Developing Language Skills in the Writing Class: Why, What, How, and Who

Mechanics Awareness

When reading and writing, I am constantly aware of vocabulary, grammar, and usage. As my literacy skills developed I would notice the how author’s syntax was different from how I would frame my sentences, but were still grammatically correct nonetheless. English is such an interesting language because there are so many different ways to be simultaneously right and wrong when reading and writing. There are so many different ways that the meaning of our writings can be interpreted; I do my best to ensure that my meaning is plain and clear.

Acquired Language

I view literacy as a daily, lifelong process which includes academic and informal language acquisition. I learned what acceptable academic documents were by reading academic articles. When presenting a formal project I also took on the voice of the academic article and used similar vocabulary when speaking. Without this knowledge, my research papers would probably be littered with personal voice with little additional insight.

Like most people, any informal development literacy activities were acquired when I was young and usually involve reading various topics of interest. My mom always encouraged me to read everything: newspaper comic strips, magazines, signs. I soon developed a tendency to read anything that could catch my eye. I’m still learning about how to approach various forms of formal and informal literacy opportunities because there are still words I’m learning and styles I’m adapting to that furthers my knowledge.

L2 Students’ Language Development

It depends on the student’s readiness for language development in a writing or literacy course. There could be a system of recommendations based on class scores and performance that demonstrates how prepared an L2 student is for the next class. However, seeing that the vast majority of native English speakers in the US don’t speak or write in completely correct English, I don’t see the need for L2 students to go beyond a certain point in English literacy learning. Things such as vocabulary, active voice, punctuation, and transitioning should be the focus for L2 learners that are advanced acquirers in academic settings. The purpose of writing in academic settings is to present data and convey multiple ideas that follow a central theme or ultimate finding. If students are able to stay in the present tense, use higher-than-expected vocabulary, correctly punctuate, and transition to the next idea then small things like subject-verb agreement and word choice or word form are simple editing fixes.

Developing Students’ Linguistic Knowledge

As a prospective teacher, I feel very comfortable developing the linguistic knowledge of my writing students. It wouldn’t necessarily be an easy task, but it’s an important one. My major concern is deciding if what I’m teaching them is vital to their writing or insignificant. Ferris’ ideas of treatable and untreatable errors is mentioned on page 336 and I’m still reflecting on the idea of errors such as lexical choice or sentence structure (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2014).  Should these errors be ignored and left for students to figure out on their own or could students end up fossiling the errors as correct information? Would the mini-lessons that are suggested help the student that’s struggling the most? I fear teaching topics in a way that students might find hard to comprehend or too simple to pay attention to.

References

Ferris, D.R. & Hedgcock, J.S. (2014). Teaching L2 composition: purpose, process,        

   and practice, 3, 40.

Improving Accuracy in Student Writing: Error Treatment in the Class Composition

My Writing Process

I focus on the linguistic accuracy of my work as I am typing or writing. I know that none of my work is without error, but I try to catch as many issues as possible. I developed this strategy after years and years of formal education and correction at home to acquire the grammatical knowledge that I use to edit my work. In addition to being taught by authority figures, as my knowledge of sentence structure developed, I began to notice the sentence structure I books I read. If I liked how the author’s style I would try to mimic it in school during my next writing assignment. Whatever errors I made in developing a new writing style would be corrected by my teacher.

Effective Editing Approach

Overall, I believe that my approach to editing is effective to a certain degree. I usually make very few grammatical or punctuation errors since I edit as I go. However, it isn’t time efficient. What takes other people two or three minutes to go back and make revisions, takes me much, much longer. This provides me with the foresight to see if I should scrap an idea or add or delete a few words or sentences, but sometimes the concept suffers because I make too many corrections. I’ve recently tried writing down main points. While my typing time is faster because my ideas are written down, I may make more errors in other areas.

Student Feedback Error

Being grammatically correct was drilled at home and by certain teachers at school, it would be the most challenging to give students feedback on grammar. It would be difficult to step outside of my biases about grammar. I would be questioning if I’m giving too much attention to a small grammatical error.

