Genre Theory/ October 28, 2009

Although process approaches have contributed to the improvement in student writing in classrooms and still have worth pursuing in today’s writing classroom, there are some aspects that attract critical responses from researchers and practitioners. Among them are the fact that process models “disempower teachers and cast them in the role of well-meaning bystanders” (p. 19). Process approaches emphasize self-discovery of knowledge, individualism, learner-centered, and implicit learning, which renders teachers to become a facilitator or collaborator. But we cannot rule out a strong possibility that ESL students who are educated in totally different cultures might be disadvantaged in the process classroom.

Teachers in the process classroom expect students to “glean knowledge [about appropriate forms] from unanalyzed samples of expert writing” without explicit explanations, and from “growing experience of repetition” (Hyland, 2003, p. 19). But if an international student enters a masters program, they are expected to write different genres of writing in different major courses over a period of 3 or 4 semesters. Given that they had no access to literacy practices that are dominant in the US academic settings before starting the program, the overall coursework might not be long and repetitive enough for them to ‘glean’ the knowledge they need. Some students might have written a critical review of a research article only once over the course of the whole graduate years.

Teachers need to be flexible enough to be sensitive to and suit students’ needs. Teachers can give clear guidelines about their writing assignments and explicit instructions on genres that students are expected to write “when necessary,” rather than simply waiting them to discover the knowledge they need by themselves. But I don’t mean that teachers have to provide explicit instruction all the time and go back to the teacher-centered classroom. They don’t have to choose one. Rather, teachers can alternate their roles on a great timing; sometimes facilitators, other times explicit instruction giver. So, it is imperative for teachers to decide when and how to give explicit instruction.

Hyland, K. (2003). Genre-based pedagogies: A social response to process. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, 17-29.

Second Language Literacy in K-12 context/ October 21, 2009

ESL students include a wide range of students in terms of their ethnic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. But clearly there is a tendency, especially practitioners in school settings, to view ESL students as a homogeneous group, one that is referred to non-mainstream students. A closer look at the students’ ethnicity, the number of years in the US, and personal experiences etc. would reveal how disparate they are. In addition, considering the importance of representations of them in identity (re)creation and attitudes toward learning, images that are not that representative, type of assignments and placement tests based on them obviously do harm students’ development.

When you are an immigrant who has lived in the US more than 10 years and feels more comfortable with English than with your heritage language, yet you are supposed to write about ‘your country,’ it’s not difficult to imagine that you are unwilling to deal with the topic. For this student, the ‘country’ topic may be very tricky. The student might feel that he/she belongs to neither of the two countries: where he/she lives now nor where he/she comes from but doesn’t know much about how it is now. If this instructor had been open to the possibility that there are other students than newly-arrived international students in the classroom, the teacher would not have given this topic for assignment or at least would have given more choices from which students can decide.

Although I guess it’s inevitable for teachers to have some kind of images about their target students, it’s imperative to realize that diversity is there and diverse needs wait to be met. Unless teachers try constantly and consciously to be sensitive to their students, it’s possible to exert a damaging influence on their students without realizing it.

Second Language Writing Support in College

Some people assume that acquisition of English is “easy and natural” for nonnative speakers (Kubota & Abels, 2006, p. 84) whatever its source might be: monolingualism, Anglo-conformity, or individualism. Or it might be simply because they have never learned any foreign language in their entire lives. In this case, it’s not surprising that they don’t know how hard it would be to write a complete sentence with voice or to speak in a second/ foreign language.

But if you are one of the decision makers about the policy on international students who need support, you should try to understand the challenges international students face. Among the efforts are rejecting prevalent attitude that views language support to nonnative speakers as “remedial rather than developmental”(p. 85). This can be traced back to the deficit model which regards foreign students as having some problems to be fixed. But as the authors point out, when Americans learn a foreign language, people rarely call it remedial.

Of course, how to provide developmental support is tricky. Various factors should be taken into account: how many international students or 1.5 students need support, how much existing resources the school has, or how much financial resources the school has etc.. Some schools might not have enough students to develop a program for support. So, decision makers and educators need to consider specific contexts in terms of the institution and their students. This would be easily said than done, though. As this is a difficult task, it is valuable to refer to a lot of real cases by reading an article or a book.

Academic Literacies-October 7, 2009

• Discussion questions
1. Brain (2002) argues that acquisition of academic literacy means more than the ability to read and write in academic settings. Do you agree with this idea? If so, what does acquiring academic literacy mean to you? From your personal experiences, how did you develop/ have you developed your academic literacies?

2. In Brain’s (2002) article, several shortcomings of research methods such as surveys and the value of case studies in the research on academic literacy are presented. If you conduct a research study on academic literacy yourself, what methodologies would you use?

3. Canagarajah (2002) points out that “contextualizing the text” (p. 7) can mean different things to different people. What does it mean to you and why?

4. Canagarajah (2002) views writing as material rather than cognitive (p. 5). Discuss what ‘material’ means in this sense and (especially international students) do you have any examples in your country where any material restrictions affect writing?

5. Canagarajah (2002) suggests the negotiation model and the difference-as-resource orientation, making a case against the crossing, or deficit model. Have you ever had any teacher who holds, consciously or unconsciously, one of these three orientations toward multilingual writers in the classroom? Which model do you agree with? Why?