Theory and Writing: Programmatic issues. 25 September - 1 October

Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Settings: The Role of ... – C. Rinnert & H. Kobayashi

Key Points: The way EFL students learn to write in their L1 will affect their learning of L2 writing. This paper talks about what L2 writers are going to bring with them in terms of writing experience when they enter the L2 writing teacher's classroom. Defining the term sociocognition describes nicely what is talked about in this paper. Sociocognition states that, “writing is a primarily mental activity by an individual writer within a particular socially mediated context and assumes that writers construct their own writing abilities at least partly based on the previous experiences and preconceptions.:
This study looked at Japanese writing education at all levels, elementary to university, to determine the affects their L1 writing learning has on their L2 writing. The findings were that different levels of L1 learning had different effects on L2 writing. And, that high levels of L2 writing expertise had an effect on L1 writing.

My interaction with the article:

1. I'm not sure what I'm suppose to take away from this study. And, I think that is what this study wants form me. The lesson here is that L2 writing students come from many different backgrounds and L2 writing teachers need to be aware of this. It would be impossible to write a paper that described every type of writer a teacher will encounter, however, closely examining one particular sample may give a teacher an idea of what to expect.
2. One problem I have with this paper is that it uses the term Japanese as though this study will applies to all Japanese writers. It would be tedious to read instead of 'Japanese' “the Japanese students that happened to be a part of this test' every time they are referred to, but I feel to lesson of this paper was that all situations are different and this includes different groups of Japanese students.

Training for Writing or Training for Reality? Challenges .... – C. Pearson Casanave

Key Points: Teaching foreign language (FL) writing in a foreign setting comes with it's own set of difficulties. How do teachers adapt what they have learned during their teacher training to fit their teaching situations abroad? Are universities preparing future teachers for teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL)?

Currently, most TESOL curriculum are based on research that happens in English dominated universities with proficient English speaking students. In reality, most teachers do find themselves teaching FL writing in that situation. When it comes time to teach in a foreign setting they may find themselves trying to force new, but sometimes inappropriate for certain contexts, educational ideologies they learned in university onto students and educational establishments. Student teachers are asking for tools to help them in specific situations. If they will be teaching in Japan then they want Japan specific methods. However, not all student teachers want the situation specific instruction and would rather learn how to adapt general techniques.

Casanove suggest three changes to the teacher education. 1) Include a course that addresses pedagogical and political realities that teacher will encounter. 2) Traditional teaching methods need to be studied as well, and simply dismissed as outmoded. 3) Research needs to switch from English dominated universities to EFL situations that include elementary, middle, and high schools as well as private, for profit schools. 4)

My interaction with the article:

1. Casanove mentioned that the majority of teaching situations are with students who are of low proficiency and study about three hours a week, however most research does not pertain to this situation. This is something I too have noticed and I wonder why this is.
2. I do not want Korea specific training. I have noticed that within Korea there are many different teaching situations and I would like to learn how to adapt what I know to fit as many demands as possible.
3. What I would like to take from this paper to apply to my classroom is the acceptance of traditional techniques. I think that because there is not much to read about the traditional techniques student teachers ignore them. It is especially important to embrace these techniques when they are the norm in your particular teaching situation. I definitely believe in reading about and trying as many modern techniques as I can, but I also believe that at the base is the system that the local school, students, teachers, and have decided to use.
4. One change Casanove suggested universities include is that, “every program needs rigorous attention to future teachers' knowledge of grammatical and lexical systems of English.” This was one of my motivations for beginning my masters. Is this something I will be learning?
5. What is wrong with test preparation teaching jobs? They are in high demand, but teacher trainers never talk about techniques that could be used to prepare students tests. It seems that most teacher's main concern is helping their students pass tests, but test are looked down upon and rejected by academics.

A Critical Evaluation of Writing Teaching Programmes in Different Foreign Language Settings – M. Reichelt

Key Points: This paper sheds even more light on some of the other teaching situations writing teachers may find themselves as they travel the world in search of EFL students. This paper is separated into research about specific countries:

1. Germany. Interestingly, here task based teaching is at odds with traditional German methods for teaching. Supporters of task based teaching say it provides real situations that prepare and motivate students. Traditionalists claim that it does not provide the full spectrum of writing disciplines. Luckily for wring teachers, Germany has a strong L2 writing tradition.
2. Poland. English arrived here after some political changes half way through the 20^th century. English here is used as a status symbol and provides business and higher education opportunities. A stronger emphasis is put on oral skills than writing skills.
3. The USA. Because English is the global lingua franca, there is little demand for foreign language education. However, the L2 writing that does take place there is strongly supported by a rich tradition of teaching writing through process.
4. China. Similar to Poland, English is a status symbol. A test that all college students have to take after their sophomore year requires students to write an English essay. This is one of many examples of standardized tests forming the L2 writing landscape.
5. Japan: already disused in the C. Rinnert & H. Kobayashi.
6. Spain. Very similar to China and Poland.

