Volume 5, Number 1 (1996)
Chinese Students'
Perceptions of ESL Peer Response Group Interaction
JOAN G. CARSON
GAYLE L. NELSON
Georgia State University
This study investigated
Chinese students' interaction styles and reactions to one particular
pedagogic technique: peer response groups in ESL composition classes. In a
microethnographic study, three peer response groups in an advanced ESL
composition class were videotaped for 6 consecutive weeks. After
videotaping, the interviewers met with individual Chinese-speaking (n = 3)
and Spanish-speaking (n = 2) group members. The Spanish-speaking students
were interviewed in order to have a point of comparison. In each of the
sessions, the interviewer and the student viewed the videotapes of the
peer response group in which the student had participated and discussed
the group's interactions. The interviews were audiotaped, and the tapes
were transcribed. The transcripts from the interviews were examined
recursively by the researchers; merging patterns or theses were noted; the
data were analyzed again using these themes as coding categories; and the
data were organized according to these codes. This analysis yielded a
description of the key Informants' perceptions of their construction of
peer response group interaction. The analysis indicated that the Chinese
students' primary goal for the groups was social-to maintain group
harmony-and that this goal affected the nature and types of interaction
they allowed themselves in group discussions. The Chinese students were
reluctant to initiate comments and, when they did, monitored themselves
carefully so as not to precipitate conflict within the group. This
self-monitoring led them to avoid criticism of peers' work and to avoid
disagreeing with comments about peers' or their own writing.
Audience and Voice in
Current L1 Composition Texts: Some Implications for ESL Student Writers
VAI RAMANATHAN
University of Alabama
ROBERT B. KAPLAN
University of Southern California
Many freshman writing
programs use an inductive approach to writing instruction. Students are
encouraged to discover form in the process of writing. This approach views
the acquisition of writing skills as a tacit, unconscious process we find
problematic for students whose first language is not English. Drawing from
10 widely used freshman writing textbooks, our study demonstrates the
problem of implicitness which exists in regard to two notions central to
writing instruction in the United States: "voice" and "audience." Both
notions, as presented in these textbooks, are predicated on a set of
assumptions that do not translate well in L2 classrooms because they draw
heavily on shared cultural knowledge that is often inaccessible to
non-native students. Our article calls attention to ways in which textbook
presentations of these concepts disadvantage L2 student writers. We
propose that a discipline-oriented approach to freshman composition will
facilitate an easier grasp of these concepts. Such an approach will expose
students to the particularities of specific disciplines and provide a more
clearly defined discourse community within which to form their views and
responses. Knowing for whom they write will create a clearer sense of
audience for these students and enable them to present clearer and
strongly individualized voices.
ESL Writing Assessment
Prompts: How Students Choose
CHARLENE POLIO
MARGO GLEW
Michigan State University
This qualitative study
examines how ESL students choose a prompt from several options on a
timed-writing exam. This issue is worth investigating for several reasons:
Little is known about the writing process on timed-writing tests; previous
quantitative attempts to examine factors affecting student choice have
been inconclusive; and opinions vary on whether or not students should be
given a choice. Twenty-six students were observed taking a writing exam
and were interviewed upon completion. We conclude that students spend
little time making a decision; that several factors including their own
background knowledge, question type, and specificity of the topic
influence their decision; that attention to the time factor is an
overriding consideration.
Peer Revision in the L2
Classroom: Social-Cognitive Activities, Mediating Strategies, and Aspects of
Social Behavior
OLGA S. VILLAMIL
MARIA C. M. DE GUERRERO
Inter American University of Puerto Rico
Little is known about what
actually happens when two L2 students are involved in peer revision of
written texts. This article reports the results of a study conducted among
Spanish-speaking students in Puerto Rico which sought to investigate (a)
the kind of revision activities students engage in while working in pairs,
(b) the strategies peers employ in order to facilitate the revision
process, and (c) significant aspects of social behavior in dyadic peer
revision. The participants were 54 intermediate ESL college students
enrolled in a writing course. Interactions between pairs of students
during two revision sessions were recorded and transcribed. Analysis of
the transcripts yielded seven types of social-cognitive activities the
students engaged in (reading, assessing, dealing with trouble sources,
composing, writing comments, copying, and discussing task procedures),
five different mediating strategies used to facilitate the revision
process (employing symbols and external resources, using the L1, providing
scaffolding, resorting to interlanguage knowledge, and vocalizing private
speech), and four significant aspects of social behavior (management of
authorial control, affectivity, collaboration, and adopting reader/writer
roles). Results reveal an extremely complex interactive process as well as
highlight the importance of activating and enhancing cognitive processes
through social interaction in the L2 writing classroom.
