what English writing problems do your students have???

[Melinda Wu]

hello, everyone, I'm a new comer here and I wanna your help. I am a Chinese student majoring in English Education and I am starting a research about the wring problems of the college students. Do your students have difficulties in their English writing? What kind of problem do they have, such as the vocabulary, the sructure and the ideas? What have you done to help them？ I'm very interested in your teaching experiences and it'll help me a lot.
Thanks
Melinda Wu

[woodcutter]

Actually I believe the most obvious problem is failing to carefully apply what they do actually know - it's very hard to do that in a foreign tongue because there are just so many things to think about as you write. So, as you yourself have, they may fail to capitalize the first word and make some odd spelling mistakes. They may also fail to attend to presentation.
I find Chinese students tend to try and introduce informal, friendly intercourse with an imagined reader too often, because Chinese texts seem to do this a lot. They may use slangy idioms while doing this, and it is very easy to misuse these. (You have done this too - "wanna" is short for "want to").
As to structure, that's a hard question. It seems to me that students often don't worry about it very much at all, but that if they do attend to it, the problems are not massive. However they will sometimes write startlingly short or long paragraphs.

[Syl]

The major problem is not being able to "turn off" their mother tongue, because if they are taught with the translation "crutches", or having to deal with tons of rules and boring explanations about tenses or the use or articles, etc., they will never produce English in a natural way, and much less write a simple sentence without mistakes, because they will continue thinking in their native tongue.

The big secret is exposing the students to much reading and listening. "Bathe them in English", would say an Inspector in the Ministry of Education to the young teachers in my country. The exposure leads to the production of the language.

[woodcutter]

Taking a bath is good Syl, but they better take a long bath when you yourself aren't there, or it's not enough. When you are there, you can mix things up a bit. Anyway, people don't make mistakes just because of the methodology of teachers like me, who use crutches and rules. All students (including yours) make them, all students bring in elements of L1. (With Chinese, misuse of articles is obviously a big problem, for example).

Following your logic, if you learn Chinese, and do it using the holy method, bathing yourself in it, when you write you won't make any mistakes, or at least any that English-speaking learners typically make. I'd like to see you try.

[Syl]

Well, woodcutter, I don't know how Chinese is structured and I can imagine that it's so different from English, obviously. But I know how Hebrew is built, a language written from right to left. There are almost no cognates or words of Latin origin; instead of vowels there are special signs under the characters, used mostly in children's books, literature or the Bible, but in modern texts people learn to read and write without those signs. When teaching kids the ABC in their first year of English, they can't understand what those strange letters are, the vowels!

There are other differences, and I don't want to bore anyone with explanations, my point is: I'm not Israeli, I'm a Brazilian and I learned the language when I arrived here many years ago. So, by acquiring the new language, I had the experience myself what it means to hear someone saying a word and not understanding it the first time. Next time, the same word will be in a different context and I'll start to notice the meaning. This goes on until I have the word in my vocabulary, sometimes not even knowing its translation in Hebrew, English or Portuguese! But I know when to use it!

I'm not in favor, as you say, of "using the holy method". I'm against extremes. I read somewhere that whole language "was an utter failure", and teaching only phonetic rules is so repetitive and boring. I'm not against translation as long as it doesn't become a habit by substituting the techniques we teach the students to overcome a reading comprehension exercise, or understanding spoken natural language. I'm not against teaching grammar, but I'm sad when I see teachers in my country that can force their students to learn rules by heart (in Hebrew!) having them tested on those rules. But these same students won't ever be able to apply those rules when they speak or write. They know how to explain them wonderfully, though! and in Hebrew! Why not have a structure drilled first and have them deduce the rule???

When I first came here I couldn't read the newspapers. After some time, I decided that I wanted to read, I felt embarassed when having to write a note to parents. So I started trying short stories, thrillers. Until I finished my first book. This gave me the motivation to encourage my students and make them read as much as possible, intensive and extensive reading. Because there's no doubt that if you see a word once, twice, twenty times in a book, you'll get to know how to spell it, much probably you'll know the meaning and you'll find yourself using it properly. Teach the students a song they love, they will learn the spelling of the difficult words, because if they follow the lyrics and listen to the song many times, they will not only know how to write them, they will also pronounce them correctly.

And so on....

[woodcutter]

A lot of good learners will emphasize that the "throw yourself in" approach worked well for them. And it is the most important part, perhaps, of what learners should do. However, we all bring our first language into our second. For example, in Canada, English speakers in French immersion programmes have a tendency to say "luh" instead of "le" and "la", and make little use of gender, despite the "progressive" nature of the teaching.