Grammar is also a wide and varied subject. There are so many rules in addition to possibilities, that often native English speakers are confused. If not taught consistently and constantly reinforced at a young age, grammar is daunting to learn. I feel that for ELLs it is a difficult concept to grasp because the only answer that you can provide for why their sentence is incorrect is simply: those are the rules.

Ideas for L2 Student Editing

I would encourage L2 students to type their written work into Google Docs or Microsoft Word to help with editing written work. I would also show them how to turn on the grammar function so they will have to click on and have the program explain why their sentence needs correcting. I’m sure that there are other programs that students can use in the self-editing process, however, my knowledge is limited. In addition to using writing programs, I would encourage students to have a page of notes providing examples of sentences, articles, and other things that they can use in the self-editing process. I currently use the aforementioned programs and I have used a similar page of notes in the past, but my current process of editing only contains one of those elements and I would not suggest that as the only method of editing to L2 students. I also wouldn’t suggest them editing every single error as they write or type. It’s too time consuming and I would rather them focus on their ideas and structuring a sentence to the best of their ability.

Response to Student Writing: Issues and Options for Giving and Facilitating Feedback

Helpful and Problematic Feedback

Overall, I remember teachers providing positive constructive feedback. I remember comments directing me to state my ideas more clearly or correcting logical fallacies. The most effective types of feedback were written in the margins and were only a few words. For example, a teacher underlined a sentence and extended it to the margin where fragment,consider revising, or huh was written. That simple comment signaled that I needed to rewrite that sentence, but being who I am, I would usually rewrite the entire paragraph. One sentence changes the flow of a paragraph and sometimes the entire paragraph needs revision. The only kinds of feedback that’s problematic are those with little or illegible writing. I can’t improve that way.

Appropriate Responses for L2 Writers

Yes, the types of responses I received in content and form would be appropriate for L2 writers if it follows Ferris and Hedgcock’s (2014) suggested techniques. On page 249 Ferris it’s suggested that for early drafts the focus should be “primarily assist[ing] writers in revising content and addressing the writing task.” As drafts come closer to being finalized, teacher feedback on errors that inhibit reader comprehension (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2014, p.249). This method of commenting on content and form is better suited for L2 writers as content is the main focus opposed to punctuation or grammar mistakes. However, combined feedback can be used for advanced L2 writers.

Effective Student Feedback

Some concerns that I have when responding to student writing include finding a balance between positive and negative commentary. When I start teaching, I want to provide useful feedback to my students that will strengthen their skills as writers. My main concern is being too harsh on certain aspects of writing and cause my students to dread writing. In order to find this balance, I feel that I need to get to know my students and understand a little about their background.

Peer Feedback

To an extent, I like peer feedback since that is usually my intended audience. I have found that peers, including myself, cannot often give feedback beyond general compliments. Often, they’re afraid of hurting the writer’s feelings if they provide a critique, but that’s what’s needed when reading a peer’s work. Students can often give wrong advice. A way to combat general compliments when doing peer reviews is to have students practice the sandwich technique when doing peer reviews (Ferris & Hedgcock, 2014, p. 246-248). Using another sheet of paper in the peer review, students list two aspects that the writer does well, two things that they need improvement on, and close with a compliment on the overall writing or the previously mentioned aspects. This provides reinforcement in the positives in their writing and acknowledgement that everyone has room for improvement.

References

Ferris, D.R. & Hedgcock, J.S. (2014). Teaching L2 composition: purpose, process,        

    and practice, 3, 40.

Classroom Assessment of L2 Writing

Scoring and Assessment Procedures

            In my high school AP English courses holistic scoring was used to inform us of what our writing would score during the AP exams, however the teachers came up with another scoring system for the grade book that correlated the holistic score to an analytic one. For example, if a paper is scored a three on a nine-point scale then the corresponding analytic score could range from 68-76. On the other hand, if there was a project due then an analytic score would be given but the overall course used analytic scores. This was the only course that used this method of scoring and in my post-secondary career analytic scoring is used in almost every course.

