English 345: Thursday, October 6

"The world outside of their writing classes may be far less forgiving and understanding of L2 writers' written errors, linguistic gaps, and acquisition gaps," Ferris writes in "Myth 5..." (109). While harsh, the "may" in this statement could very well be replaced with "will." The outside world will be less forgiving of L2 writing for a few reasons. Almost all will not understand the concepts of second languaage acquisiton or the specific characteristics of L2 writing, and many of those people will automatically assume that the L2 writer should be able to understand how to write in English correctly--they just simply need to do it. Yet, while I could go on about what the public will likely question about L2 writing, some specific items in the articles struck me as interesting.

Perhaps because the majority of what I read now is in some way related to standards/policies/standardized tests, I was drawn to the discussion regarding the state test of California that Ferris mentioned in her article. I have been noticing that when states implement writing on tests or for benchmarks--as many of them do now--the way they teach writing changes, and this can be especially detrimental for L2 learners. One noticeable examples arises from a school district in California.  The high schools in the district included "benchmark" assignments in English that all students had to pass to move on to another grade. These "benchmarks" contained their very own set rubric about what would be passing and what would not be. The article noted that, when teaching writing, teachers focused simply on the criteria in the rubric. During one witnessed writing conference, the English teacher helping a second language learner focused not on the overall content of her paper but on how well she met the bullet-pointed points in the rubric to this state standard. Apparently L2 learners in many states learn that all Americans write is SAT-like writing statements.

I think that a refreshing aspect of writing teaching outside of these "Standardized ways" is through the genre approach talked about in chapter 31. However, I am curious about something regarding this. The text says that the teacher brings forms and patterns to conscious awareness, but can the students construct their own forms for the genres, as well? Does the teacher always explicitly need to give the set guidelines--which truly change within a particular genre, as well. I see this as one of the only major ways that L1 writing teachers adn L2 writing teachers use the genre approach to teach students: The L1 teacher allows the students to create their own genre "rubrics" while the L2 teacher lays down the specificis in the specific context. I'm wondering if the line can't be more blurred at times?