My interaction with the article:

1. The section on the USA uses the term 'target language.' What is the difference between target language and foreign language?
2. I did not find this paper very interesting or very helpful. I felt that it over generalized each country and based an entire country on the opinion of a few teachers. I can find two teacher sin Korea that will have the exact opposite descriptions of Korean English education. The test and government policies mentioned in this article are not based on opinion, but those are subject to frequent change and may not be helpful to readers.

Theory and Writing: Genre

Key Points: This week we read about teaching genre writing. Interestingly, right now I'm writing within a specific genre. The way I'm writing this blog post, as in my rhetoric, level of familiarity, vocabulary, omission of bad words, can be considered a genre. Teaching L2 writers about genres may help them become better writers.

There are two main approaches to using genres to teach L2 writers. The first looks at the lingual building blocks that are specific to each genre. The Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach and the English for Specific Purposes follow this method. This approach is ideal for the classroom. It comes with a step by step method and makes writing less daunting by providing some framework.

The second approach is to make students aware of the process of genre writing and is inspired by the New Rhetoric School. This school of thought states that genres change according to context and cannot be understood by simply examining example texts and coming up with frameworks to write within. However, being aware of the nature of genre writing will help the L2 writers become better writers.

Ideally, teachers will incorporate both schools of thought when teaching genre writing. The benefits of teaching genre writing can be seen in the studies conducted by S. Yasuda and G. Myskow & K. Gordon. S. Yasuda combined genre writing and task based learning in a study show proof of improvement. The study was based in SFL and showed that students improved in rhetorical awareness. In the Myskow & K. Gordon paper, the reader learns how a lesson in genre that follows the other approach, New Rhetoric School. In this lesson, the students examine one very specific genre of writing, Japanese University application letters, in order to learn the importance of process and context in genre writing.

Mu interaction with the articles:

While reading these articles I tried to remember how I was taught writing. It's a little fuzzy except for one very clear example of genre instruction that has been burned into my soul, and that is the five paragraph essay. There were two Florida administered essay tests that I had to take in middle school that determined my academic future. In my Korean studies, I've introduced myself many times to hypothetical strangers and applied for a hypothetical job by listing my skills and hobbies.

It seemed that genre writing instruction for L2 writing is not much different for L1 writing. So I'm going to apply my history with genre writing to form two personal opinions. First, learning to write the five paragraph essay without learning why and it ruined my writing. I tried to use the five paragraph format for everything I wrote. It never crossed my mind that there was any other format. My second opinion comes from trying to write in Korean. I feel that there is an ideal order for learning genres. Beginners benefit from the strict forms and talking about the context or variations at that point will make writing more difficult.

S. Yasuda's study was half genre writing and half task based. I felt that genre writing got an unfair amount of attention in the reading. The study did a better job selling task based teaching than it did genre writing. I feel the genre study may have been a little restrictive, while the task based instruction was very effective.

Myskow & K. Gordon's example lesson was thorough but inefficient. To site myself as an example, studying one genre too much too early in your writing career can be bad. This isn't genre teaching. The word genre implies that other genres exist. Like me, these students may be confused when it comes time to write in different genres because they will relate all writing to the genre they studied the most. They also may be scared to write again if they think that it will take that much research to write.

11 September - 17 September: Critical examination of L2 writing process research

Key Points: This text is a reflection on many other studies concerning L2 writing. Instead of conducting tests to gather data like Sasaki did in the other reading above, these researchers gathered their data by looking at other research projects. There aim was to determine how effective L2 research has been up until this point. And, their conclusion is that L2 language researchers have a lot of work ahead of them.

This reading did a very good job of detailing all the ways that previous research projects have attempted to extract data from L2 writers. However, the authors also did a good job of explaining how each method has its flaws. For example, Sasaki had test subjects watch themselves writing on video and they recalled what they were thinking while they wrote. The authors in this study bring up the point that the test subjects can not be 100% accurate as the recall their own thoughts. Given the situation, the test subjects may be idealizing what they were thinking in order to comply with what they feel is the proper way to think while writing.

The article continues on to question many methods of gathering data in L2 language research. One method that interested me was the dual-task test. This is where researchers distract writers with unrelated input, such as a series of random numbers, while the test subjects write. This sounded quite strange to me until later it was explained that this method was used to determine the amount of cognitive resources test subjects needed while writing. The random input would use up brain power and if brain power was necessary for writing than the writing would be affected. If test subjects were not distracted than that meant that they were not using all of their cognitive resources to write.