            In high school, holistic scoring was appropriate to provide practice in improving writing for the basis of the exam students enrolled in the course would be taking at the end of the year, but it wasn’t appropriate in an overall context of composition. The rubric handed out which described what qualities were in each score range wasn’t descriptive enough in what the teacher was looking for so a student could improve his or her score. I will add that as a student we’re more familiar with analytical and multiple trait scoring as we continue in our education.

Scores Improving Quality of Writing

            One of my undergraduate history courses required most, if not all, of the exams in essay form. We had to write about what we knew about an important historical point discussed in prior classes. For one reason or another I was always extremely close to having a 90 on the essay, but I fell short by three or four points. Those few points drove me insane, but I steadily increased my score until I made a 94 on an exam. I felt accomplished that I had met the expectations of an “A” paper. Whenever I wrote papers for professors that had comparatively higher expectations for their papers, I would attempt to approach those papers the same way I did on the paper I scored a 94 on. I knew what I was capable of as a student and writer and I earned every grade.

            I’ve been out of practice writing academic texts for nearly a year so this course is providing me with a refresher of the requirements for the grades that I want. Holistic scoring causes me to devalue the effort I put into a composition task because the score is either too general or has too many requirements to be realistically achievable in a short time frame. Since analytical scoring usually adds up to 100, culturally viewed as complete and the best possible score, then it’s easier to identify with and puts the score in the perspective of completeness.

Assessment Apprehension

            When I’m a pre-service teacher I would be most apprehensive about providing constructive feedback. I also want to grade students fairly with as little bias as possible. In order to give students grades that reflect the quality of the students’ work, I need to be as objective as possible so that when a student asks me why they received a certain grade then I’ll be able to explain what was done well and what needs improvement. As long as it’s possible I would prefer to grade analytically. I feel that holistic grading is too harsh especially if a student leaves out one element that takes them from a five to a three.

Formal Assessment

Formal assessment should be reliable and valid in the evaluation of student literacy and composition. Ferris and Hedgcock (2014) discuss several types of reliability and validity that could influence assessment including student-related reliability and content validity. This reliability involves a student’s mental and physical preparedness for a writing task. While content validity requires the reader to show their mastery of key ideas through writing. Content validity would most likely involve a student taking a Sociology test that has open-ended questions over theories or constructs and providing examples often embedded in current events or major historical markers.

Portfolio Familiarity

I’m not familiar with portfolios at all but I can see their benefits. The portfolio being designed for this course will have my teaching philosophy, examples of informal writing via blog, and examples of a proposed lesson plan and a sample writing activity with a prompt and rubric. All provide different examples of my writing and will be beneficial to show to future employers.

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process,        

     and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print

Course Design and Instructional Planning

 Syllabi or Outlines in Secondary or Post-Secondary Courses

I remember the general outline of syllabi provided during college. The most important part of it was the parts concerning projects, quizzes, exams, calendar, and total points available for the course. I used all of these things, but mainly the calendar, as a guide of what I’m expected to know and have complete by a certain date. If I know what I must complete within a certain time frame then I’m able to use my agenda to plan out what to do for each day in order to have an assignment or reading completed on the day that it’s due. For the most part I use syllabi as a means of assignment completion, what book I should purchase for the class, and email and office hours if I need them.

Students’ Sociocultural and Educational Needs

On page 152 Ferris and Hedgcock (2014) list several literacy tasks relevant to academic and preacademic L2 writers. A few of these tasks include writing brief academic texts such as journal entries or reading responses, listening to academic lectures and taking notes, and writing under timed conditions. In these activities L2 students can provide personal analysis, refer to other academic texts, or demonstrate how they’re able to form ideas and cohesive essays under a time constraint. In addition to these tasks meeting students’ sociocultural and educational needs through kinds of texts selected through writing, a course plan should reflect an educational institution’s requirements and philosophy. An educator is able to reflect the philosophy and requirements through identifying and addressing gaps in student learning and structuring class discussions or assignments in a way that allows for critical thinking and student participation.