Volume 5, Number 2
(1996)
ESL Students in
First-Year Writing Courses: ESL Versus Mainstream Classes
GEORGE BRAINE
Chinese University of Hong Kong
In first-year writing
courses, ESL students are usually mainstreamed or placed in specially
designated ESL classes. Although ESL writing specialists, backed by
research into second language writing, strongly advocate the placement of
ESL students in ESL classes, mainstreaming appears to be the norm. This
article is based on a year-long study conducted at a medium-size
university where ESL students have the option of mainstreaming or
enrolling in ESL classes in first-year writing courses. The study
describes the preferences of ESL students for ESL or mainstream classes,
their performance on a holistically scored exit examination, and the
reasons for the high rate of withdrawal of ESL students from mainstream
classes. The study shows that the majority of ESL students preferred to
enroll in ESL classes and performed better on the exit exam in these
classes.
Verbal Reports of
Japanese Novices' Research Writing Practices in English
HUGH GOSDEN
Tokyo Institute of Technology
This article presents
interview data from a group of Japanese novice researchers who were asked
to comment on their writing practices in preparing their first scientific
research articles to be published in English. The verbal reports and
subsequent commentary and analysis provide insights into cross-cultural
aspects of academic writing from a social-constructionist perspective
under the headings: (a) the construction of NNS novices' research article
drafts; (b) translation from L1 to L2; (c) revision in response to
external critique and the concept of audience. To better understand the
language and subculture of the scientific community, findings stress the
importance for both EAP practitioners and for NNS novices of feeding
relevant background literature from the fields of sociopragmatics and the
sociology of science into advanced courses in English for Academic
Purposes.
U.S. Academic Readers,
ESL Writers, and Second Sentences
Joy REID
University of Wyoming
Traditionally, ESL writing
teachers have taught the concept of the topic sentence to introduce
academic paragraphs. However, ESL students frequently develop paragraphs
that do not fulfill the expectations of native English speaker (NES)
readers proffered by the topic sentence. Recent writing-reading connection
research suggests that different contextual and rhetorical schemata may
result in ineffective ESL written communication. This article describes
exploratory research focusing on the sentence that immediately follows the
topic sentence in an American-English paragraph and seeks to answer the
following: Can second sentences be (a) consistently predicted by
experienced NES readers; (b) successfully predicted and written by
inexperienced and/or experienced NES student writers; (c) successfully
predicted and written by inexperienced ESL student writers? Results
indicated that whereas NES inexperienced writers sometimes used
unexpected, inappropriate second sentences, NESs were able to
appropriately predict the "expected" second sentences nearly twice as
often as ESL writers. Pedagogical implications are discussed.
Do English and ESL
Faculty Differ in Evaluating the Essays of Native English-Speaking and ESL
Students?
BAILIN SONG
ISABELLA CARUSO
City University of New York-Kingsborough
This study investigates
the degree to which differences exist in the rating of two NES and two ESL
essays by 32 English and 30 ESL professors in the English Department of
CUNY's Kingsborough campus. The two faculty groups were divided into
subgroups, one rating the four essays holistically on a 1 to 6 scale and
the other rating them on a 1 to 6 scale but in light of 10 specifically
categorized features, 6 comprising rhetorical and 4 language features. The
results indicated that in holistic evaluation, English and ESL faculty
raters differed significantly, with English faculty assigning higher
scores to all four essay samples. In analytic evaluation, the two groups
did not evidence significant differences in rating the specifically
categorized features. Raters with more years of experience in teaching and
holistic evaluation tended to be more lenient in their holistic
evaluation, whereas with respect to analytic evaluation, experience in the
two areas was not an influencing factor. Also, in holistic evaluation,
English faculty seemed to give greater weight to the overall content and
quality of the rhetorical features in the writing samples than they did to
language use.
Volume 5, Number 3
(1996)
Tutoring Second Language
Text Revision: Does the Approach to Instruction or the Language of
Communication Make a Difference?
