[Teaching_Composition] NEW MODULE
Elizabeth Vander Lei
teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:48:03 -0400
Doug,
I have a deaf student for a second semester of advanced writing. She comes with extremely high literacy in standard English--she says she picks it up from reading (she's an English major). What's curious about her writing, though, is an odd "flatness." Her writing is grammatically correct; the sentence structures are sophisticated; she can use humor effectively. She chooses interesting ideas to write about. Maybe the writing is too correct? It's so very subtle that I can't pinpoint what in the text produces the effect; if I hadn't been reading her writing for two semesters now I would have attributed it to topic or stage or something else. But I'm at something of a loss to explain what I mean to her (and of course I do that explaining either through an interpreter or in writing--neither, interestingly, ideal for this kind of explanation), and at even more of a loss to mentor her beyond the "flatness."
Teaching ESL students, I have had a version of this same experience. Their ability to shape ideas to thought and thought to ideas sometimes feels "flat," limited somehow by the constraint of communicating in a second language (I've been known to wonder if this same phenomena accounts for some of the "flat" research essays I get from freshmen with little fluency in college English). I'm sympathetic: I remember so wanting to communicate with my neighbors in Vienna but being limited by my elementary German to elementary subjects.
Elizabeth Vander Lei
Associate Professor of English
Calvin College
1795 Knollcrest Circle SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4404
616.526.6434
>>> "Doug Downs" <DOWNSDO@uvsc.edu> 10/11/2006 1:15 PM >>>
I'm working on something similar to Laura's case right now, with a little twist -- a student whose first language is American Sign Language, making English L2 for him. I didn't realize until last year (we have a large deaf population at UV) that ASL doesn't just "sign" English but that there are major syntactical differences, meaning that ASL writers, depending on their experience with English, might have much the same trouble with articles, tenses, and s/v agreement that other ESL writers can have. . . .
Anyway, the first writing I saw from this student looked *very* ESL in the above terms. My problem is this: writing I've seen from him since is much improved syntactically, but I don't know *why* -- is a writing center tutor "cleaning up" his writing; was it just a proofreading issue; something else? And while I'm not ssure Suzanne or others of you who are ESL experts really want so abnormal an example, I'm sort of flummoxed about how you teach writing to someone who ESL *and* deaf. I didn't realize until trying to work with this student how much I teach syntax in terms of *sound*. Ack!
Laura, I'm glad your student could recognize why your original analysis was as it was. :-)
Cheers -
Doug
Dr. Doug Downs
Asst. Professor, Composition & Rhetoric
Writing Program Coordinator
Dept. of English and Literature
Utah Valley State College
800 W University Pkwy, Orem UT 84058
LA 114w
801-863-8572
>>> "Laura D Card" <laura_card@byu.edu> 10/11/2006 9:33 AM >>>
First, thanks for the suggestions and support from people who responded to my last posting in the previous module. I'm much better today and you folks helped make me that way.
Second, I'm also grateful to see this new module and the information from Suzanne and Emmanuel. I was kind of thrown in the deep end without any instruction on how to teach ESL students so I don't know much of the terminology or theory behind it. At my university we have students from 120 different countries and the majority of the students speak at least one other language besides English, so you can see how relevant this thread is to me. I am happy that instinctively I decided to require the same standards of all my students, but give one-on-one time to those who struggle as you mentioned is good to do. I will read with interest other strategies that would be helpful as well.
Funny story time--But here's a twist--Last week I had a female student come into my office stunned because I had commented on her paper that II would be happy to help her if she was having trouble because she was an ESL student. She was born and raised in New Jersey. She was half laughing, though, because when she showed her paper to her roommates, they agreed with my comments. She said, "They totally saw what you were talking about. I guess I should have proofread it before turning it in." She only came in to see me to let me know she was not an ESL student so I didn't have to worry about her. Oops.
