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Supporting English Language Learners in Literacy and Content

810.629Thursday, October 15, 2010

6:45-8:45 PM

Teaching Writing

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Outcomes

By the end of today’s class, you will have:

• Reviewed methods for teaching writing to second language learners

• Learned about a Curriculum Cycle approach

• Explored a poplar writing textbook and• Worked through a unit from a writing text• Made connections between the writing

text and common methods for teaching writing.

Warm-up: On a piece of paper, describe your own classroom experiences in “how to write.”

Relating Proficiency to WritingProficiency Level

Description Strategies/Activities

Novice Students can copy words and phrases and write them from memory. They can identify, list, and label. They can write one of more familiar phrases, statements, or questions in context.

Simple descriptions to accompany visuals; paragraph completion, cloze passages, dictations, filling-in forms, cinquain poetry, organization of information on graphic organizers

Intermediate Students can create statements and questions well enough to meet practical needs and limited social demands. They can write short messages, notes, letters, paragraphs, and short compositions and can take simple notes. They can compose a series of related sentences that describe or compare. They can narrate a sequence of events and write one or more sentences that classify, summarize, or predict.

Descriptions with visuals, cloze passages, sentence combining, elaboration, guided descriptions and narrations, compositions based on interviews, journals

Advanced Students can write social and more formal correspondence, discourse of several paragraphs, cohesive summaries with some details, and narrative and descriptive passages. They can take notes. They can express feelings and preferences and give supporting details. They can develop an organized composition, report, or article of more than one paragraph. They can explain their point of view simply.

Detailed descriptions, sentence combining, elaboration, guided descriptions and narrations, compositions with rewrites, free compositions, dialogue journals

Second Language Writing TheoriesTheories about second language writing revolve

around different focuses:• Language structures• Text functions• Themes or topics• Creative expressions• Composing process• Content• Genre and contexts of writing

Language structures –Writing is a product of a student’s command of grammar:• Familiarization• Controlled• Guided • Independent

Communicative content is an afterthought.

Text functionsLooks at the form and function of textRhetorical Forms:• Descriptive• Narrative• Comparison/Contrast• Process Writing• Argument

Creative Expression• Writing is learned, not taught• Nondirective and personal• Prewriting & Journals• Interacting with the reader (instructor)

Does not take second language learner's differing cultural backgrounds & purposes of writing in the real world

Composing Process• Recognizes cognitive processes

associated with writing; helps students to develop students abilities to plan, define a rhetorical problem and purpose and evaluate solutions

• Selection of topic• Prewriting/brainstorm• Revising• Response to revisions• Editing/ proofreading• Evaluation• Publishing

Content• Focus on what writers will write

about• Teachers help student develop

schema: brainstorms, content webs

• Easy to adapt to students’ proficiency level

• Include process writing and theme and topic

Curriculum CycleGibbons presents a curriculum cycle as a

way to help students be able to write independently on a given topic in a given genre in their L2. The curriculum cycle is composed of four stages:

• building up the field, • modeling the text type, • joint construction, and • independent writing.May take several weeks to complete one

polished piece of genre-specific writing.

Building up the fieldKnowledge and vocabulary is developed

through speaking, listening, reading, & development of research skills. Activities include:a semantic web

wallpapering creating a list of

questions about what students would like to

learn reading about the topic

using pictures to reinforce/ teach

vocabulary, developing a word

wall/bank

visiting a museumusing cooperative

activities (such as the jigsaw)

using electronic resources

interviewing an expertwatching a video

practicing grammatical structures that will be useful in writing about

the topic.

Modeling the text typeStudents work with texts similar to the

onethey will write: • Analyze and discuss the text’s purpose,

its organizational form, and linguistic features that are characteristic of the text.

• Reconstruct texts by putting sentences or paragraphs in order, doing a dictogloss*, or completing a cloze-type activity.

*A classroom dictation activity where learners are required to reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words, which are then used as a base for reconstruction; regarded as a multiple skills and systems activity. Learners practice listening, writing and speaking (by working in groups) and use vocabulary, grammar and discourse systems in order to complete the task.

Joint and Independent WritingIn the final two stages, students write,

both collectively and independently. • First, in “joint construction,” the teacher

and students construct a text together, as the teacher models the writing process to the students.

• Then in the final stage, “independent writing,” students, singly or in pairs,

Immersion classroom teachers and English language arts teachers need to work together to make sure that students are taught the entire curriculum, because there is not enough time to do it all twice in two languages… immersion teachers need to be acutely aware of their students’ abilities and limitations in their L2 and employ scaffolding... Even shorter pieces of writing need to be scaffolded if students are learning new language structures or vocabulary. To promote vocabulary development and knowledge of the grammatical structures of the L2, immersion teachers need to teach a wide variety of genres and infuse writing throughout the day every day.

Meeting the Challenges of Second Language Writing Development in the Immersion Classroom

Mary Livant, Third Grade Teacher, Normandale French Immersion, Edina, MNThe Bridge • ACIE Newsletter • May 2006

Hands-On LearningChapter 8 :“Comparing the Sexes”

A Writers Notebook by Trudy Smoke

1. Quickly skim the entire unit.2. Read pages 166 – 169 & 174 – 1763. Complete Exercise #3 on page 176 (top of page)

As you read, note which of the second language theories of writing are represented.

As a second language teacher, what are some a additional scaffolds you could use with your students to make writing a comparison/contrast essay less complicated?