Goals & Activities

Since I am not familiar with the setting and the teaching content with the English 1000 course here, I am going to design the syllabus of a writing class for ELL students at college level.

My primary goal for this class is to help my students experience writing as a process, as fun experience (I wish I could think of more creative and engaging classroom activities), instead of merely a task, or a burden for them. I want them to realize that a writing piece is not a finished product, but rather something they could always go back to revisit and revise.

I also wish that through their own writing processes, they could develop, and truly find their own voice, and use that voice to effectively express themselves, instead of using words, yet speaking nothing truly representative of themselves.

We used to teach our students that by using 3 paragraphs or 5 paragraphs, they may effectively organize their articles, but now, I want my students to write more creatively. I hope they could not only write about their stories, but also write down their thoughts and feelings, so that they may write to learn, write to think, and write to explore about themselves.

The last but not the least, I hope I could provide enough opportunities for my students to practice writing both in the class and at home. I hope to help them develop the habit of writing something everyday.

As for the activities, unlike Nelly, who has already finished the detailed assignment sheets/requirements, currently I could only think of the major things that I would expect my students to fulfill in my writing class:

Free writing: This is one of the writing activities, from which I have benefited the most here, therefore I would definitely introduce this to my ELL students to improve their fluency and writing skills. For the first 5 minutes of each class, I would ask my students to do some free writing, writing about anything in their minds or that they want to write about. Occasionally I might also ask them to do some focused writing (that depends on whether they have a big paper in progress).

Three “big” papers: Instead of asking the students to submit a huge project at the end of the semester, I would rather have them write three essays along the whole semester, during when they would also be required to revise their papers once or twice and submit the final papers in the end. The first paper will be the self-exploratory experience for them: discovering their own journey of being a writer. The second paper will be a creative non-fiction (might change this idea). The third paper will be an academic research paper, following certain rules and format.

Writing workshops: During the whole semester, I would also organize at least two or three writing workshops, focusing on some major topics of writing, and offering guide on how to develop a paper or how to improve it. In the workshop, students will be divided into several small groups with 3-4 students each group. They will be asked to read aloud their papers to share with each other, and also learn to respond and give feedbacks to their group members.

Blogging: I would definitely use Blog in my teaching, to help my students better know each other and exchange ideas after class. They may choose the topics they are interested themselves or they may write about something that help them organize their paper ideas. Length: at least 200 words. They need to post a blog every other week, and comment on at least three classmates’ posts each time.

I might have other ideas for this class. I’ll just see whether/how they will really fit into my syllabus in the end…

Textbooks

As a writing teacher, choosing good materials for students is very important. I think that’s why Dr. Strickland would ask us to do the book report and textbook review. Only having known both the strengths and the drawbacks of the book could we teachers really make wise use of the book and make it really beneficial to our students.

On the other hand, the definition and interpretation of “good” and “bad” may vary among our students, therefore we shouldn’t limit or confine our practice and field of view to just one particular book. Like what Dr. Strickland has done, she did not ask us to buy any book and authorize any text as our “textbook”, instead, we were asked to read chapters from different books or journals. Many other teachers in our college are also teaching in the same way. In so doing, our thoughts are liberated and our horizon is broadened.

However, how much reading materials are necessary or sufficient for a writing class? And what should we expect our students to do after they’ve read the articles we’ve assigned? How can we effectively build up the connection between what they read and what they write? What activity may lead them from the images and words that they read to the images and words that they write by themselves?

And what materials/articles I should include in my writing class? How will I make sure that those articles have covered all the important issues/topics in writing? There’s still a lot that I need to know…

Grammar or not to grammar, that’s a question…

Since English is my second language, I remember from the very beginning of my learning process, grammar played a very important role. Grammar is just like the fundamental concrete structure of the English learning “House”, with vocabulary being the bricks and tiles of the walls and roofs of this house.

