Blog #6

1. In my academic writing experience, many of my instructors used a more holistic scoring system to assess written work. Some instructors provided brief commentary with the evaluation criteria, however very little grammar correction of spell checks where included. As students, instructors expected us to fix grammatical errors and do spelling checks on our own before submitting work. Postsecondary instructors used more creative assessment and scoring tools. For instance, one instructor had us create an essay binder. Students choose from a list of topics and scheduled meetings to have the instructor review drafts; before submitting the final essays in the binder. In the binder the essays had to be labeled based on their patterns; for example, narrative, descriptive, argumentative and so on and so forth. Regarding both educational experiences writing instructions were very clear and detailed. Writing prompts were much more interesting in postsecondary school, because we were given much more freedom. The grading rubrics were straightforward regarding the criteria for written assignments.  

2. It wasn’t just the grades that I received that made me want to improve my writing skills; the instructors commentary with specific areas of improvement. Receiving low scores greatly disheartened during my postsecondary education, which drove me to work diligently to improve my writing skills. I constant lingering remember that my work was not up to par had me second guessing every writing assignment that I had to turn in. Consequently, these low scores motivated me to work harder. I would take time to review my previous work and make the necessary alternations. In the off chance that I did receive a passing grade. I immediately took note of the instructor’s commentary, which highlighted the aspects of my writing that were successful. Therefore, confirming that I had grasped the composing skills necessary to produce quality work.

3. The greatest challenge that I face as an instructor has to be managing the workload and proving the appropriate amount of feedback. First pertaining to workload, in a class of 15 students I give 3 writing assignments a week. That results in 45 writings I have to grade over the weekend. In addition, to providing quality feedback. At times this means ignoring the spelling mistakes and focusing on the grammatical mistakes. And even more so, possibly ignoring both of those things and tackling the student’s lack of understanding proper sentence structure and appropriate responses to a prompt. This becomes overwhelming, because which aspects of writing deserve more attentions over others. I can be a daunting task, yet instructors must decide what students need to know in order to produce quality work and succeed beyond their class.

4. As statement in the book formal assessment should focus on the students’ development of the writing process. Assessments should provide students with meaningful feedback. I have gravitated towards feedback focus; in which, feedback is given to students that addresses the strengths and weakness within their writing and provides techniques to improve them. Assessments also need to guide students through the writing process. This can be setting up assessments to follow along with the writing stages. Instructors can evaluate student’s ability to productively transition through the writing process. This entails that students will be assessed at the end of each stage in the writing process based on how well and what they are able to produce.

5. I have been privileged enough to have had several instructors use alternative forms of assessment. Referring back to me postsecondary education, the Essay Binder was something I enjoyed doing. I liked that we had the freedom to choose from a list of topics and then schedule times throughout the week to meet with the instructor for one-on-one feedback before finalizing the writing assignments. Another fun assessment option was the poetry booklet that my high school English teacher had us make as part of our final. Throughout the semester we were introduced to a variety of poetry and asked to make up our own poems using the same styles that we covered in class. As part of the booklet we had to design a cover for the booklet and decorate the pages. In primary school, my Language Arts teachers allowed us to paint a window that depicted a story that took place in the rain forest. From there we had to write a short story that corresponded with picture for a final grade. It was because of these alternative assessment options that I was able to truly enjoyed and appreciated writing. I loved doing something that was different from the norm and allowed me to be creative. It’s because of these benefits that I have developed a passion for writing and hope to encourage my students to come to appreciate writing as well. 

Blog #5

While I am unable to recall my secondary course syllabi or outlines. I do recall postsecondary syllabi and outlines that proved to be a tremendously useful aid. In postsecondary courses, I used the syllabi to prioritize my work load. I would complete all my reading assignments before tackling the homework and if time permitted I would squeeze extras readings or homework to try and stay ahead the course calendar. The course calendar was by far the most important aspect of the syllabus that I utilized. I provided me with all the information that the course was going to cover, which meant that I could pre-read chapters. This allowed me to complete homework assignments in a timely manner and begin working on the subsequent assignments. It was because of this that I was able to achieve my goals and graduate a year earlier than expected. This is no longer the case, but I hope to transition back to this mentality again.

