Halloween Throwback

Blog Post #9

Literacy Development

To be honest, I am very aware of my use of punctuation, capitalization and spelling in my writing. I even sometimes say the words to myself as I type.

Capital "s" - summer break is good for the soul - period - capital "i" - I love going for ice cream - comma - especially on hot summer days - period.

I even spelled out my eleven letter maiden name letter by letter as I wrote it. Every single time. This was not just in childhood; I did this until I was married and changed my name at the age of 24. I do sometimes free write, and in those cases I think less about mechanics, but in academic writing I am very conscious of the words I choose, spelling, and mechanics. Reading is different, though. Unless something sounds wrong or is spelled wrong, I get caught up in the words and do not notice the mechanics of the text at all.

Processes for Acquiring Academic Reading & Writing

Like most people, I acquired my academic and professional reading and writing skills through a mix of trial and error along with explicit instruction. Teachers, professors and colleagues would explain the formatting that they expected, and I would do my best to stay within that format. Through the use of that format, I would find out what was and was not acceptable. Sometimes I was allowed to push the boundaries of the format, and sometimes I was not. Basically, the acquisition process was through practice and use of the genre.

As far as informal literacy activities, I have never thought much about how I acquired these skills. I was a bookworm as a young girl, so that is where my reading skills come from. I read anything I could get my hands on, especially Nancy Drew books and Seventeen Magazine. Informal writing was taught in school - we had to practice writing letters. I also remember my grandpa teaching me to send an email when I was nine years old. I typed up a short note, and he helped me send it to himself. From there, my writing just expanded to more in-depth approaches to the same activities - longer emails and letters, leaving notes for parents to explain my whereabouts, grocery lists, etc. I learned it on an as-needed basis.

Ongoing Literacy Development

In a writing or literacy course students need a great deal of ongoing literacy development. Students need to learn about different genres, both in reading and writing. The instruction needs to be explicit. Students may not pick up on the subtleties of the genre unless they are pointed out. Students should be given rich reading materials that pertain to their real lives - careers, majors, hobbies, etc. A scientific report is going to look much different than a professional email, each using specific lingo and formatting. Students should be exposed to a variety of written work and then practice reproducing the same genre.

Developing Linguistic Knowledge

I feel somewhat comfortable developing students' linguistic knowledge in a writing course. I know that students need a lot of variety and a lot of practice. However, my concern would be that I would want more guidance in pacing and organizing the material in the right order. I imagine that since students build their knowledge, there must be certain texts that make more sense to teach in the beginning and some that make more sense to teach later in the course.

In all, developing a student's language skills is an important piece of the puzzle in an L2 writing course. It's our job as instructors to provide context-rich materials so that students have a wide base of knowledge that allows them to succeed.

Blog Post #8

Linguistic Accuracy

During my own writing process, I focus on linguistic accuracy throughout the course of my writing. I begin to write, focusing on getting my thoughts on paper. Once I have completed several sentences or a paragraph, I usually re-read my work, checking that the content flows, makes sense, and is focused. As I read, I edit the linguistic errors I find and revise the content at the same time. I do this constantly throughout my work, and upon completion, I proofread, make last minute corrections, and then submit my work. I do not usually have much to change during my final proofread since I have caught the majority of the errors during previous read-throughs. I acquired most of my grammatical knowledge in late elementary school and continued to grow and develop that knowledge throughout the later years of my schooling. I had a very firm foundation in grammar, including lessons on sentence structure and parts of speech.

Effectiveness of this Approach

While academically, I am not sure if my approach is sound, it has worked very well for me. I believe that it has saved me considerable time in editing and revising since I catch errors as I go. I am able to see that a sentence does not work or fit with the text that I am writing and revise, edit, or eliminate it before the problem starts to affect the rest of the piece. 

Teaching Writing

I do not have experience teaching writing, though if I do teach a writing class, I imagine that the most difficult part of giving students feedback on language errors would be in deciding what to mark on their papers. I know in my foreign language studies, having this kind of feedback has been helpful, allowing me to avoid the same mistake the next time. However, since English is a more opaque language, it leaves more room for language errors, especially in spelling. It will be hard to determine a good balance - marking errors to help the student avoid future mistakes versus marking so many that it becomes overwhelming and discouraging. 