Teachers taught specific sentence patterns based on grammatical rules, and we then make our own sentences. Once we were required to translate a sentence, the first thing that guided us was the grammar rules. Subject first, then think about the verbs, and then the objects. However, it’s very difficult for us, since it seems that each grammatical rule has exceptions. When it came to this occasions like irregular verbs, teachers would say, “it’s just the way it is, you just need to memorize all those”. Sometimes we were really confused, and then Chinglish was created by ourselves. Mistakes like “--Do you like mango? – Yes, I like.” and “--Haven’t you been to Beijing? –Yes, I haven’t gone there.” are commonplace, not to mention the errors like “I goed to the park yesterday” and “My mother is a teacher, and he is very kind to his students.” (In Chinese, he and she are both pronounced as “TA”, though characters are totally different.).

On the other hand, sometimes, grammar did help us, because for us, English language learners, it is something that we could use to check whether we are using Standard English correctly. It is something that may help us from making horrible mistakes thus embarrassing ourselves.

As for writing, I think grammar benefit us even more. A lot of Chinese students could write beautiful sentences with very little grammatical errors, because our teachers put much emphasis on grammar and the students have very good knowledge of it; and because in writing, students could have more time to think about grammar, and they could see what they are “thinking” and “talking” in their mind, compared with speaking English.

Frankly speaking, for me, if I knew nothing about grammar at the very beginning, and when I was still in China, which means I didn’t have very good language environment, I would have no clue to learn English, possibly I would have to memorize everything, every word that I see and hear. Wouldn’t that be an even more difficult thing?

Assessment

One of the important jobs that a teacher must do is to assess the students’ work, to check whether they’ve really learned and how much they’ve learned. What criteria could we use to assess the students’ writings? What should we see in their writings? As for course designers, what artifacts should we teachers examine to give students a grade?

We’ve already known about the Six Traits to evaluate a writing piece, however, among ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, word choice and convention, which one should we give the most credits? Should we focus more on the students’ ideas and their thinking processes, or should we be picky on their use of language? Isn’t organization important as well? What about the ESL learners? What kind of accommodations should we make for them while grading their papers?

While we are to give students their final grades at the end of the semester, what percentage of A should we be giving? Won’t people think it’s too easy to get an A if too many students got it? However, will students got discouraged thus lost their interest in writing if they only receive a B, or even a C? Should we emphasize more on the effort that our students have been paid, or on the quality of the papers that they’ve produced? What else should we examine besides one or two finalized papers when we consider grading?

There is also an important issue: while we are doing writing conference, or when the students are doing peer writing response, how can we make sure that we really helped, and motivate our students to be willing to write more, and to share with each other; instead of being scared, and even discouraged from writing and sharing? How can a teacher make sure that each one of the small group is really building a supportive community that foster real learning and scaffolded help?

Authority Vs. Moderator of the Class

Mike’s post reminded me of an important question: while the students try to adjust to the class, we, as teachers, are also trying to adjust to the class each time we enter the classroom. How do we balance the role of being authority and moderator of the class?

Since my childhood, I have been taught that the teachers are the absolute authorities in the classroom, and we need to obey strict disciplines in the class and follow the teachers’ orders and instructions without questioning them.

As we grew up and entered the colleges, the classroom setting has been changed. We, more often than ever, have been given opportunities to play some roles in our own classrooms: doing presentations, role playing, etc. We, as students, sometimes are also enjoying the fun of being a teacher taking over the class. At that time, I would be wondering, what is my teacher doing now? Is he/she also listening to us? Is what we are doing right now something new to him/her? What will he/she respond to our performance? At this moment, our teacher turned to be one of the audiences, communicating with us through eye contact and facial expressions. However, whenever I didn’t have the confidence to report what I was about to present, or say, I didn’t have enough knowledge about certain information; or when I was not very sure about the reliability of other classmates’ presentation, I would be eager to become an obedient student, wishing the teacher would take over the control of the whole class, and give us the detailed demonstration of that knowledge.