In order to design a literacy course in which the focus of the course is to develop writing skills; student’s need to be instructed to read and write as if it were their job. This means designing an effective writing development course to have real world application both personally and academically. Taba (1962) step one, in the seven step process for curriculum development, instructors need to diagnosis the students’ needs. Instructors can then construct appropriate courses and select appropriate content. Student’s sociocultural backgrounds and educational experiences need to be acknowledged. Students’ can then make connections to larger more complex concepts and symbols.  Whether its finding similarities or differences between writing expectations and production, instructors need to construct a course design that allows students to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards.

Course plans should reflect an educational institution’s requirements and philosophy in the course goals of a syllabus. It is here that students will read what the institutions requires of them as students in order to succeed academically. The institutions philosophy will express what the institution believes are most vital aspects of learning, how learning equals success and attributes to the community in which a student resides. In the course syllabus students are reminded of the institutions goals and hopes for them as they embark on their academic voyage.

In a L2 composition course, instructors must diagnosis their student population. Instructors in a writing course students need to understand new concepts, apply concepts and generate work depicting concepts in the appropriate format. For example, in essay writing students must learn several kinds of essays. An argumentative essay differs from a narrative essay and students must learn the differences between them. While on the other hand, instructors in other areas, such as Chemistry needn’t diagnosis their students’ abilities nor various concepts. Students simply learn a process to arrive at an answer. They will more than likely be learning formulas or memorizing terminology.

As a student I believe the essential components of a successful lesson are in the application of the material that was covered. It’s important to see student produce work based on whatever the lesson was about. Students should complete daily writing assignments to build writing-confidence. Instructors need to introduce new vocabulary daily and have students read outside of the classroom setting for personal and academic fulfillment. Lessons should be sequenced in the order of which the instructors presents information, provides examples; while interacting with students and guiding students through application activities. This ensures that instructors are meeting the needs of the students and hopefully accomplishing the course goals.

As a student, the hallmarks of a productive classroom instruction was the instructors’ enthusiasm about the material we covered and the time spent practicing in classroom with time for instructor feedback. I believe that effective classroom management requires instructors to demonstrate and communicate what students need to accomplish. In addition, instructors need to be flexible, because anything could transpire. 

Blog #4

I have been fortunate enough to have had wonderful reading and writing experiences. Whether it was my instructors who taught using the process-oriented approach or my grandmother who forced me to read during the summer break; I pay them tribute. I was encouraged to keep journals, write short stories and create various personas for writing activities in primary school. In addition, I’d stay with my grandmother in the summers, who required that I read at least 5 books over summer break. At the end of the summer I had to summarize each book to her and tell her why I liked it and what I learned from it. Although at the time I despised summer reading assignments, I can fondly acknowledge that these experiences have greatly aided in the development of my writing skills. For instance, my grandmother always told me to reread as so did my instructors, but it was grandmother who really enforced it. I reread and reread and reread until the meaning of the text is clear and I am able to provide examples as well as explain in my own words. When I write I reread what I have written to see if I should restate or add and subtract information. In my L2, I often find myself rereading the text in order to break down the sentences in order to gain a better or more accurate understanding of the text.

Likewise, L2 learners can apply some the skills or practices that they’ve acquired during their L1 primary schooling to their L2. It’s especially important for multilingual students to read to visualize the various formats and writing patterns as well as grammatical structure. Not only that, students will add new words based on context to their lexicon. If spelling is an issue for multilingual students, when they read they will recognize words and self-correct their misspelling of words. Reading and writing are essentially a family and you can’t have one without the other.

