English 495: Tuesday, March 1

“Of all the contexts in which L2 writing occurs, high school is probably the most fraught and the most complex,” writes Leki (17), and I could not agree more. High school is likely a strenuous time for even L1 learners, a time of coming of age and of finding oneself. Having to navigate this world when you don’t know the “school scripts” and don’t know what culture you fit into can be even more of a challenge.

I found the readings in Leki for today incredibly interesting, partly because of the interesting points made like the  above. She notes that the drop out rates are extremely high for English language learners. But huge questions lingers: Where do they belong? When should we mainstream these students into the content-area classrooms? I have seen examples of students who have been mainstreamed too soon and students who have not mainstreamed at all—both to the detriment of the student. A few students were put into a freshman level biology class in which most L1 learners were struggling with the content. They simply could not handle the academic rigor and had to be pulled. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum In the high school in Rockford (where I am from) housing the ESL student, teachers have told me that ESL students continue to do poorly on purpose so that they can stay with their friends when they are fully capable of doing the work there.

I also found it interesting that she mentioned how mainstream teachers often work to find experiential relevance so that their students can connect to their lesson plans. I cannot even imagine how many times I used jokes, sarcasm, etc. in the classroom with ESL student there. I now realize that most of those culturally-specific  and went way over there heads.

In one final note, I want to mention something from Wallace’s article. I found it interesting how the religious identity of the students was mentioned as being so powerful. I do agree that religion is absolutely an identity builder for people. I went to a private, religious school from 6^th to 12^th grades, so religion was freely mentioned in each class regardless of the content. However, in the U.S. public schools, that matter is much more tricky. Thanks to separation of church and state, etc., I would be wary about asking students about their religious preferences or lack there of despite the importance of the subject to their identities.

English 344: Tuesday, March 1

I have virtually no experience working with elementary school children (other than an unfortunate incident when I was in high school regarding an attempt to cut my hair with scissors haha), so I began to read Toohey's article a bit skeptically, wondering if I would be able to relate to it all. Surprising, I have taken a lot from the article, and much of that information gleaned from it can be nicely summarized in the author's own words:  "The individualizing of children starts a process of community stratification that increasingly leads to the exclusion of some students from certain activities, practices, identities, and affiliations" (80). Essentially, I saw basis for a lot of the culturally-constructed practices we have here in America (and, apparently, in Canada, as welll).

I remember when I was in grade school having each of my teachers drill into our heads to "do your own work" and "to not copy." Those commands led to the construction of mini fortresses during tests and other assignments, with students completely surrounding their desk with a blockade of folders. Yes, some saw this as a joke; still, all knew how important it was to do our own work. This thinking, along with the Americanized definition of plagiarism, has continued with me through my educational career. Yet, I am now questioning things. How could grade school teachers build better "dialogic communities" of learning within their classrooms? What is so wrong with ESL student mimicing what other say--if that practice helps them learn? When is it okay to copy, or perhaps borrow, someone else's work--if the concept of plagiarism is socially constructed to begin with?

I am also curious about the arrangement of seats in this classroom, although, as I have written before, I have no experience in how teachers handle the seating arrangements in elementary schools. I do know that when I worked with high school freshmen, I first let them pick their seats; they were ultimately too talkative, so I had to pick the seats for them. Ironically enough, I put the "less-skilled" ESL students right up in front so that I could better talk with them, and they would feel more at ease answering questions. I do now wonder if they felt more excluded from the group because I chose to do this. Still, their work improved with the move, so I suppose that I'm still torn on the issue.

And although this is a blog for English 344, I continually thought about the genre and process approaches to writing as a read this. I would still very much like to see some sort of unit plan showing the genre or a combination of the genre and process approaches, but I do see the dialogic approach as a good starting point when utilizing the genre approach or a combination. Within that community of learners, students would feel free to work together, to share their drafts, and to ultimately learn from each other. I would be curious to explore this topic further.

