This collection of sixteen essays explores the problems inherent in empowering college English as a second language students by allowing them access to the skills necessary to participate in the academic community. From the outset, this project is defined in the broadest sense, using the discipline of composition studies as a springboard into suggestions of various transformative, participatory, and resistant strategies within academic discourse. To help the ESL student feel more welcomed than threatened by the academic discourse community, the overarching aim of this collection is familiarization—on the part of the ESL student and teacher alike. The text is divided into three parts: "Issues," "Research," and "Pedagogy."
To embrace the linguistic diversity in their classes and shift or expand privilege, Clark and Haviland polled students to discover their non-English reading competencies. Based on these polls, they designed an assignment that aimed to shift linguistic privilege and work toward greater linguistic inclusiveness in the basic writing classroom. The assignment responded to the realization that while many of the texts we use reflect our students' cultural diversity, they ignore their linguistic diversity because they are written in and privilege standard academic English. For the assignment, groups of five students worked with magazines written in French, Spanish, and Chinese. In the groups, at least two students spoke the language in which the magazine was published. Students worked collaboratively to answer the question: "What can you know about this country from the magazine we've given you?" (60). In these groups, ESL students were the experts; they interpreted the articles while the other students added their observations about the country from their reading of the photographs, ads, and cartoon captions. In this atmosphere of "share[d] power and privilege," (64) students participated in genuine collaboration and, as a result, produced texts "richer for this fuller collaboration" (64).
Connor provides a comprehensive discussion of how contrastive rhetoric relates to the theories of applied linguistics, linguistic relativity, rhetoric, text linguistics, discourse types and genres, literacy (cultural and cross-cultural), and translation (structural analyses and literal translation). Connor acknowledges the value of syntactical concerns, such as those advocated in Chomskyan-like models, and expands on the theory that "linguistic and rhetorical conventions of the first language interfere with writing in the second language" (5). Detailed student examples, instructors' comments, tables, and specific language comparisons illustrate her argument. The extended table of contents, subject index, and author index render this book easily navigable. An exhaustive reference list creates an invaluable source for those interested in contrastive rhetoric as it relates to process rather than product.
Dong argues that teachers need to understand the diverse literacy backgrounds of their English as a second language students if they are to build on that knowledge and help students develop strategies to improve their proficiency in English reading and writing. To learn about their reading and writing histories, she asked twenty-six first-year international college students at a four-year college to write about how they learned to write in their native language, their most satisfying writing assignment in that language, and the differences between writing in their native language and English. Dong presents the students' stories in their own words, and they illustrate a wide variety of experiences and perceptions. From them, Dong concludes that teachers who ask students to reflect on and share their native-language backgrounds can use this information to expand the ways they identify and address each student's unique needs. Students also become more aware of how their previous experiences affect their expectations and approach to learning English.
This is a comprehensive resource designed to help prospective and current English as a second language composition teachers to design and implement syllabi and lesson plans, choose textbooks, and confront most of the pedagogical obstacles such courses present. Charts, samples of ESL student writing, and suggested classroom activities fill each chapter. In addition, application activities that conclude the chapters provide direct practice in such tasks as developing lesson plans and writing commentary on student papers. Ferris and Hedgcock argue that the ESL teacher really must ascertain the needs of each particular ESL class separately. No two are quite alike in terms of ethnic profile and language capacity, so teachers are at pains to adapt curriculum carefully once the term has started. The book then outlines how to do that in terms of text selection, instructor feedback, class activities, and so forth. Included are chapters that focus on the theoretical and practical issues in ESL writing, the reading-writing relationship in ESL composition, syllabus design, text selection, instructor feedback, editing, assessment issues (including the use of portfolios), and the uses of technology. Ferris and Hedgcock also examine important research on the relationship between reading proficiency and writing ability for both first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) students, finding that among both, good readers are good writers.
The book focuses on three areas. "Students" focuses on the importance of listening to their issues of identity, stigma, academic acculturation, and literacy needs. "Classroom" examines instructional practices, the importance of critical literacy (such as real engagement with text and content), and visions of good curriculum. "Programs" explores issues of institutional placement, fit, tracking, and institutional practice.
Hillenbrand uses responses from an informal survey of teachers of English as a second language students on her college campus to identify areas of frustration in the assessment of ESL writing and to offer suggestions for meeting the challenges that ESL writers face. She emphasizes the importance of understanding differences in rhetorical patterns between cultures and explains the difficulty of adapting to the common rhetorical patterns of English. To assist ESL students, she suggests providing writing models or encouraging the use of writing strategies such as outlining. In addition, she suggests that teachers respond to ESL student writing as a whole, avoiding the temptation to focus just on grammatical and mechanical errors. She suggests that both holistic and analytical scoring can benefit ESL students as well as one-on-one conferences with the teacher, and she especially encourages writing teachers who work with ESL students to be aware of the unique linguistic challenges that their students face.