Laura Card, PhD
English Department
Brigham Young University
-----Original Message-----
From: Emmanuel Sigauke <esigauke@ccsf.edu>
To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:26:02 -0700
Subject: Re: [Teaching_Composition] NEW MODULE
This is an interesting topic for me because, although I teach "regular" composition classes, I fall ( or used to fall) within the category of NNES since I learned English at the age of seven. I went on to major in English in an African country (former British colony) that used English as it official language, but I continued to use a primary language for daily communication at home. The English major element, I have noticed, has made me attain a comfortable pedagogical angle from which I can teach English to NES as well as NNES. This has made me attain a better (perhaps well-informed) understanding of the different approaches to composition that native speaker students have in relation to ESL. Often, I am able to pierce into the deep-rooted linguistic hesitancies of an ESL rhetoric, borne out of the suspicion of defiency that such students have picked on their way up the ESL learner ladder. I am able to detect the hidden cry for help which demands of me a certain understandi!
ng of the ESL experience, and my answer to the cry is that of teaching the same standards to NNES as those taught to NES. Is this fair, especially coming from someone "who should know"? It's not a question of fairness, I have reassured myself, but that of teaching according to the standards of the course being taught; just as there is not ESL way of teaching Anatomy as opposed to a NES one, I have followed the axiom that in a class like English 1A, or IC, I will use the same standards in setting essay prompts, exam questions, grading ( lack of parallelism is lack of parallelism, whether one is NNES or NES), but I have catered to linguistic diversity by fascilitating discussions that hinge on personal experience, and during on-on-one conferences and office hours, I have encouraged utilization of allowing the L1 experience to help in things like brainstorming, but have emphasized the need for a full translation of the concepts to their English equivalence. The NNES state, acc!
epted as a strength, can lead to confident writing.
I have also found that an honest approach to these issues does help; for instance, if I detect an error that is L1-inspired, I will let the NNES student know that I understand the ideas being expressed, and I will then offer alternative ways to express the same ideas in a more standard style. While there are problems that are exlusively NNES in nature, there are some non-standard versions of English (writing) that are of an NES-nature; I treat these as part of linguistic diversity in my composition classroom and work with the students to appreciate use of a standard writing style.
In short, linguistic diversity in a composition class could range from dialect-based to NNES varieties of English, yet the goal remains that of helping all the students improve on or attain a level of writing that yields results in communication, and helps the students best express themselves in writing.
Emmanuel Sigauke
English Department
City College of San Francisco
50 Phelan Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94112
Phone:(415) 452-7059
>>> chris_anson@ncsu.edu 10/10/06 6:21 AM >>>
If you've ever formed small focus groups in your class and then, to
get through your agenda, had to break into what you know are highly
productive, energetic discussions, then you'll have a sense of what
I'm experiencing moving us to a new module. (In such a situation you
might let the discussions go on longer than you'd planned*and we've
done the same, by about ten days worth.) In any case, many thanks to
Bill Thelin for leading us in an especially engaging discussion of
the "academic bill of rights," ideology in the classroom, and related
topics.
Another kind of ideology is at work in our teaching and is relevant
to our next module, "The Linguistically Diverse Composition
Classroom," led by Suzanne Blum Malley. I'm thinking of instructional
ideology*beliefs about the goals and methods of the educational
enterprise that are predictive of how we might conduct a class
session, what we might write on a student's paper, how we interact
with members of our classes (publicly or in tutorials and office
hours), and how we feel about students themselves*their preparation,
their lifestyles, their appearance, their ethnicity, and the
varieties of language they bring to our classes. In spite of the
growth of world English(es) and attempts in the U.S. to erase or
marginalize other languages through English-only legislation, many of
our campuses continue to be linguistically diverse, enrolling
students with a spectrum of language characteristics and influences
that variously affect their oral communication, the rhetorical and
pragmatic/discursive features of their writing, and their control of
surface features as well. Teachers often bring quite different
beliefs about the role, needs, "place for," and performance of
students outside the linguistic mainstream. In her module, Suzannne
asks us to consider such issues in the context of a crucial area of
language preparation and growth: the composition classroom. As
always, please visit the TeachingComp Web site to read Suzanne's
module, which includes links to some useful resources and ends with a
set of discussion questions for the list: http://www.mhhe.com/
socscience/english/tc/
Suzanne Blum Malley is the Director of ESL and interim Director of
the Writing Center at Columbia College Chicago, where she teaches in
the ESL Program, the Writing and Rhetoric Program, and in Columbia’s
First Year Seminar. She serves as a master teacher for the University
of Illinois at Chicago Master's in Applied Linguistics Program, with
MA students interning in her classes for a semester prior to
completing their degrees. Suzanne's areas of interest and research
include digital rhetoric and alternative pedagogies for college-level
second language reading and writing. She has recently co-authored a
composition textbook with Amy Hawkins titled Translating Culture: A
Rhetoric for Ethnographic Writing in the Composition Classroom
(forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin).
Hablemos.
--
Chris M. Anson [Web site]
Professor of English
Director, Campus Writing and Speaking Program
Box 8105, North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-8105
(919) 513-4080
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