But how could a teacher understand our needs and our thoughts in time? I sometimes understand it must be a difficult thing for teachers to notice when they should shift their roles from a moderator/co-learner to becoming the real authority in the class.

Maybe that depends on the teacher’s experience. Maybe teaching is also a process, a learning process…

Teaching patterns

From the classes I observed I found that different teachers have certain teaching patterns. Once the pattern was set up, it seemed the following classes were just following the routine and everyone understood what they were supposed to do, and they will find themselves on the right track very soon.

Both classes I observed are from the Department of LTC. One of the teachers hope the students could comprehend and exchange meanings by reading and sharing poems, therefore the routines are students taking the turn to introduce their favorite poems, then small group of 2-3 students discuss the poems and share their own feelings, then the big class get together and further discuss about it. Through this routine, everyone is very clear about their own roles, either as the discussion leader to bring a poem and prompt discussion, or as the students talking about their understandings about the poem.

The other teacher aim at broadening our understanding of the language we use, and deepening our exploration of the language we heard others use. Her specific teaching patterns are introducing students to read seven books in order, and students discuss about the texts in both small groups and big class, then they are supposed to write 2-3 page paper on each book, and then they are required to share and discuss their papers with small groups arranged by the teacher, and in the end the class come together to talk about their specific experiences or understanding towards certain points in the book.

I haven’t observed any English 1000 class yet, nor had I ever taken any. I am not sure about the contents that teachers are supposed to teach, nor am I aware of the American college students’ writing levels and their needs. I wish I could have more information after I observe one English 1000 class tomorrow.

I am also asking this same questions as Nell has asked already: how could a teacher balance both flexibility and stability of the class? How can we adjust our teaching and syllabus to the needs of both the students and the class without making our students maladjusted and frustrated?

Writing community and the teacher's roles

Teachers have very high social status in China, and also in many other eastern countries. Everyone respects teachers, not only in schools, but also in the society. Many girls wish to be teachers for teaching is a well paid, well respected and a very stable job, plus, this profession may possibly bring them a good husband – men always want to marry a woman with over three months’ vacation each year. And the men, themselves, also enjoy the stableness, good salary and the power in the classroom this job may bring them.

In the classroom, teachers are regarded as the absolute authorities, who are supposed to be the major source of the knowledge. Teachers need to know everything, and are supposed to be able to answer all the students’ questions; otherwise, they are not doing the job and will lose face in front of their students.

According to whole language philosophy and Boice’s article, teachers need to reexamine their roles in the classroom; they need to readjust themselves to be not only facilitators, but also co-learners. Frankly speaking, I was more fascinated by this idea that teachers could, and should learn together with their students than I was relieved to comfort myself that teachers do not need to know everything.

However, at the same time, I realized that we, as writing teachers, seldom write, or say, seldom write together with our students, not to mention we share our writings with them. Why wouldn’t teachers share with students their own writings? On the one hand, teachers should be superior than their students, and reading their own writings out aloud to the whole class might be thought of as showing off in front of a group of lower-leveled learners; on the other hand, probably due to the fear, and the embarrassment, even the teachers wouldn’t have sufficient confidence and courage to share their articles.

After I came to the U.S., I was surprised to find that not only we were often asked to write, and share with our peers, the classroom teachers would now and then share with us their writings, even though it was just an improvised paragraph she finished while we were writing. I was amazed not only by how good the improvised article was, but also by the teacher’s willingness to merge into us students as a writing community. I felt we were connected and our distance was suddenly shortened.

Um…I am thinking of overcoming my own fear and sharing one or two pieces of my own writings with my future students. Hopefully I won’t be too nervous or embarrassed to have my voice trembled…

Writing workshop and peer response

In my memories, I don’t think we had the experience of sharing our writings with our peer learners and receiving feedbacks back in school. Writing is always regarded as an individual thing; no matter it was a weekly journal, a diary, or an academic writing that the teacher assigned.