Literacy Courses vs. Content Courses

Literacy or composition courses are more application intensive than other courses such as physics, history, sociology, art, or literature. There aren’t any formulas, theories, dates, painting styles, or reading between the lines in a literacy course. Of course all of these things can be included when writing; however the main focus of a composition or literacy course is to focus on the thought process, familiarity, and formation of sentences and their structure to create essays and reports in content courses.

Essential Components of a Successful Lesson

I feel that a lesson is successful when I have a feeling of being challenged, The classes that I enjoyed the most, regardless of the discipline, challenged me in some way. They didn’t challenge me to the point where I felt frustrated just thinking about the class, but enough of a challenge to where I felt like I was becoming a better student and learning. It didn’t matter if I was being tasked with greater critical thinking or attempting to become a better writer through essay exams. I welcomed each opportunity to think outside of myself and to break limitations I put on myself.

A few activities or tasks that could expose students to critical thinking could be writing narrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive essays. A way to approach exposure to each type of essay is to present examples of each type of writing and discussing it as a class. Then the students would write their own essays showing each type. These would be addressed to the class in order of increased difficulty. It’s better to start off with something that most students are familiar with and then work our way towards more difficult essays where they may have to use a combination of essay types.

Productive Classroom Instruction

The best hallmarks of productive planning and delivery are when educators are prepared, organized, and show ease of simplifying topics. When a teacher is prepared with handouts, notes, and what they’re going to lecture about the class has direction and seems purposeful. Usually with preparation comes organization and a plan for how the class is supposed to flow for that day. When the teacher is prepared and has read or reread notes for the lecture they’re better able to better explain and simplify something a student came across in the reading that wasn’t easily understood.

In addition to proper preparation, course expectations are an element of effective classroom management. I’ve had professors that were strict about student punctuality and would lock the door or turn students around if they attempted to enter the room outside of an established time frame; some that strictly stuck to the course outline; some only wanted papers turned in APA style formatting. Almost every experience I’ve had with educators, including in primary and secondary education, had expectations for the class that every student was expected to follow. 

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process,        

     and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print

Reading, Genre Awareness, and Task Design

Reading Skills and L1 Writing Development

Reading provided me with a better understanding of context clues. Whenever I approached an unfamiliar word I would reread the sentences before it and after to give me an idea of what that word means. Most of the time that strategy worked, but when it didn’t I would ask someone I thought would know or look up the word. After having a definition, I would then look at the synonyms to find a word I knew. This activity expanded my vocabulary and now I knew a different word or words that mean the same thing as other words that I already knew. Asking questions about unfamiliar words and doing my own research prepared me to understand what academic journals and similar texts were conveying before entering college. As I became a more developed reader, I would notice sentence structure and attempt a similar style in my writing. This is one of many reasons why I usually write very long, verbose sentences. I think that some of the reading skills I developed can assist multilingual students become proficient writers.

Without being knowledgeable of what I was doing, I was “building meaning” (p.97) and “developing cognitive and linguistic skills” (p.96). Much how I learned to read, I think that L2 writers could learn to become proficient writing students in the same way. Students must learn how to read for fun and be steadily exposed to more complex texts. This provides a way for them to build vocabulary by reading about something they enjoy and then write about it. It’s a way to get L2 students to develop their writing skills.

Encountered Genres

As a nonacademic reader I often find myself reading novels, news articles, and social media posts. All of these readings I do for enjoyment, but I’ll really read just about anything. Two of my favorite novels include Gal, an autobiography, and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. The news articles provide me with current events and I use that in my daily discussions with friends and family members and social media usually fuels my interest in a topic. Contrastingly, as an academic reader I’ve mainly encountered textbooks and academic articles which are structured very differently from their nonacademic counterparts.

Academic articles, in particular, are written for information to develop or disprove previous research within a specific discourse community. This usually requires the reader to be able to simplify overly complex wording or sentences into simpler ones to get to a direct meaning and, in most cases, analyze data. This is how developing meaning through context clues can influence reading and writing in academia. The vocabulary is often more complex in textbooks and journals because the audience is college students as opposed to the general public interested in science fiction books, comics, or articles on the presidential election. Therefore, college students have examples of what is generally expected of their writing in an academic setting.

