Second Language Teaching and Learning

1. Second Language Teaching and Learning Ling 316 Lecture 4:Teaching Writing

2. Approaches to teaching writing • Product approach: • concerned with end product • focus on readability, so concerned with content, text structure, grammar, vocabulary, spelling etc • Process approach: • concerned with the means by which a text is created • focus on drafting and editing process • Social interaction approach: • writing as interaction between writer and reader • explains composing decisions in terms of writer’s projection of the understandings, interests and needs of readers

3. Product approaches Genre approach Halliday (1994), Martin (1992) • A genre is a set of texts which share the same social purpose and structure

4. Major genre Major genres encountered in schooling • narratives • recounts • reports • explanations • procedures • arguments • debates • descriptions

5. The genre approach • What are the major genre encountered in an office? List them

6. Major genre: recount Social Purpose: Recounts ‘tell what happened’

7. Major genre: narrative Social purpose: Narratives construct a pattern of events with a problematic and/or unexpected outcome that entertains and instructs us.

8. Major genre: reports Social Purpose: Information reports present information about an entire class of things, eg: mammals, the planets, rocks, plants, computers, countries transport, and so on.

9. The teaching learning cycle

10. The teaching/learning cycle: Building the context Purpose: • introduce authentic example of text type • introduce cultural context in which text-type is used • introduce social purpose of text type • explore register by: • building knowledge of topic of text • understand roles and relationships of people using text • understand channel of communication

11. The teaching/learning cycle: Building the context Activities: • Activities to reveal: • what the text is about • what students already know about it • Examples: • present context through pictures, A-V materials, excursions, etc • brainstorm vocabulary from images, previous knowledge etc • compare practices in different cultures • predict content • quiz • Activities to establish: • who wrote the text, for whom, purpose for writing • Examples: • discussions • questionnaires • Activities to explore mode: spoken or written • Examples: • compare model text with different type of text eg application form and bill • discuss differences between speaking and writing

12. The teaching/learning cycle: Modelling and deconstructing the text Purpose: • To investigate text structure and language features of this text type • To compare the model with other examples of the same text-type

13. The teaching/learning cycle: Modelling and deconstructing the text Activities: • Identifying text structure • sequencing jumbled stages • labelling stages • sorting sets of texts into those which are the same text-type and those which are not • comparing model with an example missing a stage • Exploring text presentation • identifying function of text features (eg logo, headings, bold letters, position etc) • indicate position of blocks of text • Activities focused on cohesive devices: vocabulary networks, cloze, conjunction, reference. topic sentences • Semantic maps • Presentation and practice activities related to grammatical features of the text • Activities involving pronunciation, spelling, decoding

14. The teaching/learning cycle: Joint construction of the text Purpose: • Students begin to construct examples of the text-type with support • Students develop ability to construct examples independently • Teacher gradually reduces contribution to text construction

15. The teaching/learning cycle: Joint construction of the text Activities: • Whole class construction of text through discussion, scribing, editing • skeleton texts • jigsaw and information gap activities to construct text • small group construction of texts • dictogloss • self-assessment and peer assessment

16. The teaching/learning cycle: Independent construction of the text Purpose: • Students work independently to construct texts • Student performance can be used in achievement assessment

17. The teaching/learning cycle: Independent construction of the text Activities: • learners construct own texts • learners draft, edit and proofread texts • learners critically evaluate their own texts and those of others and suggest areas for further work • learners discuss the ways in which they position their readers

18. The teaching/learning cycle: Linking to related texts Purpose: Allows students to explore how what they have learned relates to: • other texts in the same or similar contexts • other types of text

19. The teaching/learning cycle: Linking to related texts Activities: • comparing use of text-types in different fields • researching other text-types used in same field • exploring how language feature used in this text-type is used in other text-types • change audience of text and ask learners to re-write text • changing purpose of text and ask learners to re-write • personal recount (spoken) to newspaper recount; • description of specific thing to report on a class of things

20. Major genre: explanation Social Purpose: Explanations tell how and why things occur in scientific and technical fields

21. Other genre: discussions, arguments Discussions: The social purpose of a discussion is to explore both sides of an issue Arguments: The social purpose of an argument is to present a position on a topic

22. The Process Approach Expressivist view of writing: • thinking precedes writing • free expression of ideas encourages self-discovery and cognitive maturation • the process of writing is as important as the product • because writing is developmental, teachers should not present models, suggest responses or focus on grammar • no clear criteria for judging good writing

23. The writing process Cognitive view • writers have goals • they plan extensively • planning involves defining a rhetorical problem placing it in context, exploring its parts • arriving at solutions • translating ideas on page • all work can be reviewed, evaluated and revised even before writing • planning, drafting, revising & editing are recursive • plans and texts are evaluated in a feedback loop

24. Process approach L1 and L2 process-writing research • General composing patterns seem similar in L1 & L2 • Skilled writers compose differently from novices • Skilled writers use more effective planning and revision strategies • L1 strategies may or may not be transferred to L2 contexts • L2 writers tend to plan less than L1 writers • L2 writers have more difficulty setting goals and generating material • L2 writers revise more but reflect less on their writing • L2 writers are less fluent, and produce less accurate and effective texts Hyland, K. (2002) Teaching and Researching Writing. Harlow, England: Longman p26

25. Social Interaction Approaches • Meaning is created in interaction between writer and reader • Skilled writers create a mutual frame of reference, anticipate what their audience will understand and provide greater elaboration when they expect misunderstanding • Recursive drafting is a result of writer monitoring text for potential trouble spots

26. Social Interaction Approaches Intertextuality (Bakhtin) • Discourses are always related to other discourses • Text-users are linked to a network of prior texts , which provide a system of options for making meanings which can be used by other text users • These conventions make some interpretation more likely and preclude others, which helps explain the rhetorical choices writers make

27. Social Interaction Approaches Contrastive Rhetoric Languages use different: • patterns of organisation • approaches to argument structuring • approaches to incorporating material from other sources • persoectives on reader orientation, attention-getting devices and estimates of reader knowledge • use of cohesive devices • etc

28. Useful source The texts used in genre slides are taken from the NSW Primary English syllabus, which is on the web site of the NSW Board of Studies: http://k6.boardofstudies.nsw.edu. au/english/ Click on Student Work Samples