCC Statement on Second Language Writing and Writers.” National Council of Teachers of English, Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.
Green, John M. “Helping ESL Writers Grow.” Crosscurrents. 3 (1998): n.pag. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.
Harklau, Linda. “Generation 1.5 Students and College Writing.” Center for Applied Linguistics, Oct. 2003. Web. 15 Nov. 2011.
[NWP] National Writing Project, and Carl Nagin. Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006.
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