Features of Instructional Materials

Instructional materials should be interesting, relevant, and at or slightly above the student’s level of comprehension. Students should be able to understand the assignment—whether it’s writing or reading—with some level of difficulty to foster learning, but not so much that they’re confused or become frustrated. Most readers find it difficult to read something that they have absolutely no interest in. Not all materials will be considered fun, but the lecture or following activity or assignment that supports the text could have a little something extra to make it not as boring as it could be. Instructional materials should also be up-to-date and relevant to the expected learning outcomes of the course. Good textbooks and software applications have the previously mentioned characteristics which are reflected through content understanding exercises such as quizzes, tests, or answering questions after the reading.

L2 Text Criteria

According to Ferris and Hedgcock (2014) in Figure 4.5, prototypical features of academic genres “should present arguments explicitly and define key terms, provide linguistic ‘signposts’…to inform readers of the direction of the argument, and texts must acknowledge intertextual relationships to support their arguments and encourage discussion” (117). An L2 composition or literature textbook should have these same qualities with the addition of appropriate word choice, sentence structure, and topics that reflect the level of L2 learner that is reading the text. An L2 text shouldn’t assume that the reader has the same schema as the reader of an L1 text and should be  written in a simple way that reflects that.

Augmenting Lessons

A composition teacher should augment the textbook with supplemental materials, tasks, and assignments as much is appropriate for class and individual student understanding. If a chapter is too complicated for the class, then it could be taught in a hands-on or lecture approach and avoid reading the text altogether or if it’s very simple or is a compliment to another chapter then it could be combined with or tacked onto the end of another lesson. Handouts, writing assignments, and additional reading could reinforce what a student was taught by providing practice instead of an instructor assuming that they understand.

Activities

Some in-class activities and exercises that could be productive to inexperienced writers include a popcorn style of writing a story where either the entire class or small groups participate in forming a short story and daily journal activities. I remember having a teacher that would pick a paragraph out of the local paper and have us identify different parts of the sentence and identify the type of sentence. Some of the identifiers were prepositional phrases, gerunds, adverbs, articles, adjectives, and complex compound sentences. Of course an activity like this assumes that the person's L1 is English, however, with daily repitition the activity became almost rudimentary, but by then I felt that I had mastered English. 

Out of class students could have a worksheet where they practice just writing to free their thoughts about the class or content learned. There would only be a grade for actually writing and forming cohesive and complete sentences at first. After a while spelling and grammar would be corrected.

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process, and

Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print

Content Pedagogies: Theory, Principle, and Practice

Beginner Writing Experience

            I remember extensive formal writing in English, my L1, in primary school. We would begin by writing out letters, which extended to words, then sentences, and eventually a string of correlated sentences to form short paragraphs. The majority of we wrote consisted of nouns, adjectives, our names, and numbers. My amazing kindergarten teacher started us writing sentences by filling-in-the-blank adjectives that described ourselves such as hair color or eye color. By the end of the year, we were writing a paragraph consisting of simple sentences that were usually thematic. We would write about friends, family, or what we do close to specific holidays or about a book my teacher would read aloud to the class. We also kept composition journals. I can’t remember now what we wrote in them exactly, but we wrote everyday.

University Writing Courses

            English1302, taken during my time as an undergrad, provided me with a foundation for writing research papers and giving presentations. I was prepared for how much time I needed to prepare for a large and abstract writing assignment. While what I presented for the Celebration of Writing held at TAMUC was far from my best work, it was the most effort and thought I had ever put into research and it set the foundation for how I would approach large projects during the rest of my undergraduate career. My professor employed what Ferris and Hedgcock (2014) would describe as focusing on readers and discourse communities (p.77-80). We were tasked with finding literacy within our daily lives (an extremely abstract task) and then to do research on what we find. Throughout the course our writing was evaluated and edited to give feedback on appropriate topics, sources, and general guidance on the project. However, we were mostly left to our own devices as literacy is a broad and abstract subject and construct the research portion much like an academic journal.