My interaction with the article: This reading was very difficult to understand at times. The more difficult it was to understand the more I realized that conducting this type of research is not easy. I felt good about myself when the authors raised some of the doubts that I had while I was reading about Sasaki's research. My doubts just scratched the surface, though. These authors took so many factors into consideration as they criticized the research techniques that I felt bad for the researchers in the previous studies. I wonder if this criticism made any researchers angry.

In my classroom I could take some of what I learned about the complexities of writing in L2. But, this article has left me with some unanswered questions. I don't know if I'm confident enough to take anything I 've read about in this article into the classroom.

One that I'm particularly curious about is what language are the L2 writers thinking in? Perhaps this question was answered in one of the sections in the article that I had trouble understanding. I wondered if it would help L2 writers to write their first draft in L1 and then translate that the best they could. This may seem like a silly question, but I've never written in L2.

I also wonder what differences can be found between typing and writing be hand. As far as I could tell, this article didn't address that.

11 September - 17 September: Building an empirically based model of EFL learner's writing processes – M. Sasaki

Key Points: This text is about Miyuki Sasaki's research project on L2 writing compared three groups of L2 writers:

1. expert writers (12)
2. novice writers (22)
3. the same novice writers after 12 weeks of instruction in writing process

Sasaki tested 8 hypotheses that she made with the help of a preliminary pilot study. The hypotheses were mostly concerned with planning (global planning and local planning), stopped to reread and revise, and the effects of writing process instruction on the novice writers.

Gathering data to test these hypotheses was a quite a challenge. Previous studies asked test subjects to think out loud while they wrote. Sasaki felt that this method was ineffective because it interfered with the students writing process so she used a technique in which the test subjects watched themselves on video. While watching, they told the researcher what they were thinking at each point in the video.

In this study the test subjects wrote an argumentative essay. One topic was used for the first novice test and a second topic was used for the test given after instruction. The topics of the two test were similar, but they could not be the same.

The text details exactly how the data was gathered. The three sources of data were the texts that the test subjects wrote, observations made while watching the subjects write and the recollections the subjects gave after they wrote. Sasaki evaluated the subjects' text using Jacob's English Composition Profile. From observation she could determine how long it took to write the texts and how long the subjects spent rereading and revising.

Overall, Sasaki concluded form the research project that planning in writing is important, especially global planning.

My interaction with the article: This text was a great introduction into the practice of L2 writing research. Every step of the process was detailed well. Even though I had trouble understanding the coding and mathematical sections of this text, I could get a good idea of how this type of research is done and I found it very interesting.

It would be very easy for me to take what I learned from Sasaki's research into my own classroom. Planning is key. Although, I have a feeling that teaching global planning to novice writers is not that simple. I wondered if the instruction that the novice writers received during the course of this research project included lessons on global planning. If it had, wouldn't that mean different results or is it impossible to simply teach global planning to novice writers.

While reading this text I couldn't help but doubt the methods used. The entire text was an explanation for why the research project was carried out in the way that it was, but I still had many unanswered questions. For example, why couldn't the test subjects use dictionaries? Wouldn't they use them in a real life situation? Why did Sasaki have to pay the novice test subjects and not the expert test subjects? The experts had experience reading about and possibly carrying out such research projects. Could their background knowledge affect the results? And so on. However, upon completing the article I felt satisfied. Even though I had many unanswered questions, I realized that Sasaki did as well. This was not the research project to end all research projects. I was a step in the right direction.

Furthermore, I learned that before a researcher attempts to begin their own study, they must read all the research pertaining to what they intend to prove. Sasaki listed many experiments that pertained to her research project. The research projects do not happen in a vacuum, they are connected to a long line of research.

Week 1: How to Research Second Language Writing

Key Points: This text looks at how to research ESL writing. There are two basic components in the research of second language writing. The first is the actual text that the second language writer writes and the other component is the process that the writer goes through in order to produce the text.

There are eight methods to researching second language writing outlined in this text. They are surveys, interviews, meta-analysis, classroom observation, text analysis and process research. Good research triangulates, which is to use as many of these methods as possible to insure a large sample of data.

Researcher may also look at the material that inspired the texts, such as text books, courses and teacher input.

Looking at the texts produced by ESL writers can help researchers learn about common problems and possible solutions to those problems. The problems being common mistakes in the texts. Looking at the text can also provide some insight in the the effects of methods used to teach ESL.

There are many complexities when evaluating a text. For instance, how does a researcher count mistakes in the texts. A researcher must also determine if some mistakes are worse than others. There are many aspects of text evaluation that do not lend themselves well to calculation.