English 495: Critical Literature Review Book

Hi Professor,

I am planning to read:

Snow, Marguerite Ann and Donna M. Brinton. The Content-Based Classroom: Perspectives on Integrating
        Language and Content. White Plains, New York: Longman, 1997.

The key word there is planning. Currently, I'm on the table of contents haha. But it is on the agenda...

English 495: Genre and Second Language Writing, Continued...

I found the discussion in class today immensely interesting, particularly because I am so unfamiliar with the genre approach. I think that many of my questions regarding the approach were answered, although that is only forming a base to what I believe I still need to learn. In our group, Kristi and I focsued on question 2, although I am pretty sure that we veered off that path almost immediately. I like this question because I really don't understand why the articles seemed to present the approaches as polar opposites. Why not combine the good things of both, right?

We also discussed these theories and what they have to do with the age of the student. I believe that age plays a huge role (or ability level, in the L2 learner's case more than likely). I know that from an L1 context, I can't imagine teaching solely the genre approach in a middle school classroom when the students don't have the skils or base emough to understand just how to write (or perhaps I should say the process of writing).

I also mentioned that I thought that the articles brought up a lot of theoretical talk, like telling your students that they are a community of learners, that their works speak to each other. But I wonder how to get these concepts across. Essentially, I would still love to see pedagogy in action. What would a unit plan look like if you were teaching high school students this? How would the response be? What would be effective, what would not be?

English 495: Tuesday, February 22

I will admit that, probably because I am extremely green about the topic in general, I find the genre-based pedagogy versus the process-view to be a confusing one. I begin this blog post with what I mentioned in one of the first classes: preservice teachers are still getting educated to use the process approach when teaching writing to secondary students, be it ESL or those "native speakers." When I was in those classes, I never heard the phrase genre-based approach. Yes, we all knew what genres were, but a named approach as such never entered into the fray there. I still find that rather interesting....

When I examine them, I see good and bad with both approaches, althoughy my understanding of the genre approach may still be extremely incomplete. As Hyland states in his article, I find that students should be aware that writing is dialogic, that we have that plurality of voices. "It would be much easier for all of us to teach students who are like us," but then we probably wouldn't have a need for this class, either (Hyland 148). Yet, I also view any type of writing as a recursive process, including my own. Regardless of the genre, I am I writing, editing, rewriting, etc.

I agree that the process-based approach is often "individual problem-solving," but it also involves a lot of hands-on approach from teachers. When I taught various writing assignments, I would be actively involved in the students' learning despite using the process approach. I don't think that I ever felt disempowered.

I'm also left with a lot of questions, per usual, which I hope we can clarify through class discussion. It's wonderful to say that a class is a community of writers and that each student's work speaks to one another, but how does one get a class of freshmen to think about this and understand this concept? Do they even need to as long as their writing is improving.? If a teacher is employing this genre-based approach in her classroom, which genres does she choose to teach? Which get left out? Are the ones chosen deemed more important? Ultimately, I would love to see a full unit plan of utilizing this genre-based approach in a high school classroom. Through what activities/discussions does a teacher get an ESL student to understand that "literacies are common resources which are realised in social relationship" (24)?

I'm left to wonder if we can't somehow combine the approaches, taking the best from both--because I do see that both have their high points. Why can't the process approach be more explicit in instruction and focused specifically on a genre? Does process writing really fail to make plain waht is being learned? Why can't the teacher be explicit about that, as well?

English 495: Plagiarism Question #8

I find this question extremely interesting because the issue of who owns texts in this age of multimodality will only become a more complicated one. Every website seems to contain links to other websites or republished texts from another website. No text/page on the internet stands on its own; rather it has connections with hundreds, if not thousands, more pages there.

When I worked at the tv station, I would often link various websites to the news station's website is someone could gather more information by using that said website. Thus, people were directed to our own website before being able to link up to the other websites. While this issue does not directly speak of plagiarism, it does offer an example of that interconnectedness. I never asked those websites if I could link their pages to our own; rather, it was a given that they would not mind the added traffic to their own website by my having linked theirs to my own.

