Teacher Discussion Forums

I have a writing question concerning young ESL students.
I am an editor of materials for English-learning elementary students. One of the writers of our monthly magazine has a writing section in which a sample three-paragraph text is presented and young children (6-10 yrs) switch words that are underlined — almost like in a cloze exercise — to fit their situation. They are then told to recopy the whole thing and send it in as their own to be published and for a prize — and this is done every month. (They can optionally write their own letter.) I was concerned as an educator that this really isn't a legitimate writing lesson (as it is substitution and mere copying); but more than that, I'm concerned that it has the slight appearance of how some people plagiarize: changing key words around, but keeping the original more or less intact.
I don't have access to ESL materials to check, but have looked at Scott Foresman writing textbooks for American children and haven't seen similar looking exercises. I was told that teaching ESL students are different. Are my suspicions valid — even for ESL students?

This sounds more like penmanship than writing to me, too.

Say--I know I responded to your PM a while ago, but maybe I didn't quite understand. I thought the cloze you were talking about was a story, such as: My name is _________. I live in ____________. I like to eat _________ for breakfast. In the morning I usually get up at ________.

That's the kind of cloze I think can be useful. Was that what was used? Or was all the vocabulary given?

I told you wrong when I talked to you earlier about it. The exercise is accurately described as above, with vocabulary given, and students switch words at various places. Again, this is treated as a "writing" exercise. I think cloze is good for vocabulary or contextual practice, which may be more appropriately labeled "reading" exercise, but I don't see how it belongs to writing, unless it is practicing one's mechanical handwriting as Senorite Daniels mentioned.

The exercise seems like an example of "busy-work" to me. That is, something annoying that an uninspired teacher designed so as to keep kids busy. I really don't think it has all that much educational value. But that's just my opinion.

I think the lesson could be improved by changing it just a little so that it's more like a Mad Libs format. The kids fill in the blanks still, but instead of using word banks to choose the words instead they are given parts of speech and have to come up with an example of the part of speech on their own. For example, a sentence like: "The (adj.) prince sat on the (adj.) (noun). You have three labeled blanks, and the kids use their imagination and their knowledge of grammar to make it an interesting sentence as part of a short story. The skinny prince could sit on the angry frog. Or the old prince could sit on the golden throne.

-EH

That is an excellent idea! I never thought about that. I remember how fun that was when I was in fifth grade. I'll mention it to our writers.
But still, if this were done and copied and turned in to be printed, does it become a good writing exercise for our writing section? I'm still dubious. I guess for a writing section, they just need to be prompted on a subject; or maybe only one sentence should be given for them to continue along.
I can see the point of our magazine writers, who want to present a step-by-step writing process to help students along without forcing them to make a sudden and difficult plunge (for student as well as teacher); yet I don't like exercises that might encourage a mindset that disposes or otherwise influences them to plagiarize later in life — it seems to happen often among our foreign students at college. Is there a middle road? Writing is important and I hate to do away with our writing section because of our difficulty.

I agree. It's not much of a writing excercise if it's Mad Libs. More of a grammar thing, really. But at least it's more original, and not so close to plagiarizing.

I like your idea of giving the kids a starting sentence or two, and having them finish the story. That's more of a writing assignment.

Another idea is to give them a really interesting action picture and have them write a story inspired by what is going on in the picture/what's going to happen, etc. One of the most popular writing disabilities diagnostic tests uses this format, and it tends to elicit pretty decent responses.

The only thing is, you'd have to have a scoring rubric in place before assigning these sort of original writing projects. If it's a contest, then you want the scoring to be as objective as possible. X number of points for grammar, spelling, length, "sparkle"/reader interest, etc.

Good luck,
-EH