ALISTER CUMMING
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
SUFUMI SO
Carnegie Mellon University
This study describes the
dynamics of problem solving through spoken discourse in one-to-one
tutoring of second language writing, aiming to determine if these
processes might vary according to the instructional approach or the
language of communication utilized. We tutored 20 adult students of
English as a second language (ESL) in 4 sessions of text revision on 4
similar compositions they had written, alternating these sessions between
provision of (a) conventional error correction versus procedural
facilitation and (b) use of the second language (English) or learners'
mother tongues (Cantonese, Japanese, and Mandarin)-forming a 2 (Approach
to tutoring) x 2 (Language of communication) factorial design. The
discourse of tutoring seems to have been highly normative in this context,
sequenced into transactions of problem identification, negotiation, and
resolution that did not vary appreciably across any of the conditions for
tutoring. Tutors' and students' cooperative efforts to solve problems in
the students' draft compositions focused primarily on local levels of the
compositions (i.e., grammar, word choice, spelling, punctuation), guided
mainly by the tutors' decision making, in all of the experimental
conditions. This finding parallels what has been found in most previous
studies of text revision. However, individual tutors tended to differ from
one another in the extent to which they solicited students' input to the
discourse, suggesting this is an important factor to be considered in
future studies of the impact of tutoring on ESL students' writing.
Explaining Hong Kong
Students' Response to Process Writing: An Exploration of Causes and Outcomes
MARTHA C. PENNINGTON
MARK N. BROCK
FRANCIS YUE
City University of Hong Kong
The purpose of this
investigation was to evaluate student reactions to the attempt on the part
of their English teacher, a native Cantonese speaker, to apply the
innovation of process writing in 3 multiple-lesson units. Answers to a
questionnaire revealed a variable reaction to the units across 8 classes
of Cantonese-speaking secondary-school students. For two groups in
academically achieving all-girl classes, the experience was judged as
positive, for two in lower achieving mixed-gender classes as negative, and
for the four other classes as mixed positive and negative. The teacher
judged at the beginning of the project to hove had the most positive
attitude toward process writing taught the students who evaluated the
experience as most positive. The class that evaluated the experience as
most negative had the teacher judged at the outset as having been most
conflicted about process writing. There is evidence that in the two
classes where the students had the most positive reaction the teacher made
a fuller adoption of the process approach than in the two classes where
students had the most negative reaction. In the former, the teacher
integrated elements of process writing into an overall teaching routine,
whereas in the latter, the focus was on traditional language exercise and
grammatical accuracy, and process approach elements were not well
integrated into the teacher's instruction. The results illustrate the
complex pattern of cause-and-effect relationships existing between
teachers' and students' attitudes and behaviors in the context of an
innovation. They further demonstrate how an innovation can be
reinterpreted when implemented in a new culture.
Issues in Using
Multicultural Literature in College ESL Writing Classes
STEPHANIE VANDRICK
University of San Francisco
Multicultural literature,
and multicultural textbooks, are increasingly used in college ESL writing
classes. This is an appropriate and welcome development, but it is
essential that such literature and texts be chosen and taught carefully
and thoughtfully. ESL professionals need to define multiculturalism, and
multicultural literature, as those terms apply in ESL education and
particularly in the context of the writing class, and understand and
prepare for the fact that some students as well as fellow academics find
such concepts controversial. This article discusses the following related
issues in the ESL context: the "canon wars," the purposes and benefits of
teaching multicultural literature, possible pitfalls in emphasizing such
literature with ESL students, the selection of textbooks with appropriate
reading selections and editorial apparatus, and possible problems arising
during such teaching.
Second Language Learners'
Processes of L1 Writing, L2 Writing, and Translation from L1 into L2
KOZUE UZAWA
Western Washington University
This study compares second
language learners' L1 writing, L2 writing, and translation from L1 into
L2, focusing on writing and translating processes, attention patterns, and
quality of language use. Thinking aloud, 22 Japanese ESL students studying
at a Canadian college performed 3 tasks individually. These think-aloud
protocols were analyzed, supplemented by observational notes and
interviews, and the writing samples were evaluated. The data were analyzed
with attention to theories of composing processes (Bereiter & Scardamalia,
1987), Schmidt's "conscious attention" (1990), and Swain's "i + 1 output"
hypothesis (1985). It was found that (a) most students used a "what-next"
approach both in the L1 and L2 writing tasks and a "sentence-by-sentence"
approach in the translation task, (b) attention patterns in the L1 and L2
writing tasks were very similar, but quite different in the translation
task. Attention to language use in the translation task was significantly
higher than in the L1 and L2 writing tasks and, (c) scores on language use
in the L1 and L2 writing tasks were similar, but scores on language use in
the translation task were significantly better than in the L2 writing
task.
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