Second Language Writing PDF

The psycholinguist Eric Lenneberg (1967) once noted, in a discussion of "species specific" human behavior, that human beings universally learn to walk and to talk, but that swimming and writing are culturally specific, learned behaviors. We learn to swim if there is a body of water...

The psycholinguist Eric Lenneberg (1967) once noted, in a discussion of "species specific" human behavior, that human beings universally learn to walk and to talk, but that swimming and writing are culturally specific, learned behaviors. We learn to swim if there is a body of water available and usually only if someone teaches us. We learn to write if we are members of a literate society, and usually only if someone teaches us. Just as there are nonswimmers, poor swimmers, and excellent swinmmers, so it is for writers. Why isn't everyone an excellent writer? What is it about writing that blocks so many people, even in their own native language? why don't people learn to write naturally" as they learn to talk? How can we best teach L2 learners how to write? What should we be trying to teach? Let's look at these and many other related questions as we tackle the last of the "four skills." RESEARCH ON SECOND LANGUAGE WRITING Trends in the teaching of L2 writing have, not surprisingly, coincided with those of the teaching of other skills, especially listening and speaking (Cumming, 2012; Weigle, 2014). You will recall from earlier chapters that as communicative language teaching gathered momentum in the 1980s, teachers learned more and more about how to teach fluency, not just accuracy, how to use authentic texts and contexts in the classroom, how to focus on the purposes of linguistic communication, and how to capitalize on learners' investment in learning. Those same trends and the principles that undergirded them also applied to advances in the teaching of writing in L2 contexts. 426  CHAPTER 18 Teaching Writing 427 Over the past few decades of research on teaching writing to L2 learners, a number of issues have appeared, some of which remain controversial in spite of reams of data on second language writing, Here is a brief look at some of those issues. 1. Composing A simplistic view of writing would assume that written language is simply the graphic representation of spoken language, and that written performance is much like oral performance, the only difference lying in graphic instead of auditory signals. Fortunately, no one holds this view today. The process of writing requires an entirely different set of competencies and is fundamentally different from speaking in ways that have already been reviewed in the last chapter. The permanence and distance of writing, coupled with its unique rhe torical conventions, indeed make writing as different from speaking as swim ming is from walking. CLASSROOM CoNNECTIONS In what ways have you felt that it was helpful to have information in written form? And under what circumstances have you felt that preserving something in writing (that would otherwise be spoken or nonverbal) diminishes its impact? In what way does writing represent distant communication? How might these characteris tics influence the way you would teach writing? One major theme in pedagogical research on writing is the nature of the composing process of writing (0Brien, 2004; Silva & Brice, 2004; Leki, Cumming, & Silva, 2008; Silva, 2010). Written products are often the result of thinking, drafting, and revising procedures that require specialized skills-skills that not every speaker develops naturally. Further, students exhibit a number of different styles and preferences in their composing processes (Chen, 2005). The upshot of the compositional nature of writing has produced writing pedagogy that focuses students on how to generate ideas, how to organize them coherently, how to use discourse markers and rhetorical conventions to put them cohesively into a written text, how to revise text for clearer meaning, how to edit text for appropriate grammar, and how to produce a final product. We must insert an important caveat here. Our treatment of writing and composing in this chapter applies to academic writing and most traditional writing genres. Most of our discussion (with the exception of an example, at the end of the chapter, of a lesson that uses blogging) does not apply to 428 CHAPTER 18 Teaching Writing electronic communications such as e-mailing, texting, and blogging. These communications, of course, comprise a popular set of genres, with varying characteristics and functions. 9CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS With so many genres of writing now in use in electronic social media, what would you say are some of the conventions of texting? Are there socially accepted "rules" of when and how to text someone? What sort of revision is involved in texting? Would you teach students how to text? What about blogging and e-mailing? Or would you simply leave it to students to "pick up" whatever conventions they need? 2. Process and Product Recognition of the compositional nature of writing has changed the face of writing classes. Half a century ago, writing teachers were mostly concerned with the final product of writing: the essay, the report, the story, and what that product should "look" like. Compositions were supposed to meet standards of English rhetorical style, reflect accurate grammar, and be structurally and cohe sively well organized. A good deal of attention was placed on "model" compo sitions that students would emulate and on how well a student's final product measured up against a list of criteria that included content, organization, vocabulary use, grammatical use, and mechanical considerations such as spelling and punctuation. There is nothing inherently wrong" with attention to any of the above criteria. They are still the concern of writing students and teachers. But in due course of time, we became better attuned to the advantage given to learners when they were seen as composers of language, when they were allowed to focus on content and message, and when their own individual intrinsic motives were put at the center of learning. We began to develop what is now termed the process approach to writing instruction. Hedgcock (2005, pp. 604-605) described the essence of process writing as one that engages learners in meaningful writing, encourages stages of multiple drafts and revisions, and provides formative feedback through con ferencing. You may know from personal experience what it's like to try to come up with a "perfect" final product without the above process. You may have experienced writer's block or experienced anxiety building within you as you felt the pressure to write an in-class essay that would be judged by the teacher, graded, and returned with no chance of future revision. The process approach is an attempt to take advantage of the planned potential of writing  CHAPTER 18 Teaching Writing 429 to give students a chance to think as they write. Another way of putting it is that writing is indeed a thinking process. 9CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS Have you ever felt "writer's block," when you just can't seem to get started or make any headway in writing something? Think about one or two of these instances and ask yourself why you "froze up." How would you then help students to "unfreeze" as they attempt to compose in their L2? The current emphasis on process writing must, of course, be seen in the perspective of history (Hedgcock, 2005; Silva, 2010; Hinkel, 2011; Ferris & Hedgcock, 2014). As in most language-teaching approaches, it is quite possible for you to go to an extreme in emphasizing process to the extent that the final product diminishes in importance. TIry not to let this happen! The product is, after all, the ultimate goal; it is the reason that we go through the process of prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. Without that final product firmly in view, we could quite simply drown ourselves in a sea of revisions. Process is not the end; it is the means to an end. We'll provide more detail on the process approach later in this chapte. 3. Intercultural Rhetoric Kaplan's (1966) article on contrastive rbetoric has been the subject of debate for five decades. Kaplan's thesis was that languages and their cultures) have their own unique patterns of written discourse. English discourse, according to Kaplan (p. 14), was schematically described as proceeding in a straight line, Semitic writing in a zigzag formation, Oriental [sic] written discourse in a spiraling line, and so forth. A half-century of subsequent research has shown that L2 learners do indeed bring with them certain predispositions from their native languages and cultures about how to organize writing. While some generalizations apply, it's now clear that not only were Kaplan's diagrams simplistic (Connor, 2002; Casanave, 2004), but his conclusions were based on intuition rather than sound research. Further, the diagrams were overgeneralized in promoting stereotypes that may or may not hold for individual writers. Nevertheless, there was and still is a ring of truth to Kaplan's claims, as both Kaplan (2005) himself and Connor (2002) noted. No one can deny the effect of one's native culture, or one's predispositions that are the product of perhaps years of schooling, reading, writing, thinking, asserting, arguing, and defending, a concept that became known as contrastive rhetoric. As 430 CHAPTER 18 Teaching Writing teachers attend carefully to their students' schemata, L1 patterns of thinking and writing cannot be ruled out. A balanced position on this issue, then, would remind teachers to consider a student's cultural/literary schemata as a possible source of difficulty, but not to predict those patterns a priori (Matsumoto & Juang, 2013). 9CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS Reflecting on some cultures you are familiar with, do you feel that there are rhetorical conventions that predictably apply? So, for example, are there typical American," "Chinese," or Arabic" characteristics of writing? If so, how would that information influence your approach to teaching writing to one of these cultures? How would you help students appreciate and nego tiate both their L1 traditions and new rhetorical conventions of L2 culture? In recent years the issue of contrastive rhetoric has re-emerged in the rede fined form of intercultural rhetoric to more appropriately "account for the richness of rhetorical variation of written texts and the varying contexts in which they are constructed" (Connor, Nagelhout, & Rozycki, 2008, p. 9). From a social constructivist perspective, we now recognize that many languages have genres of writing, and even within, say, an academic genre, disciplines vary in their views of acceptable writing. Writing contexts (who is writing, to whom, and for what purpose) and specific conventions within subgroups of genres (e.g., a scientific laboratory report; a personal narrative essay) may prove to be far more important for learners to attend to than a possible contrasting native language convention (Connor, 2011). 4. Differences Between Lland L2 Writing In the 1970s, research on L2 writing was strongly influenced by pre vious research on Ll writing. Assumptions were made that the composing processes in both instances were similar if not identical. But it is imperative for teachers to understand that there are in fact many differences between the two, as Silva (1993) noted: L2 writers do less planning, are less fluent (used fewer words), less accurate (made more errors), and less effective in stating goals and organizing material. Differences in using appropriate grammatical and rhetorical conventions and lexical variety were also cited as significant factors. Current research on differences between L1 and L2 writing (Hedgcock, 2005; Hinkel, 2011; Weigle, 2014) highlight some pedagogical principles:  CHAPTER 18 Teaching Writing 431 NPEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES FOR L2 WRITING Consider L1 rhetorical conventions as an important factor in determining what and how you teach. Factor in the Ll sociocultural context of your students as you enable them to participate in one or more discourse communities (Weigle, 2014). Focus on the ultimate purposes of your students in learning to write (in some cases, these could specific purposes (occupational, professional, academic) that have marked L1-L2 contrasts. As much as possible, embed writing instruction into content-based and genre-based approaches, which may have significant cultural ramifications (Hinkel, 2011, p. 527). In assessing writing, students may need to be gently persuaded to adopt a process approach that differs markedly from their L1 cultural norms. 