As an academic reader I encounter research text, essays, textbooks and instructional guides. Research is specifically focused on one topic addressing an issue and providing possible solutions. It contains statistics, data, theories and applications. Whereas, essays have various patterns and purposes. They require a particular formatting and layout. For example, essays typically have 5 paragraphs an introduction, 3 body paragraphs and a conclusion. Even more so, textbooks, which are used to study a specific subject can all be categorized as academic works. There overall purpose is for students to comprehend information pertaining to a learning objective and execute that in an output activity.

As a nonacademic reader I encounter daily news articles, blogs, community boards and novels. Daily news articles cover a range of current events and topics. Blogs are personal journals that are displayed on the web and contain opinion and personal narratives. Community boards are where people within the community or even outside the community can go to discuss issues and possible solutions as well as concerns. Similarly, these nonacademic genres are meant for personal fulfillment. From each of these genres I’ve learned that reading can be a pleasurable experience in that there exist a multitude of various materials that has been tailored to personal interest and needs. All I have to do is open up the doorway for my students to venture in and explore.

From my teaching experience, I seek out teaching materials that utilize communicative activities. This way my students may be focused on one particular aspect of their L2, but are utilizing all their L knowledge base to help strengthen that one aspect. This includes handouts for my students to work on individually and as a group. If it provides supplemental activities, games and other learning resources to give the students to reinforce what they have learned it makes my job easier and my lessons more cohesive. It has been my experience that a good textbook contains the things mentioned above, whereas a bad textbook contains none of these. In addition to not providing students with enough context or tools to better aid them in the L2 learning journey. One particular textbook that I used in a community-based settings assumed that beginner students knew the letters of alphabet and the corresponding sounds. Too no one’s surprise many of them didn’t and that meant I had to put together additional learning materials for them to study and use. It was precious time that could have been used elsewhere.

In terms of the criteria, L2 textbooks attempt to cater to a wide range of L2 learners. These books tend to be more repetitive, use less extravagant grammatical structure so that the material is a tad easier for students to understand. Additionally, one textbook cannot address the needs of each student. Conversely, other types of textbooks expect students to have an extensive amount of background knowledge to build on. This means that these textbooks don’t repeat material as often. Textbooks may contain lengthier sentences with extensive grammatical structure. In some cases, new vocabulary is strictly to be interpreted in context without a definition. It’s because L1 and L2 learning takes place at different stages in a person’s life. L2 learning takes place after the L1 background knowledge, skills and strategies have already taken shape. Transferring these things can be easy or difficult depending on the student’s background.

Augmentation of a textbook should only occur if the material is significantly lacking in regards to the amount of information provided, application activities and supplemental resources. In the case the bad textbook that I encountered, the very first activity asked students to write their name and answer the questions: Where are you from? Why are you here? This was a beginner’s class in a community-based setting. I recall that only two students were able to complete the activity. While I was given permission to augment the textbook as needed. I found myself simple completely recreating lessons. I also had to attempt to accommodate the needs of individual students.

The most productive activities that I believe inexperienced writers can do in-class are generate their own prompts and respond to it. They can also brainstorm ideas with other students writing down suggestions and commentary. These activities need to be cultural relevant and interesting for students. Out-of-class activities for inexperienced writers can journal, blog, join an online community and even do research related to personal interest. Journaling can be completed anywhere on any topic. Blogging allows students to narrate daily events, be opinionated and rant to the world. Even experienced writers can enjoy these activities, because they enable both inexperienced and experienced writers to access various parts of their lexicon and utilize their schemata. 

