Welcome, Rebeca Fernandez!
We are delighted to have Dr. Rebeca Fernandez with us to lead a follow up discussion after today's fantastic webinar -- the third in our series on teaching academic writing to English Learners -- in which Rebeca highlighted the many ways writing can support other components of language including reading, listening and speaking, vocabulary and grammar.
Thank you for sharing your expertise with the field, Rebeca! We're looking forward to a great discussion on Monday and Tuesday, December 10 & 11.
Here is a link to Rebeca's PowerPoint, and we'll let everyone know when the recording to the webinar is available.
Rebeca's bio:
Rebeca Fernández is Associate Professor of Writing and Educational Studies at Davidson College, where she teaches courses in first-year composition and educational linguistics and provides individualized writing support to multilingual students. She holds a doctorate in language and literacy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Early in her career, she worked in K-12 bilingual education, taught preschool Spanish, and conducted reading research on bilingual school-aged children. Afterwards, she worked as an adult ESL and ABE/GED instructor at Central Piedmont Community College, where she taught all educational functioning levels and developed contextualized, content-based, and English for specific purposes courses for students and an online professional development course for faculty. Currently, she is collaborating with several colleagues on second language writing projects. She is a co-investigator on a longitudinal, multi-cohort research study on the writing development of Chinese L2 college writers. Along with Joy Kreeft Peyton and Kirsten Schaetzel, she has been conducting research, co-publishing, and developing professional development on adult ESL writing. Her recent publications include A survey of writing instruction in adult ESL programs: Are teaching practices meeting adult learner needs? (with Peyton and Schaetzel, 2017) and Artifacts and their agents: Translingual perspectives on composing processes and outputs (with Campbell and Koo, in press).
Comments
Good morning, everyone!
Thank you for the good questions and feedback you left for me after Friday's webinar. Several of you were interested in getting your students to write more and, as one HSE instructor mentioned, learning how you can "create more enthusiasm for writing." In today's discussion, I'd first like to propose that we consider how to use of social media as a springboard for academic writing. Then, I would like you to apply these guidelines to make suggestions for a multi-level writing lesson.
Why incorporate social media in writing instruction?
First of all, we know that millions of people use such sites as Facebook and Twitter every day. For many of our students, social media may be one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to stay connected with friends and family (cheaper than international calling cards!). It's also a way to increase community and civic participation and lessen their sense of isolation in the United States, since many organizations, schools, and businesses maintain a social media presence. Second, using social media posts during writing instruction has many language learning and academic benefits as well. Not only does learning how to post to social media provide an authentic and motivating purpose for writing, but it also affords instructors with opportunities to teach rhetorical moves explicitly, and for students--at all levels--to participate. And last, but certainly not least, learning to use and communicate in social media also allows students to develop important digital literacy. If you are interested in reading more extensively about the benefits of social media in the writing classroom, I recommend Social Media in the Writing Classroom and Beyond (2017) by Zheng, Yim, and Warschauer.
What are some rhetorical moves that can I teach with social media? How do these rhetorical moves build academic and workplace writing skills?
Below are some of the rhetorical moves I came up with that people often make when writing to social media. The moves in 1-4 are most often performed in the workplace or another formal setting. For instance, even though we associate complaining with customer service scenarios, an employee might "complain" to a supervisor, albeit with great tact and careful language. Moves 5-7 are building blocks of academic essays. When we "forward" an article, video, image, etc., we often draw the reader's/viewer's attention to an aspect that interests us. This move is not much different than the academic writing practice of using the work of others to support our positions. (For a landmark text on this topic, see Joseph Harris' , 2006, Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts.)
1. Congratulating or expressing condolences
2. Inviting or announcing an event
3. Requesting information or advice
4. Complaining about, or praising, someone or something.
5. Forwarding an article or video drawing readers attention to a specific aspect.
6. Expressing agreement, disagreement, ambivalence
7. Supporting or criticizing views or opinions
How do I introduce social media writing to students?
Refer to the handout on Using Social Media as An Occasion for Academic Writing in Google Docs for more details on these four steps.
1. Prepare students to participate.
2. Model use of social media.
3. Provide scaffolded practice.
4. Give students an opportunity to show what they know (e.g., posting and replying).
5. Incorporate timely and contextualized feedback.
YOUR TASK FOR TODAY
Now, it's your turn to apply these suggestions! Study the image by clicking on the link Snake picture and consider how students at different levels can prepare to respond to the poster's question: Does anyone know what kind of snake was waiting for us in our courtyard this afternoon? Should we worry?