Examining the process of writing is also complex and produces difficult to work with data. The two most common methods for collecting data when looking at the process are interview and observation. One particular method combines interview and observation by asking the test subject to watch a video of themselves writing and provide a narrative to what they are thinking at each step in the writing process.

The final part of the text gives the reader an example research project that makes use of a control group in order to observe the effects of teaching self modification in writing.

My interaction with the article: Now, I want to see results. I have read how about how research in writing is accomplished, but I haven't read much about the results that these studies produce. It is like reading about the science behind how a camera works but not yet seeing the pictures a camera takes.

Understanding the process and methods behind the research will enrich my reading of research results. I see a lot of reading about research projects and the results they produce in my future.

I'm guessing that this article will affect my teaching. In order to improve as a teacher I must be aware of these studies and the journals that they are in. To implement what I read into my classroom, I must understand exactly how the tests gathered data. If I want to see the same results in my classroom that I read about in the study than I must replicate the environment and the procedures that are used to make the results.

As for my reaction to the methods, procedures, and research outlined in the text, I am overwhelmed by the complexity in researching writing. Any attempt to simplify or streamline the process in order to get easier to examine data will not give the researcher enough information to come to any conclusions. If I were asked to produce results in a writing research project before I had read this text, I would have tried to make the test as specific as possible. I would have done things like counted how many times writers left out an article in their writing or timed them to get easy to work with data. I now know that that data means very little on its own and need to be triangulated with many methods of acquiring data.

Week 1: Globalization of Scholarships: Studying Chinese Scholars Writing for International Publication.

Key points: In this text the reader is lead through the process of conducting a long-term research project that looks at ESL writing. The research project looks at Chinese university students who are faced with writing in English as a side effect of globalization.

Globalization, for good or for bad, is forcing English upon international university students seeking to publish in academic journals. For many reasons students writing for publication must use the international lingua franca, English. For international students this means using English as an additional language, which in this text is referred to as EAL.

The study takes place in two locations, each of which provide unique insight into the effects of globalization because of their unique circumstances. Hong Kong was under English rule at the time of this study and is the first location in this study. Mainland China is the second location and is special because it is new to the international scene.

The study took place because of the upcoming hand over of Hong Kong back to China. This meant native English speaking professors were about to be replaced by Chinese speaking professors thereby making EAL an issue in Hong Kong universities. The researchers behind this study wanted to look at the way Chinese speaking scholars were writing for English publications. There were four main objectives for the study:

1. To investigate attitudes toward writing in EAL.
2. To look at problems specific to each field of study.
3. To look at interactions between the writers and the international community involved in research journals.
4. To see the effects EAL has on the content of their writing.

The text then proceeds to detail the methods used to conduct the research.

Finally, after learning about the steps that went into the project the reader learns the results of the project. The findings were:

1. Writing in EAL takes a great amount of effort.
2. Their papers are affected by their L1.
3. Each field has it own way of writing in EAL.
4. And, the point I found most interesting, Chinese students had a cynical attitude toward the gatekeepers of the academic journals.

My interaction with the article: This was my first time to read about researching in ESL. In the past, I used tests to do my own informal research. I didn't learn anything from the tests and now I'm beginning to understand why. I think all are curios as to what teaching methods work in their classroom and what methods do not. I'm curious about my classmate's experience with informal research in their classrooms.

I have many questions about the research project that weren't answered in the text.

1. Did the researchers speak Chinese and English?
2. How do language barriers affect research projects such as this?
3. Who are the people who do these types research projects? How do they make a living? What else do they do to make a living while they are conducting research? Doesn't the background information affect the results of the research?
4. The results and details of the survey must be really tedious to read and to check. Who job is it to do this? Do they ask the same background questions about the researchers personal details that I just did?

The most interesting part of the article was the end when we got to read the results of the research. One of the findings was that the Chinese authors of the academic papers were cynical toward the gatekeepers for the academic journals. I am wondering if it was the purpose of this research to bring this issue to their attention. It seems to me to be an important issue in globalization. Is this a well known problem? Is there anything being done counteract the bias against non-English speaking countries in a globalized world that choose English as its lingua fraca?

An Introduction

My college career started in community college, because I hadn't decided what I was going to be when I grew up and that was the default step to take after high school. After way too many credit hours and about four changes in major I settled on Music Education. Currently, I have a few private students and some part-time work at a hagwon as I continue my education. I'm teaching reading and writing to only one student. I am having him read two chapters a week of the Judy Blume book, Superfudge. Each week I write questions about subtext which require more than just short answers- this is the writing, and questions about idioms and vocabulary. I really enjoy the private tutoring, but I do not know yet if it will be enough to pay the bills so five years from now I see myself in a teaching position that will promise stability and sustainability. I'm hoping that while working achieving my masters I will gradually become more specific about the teaching position I desire.