Blog #3

As I reflect on my past experiences with writing, I am immediately compelled to state that my overall writing experience was good. I always had the best and most passionate teachers throughout my writing journey. I recall that much of my primary school writing instruction was to encourage writing as a means of self-expression. Almost all of my primary school instructors constantly lectured us about using writing to tell our personal stories, keep journals of our adventures and write short stories about anything that came to mind. I believe that majority of my instructors used the process-oriented approach due to the fact they stimulated us to writing as a means of self-discovery. For example, I recall my 4^th grade teacher gave us an end of the year writing assignment. We had to come up with a story based off a painting that had been completed earlier in the year. It was a chance to be creative and burrow deep down into our knowledge base of information and imagination in order to create a story that was unique to our individual experiences.

In my university experiences with writing, instructors were unforgiving and had high expectations for completed assignments. They provided materials and resources for students to use in order to produce high quality work. In terms of principles and methods my instructors did not provide of us with new skills sets or knowledge in terms of writing. However, more so stressed the fact that the skills learned in secondary school; such as, identifying your audience, successfully writing a thesis statement, having adequate support and answering the prompt effectively were ideally things that should have already been acquired and only to be improved upon. I think this is a much more product-oriented approach to teaching writing. In my case, the lack of instruction, practice and individual feedback hindered me; conversely, other instructors that I encountered were much more involved in their students’ progress and improvement. Nevertheless, it did help to reinforce the techniques, rules and formulas required to produce a good quality writing assignment.

As my writing skills have developed and continues to develop. I feel that the instruction that I received in the classroom in my primary schooling has molded me into the writer/reader that I am today. Due to my primary school instructors whom I have discerned used the process-oriented approach as expressivist; who encouraged a wide range of self-discovery writing prompts and activities. Conversely, the exact opposite can be said regarding my university classroom instruction. Which I believe focused on a more product-orientated approach with some integrated process-orientation approaches. For example, regarding rhetorical practices we were given argumentative prompts where we had to choose a position and another prompt where we had inform readers of an issue and provide a solution.

I have attempted to learn several languages, Japanese being one of the many languages that I tackled over the years. I have never taken a formal writing class in regards to academia. The classes that I have taken only teach the writing necessities; such as filling out documentation, making written request and other daily needs where writing might be required. The only purpose emphasized by the instructor for learning to write was for daily needs, because of this I believe instructors took a more product-oriented approach. They only wanted to see that students were able to write in response to everyday questions in a variety of situations. On the other hand, the instruction that I received in writing in my L1 encompassed everyday writing necessities. In my Japanese writing class we were taught how to properly respond to an email; and in my L1 class this was taught as a form of formal writing. However, similarly my experience in both settings stressed the importance of writing formalities.

My classroom experience with writing has been an exciting and revealing journey. The passion that I have for writing stems from my love of self-expression. This is evident in the task that I assign my students. I enjoy giving students prompts that require them to think as well as use personal experiences in their responses. I encourage making outlines and brainstorming before sitting down to write. I am an expressivist through and through. I use writing as a means of self-discovery; while focusing on rhetorical practices because I teach in an academic setting. I strongly believe that the skills and strategies that my students need to master are building a strong vocabulary, taking time to explore and develop topics and outlining before the writing begins. In my opinion, this creates strong writers.

I think that by cultivating an understanding and of diverse models of writing and instructional methods can help me accommodate a wide range of L2 learners. No single method of teaching is going to work in every setting with every student. In order to be a more effective writing instructor I have to be able to incorporate different practices into my writing instruction. For example, I was teaching English in a community setting where was need for students to learn the formats and formulas for writing an essay. They simply needed to learn how to write in some cases only a basic knowledge of was all they needed. Whereas, teaching in an academic setting that requires focusing on the various writing styles and practices. In the community setting students often only need enough basic writing skills to obtain a job and in the academic settings students require extensive knowledge of the formal writing criteria. A single method will never work because the dynamics of the classroom setting, students and context are forever changing. 