Yes, back in middle school days, some good articles will be read aloud in front of the whole class by the teacher, but that was just for the appreciation purpose – to allow the whole class enjoy how beautifully the article was written. Gradually it turned out that we admired that writer much more than we appreciated the article. No further comments were invited from the rest of the class, and that article was regarded as the final product – a model article.

Back to my own teaching days, I also assigned writing tasks, on specific topics. But due to the big class (I had 120 college students in one Reading and Writing class), most of the time, my young writers’ reader, and their only reader was me. Occasionally, I would find one or two outstanding “model article”, which conveyed creative thoughts and refreshing air; which also carried a plenty of common mistakes that many other students may make while writing in English. Having got the permission from the writer, I would copy and paste the article to a Word document on a computer to share with the whole class, and also read aloud in front of them. Although the writer’s name had been hidden, and the students were very active in “pointing out” the mistakes, I felt something was not right... Yes, the poor writer’s face was getting redder and redder – he/she was embarrassed to some degree. Although I was still inviting students to appreciate how the paper was structured and how carefully some particular words were chosen, my students’ attention had gradually transferred from “appreciating” to “error correcting”. Will the young writer still be willing to “share” the writing with the rest of the class next time? I doubt.

This Tuesday, we had a writing workshop. We were still using one “sample article”, and the comments from the rest of the class were invited. But this time, our aim was not to “fix the article” or to correct the mistakes; instead, we were to tell the writer what we saw and what we felt about his article. I truly believe that it was a healthy way to encourage the growth of a writer by letting him/her hear the voice directly from the readers, realizing his/her own strengths and weaknesses. It is a community where people trust each other and are honest with each other...

I will definitely adopt writing workshop and peer response in my future classrooms, to build up their confidence in writing, and to help them become a better writer, and, of course, I hope I could be given a smaller classroom.

Imagination

Boice mentioned in his article that what is as same important as motivation to help writing is imagination. While I was reading, I couldn’t help asking these questions: Where does imagination come from? Is it something we were born with, or something that we need to train ourselves to be good at with?

My husband used to say that I was one of the most imaginative people in the world, because I would always have the wildest and weirdest dreams during the night and to tell him when I woke up the next morning. But am I an imaginative writer? If you ask me to answer this question, I’ll never admit it, because just like many of my students, staring at the topics which were irrelevant to my life, and holding the pen in my hand on the blank paper for couple of hours, I still, couldn’t generate anything creative or interesting to write about. I would and could write up an article freely and fluently only when I, myself, had the life experience about the topic. To be precise, this type of articles does not belong to the academic writing category. They are often journal like articles restating what I had gone through, which left me deep impression.

Does imagination have anything to do with artistic ability or handcraft making type thing? If the answer is yes, and imagination does require a lot sense of art, then probably I’ll include myself to the non-imaginative people section, because I am always clumsy doing those kinds of stuff.

Boice’s article also talked about how information collecting may help generate imagination… I kind of doubt it…I’d rather say it is the information that we collect and take in that help with our thinking -- to think about a wider range of matters, which we perhaps pay little attention to, and to think about a particular issue more deeply, more critically. Could that also be termed as Imagination? Is imagination part of our thinking process? Why each time when I look at the word imagination, I could only think of something wild, unreal, and non-existent in this world, which we create only in our mind?

Why do they write? How do they start?

Every time when I assigned a writing task to my Chinese college students, I would always be responded by their knotted brows, distorted faces written with agony.

Yes, as a teacher, I need to do my job, that is, I need to give writing tasks to my students and provide them more opportunities to practice it. And my poor students have to write, no matter how poor their English was, because I, their English teacher, asked them to; and they needed me, the reader, to give them feedback and to check how well they could write and what they were lacking of. They, themselves, also realized this need, the need to write, then why were they still so painful?