L2 Learners and Editing

Seeing language errors can be difficult in L2 learning. For this reason, in the editing process, I would encourage students to look for one type of error at a time. I would guide students in subject-verb agreement, tense/aspect, plural/singular, etc., one at a time, so that students can focus on specific issues instead of an overwhelming and seemingly infinite number of possible errors. While this is not congruent with my writing process, I have the benefit of native speaker intuition guiding my writing. With a sense of what sounds "right" and what doesn't, the editing process for me will be different than it will be for my students.

Regardless, it will be a difficult but satisfying journey into guiding my students into writers who are proud of their work and feel accomplished and proficient as L2 writers. 

Blog Post #7

Teacher Feedback

If you have been a regular reader of this blog, you probably will not be surprised to hear that marginal notes from instructors makes me geek out a little. And the notes at the end of the essay? Icing on the cake. Like most students, I always really appreciate a mixture of praise and constructive criticism. When I get a paper back, I honestly want to know that the instructor thinks about it. I am curious to see where I have done well and surprised him/her with my insights and where I have gotten lazy or completely missed the point. Sometimes the feedback is frustrating ("Oh man, I should have seen that when I proofread") and sometimes it is exciting ("Wow, I took a big risk there, but the professor really responded well"). But regardless, it all makes me a better writer. The frustrating bits remind me to proofread better, to revise as I go, and to continue to look back on the prompt to make sure I'm staying on task. The encouraging bits give me the motivation to continue to better myself and to remind myself of my intellectual abilities.

However, sometimes feedback feels very problematic. Rubrics without specific comments have been very frustrating. It gives me a very general sense of my strengths and weaknesses, but often times the feedback is not specific enough to revise thoroughly. The worst form of feedback, though, is the non-feedback - the letter grade at the top of the page with no comments at all. We should all just band together to do away with grading compositions so vaguely.

Appropriate Responses for L2 Writers

L2 writers have different needs than I have as an L1 English writer. However, the type of feedback that I have received in the past would also be appropriate for an L2 writer with a few tweaks. I have noticed that I occasionally get feedback that points to a sentence or paragraph and says something like,"vague," "too broad," or "sentence structure." While I could often re-read my work and figure out how to tweak it, by the time I was in high school, I'd already had years of training on the expectations of North American writing instructors. L2 students do not have that luxury, and comments need to explain the "how."

It actually reminds me of the way research tells me to parent my two toddlers when they misbehave - instead of telling them "no" (e.g. that I see a problem), I need to tell them the behavior that I want. The negative feedback I give them lets them know that I want to see a change, but it does not actually give any specific ways to change or concrete examples of what behavior I would like to see instead. So for example, as I write this, my three year old son is climbing onto the entertainment center to turn off Frozen, which my two year old daughter is watching. Better than just snapping an arbitrary "NO!" at him, I need to tell him, "You need to get down. Your feet need to stay on the floor." This gives him specific instructions on what I'd like to see. He still has choices - he can ignore me, he can choose how he gets down (jump, climb, slide), but it still offers specific feedback that lets him know where and how he can improve. In the same way, instead of pointing out mistakes and errors negatively or arbitrarily, instructors should provide specific feedback, pointing out specific issues to L2 writers while still allowing them to revise in a way that they see fit.

Concerns with Responding

As a future composition instructor, I believe that it is important to take the time to make sure that I understand the nuances of my student group - their educational and cultural background, their writing level, and the amount of time they have been in this country's educational system. My concerns would be with wanting to ensure that I provide solid feedback in a way that students understand while being sensitive to how students receive criticism. Another concern is the time it takes to provide feedback to individual students. I want to make sure that I provide solid feedback instead of lazy or rushed feedback as I try to get through my mountain of papers.

Peer Feedback

I only vaguely remember using peer feedback in school. I know that I did, but cannot remember the specifics. I imagine that that means the peer review activities were never too traumatizing to me. And since my writing was pretty strong and I was an avid reader, reading another student's paper did not give me anxiety. I knew I would be able to provide small bits of valuable feedback, helping my friends to receive better grades on their drafts. However, I remember feeling unqualified to give peer feedback in my upper-level Spanish classes when paired with students who were grammatically stronger than me, so I can also empathize with the anxiety that students may experience. Because of that, I would want to have specific classroom instructional time dedicated to teaching students how to review peers' work and, at least initially, give step by step instructions in a teacher-directed peer review session.