5. Authenticity How authentic are the classroom writing exercises that we ask students to perform? Perhaps this question is best answered with another question: how much writing do most people in today's high-tech world actually do? If we enumerate those genres, we may begin to approach the issue of authenticity (Hedgcock, 2005; Weigle, 2014). For a huge proportion of educated people around the world, writing consists of filling out forms, making lists, texting, e-mailing, sending "wish you were here" post cards from your vacation, and dashing off a "post-it" note to your kids to clean up their room when they get home from school. We are less and less called upon to compose. So, why do we want students to write? In school, without some ability to express yourself in writing, you don't pas the course. In writing for academic purposes, writing ranges from short phrases (as in fill-in-the-blank tests), to brief paragraphs (as in essay question exercises and tests), to reports of many dif ferent kinds, to research papers. In vocational-technical L2 courses, students need to fill out forms, write simple messages, write reports (for example, a bid on a contract, an inspection report), and for some, write brief business letters. In adult education and survival English classes, authenticity may be found in filling out simple forms and questionnaires. This leaves the "academy" as the major locus of writing pedagogy that concerns itself with the compostng pro cess: development of ideas, argument, logic, cause and effect (Paltridge, 2004). Another way to look at the authenticity issue in classroom writing is to distinguish between real writing and display writing. Real writing occurs when the reader doesn't know the answer and genuinely wants information 432 CHAPTER 18 Teaching Writing (Raimes, 1991). In many academic/school contexts, however, if the instructor is the sole reader, writing is primarily for the display of a student's knowledge. Written exercises, short answer essays, and other writing in test situations are instances of display writing. CLASSROOM CoNNECTIONS What are some examples of display writing that you remember doing in learning an L2? Is it realistic to convert every writing assignment for your students into completely authentic real writing? What are some examples of writing techniques or exer cises that might fall somewhere in between real and display? Is there still some benefit in such writing? Should we as teachers incorporate more real writing in our classrooms? In some ways, yes. If L2 courses strive to be more content-based, theme-based, or task-based, students are more likely to be given the opportunity to convey gen uine information on topics of intrinsic interest. But display writing is not totally unjustified. Writing to display one's knowledge is a fact of life in the classroom, and by encouraging your students to perform well in display writing exercises, they can learn skills that will help them to succeed in further academic pursuits. 6. Content- and Genre-Based Writing Pedagogy An excellent way to involve students in more real writing is through content-based instruction, in which writing (along with reading) plays a central role and the purposes of writing are embedded into the overall goals of the program. Through thematically-selected readings, the teaching of L2 writing can address matters of discourse structuring and information flow" (Hinkel, 2011, p. 533). As more and more L2 instruction is specialized in a number of specific purposes, writing can beyond the early stages of learning the mechanics of writing -focus on the central interests of students. Likewise, genre-based writing, besides its natural fit with integrated approaches, offers an opportunity to focus on the discourse features of various writing genres. Ranging from e-mail, to memos, to reports, to research papers and more, genre-based pedagogy enables students to appreciate the subtleties of discourse and syntactic conventions (Martin, 2012; Tardy, 2013). What is conventional and acceptable in one genre may not be the case for another. Formal academic research writing, for example, differs considerably from informal news reports. 7. Responding to Student Writing The gradual recognition of writing as a process of thinking and com posing was a natural byproduct of CLT. With its emphasis on learner-centered instruction, student-student negotiation, and strategies-based instruction that values the variability of learners' pathways to success, CLT is an appropriate locus for process writing. As students are encouraged (in reading) to bring their own schemata to bear on understanding texts, and (in writing) to develop their own ideas, offer their own critical analysis, and find their own voice (see #7 below), the role of teacher must be one of facilitator and coach, not an authoritative director and arbiter. This facilitative role of the writing teacher has inspired research on the role of the teacher as a responder to students' writing (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2005, 2014; Goldstein, 2010; Ferris, 2011; Weigle, 2014). In a process approach, the teacher offers guidance in helping students to engage in the thinking process of composing but, in a spirit of respect for student opinion, should guard against imposing on, or in Reid's (1994) terminology, "appropriating," a student text. In this role, responding to content normally precedes dealing with linguistic issues such as spelling, grammar, and discourse. Further, Ferris (1997) found that when teachers requested specific information from students, more substantive revisions ensued than when teachers simply made positive Comments. CLASSROOM CONNECTIONS Why would requesting specific information from a student result in better revising? What are some examples of specific informa tion? Given Ferris's (1997) finding, should you avoid giving a student generalized positive comnents like, "Good essay! Nice job on this. You've improved a lot." Under what circunstances might positive comments still be pedagogically sound?