Rebeca, I really appreciate your comments regarding the use of social media, which I have always supported for many of the reasons that you listed. Thanks, also, for the links and for contrasting different types of functional writing, all of which directly or indirectly lead to more academic writing.
You asked, "Does anyone know what kind of snake was waiting for us in our courtyard this afternoon? Should we worry?" The link you provided to your article, "Using Social Media as An Occasion for Academic Writing," has a variety of excellent examples of how students might respond to the image and question you shared.
Re "Preparing Students to Participate," lower-level students might be asked to reflect on any of the following and compose a simple message related to their choices:
1. Have you seen a snake like that? What does does the snake remind you of? Send a message sharing your thoughts about the snake.
2. Go to Google images and describe the snake. Compose a short message that includes a link along with your suggestion about what you think it is.
3. Think of something funny about what you see and share it in a post. Example: "That snake looks very sneaky to me. It reminds me of .........." OR "That snake looks scared about something. I wonder what it sees. Maybe a ....."" OR "I don't know what type of snake it is, but for people who eat snakes, that would be a big meal!"
4. Ask questions that might help identify the snake. "Where do you live?" How big is the snake? Is it trying to eat the plant or just using it to hide? Can you see the tail. What does it look like? Is it real?"
Re "giving students an opportunity to show what they know," more advanced student preparation could require a bit more.
1. Share a link to a site that describes features of venomous snakes. Share your opinion about whether or not this snake is venomous.
2. Describe the features you notice in the snake and match those to the type of snake you think it might be. Justify your response.
I look forward to hearing more ideas. I live among canyons and hope I don't see a snake looking at me like that on my land! :) Leecy
Hi Leecy:
Your suggestion for assignments that ask students to conduct a WebQuest in order to figure out what kind of snake it is and whether it's venomous reminded me that one of the top courses adult ESL students requested at my former institution was "computación", not computation in the general sense of the word, but rather, how to use the computer and the internet. As such, a WebQuest would be highly motivating to some students; research also supports its efficacy as a way to improve English learners' vocabulary and grammar. Thus, the WebQuest task becomes not just an activity that uses reading-to-write in an engaging and authentic way, but also about developing both language and important information literacy skills.
How might you, or other discussants reading this, scaffold the WebQuest, specifically? What key words and phrases would you pre-teach, for example? How would you ensure that the activity ultimately leads to writing? Imagine you are preparing the lesson for tomorrow.
Rebeca
To conclude the discussion about the social media post of a snake picture I offered yesterday, I suggest below a sequence teachers might use.
1. To begin the lesson, you may guide the student in describing the snake’s features, in the process, introducing new vocabulary and preparing them to ask similar questions in the social media page:
Snake Features—Word Bank
head shape
scales
pupils
mouth
body
color
oval
shiny
slitted
front fangs
thick
black
triangular
rough
round
back fangs
thin
red
round
bumpy
large jaws
wide
yellow
holes near their nose
smooth
straight
stripes
large
rattle at the tail
spots
small
bands
Alternative: Advanced students might be able to create their own word bank after reading about the characteristics of venomous snakes in an online article.
2. Next, you might prepare students to speculate in their posts.
Students might create a T-chart or Venn diagram comparing the description of venomous and non-venomous snakes provided in the website. To contribute to the social media thread, they might post:
Alternative: More advanced students might use the snake’s features to research location and habitat information, and in that way, allowing them to ask further probing questions.
Students may also reply to the post by offering advice or a reaction.
3. Finally, you might have students create new posts requesting information and advice about another household creature or animal they have seen in the United States that is unfamiliar to them.
Perhaps you are asking yourselves at this point how you might connect the social media activity we discussed yesterday to an academic essay. After all, there are some clear ways that an academic essay will differ from an informal online post.
To bridge this social media activity to an academic essay assignment you may want to start by helping students understand the two rhetorical situations:
Social Media Discussion About a Black Snake
Academic Essay About Snakes
Who was the post written for?
Who will the essay be written for?
Why did friends participate in the social media discussion?
What occasion or problem will the essay address?
What was the general goal of the social media discussion?
What might be the goal of the academic essay?
What kind of response and information are appropriate in the social media discussion?
What kind of claims and evidence will be expected in the academic essay?
