Job Discussion Forums

[JZer]

[tedkarma]

[quote="JZer"]

[JZer]

[natsume]

[quote]I understand your point and partly agree but isn't that mainly what your writing and my writing is as well. I mean, don't we mainly just repeat phrases that we have heard over our lifetime.

We do repeat, but every native speaker is also capable of inventing a sentence that has never been heard before, that perhaps makes no "sense", but is grammatically correct. I know I can say in English, "seven red elephants ate my car", but I cannot say "car elephants red my ate" and expect somebody to understand what I am getting at.

At a very basic level, language learning can be about rote memorization of survival phrases, but language is also inherently creative, and writing communicatively correctly, if it is the student's goal, is much more than mere repetition of phrases.

[shyarra]

I think there has to be two parts to writing in every beginning and intermediate ESL class. The first has to basic grammar instruction (i.e., the sentence, the paragraph, the essay, etc.). On top of that though, students have to gain practice writing in English. I teach English in the U.S. to kids who are functionally illiterate. English is their first language - but they cannot write a sentence. To get them to write, I give them a "journal topic," and for the first ten to fifteen minutes of every class, they write on that topic. I don't care if words are spelled correctly, if the grammar is correct, or even if they occassionally make up words. I know this sounds ridiculous when you're supposed to be teaching correct English, but what this second exercise does is give those students confidence in their ability to write. Once they know they are capable of picking up a pen and whipping out a page of writing in ten minutes, THEN I have them incorporate the grammar into their writing. In an ESL class, this portion of the writing process would fall into the intermediate and advanced stage of writing.

I'm going to be looking for a job in Taiwan in the next few months. Depending on the age group I get, I'm planning on using this same lesson plan again. Eventually, they get used to writing because I expect it of them.

[tedkarma]

[TheLongWayHome]

That's it, no more writing in class, never again! As native speakers we don't write for the first 3-5 years of language learning. I wonder how much it has to do with lack of literacy skills in the students' first language.

[rusmeister]

[FishcalledWanda]

I am not sure I agree with this paper. Unless, I am doing things different than what this paper suggests. I see improvement in my student's writing. I have been gradually getting them to indent. I would teach them how to write properly in small steps. For example, I would work constantly on comparing their writing when it was correct to when it was incorrect. For example, suppose someone was thinking in the past tense, but that someone mixed up the tenses, I would show that person when they got it right, and I also showed them when they did not. I would correct their errors.
Then, I would require them to re-write the corrections I made into their notebooks. And I would sometimes have them read out loud what was written. This is, I suppose, a way to tackle problems with their writing using more than one technique. I would teach them some basic grammar and may correct a Korean student by saying "When you write I'm go, you mean I went". Of course, most of these kids went through lots of grammar with me. In that class, I did not go into paragraphs at all. I just simply first taught them ad nauseum what was a word, what are the components of a sentence, and what is the subject. I would have thought they would have known the grammar since their Korean teachers teach them grammar in Korean. But, somehow, that isn't the case...

[poof]

The article is interesting for me because I've been teaching more or less nothing but writing classes to adults for the past 14 months. Over this time, I've noticed quite a few things about how students write in English. However, it wasn't altogether clear whether the research for this article was specific to any country or whether it was global research.

I also see the problem that no matter how much I correct or just circle grammar errors on paper, students make the same mistakes the next time and the next time after that, ad nauseum. I don't think it's necessarily a problem of the teacher's error correction approach, but rather that many students simply don't actually realise that they are to learn from the corrections and moreover don't know HOW they are supposed to learn the correct forms.

It seems blindingly obvious, but in some Asian countries such as Japan and Korea, I've learnt that students need to be told how to learn. My suggestion is for them to copy out the corrected sentence into a notebook and to regularly review it. Some students have actually thanked me for pointing out this apparently simple technique. Of course, there are many different learning strategies, but you have to teach your students some of these and have a way of following up that they are actually trying out your suggestions. Since this approach, I've had a couple of students who started with very bad grammar, but have improved considerably after I pointed out some strategies.

Other things I do: I designed my own course starting from vocabulary, sentence structure, paragraph writing, whole essay writing. I limit any essay to 1 A4 page - a student tends to make the same type of mistakes over and over, so a 10 page essay has no benefit. I do not correct all student errors - I make the students do it themselves. If students write 'gobbledy gook', I tell them to re-write the sentence with more simple grammar; I tell them if they are unsure of any grammar, just don't write it. I emphasize that simplicity and clarity is the key and I provide extensive feedback on both grammar errors, organizational errors and content errors. I also tell students who are unable to speak in reasonable sentences that they have to take a speaking course before my writing course.

With a well-structured course, I am pleased to report that all students who have been attending my classes make considerable progress in their essay writing, although no one still comes out flawless. The same could be said for many native speakers, though!

[gaijinalways]

[FishcalledWanda]

[VanIslander]

Get THEM to correct their own mistakes!

Point out where the mistakes are, maybe at most sometimes but not often give a hint like giving an analogous sentence form.

I have seen clear and distinct improvement in my students' diaries.

Seems like common sense to me and even CELTA encourages such tactics of eliciting.

[Steppenwolf]

I can only talk about what I see in CHINA though I am well-acquainted with many other countries' education system.

Teachers in China singularly fail to practise the rules they hand down to their students; rules are explained in Chinese, then committed to the memory of the learners - and that's it.

But what students really need is applying those rules; this cannot be done by asking students to take multiple-choice tests only; rather they should have to juggle words and phrases on their own, and think about the proper use of each word's various forms, verbal tenses etc.

Analysing texts would also help them understand the rationale of the rule they are studying.

If you remember your Spanish, French or Russian class you may remember that you had to do substitution drills: replace the present tense with the past tense whenever applicable, replace the first person subject with the second or third person subject, etc.

And your teacher probably used the target language to teach you the grammar of it - not so the Chinese English teachers. No wonder, most Chinese English students don't get it - contrary to the wild claims to the contrary!

[isanity]