Blog Post #6

Scoring Procedures in Writing Classes

I loved (and, let's admit it, still love) getting papers back from my teachers and professors. All the work I put into writing pages and pages of words had finally been looked at and given a numeric or letter value. It always felt really satisfying to see the red ink with the score at the top and the teacher's comments scribbled on the sides. Except getting scores back on papers was... Confusing. Inexact. Arbitrary. 

I do not remember ever receiving a rubric or grading scale for papers I wrote in either high school or college. Projects had rubrics, but papers did not. I never knew quite what the instructors were looking for. I was a skilled enough writer that I went on the assumption that I would be able to look at the teacher's feedback and revise my draft for an A or high B as my final grade. Struggling classmates, on the other hand, did not have that luxury and many assumed that they were bad writers, or worse, not smart. 

Scores Effects on Improving Quality

I always took the time to look at my grades, read teacher and peer feedback and revise accordingly, so my grades helped me know where to improve. If I received a grade I deemed low, I would use it to motivate myself to do better next time or on the next draft. I took feedback seriously in my writing. Scores enhanced my writing because they always felt encouraging to me. Because I felt like I had a good foundation and was a solid writer, I was comfortable enough to take risks. However, I understand that this is not everyone's experience. For some, grades would have the opposite effect and feel very discouraging. Having clearer expectations for what the teacher was looking for would have helped many a struggling student instead of the frustration of seeing a low grade written on the top of their papers with little understanding as to why that was the grade they received.

Experiences as a Composition Instructor 

I have no experience teaching composition, but I do have some apprehension. Some of my concerns include wanting to make sure that my expectations are clear; I want to present a fair, valid and appropriate way to score all written work that does not hold bias in any direction. I want to assign work in a way that helps students believe that they can complete the work and excel. My hope is that I do not bring discouragement or unrealistic expectations, causing students to feel hopeless.

The Roles of Formal Assessment 

To be perfectly honest, as an educator, I struggle with formal assessment. My curriculum (for Spanish I and II) uses a test generator with questions that do not line up with the textbook's style of teaching. So my first thought is that the assessment needs to be double checked for validity and reliability. Obviously a writing class will have a different type of assessment, and I (hopefully) will not have to worry about poorly constructed multiple choice exams when I teach my own composition course, but my current experience will remind me to consider my assessments carefully. 

Assessments should motivate students to put their best efforts forth in their writing and encourage them to think critically and carefully as they revise and edit their work. Assessments should not be given just for the sake of giving them. They should have a clear purpose with clear guidelines and expectations.

Alternative Assessment Options

I am not very familiar with alternative assessment options like portfolios except as an assessment for an art class. However, I think a portfolio is a wonderful way for a student to show what he or she has learned over the duration of the course. It showcases a student's mastery of different genres and writing styles, giving a clearer and broader picture of what a student can accomplish with his or her words. 

In all, I believe that assessments are good ways to help students understand which areas they need to improve upon, but they only work well if the grading criteria are clear and easy to understand. 

Blog Post #5

Course Syllabi and Outlines

I began receiving course syllabi and class calendars beginning sometime in high school. I do not remember specifics in any of my classes except in my upper level Spanish classes. I had the same teacher my junior and senior years, and she provided a calendar detailing what we would cover in class that day, what homework was due that day, and the homework assigned for that evening. I loved it. I always knew exactly what was due when. I also knew what I should work on if I missed class or needed to work ahead for some reason. I imagine that we would have had to adjust the schedule on occasion, but honestly, I cannot remember how she dealt with that. I suppose that she must have built in makeup and review days that allowed for some flexibility should we have gotten off course. College courses were generally the same - a syllabus outlining class expectations, a course description and contact information along with a calendar of learning objectives and due dates. I really appreciate knowing what is coming up so I do not feel caught off guard.

Reflecting an Institution's Philosophy

While a writing course should reflect an institution's requirements and philosophy, this should just be a starting point for the instructor. When it comes down to it, a student's writing ability will have a huge impact on other courses he or she takes. If the student's composition skills are lacking, it could impact the quality of the work produced in other classes or, worse, in his or her career. Therefore, a student's self-identified needs should be an area of focus. After all, the whole objective is to improve the student's writing. If we do not take time to improve it in the areas the student knows is in need of improvement, we are not leaving the student much better off than they were before taking the course.