Writing Theories in Classroom Instruction

            While I was reading this chapter I immediately identified being exposed to all of the theories through my many years of being a student. I remember the product orientation and the process orientation beginning in fourth and fifth grades when learning how to structure an essay and again in 9^th and 11^th grades in my AP English courses. The main differences in instruction are that in my formative writing years the prompt required more expressivist approaches and later in my education instruction was centered more product-oriented with emphasis on cognitivist approaches to writing. More thought was given to establishment as a writer when you’re younger so that by the time you’re in college it is expected that a student only needs instruction on what post-secondary writing in academia consists of (Ferris&Hedgcock, 2014, p.63-68).

Second or Foreign Language Writing in the Classroom

            About two to three years ago I took a Spanish course at the university level. The course focused on writing quite a bit, however it was mostly on spelling and correct accent marks. Most of what the course focused on was correctly identifying nouns and adjectives. Since I was exposed to Spanish previously, I didn’t note many differences in writing in Spanish than in English other than the accent marks and that the noun comes before the adjective. Other than the aforementioned, I didn’t note any other notable instructional differences writing.

Hypothetical Instructional Method

            I’m making my assumptions based on if I were the writing teacher for students in the fourth grade.

I would start the school year off by having my students write a narrative on several provided topics. This exercise would mostly be to gauge where students’ strengths and improvements lie in their writing composition. After I’ve returned the papers with positive comments, I would show the class department-approved ways to form an essay and have them choose their preferred layout. After choosing their topic and outline, I will define terms such as paragraph, sentence, and essay to provide a refresher for those that know and to teach those that are just gaining that knowledge.  After students show progress in following an outline, I would then focus more heavily on spelling, syntax, grammar, and transitional phrases among other things. They will continually write their story, showing progress with each paragraph, until they have a completed essay. After the essay is completed then I would have them rewrite their story, do a final revision, and then turn it in for a grade.

I can’t choose a specific skill or strategy that I would like my students to develop other than being confident in their writing. Writing is a life-long learning process that even the most developed and scholarly of writers can improve on in some area or another. In practice, all teachers should use a combination of the theories presented because not every assignment or student fits into complete structure or complete freedom. Writing is a cultural process. However, it shouldn’t be completely about conformity.

Becoming an Effective Composition Instructor

Gaining knowledge of diverse models of writing and instructional methods could help me become an effective composition instructor because it’s important to understand the type of former writing instruction that a student as had before coming to my class. It gives me an idea of the student’s comfort zone and what I can do to show the student that there are other forms of writing. Not every culture writes the way that we do in the United States and as a teacher coming into contact with students and their families, we can’t afford to be ethnocentric in the name of our own comfort zones.

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process, and

Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print

Understanding Student Populations and Instructional Contexts

Challenges Facing L2 Learners

            The purpose for learning a second language (L2), syntax, and time constraints are some of the biggest challenges facing L2 learners when writing in a second language. Depending on the purpose for learning an L2 is if it is a requirement for entering a degree program, to have better chances being admitted into a degree program, or for enjoyment (Ferris & Hedgcock, pg. 44) a second language learner has different motivations and levels of dedication for learning an L2. I think newer L2 learners have to think more about comparative syntax of the first language (L1) and the L2 as to not accidentally write the sentence as they would in their L1. Because the second language learner has to now think in the L2 opposed to their L1, it takes the learner more time to construct a sentence that they feel comfortable with presenting for critique. Even if the sentence, paragraph, or essay isn’t finished the learner put great effort into writing what they could. Whether it’s the thinking process or remembering what a letter looks like, their level of dedication can impact how much effort they put into trying to construct a sentence in the L2.

Teaching an L2 Writing Course

Advantageous information to have on L2 students in a writing course I’m preparing to teach would be what level of literacy they have in English and their goals for the course. I wouldn’t want to assign a task where students mimic the format of a sentence from a particular text Charlotte’s Web would be better suited for this course than Romeo and Juliet. Knowing the goals and literacy level of the L2 would help me selects appropriate texts, lessons, and activities that reflect the end goals.