Blog #2

In my experience, the biggest challenge that my students face when writing in the L2 is not having sufficient basic knowledge of the L2. For example, often I am faced with students who have not mastered their parts of speech. This can be very difficult when it comes to instructing students on how to make compound and complex sentences; and even prevent them from fully understanding parallel structure. Another big challenge is the lack vocabulary variety. I believe the more words you know the more descriptive and picturesque writing will be. This doesn't necessarily a lot of big words, but more so the various ways to use one word over another. For example, one student wrote "use my time better" and I encouraged that student to use "manage my time better" or "better time management." These variations are better suited for academic writing.

The information that would be helpful to have before planning a course, I think would be having students to answer a few questions regarding their academic writing background would contain useful information about I can expect as their instructor. Questions regarding how writing is taught in their L1, what expectations did their previous instructors have for their writing, how L1 and L2 academic writing differs (if it differs at all), and perhaps what their future plans are. I would hope that have this information or a much more detailed history of my students writing experience could help me better prepare and plan what materials need more focus and what other material could wait.

In order to teach writing effectively in an educational institution context, I need to have a firm understanding of the institutes expectations of student writers. This means what the students should be able to produce by the end of the course in order to transition to next class or to pass an examination. I also need to know what support services the institution offers to L2 learners. This way I can encourage my students to seek out tutors and extra materials to aid them in their writing journey.

Blog #1

Like most teachers, I want my students to be avid readers. In addition to being avid readers, I want them to be fearless learners. As a former student, throughout high school my instructors encouraged us to read a variety of writings. Whether it was the encyclopedia or a novel, a newspaper article or an autobiography; we were driven to read. If students are reading they are expanding their vocabulary, they are visually observing different writing styles and they are improving their understanding of language. Moreover, if students are fearless; this means not afraid to make mistakes or ask questions in the classroom. Combining the two will ensure that students are successful in developing good quality writing. 

Writing comes from the human desire to express oneself in a multitude of ways; such as a short story, a diary, poetry, or memoir. It is an essential part of our modern society, because humans yearn to connect with others. Writing dates back thousands of years to a time when pictorial depictions served as the only means to record historical events and share those events with future generations. The most popular use of everyday writing comes in the form of social networking; Facebook for example, is where people share their thoughts, stories, day-to-day adventures with thousands even millions of other people daily. Despite not being an example of formal writing, it is the reason writing plays such an important role in our daily lives. 

Regarding the writing process I would like to have a better understanding of how L1 influences my students' L2 writing abilities. What specific things hinder them or make them more successful L2 writers. Concerning my Spanish and Japanese speakers I feel that I can accommodate their needs Discussing writing. I know very little about my students with different L1 backgrounds. In addition, I want to determine what aspects of writing deserve more emphasis for being vital to student success in all non-ESL/ESOL classes. 

There are thousands of different languages being spoken around the world and each language has its own unique writing system. Writing systems are diverse, because the world is comprised of different cultures that speak various languages. I think that people become better writers under a formal education. A lack of formal education may result in nonexistent writing system or a language being lost. 

If a student’s maternal language and an additional language share for example a similar word order, student acclimate more easily to writing in that L2. When the L1 and L2 have in common formats or writing requirements, students may use their prior knowledge to transfer skill sets used to write in the L1 to the L2. For example, the format for writing an essay in French is the same for English. In this case, there are no clashing patterns. However, if the L1 and the L2 have different word orders, formats or grammatical requirements in terms of writing students must then learn a new set of skills in order to produce appropriate written works. For example, when writing an essay in Chinese students are allowed to quote or include word-for-word what person has said without giving recognition to the originator. If this is done in an essay written in English, it’s plagiarism. In addition, in Chinese the controlling idea of an essay is narrated by the writer; then explored, while discussing that topics issue(s) and finally that/those issue(s) being resolved all in one paper. This means that an essay in Chinese could range in the number of pages. Conversely, essays in English have a five paragraph minimum in which the topic needs a possible solution or ends in a possible result. Thus, a student must completely alter their way of writing in the L2. It is because of these writing regulations varying that students must learn the rules and formats for writing in the L2.