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…