Settings to Teach Writing

            Since I’m interested in teaching primary school children learning English I would need to know what outside support resources are available for students and parents, what level of progress is expected to be attained by the end of the year, and what policies are in place for students that don’t meet expected progress. If there are additional support services available for students and parents outside of school, then that could further the family’s understanding of the L2 and help the student meet expected goals for their experience with the second language. In the case that a student or students are not able to meet personal or district goals, it would be helpful to know what steps I have to take in order to help that student do what’s best for their educational level. There could be a case of a reading or writing difficulty hindering the student’s ability to learn the L2.

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process, and

Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Skills and Competencies

Drawing from my experience as a student writer, I would want my future students to be able to find comfort in their own style of writing. In high school, I remember being critiqued by two different teachers that preferred students to stick to writing essays in a particular way. When I deviated from their preferred method, it was critiqued for one thing or another or if I followed the method then there was a critique for that. When this happened frequently, my confidence in my writing diminished. In my senior year of high school I decided to forgo the box that was argumentative style writing and embrace my own style. When students are allowed to embrace their own format of essay writing, much how Spanish, French, Korean or Japanese writers differ in their approach than Anglo-American style writers; it fosters confidence in their writing style and accepting that more than one approach to writing is acceptable (Ferris & Hedgcock, 19-20).

            Additionally, I would like my future students to have a comprehension of English reading and writing similarly to the way they comprehend their first language. I wouldn’t want them to totally wipe out their first spoken language, but to try to equate certain letters, words, or phrases in English with similar ones in their first language. It could help with some issues that students come across when learning a second language. Finding similarities is what helped me to better grasp Spanish and French when I took those classes.

Importance of Writing

I think that writing was developed as a way to record important information that could be shared with others. This is a reason why writing skills have become so important in modern societies. We have a need to have physical evidence of the topics that we’re passionate about and then to find like-minded individuals or inform others about what we feel are important topics. Since the invention of writing, we have been able to compile books, blogs, magazines, and the like to express our ideas to the masses. With the ability to compile our ideas into a place for consumption, others have been able to expand upon or discredit ideas.

Development of Writing, Writing Processes, and Writing Pedagogy

            I would like to develop at least a basic understanding of the writing structure of my students’ first language which could potentially help me understand some of the difficulties that they may face when learning to read and write in English. If I could put myself in the shoes of the learner then I could be a better educator by at least having an idea about what they’re experiencing. Expanding my knowledge on the structures of different languages will not only make me a better writer, but a better teacher for students learning to be literate in English.

Diversity of Writing Systems

            I believe that writing systems are so diverse because people and languages are diverse. People created writing systems that were convenient for the way that they needed to get their message across, which is embedded in culture. It’s drilled in US schools to state your purpose first and then get down to the details. Culturally, it is viewed as “beating around the bush” to explain or reason with a person for what we want as opposed to just getting to the point. Our writing is reflective of our culture and way of speaking. A way for someone to learn how to use a writing system would be to pay attention to the way a group of people generally speak to one another. Watching a movie produced by that country, with subtitles, or reading a bilingual book could give clues on how people in that country may speak which could be reflective of how they write.

Writing in Additional Languages

            In the 8^th grade I took a semester of Spanish and in the 9^th and 10^th grade I took French. As I was taking French, I noticed similarities between French and Spanish. One of the similarities included putting the noun before the adjective and how the spellings of some words were similar for the same object. Having a small background in Spanish helped me when I was beginning to learn French because the structures of the languages are extremely similar. English is a stark contrast from either language for me. While it comes easier for me to write, speak and read in English because it is my first language, Spanish and French were much easier for me when I wrote, spoke, and read in either language. Now that I’m trying to reacquaint myself with Spanish I’ve noticed how I will automatically recall the French word instead of the Spanish one. For example, when I count 1-10 in Spanish to my daughter instead of saying cuatro I find myself saying quatre in French. Both words mean the number four, but they’re pronounced very similarly. Having some level of experience in three different languages, I can say that if I spoke French or Spanish as my first language it would be difficult for me to grasp the concept of proficiently being literate in English.

References

Ferris, Dana R. and John S. Hedgcock. Teaching L2 Composition: Purpose, Process, and

Practice. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.