[Teaching_Composition] NEW MODULE
Kate McKinney
teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:07:22 +0000
I have a slightly random contribution here, but I will link it to Doug's
comments about syntax (sorry--this IS sentence-level, Dr. Miller-Cochran)
and try to fit it into the flow:
When I work with ESL students in the Writing Center, my most frustrating
moments occur when I come across a turn of phrase that may be grammatically
correct, but "isn't right" in the American-English idiom....that is, I have
to say "your teacher is going to mark this as awkward." Even worse--I often
find the ESL-ism in question rather ELEGANT. (Perhaps this is because I
write poetry--spend sweat and time breaking out of cliches. Could not our
own turns of phrase--the way we are married to our own idiom--be cliche?)
--Kate McKinney
TA, Freshman Comp, North Carolina State University
Tutor, Writing Center, Wake Technical Community College
>From: "Doug Downs" <DOWNSDO@uvsc.edu>
>Reply-To: teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com
>To: <teaching_composition@mailman.eppg.com>
>Subject: Re: Re: [Teaching_Composition] NEW MODULE
>Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 15:16:56 -0600
>
>Well put, Elizabeth. I realize in my post I didn't mention that my focus
>on the student's syntax arises precisely *because* in other respects his
>writing and thinking are effective and inline with my own cultural
>expectations (I mean, we're not having any issues of different values or
>expectations relating to what makes good argument, etc.)
>
>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
>
> >>> "Elizabeth Vander Lei" <BVLEI@calvin.edu> 10/11/2006 1:48 PM >>>
>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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