Also, many learners don't especially want to throw themselves deeply in, and teachers have to teach all sorts.

Basically, the point you are making is correct, the mistakes made will often come from bringing in L1 when writing L2, and will vary due to the native language of the students. However, to claim this is mainly because of bad teachers/methods is very extreme - if you were merely arguing against an extreme version of rule-based teaching, I would agree with you.

[Syl]

Do your students have difficulties in their English writing? What kind of problem do they have, such as the vocabulary, the sructure and the ideas? What have you done to help them?

I don't think I said this is due to "bad teachers/methods" in my reply. I replied to Melinda Wu about my teaching experiences as requested, and described what I saw: some teachers who teach English using explanations in Hebrew the whole lesson, and testing their students later only regarding those rules. No interaction, nothing.

[woodcutter]

We are talking writing though - it isn't a very interactive activity. There is usually plenty of time to go over the rules, if you wish to. In fact, it is exactly what the "grammar translation method" is designed to teach. I have heard people moan that they couldn't speak because of a boring old-fashioned teacher. It is very unusual to hear that a person has a problem with writing due to that. After all, modern teachers tend to focus on conversation and meaning, neglecting the formal grammar mistakes that look bad on paper.

[Syl]

Oh

Isn't writing interactive? What are you and me doing then?

"The concept of social interaction was added to the curriculum some twenty years ago when the English Advisory Committee recognized that English is a language for communication. The domain of social interaction aims to produce graduates who can conduct conversations and informal electronic and written communication with other speakers of English wherever they live and whatever their native language. "
(Part of the English Curriculum in Israel).

I could Google the words "english curriculum standards social interaction" and come up here with many results, but anyone can do that

[woodcutter]

That's an interesting question. I think that we are pretending to talk! Anyway, even on a forum, you have time to process, time to compose. Needs practice, like anything else of course.

[Sally Olsen]

There is also a question of the social practices of a particular culture or academic tradition. If the student's don't understand what is required in an assignment they will also make mistakes in writing.

In Business Writing, I have had Chinese students put in metaphors of raging seas or cresting waves that just don't belong in a business communication.

I am also amazed that they will hand in assignments with over a hundred mistakes and make no effort to have their work edited. They seem to think that that individual effort is required when in Canada we encourage group work and mixing of foreign and native speaking students to produce the writing. That concept is particularly hard for Chinese students to accept. A rubric that is available to the students by the way.

Students of teachers who just wanted communication seem to delight in breaking the rules, leaving a marker with nothing to do but fail the students. They don't seem to understand that the instructor often doesn't even see their work and it is the lowly marker who has a rubric to follow in marking their assignments.

[Syl]

How true, Sally! Neither way can be called real teaching. Teachers should put equal weight on everything, on all the skills. That's why I said before that no extremes are adequate.

Woodcutter, I partially agree with you. Depends on the fluency, I guess. But there are other ways of written communication that don't give enough time for thinking (composing) too much. This as regards the written interaction we were talking about. Yet, not fluent speakers also hesitate and think before formulating their speech.

So, what I'm trying to say, let's encourage fluency either in speaking or writing, without neglecting accuracy mainly in writing, as pointed out by Sally.

[woodcutter]

If a grammar obsessed teacher gave students a lot of chances to compose sentences, I think that the students in that class might turn out to be very good writers. If teachers just talk on at the board, then maybe not.
Basically, you won't be good at what you don't practice, so in those classes where informal conversation is not attempted, students won't learn how to listen and respond to that kind of language. I suppose to some extent you might want to practice writing at speed but that is taking it a bit far - speed is mostly just a natural by-product of ability in terms of production. (though you need to practice listening to native language at natural speed, because it will sound very different from slowed speech)

[Syl]

What I mean by written interaction, for example: my daughter chats with friends in the USA using Messenger. When she types her messages she doesn't have time to think beforehand as it happens when writing a composition, it's kind of spontaneous. When she reads what the others write, she is also learning. There's a chance she will spell correctly after she sees words that she mispelled before. Or another example, writing a note, and so on.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Aren't you in favor of reinforcing and practicing all the skills?

[woodcutter]

I suppose there is more and more of that kind of interaction these days. However, I still don't think it creates the can't-do-it-outside-class kind of difficulties that conversation creates. You have a little time, and the words are sitting there in clear roman type waiting to be read.

Anyway, I am saying that it is particularly a teacher who neglects production of writing who will have students who can't write well, and that all students will make mistakes by bringing in L1 - both extensive natural practice but also some explicit focus on rules that are reasonably easy to grasp will help to overcome this, because students will otherwise neglect aspects like inflection and gender that are not essential for communication. Do you really disagree with this Syl?