Ideally an instructor would be able to meld student needs and wants with the requirements set by the institution. Perhaps the instructor could incorporate new vocabulary by choosing particular texts that would meet that goal. Or an instructor may focus on a particular grammar concept during a peer editing exercise. Whatever means of incorporation, instructors should find areas in the institution-mandated curriculum that they are able to add to or expound upon.

Planning Strategies for a Composition Course

Planning for a content course in an academic discipline such as chemistry or algebra is considerably more straightforward than planning for an L2 literacy or composition course. In such classes, an instructor presents material and students practice, either with study problems or by answering questions about the content. It does not take student needs or wishes into consideration. The purpose of the course is to present information related to the specific field.

An L2 composition course, on the other hand, requires language support beginning with the very basics. As students master the basics they can begin to build upon their knowledge, moving into more complex ideas and tasks. An instructor cannot present an on-level text in L2 that is meant for L1 students without added support and expect positive results. L2 students have special needs and requirements to ensure that they are learning material that is challenging but not overwhelming. Courses should take student needs into consideration by doing a Needs Analysis, determining what a student already knows, where the student struggles, and what he or she wants to know (p. 151). Based on this knowledge, instructors can modify or adapt their class calendars to suit the needs of their students.

Successful Lesson Components

From the perspective of a student, courses should be designed to have interesting but varied material. I remember the horror of finding out that I was expected to read Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles in my tenth grade English class. The thought of reading nerdy sci fi was horrifying to my fifteen-year-old self. Turns out, I loved it. Turns out, I also loved mythology-based American Gods (Neil Gaiman), which I had to read in college. Looking back, I am glad that my instructors stretched me and helped me to realize that I had cut an entire genre out due to my juvenile perceptions about being "geeky." (Full disclosure: I've now embraced the geeky part of me that was always buried under there). But just like in my examples, instructors should plan on pulling a variety of materials that have the potential to pique the interest of a wide range of students. This will hopefully help students to find reading material that interests them so that they continue to read for pleasure outside of class. It also increases their exposure to a huge amount of vocabulary that pulls from so many different genres and themes.

Tasks should be based around a text, so that reading, speaking and writing can all be touched upon at some point during the lesson. Tasks should also contain similarities for continuity but be different enough to maintain student interest without feeling monotonous. As a student, I always appreciated a level of creativity. Lessons should be sequenced in a way that builds knowledge. For example, after an instructor selects a text, he or she should begin with an activity that activates prior knowledge and introduces concepts from the text that may be new to the readers. After that, students can read through the text. Following the reading, instructors should assign activities that pertain to the reading selection that also promote literacy - categorizing words, brainstorming, response paragraphs, formulating questions about the text, partner discussion, etc. Finally, students should receive explicit instruction on the genre and writing task, including formatting instructions and examples of similar texts. With this sequencing students are able to build on their knowledge while they build their literacy skills.

Hallmarks of Productive Classroom Instruction

Productive classroom instruction is based on the instructor's planning. As a teacher, I know that if I have planned the lesson well, even if students are not receptive to the specific activities that I have assigned in class, I have an arsenal of alternate activities that help teach the same topic that I can pull out and use instead. The delivery has to be enthusiastic but genuine. False excitement is met with eye rolls and suspicion, but if the instructor sounds like he or she is bored, the students will definitely be bored and believe that the lesson is not important.

Effective classroom management happens when an instructor actively engages the students and moves around the classroom instead of staying in one spot. Proximity to students helps them focus on the lesson and makes them less likely to misbehave.

Maintaining a classroom with good classroom management, clear class guidelines and learning objectives, and interesting material will do wonders for L2 composition instructors and students alike, allowing for maximized time for classroom tasks that build up student literacy and composition skills.

Ferris, D., & Hedgcock, J. (2014). Teaching L2 composition: Purpose, process, and practice (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Blog Post #4

Writing and the Influence of Reading

I was an avid reader as a child and into my teens. My tiny school was directly beside the public library, and I'd find myself there on a weekly, if not daily, basis while I waited for my mom (the sole kindergarten teacher) to finish grading and planning. As young as age eight, I would walk across the parking lot and down a set of worn wooden plank stairs to my safe haven. Each visit I would find myself carrying out a stack of books as tall as I was, only to return within days to drop them off for another set.