I will be interested in what comes out in this age of mulimodality. Will there eventually be some sort of law or other thing set so that we know who owns these texts? Or will it be, as the Thursday articles suggest, more along the lines of the Eastern view of ownership/authorship (although I, too, am not trying to set up a set dichotomy of east and west here)?

English 495: Tuesday, February 15

Is anything entirely original? That was the question I was left with after the day's readings. Not really any answers, just this one large, lingering question. I have found myself many times this semester thus far looking at my own beliefs on things and realizing that those beliefs can only be characterized as ethnocentric. However, I have not held on to these beliefs because I truly believe in the wonderfulness of this ethnocentricism, so-to-speak; rather, I find that I am simply much less educated in topics related to writing than I thought I was.

Despite my utmost adherence to the Western standards of what plagiarism is, I doubt much of what I've ever written is that unique, that original. Many of my academic papers are filled with quotation borrowing, which, although cited, still account for ideas which were not mine to begin with. I'm sure the original thoughts of mine were somehow, somewhere written kind of like someone else.

I think that, in my head, the issue of plagiarism comes down to motivation. Why did he or she copy the text in the first place? A cultural practice is a mucher different reason than a lazy college student copying down chunks of text word for word because he or she procrastinated. The readings today reminded me of one instance when I was in fourth grade, connecting to that idea of motivation. That year in school, my teacher asked my class to write "how to" reports, basically explaining how or what something is to the class. My constantly striving to overachieve self chose the large topic of Greek Mythology, something my dad had introduced me to only a few days before that. I found the stories and beliefs extremely interesting. I read and read and read, wrote and wrote and wrote. The paper ended up being about 15 pages, extremely long for a fourth grader. I had written the introductions into many of the stories, but I had basically copied some of my favorite stories down word for word to read to the class. I had no idea that what I was doing was considered plagiarism in the Western sense. Luckily, I had a great teacher who said nothing about what I'm sure she knew was "plagiarism." She let me read my entire report, and I did well on it. Ultimately, though, I also learned a lot. I'm sure that one could have asked to recite one story, and I could have said it by memory. Pennycook states at one point that memorization through repetition (as I had read, reread, copied each story) "can be used to deepen and develop understanding" (222). I think in my case, and I'm sure in many others, this tactic of copying helped a great deal.

Yet that still doesn't answer my original question:  Is anything really original?

English 495: The Issue of Voice in L2 Writing

In our group today, we discussed question number 3:  "How realistic is it to expect (and demand) from our NNEST students to develop an English self? According to the readings, what are the pitfall and challenges in teaching voice to ESL students?" Just as our class discussion today did, our mini discussion on this question left me with more questions than answers. One question that we seemed to continually fall back on was this: Is the self inseparable from language? Raul mentioned how his voice in English and in Spanish was, at this point, different. Yet, I wondered if there was ever a chance that those two (perhaps somewhat distinct) voices could ever come together to create one unified voice. But would a person even want that if the voices did?

That being said, do all NNEST students even want to develop an English voice? What if they are simply trying to pass a test and have no desire to do so? Should those students wishes be respected?

English 495: Writing Across Borders

4. To what extent do you think we should accept cultural preferences even though the students are writing for American classrooms?

This question, which has the potential to be rather controversial depending on the answer, is one that has been on my mind throughout the class discussions thus far this semester. As someone who has taught, I have struggled with this in my mind... truthfully leaning from one side to another and back again. A part of me understands that we all need to be aware of cultural preferences. We need to understand the backgrounds of our students and continue to nurtue that so that they don't lose their identity (or their L1 voice that they may have acquired). Still, another part of me wonders why great consideration should be taken in certain cases (for instance, when graduate students come to the United States to use our educational system then bring the resources that they have gained back to their home countries). I think in those particular cases, we should accept cultural preferences only so far.

Yet, for the vast majority of L2 learners, the cultural preferences should always at least be taken into consideration. In "Writing Across Borders," one student noted that Americans use short and concrete sentences, essentially getting right to the point. Her country, however, tended towards longer, more creative and flowing sentences. Who is to say what type of sentence is truly better if both eventually convey the message?

