Brown Ch. 23 & 24 and Shohamy

Under ethical issues in Brown’s chapter 23 there is a quote by Shohamy which states “texts represent a social technology deeply embedded in education, government, and business; as such they provide the mechanism for enforcing power and control. Tests are most powerful as they are often the single indicators for determining the future of individuals.”

That quote alone depicts something that makes me so nervous. In regular English classes I struggle with creating test questions that are clear and concise, and can only be interpreted one way for the students. Tests are something so important to the future of my students, so being that I lack skills in creating meaningful tests is something I need to focus on to improve as a teacher. Thinking about creating a test for second language learners, most of which are all at different proficiency levels and whom all have different preexisting knowledge to help them interpret what is being asked of them, truly scares me.  I know that for this skill much experience is needed, but I often wonder how to create the most effective and appropriate test questions for second language learners, and which form of testing works best.

Research Progress Report

So far for my research paper I have looked into how to give a student the most effective written feedback so that they will help foster growth, progress, and confidence in our student writers.  I believe that I truly understand how to respond most effectively for L1 students, so I am beginning to take a closer look into how to respond to L2 students in order to give them the best feedback as I can.  I have also begun looking into genre-based approach like you have suggested, and began looking into Dana Ferris.

My overall research question is going to be something along the lines of whether teacher response and feedback for L2 student writers should be much like the response and feedback teachers should give L1 students, or if we need to approach L2 student writers completely differently.

Three articles that I have looked at are:

Gocsik, Karen. “Diagnosing and Responding to Student Writing.” Dartmouth Writing Program. Dartmouth College, 18 Dec. 2007. Web. 9 Sept. 2012.

This article shows teachers how to be effective responders and gives a variety of strategies to think about and implement when responding to student writing. She helps the teachers to get to know the student through writing and take who the student is into consideration upon reading the drafts of their work.

Greenhalgh, Anne M. “Voices in Response: A Postmodern Reading of Teacher Response.” College Composition and Communication 43.3 (1992): 401-410. Print.

This article discusses the task of advising students about their work-in-progress, and how a teacher must make it possible for a student to take control of their own writing, be a responsive reader, and yet avoid appropriating the draft by identifying and solving writing problems. This article emphasizes the role of the teacher as a reader and not an evaluator. This piece is different from any of the other articles that I found because it uses voice as a tool to understand teacher response.

Sullivan, Patrick. “Responding to Student Writing: The Consequences of Some Common Remarks.” English Journal 75.2 (1986): 51-53. Print.

The beginning portion of this article uses a commonly spoken quote “your ideas are good but…” as a set up for teachers to then speak their own thoughts about the students writing.  This article discusses how teachers console poor writers or how teachers immediately try to assist students in developing ideas and critical thinking. Furthermore, this article talks about how teachers set students up for a false sense of achievement, and make them less willing to accept criticism. Sullivan demonstrates how to praise ideas, and how to efficiently give students the teacher response they need by demonstrating exactly what they need to work on individually. The main point of this article is to help teachers learn how to critique student writing and how to offer instruction and suggestions for improvement by encouraging them to improve, and guiding them to how without developing students’ ideas for them.

Brown Ch. 9-11 and Kumar Ch. 13

When looking at the chapter “Mentoring Teacher Acts” in the Kumar textbook all I could think about was my meeting with the two cooperating teachers I will be student teaching for next semester. When Kumar says “these partners, by virtue of their prior experience and exposure, bring with them their own perceptions and prescriptions about what constitutes learning outcomes. Therefore, one and the same classroom event can be, and in fact is often, interpreted differently by different participants” (290). One of the first things that the two teachers I met with said to me at our meeting was “we each teach very differently; we have different teaching philosophies and you will more than likely be getting conflicting advice from the two of us.” Thinking about this, I believe this is one of the most intimidating factors when it comes to student teaching. Which teacher do I listen to? Which perspective do I follow when it comes to these classroom events? Should I listen to my mentors, or figure out different situations for myself?