One summer, my parents had the brilliant idea to pay my brother, sister and I two dollars for each book we read with an added dollar if we included a book report. By the end of the summer my parents owed me several hundred dollars (and consequently never paid me to read again).

All that to say, reading heavily influenced my L1 writing. By the time I hit middle school I had read hundreds of books covering a wide variety of genres, themes and writing styles. I understood how to string words together in a beautiful and meaningful way. I had stored away a large vocabulary database in my head. And most importantly, I understood that writing was the gateway to sharing important messages with the world. For L2 writers, reading allows them to explore new ideas and vocabulary that they may not come across in their day to day lives. It shows them how to construct sentences, both short, simple sentences and lengthy, complex ones.

Genres in Reading

These days I find that I am usually too busy to read long novels and fiction, though I still do on occasion when I get a good recommendation (so if you have one, comment away! I'd love to hear the titles of some good books). I do, however, often read nonfiction books about mothering, spirituality, and social justice. I also read a lot of blogs, cookbooks, op ed articles, and the news on various websites.

My academic and professional reading includes textbooks, articles (usually online but also in a quarterly magazine I am subscribed to), and blogs. Occasionally I will attend a presentation and my reading extends to digital presentations or PDF printouts of the presentation slides. Though blogs have to be taken with a grain of salt due to the nature of them (usually) not being scientifically researched (or at least being the application of someone else's research), I often find them immensely helpful and full of practical advice and application.

Instructional Materials in Teaching

As a teacher, I often look for authentic materials that are appropriate for lower level Spanish classes. This includes printed reading passages from the district-appointed textbook, video clips of native speakers in a more authentic setting (e.g. conducting interviews with random passersby on the streets in L2, which in my case is Spanish), curriculum-based video clips that target specific unit vocabulary and grammar, and reading and writing activities that I deem more interesting or relevant to the students' lives.

Unfortunately, I am not a fan of the textbook we use. It is heavy on fill-in-the-blank instead of the production of meaningful spoken and written work, so I like to supplement with other activities. Though I am not teaching L2 English, I believe that the same concepts apply - textbooks and other materials should be authentic and have the goal of producing meaningful output instead of just correct answers in a series of blanks.

L2 Textbooks 

While other textbooks can contain primarily information needed for course knowledge, L2 textbooks also need to have information and activities that support L2 schematic awareness. This would include information about how L1 writers in the specific culture are expected to organize compositions, cultural knowledge related to prompts and reading passages, and definitions for difficult or new vocabulary (e.g. numbered superscript beside words with short definitions or synonyms at the bottom of the page or passage). It should also provide scaffolded instruction to help students build on what they already know rather than introducing new material without context or prior knowledge, which would be incredibly overwhelming to L2 writers.

Augmenting a Textbook

In my very limited experience, it seems as if instructors will always need to augment their textbooks with supplemental materials. Textbooks do not know the students and class dynamics, so they are really only the guide and starting point for a course. As instructors gauge the prior knowledge and interests of the students, she or he can choose materials that complement the course goals. It also allows the instructor to differentiate instruction with different groups of students who need intervention in particular areas.

Activities Inside and Outside of Class

Activities outside of class are difficult for me to find in my current field of teaching Spanish due to Google Translate and "sharing" answers with classmates via text messages and photo-sharing. That is to say, I do not have real world experience in this, only ideas that I may one day try. Outside of class, I think that small assignments on social media would be fun and pertinent to the students' real lives. Posting messages onto a class Facebook group or tagging an Instagram post with a class hashtag in L2 would be simple and fast. Having students look for specific things in their everyday lives to use as a prompt or as part of brainstorming would also be pertinent to their real world experiences (e.g. look for the characteristics of a menu the next time you eat out and have a class discussion about its format, or how does the structure of a magazine advertisement differ from that of the passage we are reading). When we are able to link academics back to real life experiences, connections are made and interest is piqued.

Inside of class the instructor could conduct activities using a variety of media including websites, blogs, magazines, video clips, GIFs, and literary passages. Activities could be made up of compare/contrast, examining specific features (color, font, mood being conveyed, message being given), or discussing genre. These activities would expose L2 students to a wide array of vocabulary, genres and writing styles.

When it comes down to it, exposure to L2 in many forms seems to be the common denominator. Helping students explore the world around them will bring them into contact with a wide variety of material that will, with the help of the instructor, guide them towards L2 literacy and composition skills.