A professor in the vidoe questioned whether he should hold everyone to the same standards, likely eliminating the leeway for cultural preferences in the process. Another noted that people with an accent will likely also write with an accent (an interesting point to say the least); should we count things like wrong/lack of articles wrong if their L1 language lacked articles in the first place... especially if the meaning of the paper is still very apparent despite the absence of articles? I believe that this is another question that I will continue to ponder over for much longer.

English 495: Tuesday, February 8

In his article "Reflections and Refractions [...] on Voice," Atkinson calls voice a "complex concept" (87). I truly had not given that concept much thought until I read the articles for today. I thought that voice was some universal entity that translated equally across cultures. But I now see that that is absolutely not the case:  "In order to write good English, I knew that I had to be myself, which actually meant not be my Chinese self," a student says of trying to write academic papers in the United States (Ramanathan 55). I see that, for many years, I have bought into this culturally -defined model of good writing, although, as I reflect back on my past experiences, I see just how imposed a structure voice can really be.

The three case studies in Ramanathan and Atkinson's article were the catalysts for the said reflecting back on my own struggles with voice. Each of the three people were good writers in their first langauge, yet were having a hard time having that voice translate in English. Carmen especially intrigued me. She was a former journalist who realized that there was little room to "catch the attenction of the reader" when writing English scientific papers.

Although I was writing in the same language in both types of writing, I struggled with the same thing, making me question just how cookie-cutter the concept of voice really is. My undergraduate major was broadcast journalism, and I took a job as a news producer after college. This job entailed writing a lot of news stories... in the broadcast format in which one writes to the pictures that the viewers will be seeing, uses natural sound (sounds effects so to speak) to convey a concept even more fully, creative yet concise sentences that could sound like one was simply having a conversation with the viewer. When writing this way, my voice shown through. I could write swiftly, easily, creatively.

Then, I left the business and decided to go back to school to become a teacher. I had basically been a "professional writer" for a year, but I now found myself truly struggling with writing. I had not done academic writing in such a long time that the concept was truly foreign to me. Every paper seemed to far to long to write. When asked to write my first journal-type research articles on literature, I had no idea how to do so, so I mimiced the form that was prevalent in the papers of published writers. As I did this, I remember thinking that what I wrote did not sound like me, that I was essentially placing a boxed form over my writing and making it fit. As time went on and I practiced more, I think that I got better and have since found some voice again; when I read academic assignments that I wrote, I can hear myself in them. Still, the articles on voice have made me very interested in learning more about the topic and about my own writing.

English 344: Tuesday, February 8

I found today's readings quite interesting, being able to attribute much of that fact to the lengthy discussions on the social aspects of second language acquisition. In my own time studying Spanish, I have always felt that this was much of what was lacking. Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory states that interaction not only facilitates language learning but is a causative force in acquisition. Yes, one can learn a great deal in the classroom (and become quite skilled, one argument that the article we read for today made against Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory). However, to become highly skilled I would only imagine how important it is to truly interact with people speaking that language, particularly native speakers rather than one's peers in a classroom setting. I find it interesting that most foreign language classes in the U.S. are set up like that. Yes, they really don't have any other choice, but asking a student to learn a language simply within the walls of a classroom for 45 minutes a day really does no good.

One point in the article was particularly intriquing to me:  "According to Vygotsky's formulation of teh ZPD, one "cannot arbitrarily assume that any two learners who attain identical scores on a test are necessarily at the same stage... if all we assess is their actal developmental level. It is imperative to assess the learners' potential level of development as well"" (217). The article goes on to say that two students can make the same error, but the cause of that error, or mistake, may be two completely different things. Perhaps one simply circled the wrong answer; maybe the other truly did not understand the material. Treating these two students the same would not do either of them any good. This idea made me think about how I grade things, how I look at all wrong answers the same, when, in fact, they could have very different causes.