Kasper argues that a more student-centered, process-oriented approach to writing can demonstrably increase intermediate English as a second language students' (TOEFL score of approximately 350) confidence, motivation, and ability to write well. Noting that both basic and ESL writing research suggests that instructor feedback dramatically affects students' development as writers, Kasper describes how she adapted W. Timothy Gallwey's principle of nonjudgmental awareness—originally developed to train tennis players—to her teaching. Kasper describes how to incorporate Gallwey's principle in to writing instruction and feedback by using a series of task-oriented questions that encourage students to reflect on their communicative goals and strengths. After conducting an informal three-semester study, Kasper found that incorporating Gallwey's principle to her method of instruction produced much better results than her earlier product- and error-driven methods did: students' confidence and awareness became more noticeable, and they improved their ability to identify and revise essays for content and grammar.
Leki describes the many parallels between second-language reading and writing research since the 1970s but notes that they are often kept separate from each other. This, she suggests, is a by-product of institutional pressures and the need for disciplinary legitimacy. According to Leki, this unnatural segregation limits instruction, especially in reading. She argues that writing research emphasizes the recursive and reciprocal processes of constructing meaning but that this understanding is distorted in many second-language reading courses through text selection and pedagogical practices that ultimately make reading much harder. The bigger questions about why the text is being read or how it adds to or complicates students' knowledge is downplayed so that reading becomes more about learning skills than creating and negotiating meaning. Leki explains that bringing the fundamentally integral processes of reading and writing together enables students to work with texts in more realistic and holistic ways. She offers strategies to create a more reciprocal, socially transactional model of instruction that incorporates research findings in both reading and writing.
Leki argues that although teaching writing to English as a second language writers is similar in many ways to teaching native speakers of English, ESL writers also bring many unique experiences and characteristics to the classroom. For this reason, writing teachers without much experience or preparation working with ESL writers may find it difficult to imagine the characteristics, needs, and backgrounds of those writers. Leki offers a practical introduction to the teaching of ESL writing—especially the teaching of international visa students—for future ESL writing teachers and practicing writing teachers who are not familiar with second-language issues. The first section provides an overview of historical and theoretical background. The second section explores the characteristics of ESL students, beginning with the comparison of ESL and basic writers. The third and final section focuses on writing issues.
Responding to the desire to provide an instructional environment for all types of international students and the need to prepare students for an increasingly internationalized world, Matsuda and Silva critically report on a ten-year program that includes native English-speaking (NES) students and English as a second language students in the same writing class. Matsuda and Silva explain that a cross-cultural course must be taught by a properly prepared instructor and must maintain a balanced enrollment of both native English-speaking and ESL students. The presence of cultural conflict and misunderstandings of cultural power are considered prime learning opportunities for all students. The authors detail the course assignments, student responses, and critical pedagogy that they use in their cross-cultural composition classes.
Mlynarczyk and Babbitt describe the Intensive English as a Second Language Program developed at Kingsborough Community College to help ESL students complete their English courses before depleting their financial aid. Complementing this objective were three additional goals: helping students to succeed in credit courses during their first semester in college, improving the retention and graduation rates of ESL students, and integrating ESL students into the social and academic life of college. In the programs, students acquired proficiency in "academic English" by taking credit-bearing courses while receiving language support in ESL and speech courses. Mlynarczyk and Babbitt report that the program helped facilitate high pass rates, good grades, and a collegial classroom atmosphere. The authors posit that collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches to learning; student-centered pedagogy emphasizing reading and writing to learn; and enhanced student perceptions of self-efficacy are central to the program's continued success.
This book describes the findings of a longitudinal qualitative study Nelson conducted as director of a newly established writing center program designed to assist students who had failed the university's English placement exam to successfully complete it. In addition to focusing on students, Nelson wanted to explore two apparent characteristics of "confident" or "successful" teachers that those who had expressed feelings of frustration, defeat, or ambivalence about teaching lacked. Much of what the research team discovered relates to the process by which the students came to take responsibility for their work. According to Nelson, though, the most significant finding was that the graduate assistants discovered that the most effective approach to teaching basic writing students centered on one's ability to revise his or her pedagogy in response to the particular needs students communicated at that moment. This study calls on teachers to recognize a student's intended purpose as a driving force of his or her development as a writer.
Sustained content-based instruction, the in-depth studying of one subject over an entire term, was found to foster nonnative speakers' perceptions of "by-products," or aspects of personal growth that resulted from their academic English writing courses. This study, which focused on four courses taught over three semesters in 2000 in both Israeli and New York universities, suggests that sustained content-based instruction provides nonnative speakers with "the kind and extent of the challenge needed for the emergence and recognition of personal growth" (104). The "by-products" of academic and personal development fostered by sustained content-based instruction in English courses may have significant impact on the fulfillment of universities' goals for nonnative speakers.