Bitzer mentioned that “rhetorical discourse comes into existence as a response to situation”, and that “a rhetorical situation must exist as a necessary condition of rhetorical discourse” (p.5-6). The driven power, or the situation for the students to write something rhetorical is very clear – my request and their need to improve their English. However, is this simple request adequate or strong enough to stimulate them to do some nice writing?

Why were they always reluctant to write in English? Is it because that they are not very good at English and that they are embarrassed by the mistakes they might make? But without practices, how could they be fluent in writing in English language? Are they ready? Have I prepared them to be ready for the topic I assigned?

According to Edbauer’s article about rhetorical ecology, “knowledge involved in writing depends on activities and communications shared in interaction not only among people but also interactions between people and various structures in the environment…” (p. 8) Have I provided them the opportunity to talk to their peers first to help generate the elements of their writing pieces? Time is changing. Did I assign them the topics that closely related to their social life and studies that they had more to say about? Have I given them the freedom to write for the audience other than me? Have I thought of allowing them to receive the feedback from and interact with other potential audiences?

Having thought of the above, I think I sort of understand my students a bit more…

When is the best time to write?

After I finished reading Boice’s two articles, I couldn’t help asking myself: “How often would I really try to write an article or a paper without the pressure from a deadline?” and “Why would I always wait till the last minute to write up my paper?”

I’ve asked many other friends, and it seems that being the “last-minute-writer” is not my patent – they also, and always put them into the same situation.

Countless paper deadlines and endless paper writing follow after I made my decision to pursue my doctoral degree in the U.S. Every time, the requirements and the deadline were well explained and we were informed long enough before the paper should be submitted, but still, I will repeat the cycle of panicking; waiting, waiting for a long time; hesitating to write; attempting to start; writing till exhausted; finishing writing; and experiencing the extreme excitement till thrill with trembling hands…

Every time, I would blame myself harshly for not having starting writing earlier, and regret for the unnecessary crisis and pressure that I created for myself. However, it seems that once the scar was recovered, I would immediately forget about the pain that I’ve ever tasted, and I would still repeat the cycle over and over again, sticking to my old bad habit.

Why did I always wait for such a long time before I started to write? Why did I always waste so much precious time? Why couldn’t I start a little bit earlier next time? What was I afraid of? What hindered me starting early? Those questions I have asked myself thousand of times, and I have generalized the following reasons:

First of all, it’s my language problem. Writing in a second language is still a big challenge for me. Occasionally, only thinking of this problem would scare me to drop the pen.

Secondly, I was not ready, which I think contributed the most to my writing obstacles. Yes, I was very scared of writing something I didn’t know what to write about. I hadn’t found enough sources, nor had I read adequate materials to form my ideas and organize my thoughts.

Thirdly, my laziness always works. Yes, the thought that “there’s still enough time, so why bother now?” always hoaxed me into the last-minute-writing situation. When I realized how fast time may escape away, it was already too late…

Now the last but not the least, maybe it’s an excuse – I had no inspiration. Sometimes I would comfort myself that inspiration is something very special--it would hide in somewhere when you tried so hard to find it, and would come out suddenly when you least expected, but once it showed up, the pen would seem writing by itself and your time will be doubly saved. So, I was waiting for inspiration.

Why couldn’t I read a lot and get ready while I was still waiting, and hesitating to write? What if inspiration didn’t show up till the last minute? When is the best time to write? Was I waiting to get the best state in writing or was I just waiting to lose my passion and ability to write? Does confidence increase or decrease during the time of waiting? Um…there are a lot of questions…

Exploration

Life is the process of endless exploration.

Everyday we are asking questions, seeking answers, getting confirmations, and asking even more questions.

Everyday, we are exploring the most mysterious world -- the world of language, which is like the deep ocean with countless treasures hidden, to discover ourselves, and to weave our dreams.

What are we going to find?
I am ready and can't wait to start this journey...