Brown Ch. 26 and Kumar Ch. 11& 12

I find chapter eleven of Kumar to be extremely important when working with students who have English as their second language. I feel that it is tremendously important to make all the students feel comfortable and special, especially when it comes to sharing their own cultures with the class. Ensuring social relevance is something students definitely need in order to develop and succeed as learners. Something Kumar draws attention to is the use of appropriate teaching materials. I too think that this makes a huge difference when trying to teach students who speak English as a second language. It is so important that by your teaching materials you can incorporate specific student cultures, or do some type of activity where students can share a piece of their culture and make relevant the material they are learning in class. By giving students this opportunity it helps them to feel comfortable, connected, and like their cultures each matter; sharing students’ cultures makes them feel proud of where they came from and by making connections can help materials easier to understand. 

Brown Ch. 17 and Kumar Ch. 9 & 10

In chapter nine of Kumar there is a quote that says “successful language communication is a manner of realities coming together that make up linguistic, extralinguistic, situational, and extrasituational contexts…using language for effective communication integrates contextual factors, and, therefore, teaching it for effective learning must invoke contextualization of linguistic input” (213). I think one of the best ways to tie all of these contexts together and make students recognize context as well as integrate language skills like chapter ten depicts is metacognition.  I think the most beneficial way to teach language skills and to see these skills across different contexts is to get students to think about their own thinking and recognize what they are doing in their thinking to make sense of the language communication they are doing. It is important to provide students with a context but to also take it one step further and have them think about the context or contexts in which we are asking them to think. I feel that having students think about their own thinking and the way that they contextualize their communication and their language skills will give them a true understanding of language and a great foundation to build upon. 

Brown Ch. 22 and Kumar Ch. 7 & 8

In chapter seven of Kumar the entire first paragraph was so captivating to me especially because I have read one much like it, but with even bolder statements.

In the article “Warriors with Words: Toward a Post- Columbine Writing Curriculum” by G. Lynn Nelson, Nelson says “language is both the source of much violence in our society—and its potential cure” which reminds me much of the first paragraph in Kumar’s chapter, and how fostering students awareness of the role played by language is so important (42). Rhetoric and the power of speech is an incredible tool and one students should both recognize and understand.

Another reason I think language awareness is so important in a more specific sense comes down to language awareness in writing. A huge part of writing is voice and finding our own identity—identity especially being an element that is so important to L2 learners. In Nelson’s article she says “deny me my stories, as the modern dominant culture does, and I will eventually turn to the language of violence,” and although I question the validity of that statement, it also makes me nervous to think about my L2 learners since writing and understanding language is already a struggle for them (42).  Is this why motivation is sometimes low for learners? Do they feel denied of their stories and identity? If L1 students are acting out because of this wont the effects of this on L2 students be even worse because they struggle in writing?

Writing makes both the writer and the story meaningful. Just as we want our students to be aware of language, we also want our students to be aware of their own language as much as we are aware of their language. After all, language is the awareness of it is power.

Brown Ch. 20 & 21 and Myth #5: Students Must Learn to Correct all their Writing Errors

The Ferris article was one that I could relate to very closely being that I am an English teacher. As an English teacher I am constantly teaching, reading, and responding to student writing. Throughout my experience I found that when I place the biggest emphasis on correcting student writing often times it does not help to better the student writer.  Upon teaching writing and giving students feedback to writing it is very important to actually teach. I love that in the Ferris article one of the main points in the what can we do section is to “teach students to take the time to write,” which seems like a no-brainer.  Writing is not a simple lesson—writing is a process, and it is important for our students to see that. It is not all about correcting so that students’ writing is 100% accurate, but instead it is about progressing as a writer holistically so that a student can achieve accuracy in the big picture. Knit picking each error will not help students develop any confidence as a writer, or foster autonomy in student writing which should be a goal any writing teacher has for her students.  It is important for a teacher to praise the student for their writing and nurture ideas before going about the writing in a “what’s wrong with this paper” type manner; a student must be comfortable and confidence enough to receive corrective type criticisms to their writing.