Rodby problematizes the social and academic rejection of nonstandard written English, examining the social and political gap that divides the English as a second language educators and linguists who contend that ESL literacy can empower learners and ESL learners who experience the oppressive weight of ESL literacy. Recognizing the legitimacy of both positions, Rodby explains a series of dialectics that can be explored to bridge this gap. Using narrative examples from some of her students, Rodby illustrates how being "in-between" affects students' attitudes toward standard academic English. However, when many liminars are brought together and form "mutual relationships of neophytes in initiation" (83), they have risen to a state of what Turner calls communitas, or a communal consciousness. As a feeling of universality, communitas is egalitarian and resists structure; it is not a discourse community because it is a dynamic process that welcomes change. To facilitate communitas in the literacy classroom, Rodby advocates beginning with the students' current literacy practices and literacy artifacts, developing collaborative activities, and recognizing and legitimizing students' "otherness" and their appropriation of English.
This volume brings together fifteen articles that address various issues in English as a second language writing, arranged in chronological order to provide a sense of the evolution of the field. The editors chose articles for the volume from a large database of publications in second-language writing. They looked for works that represented the state of the art when they were published and that represented a wide variety of perspectives, contributions, and issues in the field. This volume concludes with an appeal to readers to continue to deepen their understanding of second-language writing by reading the primary scholarship in the field.
This collection of articles grew out of a symposium held at Purdue University at which participants examined and discussed the large and increasing area of scholarship on second-language writing. The volume includes articles representing a broad spectrum of experiences and studies, beginning with an autobiographical reflection on how personal experience shapes pedagogy, and ending with a call to examine second-language writing from a broader educational perspective.
Smoke complicates the notion of mainstreaming as an option for English as a second language students. After presenting new definitions of the ESL student that have emerged as part of recently legislated educational policies limiting college remedial and ESL programs, Smoke questions those definitions. She then looks closely at the overall sociopolitical context of ESL at the City University of New York and specifically at her own campus, Hunter College. The author also examines a variety of pedagogical approaches developed to meet the needs of ESL students in colleges in Alabama, Arizona, California, Indiana, and other states. After describing stand-alone ESL classes, mainstream classes, and out-of-class workshops, she discusses how teachers perceive the effectiveness of the various models. Smoke advocates offering options to students, and if mainstreaming is chosen, questions the best ratio for native speaker to nonnative speaker students. Smoke recognizes the limitations that today's political environment presents to writing directors and stresses the need to maintain the best program with as many options as are viable while keeping in mind program survivability in an uncertain future.
Second-language writers are increasingly using writing centers and are often sent there by instructors who are unsure how to deal with second-language problems. Since they come from diverse social, linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds, such writers are not a monolithic group, but their writing shows many characteristically second-language difficulties. Their limited vocabulary also makes academic reading and hence academic writing challenging for them. Unfortunately, writing center tutors are often unprepared to assist second-language writers. To be effective, tutors should understand English grammar rules, second language learning processes and the ways that those processes affect learner production. Two second-language acquisition theories—the interaction hypothesis, which stresses negotiation of meaning in language acquisition, and sociocultural theory, which sees interaction as a social process leading to the creation of new knowledge—can enable tutors to provide guidance at a level appropriate for each learner without editing or appropriating student texts.
Zamel's article appears as the result of an invitation by the editors to revisit a keynote speech given at a faculty development meeting at the City University of New York. The author establishes the terrain by using student writing in response to English as a second language classroom activities and also in conjunction with academic work in other disciplines. Analyzing these samples, Zamel demonstrates the efficacy of integrating writing as a learning tool. In her discussion she indicates how this process—using reading journals, ungraded minipapers, and in-class summaries of class activities—allows for more open communication between faculty and students. This in turn increases the student's ability to acquire the language and meanings of various disciplines and provides faculty with a better understanding of their students' learning process. While the article uses examples of ESL student writing, the argument applies to native English-speaking students as well. Zamel concludes that faculty need to attend to meanings and issues in "correcting" student writing. Error correction alone, she notes, leads away from language proficiency and actually may increase student frustrations.
Including the works of such scholars as Mike Rose, Sarah Hudelson, Amy Tan, Stephen Krashen, H. G. Widdowson, Vivian Zamel, Judith Wells Lindfors, and Simon Ortiz, this collection contains twenty-two readings in five sections: "Questioning the Nature of Methods," "Seeing in the Classroom," "Theories into Practice: Promoting Language Acquisition," "Theories into Practice: Keeping Language Meaningful," and "Questioning Assumptions about Language Identity." The readings represent a range of genres, including theoretical explorations, ethnographies, personal essays, and research reports. Each unit, begins with open-ended questions about the readings and ends with questions and prompts that help readers make connections between the readings and their own experiences in the academic and personal arenas of life. Each unit also includes a list of recommended reading and possible projects for inquiry.