Once students understand the new rhetorical situation, the teacher can begin to scaffold the essay writing by teaching them to describe and perform specific rhetorical moves. Below are some examples:
Providing a context for the reader.
My English teacher, Ms. Rebeca, in North Carolina found a snake in her courtyard last week. Snake bites can be very dangerous, and she wanted to know if it was poisonous before acting.
Saying why this topic should matter to the reader.
Her experience made me think that immigrants do not only have to learn about the language, culture, and laws of the new country. They also have to learn about the natural environment and animals of the new country because it can me the difference between life and death.
Introducing the central or controlling idea for the essay.
The United States has many poisonous snakes. In this essay, I will help readers identify these snakes and stay safe.
Anticipating objections, exceptions, or opposing views.
First of all, not all snakes in the United States are poisonous. Some snakes are very helpful. For example, ______________________________________________.
Today’s Discussion Question
What do you anticipate will be the hurdles when teaching the rhetorical moves to your students? What alternative strategies or scaffolds would you use?
Rebeca and All, in my view, rhetoric is largely a cultural issue. New learners of English or even fluent speakers of English who operate in different cultures than our dominant one (direct, competitive, persuasive, and rule oriented) must overcome major hurdles to match US academic rhetorical patterns in writing. Alternative steps to writing might involve encouraging students to express themselves in their preferred ways first; story telling might be one example of that type of expression. I have also found that students, native and non-native speakers benefit a great deal from learning more about cultural patters of communication and relating to others. Self awareness leads to awareness of others and of other ways to doing things, including writing. My practice encourages doing it "your" way first and then taking baby steps into doing in"my" way or the academic way.
Rebeca, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with everyone here. I hope that you'll consider dropping in every once in a while in this or other threads with other pearls from your experience! Leecy
Interesting that you should mention cultural considerations, Leecy. Many writing teachers are familiar with Robert Kaplan's (1966) five drawings in Cultural Thought Patterns in Intercultural Education, each depicting what he contended were cultural differences in the organization of ideas. According to these drawings, North American rhetorical organization is logical and perfectly linear, whereas that of native speakers of Semitic languages appears to be less so, as it incorporates many stories that veer away from the initial point. Similarly, the arguments of Romance and Russian language speakers also tend to digress into tangents that English language readers may find tedious or irrelevant. In his characterization of Asian rhetorical patterns, perhaps the most striking, he suggests that writing--and thinking--in these cultures tends to be lacking in clear logic, skirting around a central idea, which is only made clear at the end.
Although I've always felt that Kaplan's findings had troubling implications, because they suggested that Anglo-American cultural thought patterns were superior to the rest, I accepted them because, anecdotally, I noticed similar patterns in the writing of my students, and because, as a heuristic, the drawings allowed me to hone in on the rhetorical issues I needed to work on with them. A few years ago, however, I decided to interrogate my long-held assumptions about intercultural rhetoric and Kaplan on a trip to China with other writing colleagues. We visited high schools and a university, and spoke to students, teachers, and college professors about writing instruction in China. In addition, when I got back, I spent many hours speaking to my students from China about their K-12 writing experiences. I never wrote up the results, though they were quite compelling, because they complicated Kaplan’s findings for me in important ways. As it turned out, with the people I spoke to, extended writing was not a focus in their K-12 education; the writing they did do was not usually scholarly or argumentative. Many of them said that, as elementary school children, they often wrote creative pieces and were exposed to traditional stories and poetry. But once they entered the upper grades, writing was limited to short-essay response on tests. Students who took English in high school may have written 250 words once every two months, at most. Those who planned to study abroad in the United States got a bit more academic writing practice on their own, or through outside tutoring, while preparing for the SAT/TOEFL writing tests.
These accounts made me wonder whether Kaplan conflated narrative traditions and rhetorical organization. The patterns he observed in his students’ essays may have simply reflected a lack of practice with argumentative writing, not a flaw or significant deviation in their respective culture’s ability to reason in a logical fashion. What he describes as the circular thinking pattern of Asians, for instance, is reminiscent of the Japanese haiku’s way of conveying a profound message through impression and imagery instead of direct language. In fact, my students have told me that, in K-12, many creative writing prompts asked them to wax poetically about an image or a topic, evoking the words of respected Chinese thinkers, in what seemed, again, like that so-called circular pattern that Kaplan describes.
My point here is that students from different narrative traditions may not necessarily struggle more than English native speakers when constructing text-based, logical arguments--simply because of their cultural backgrounds. If they didn’t learn to write academically in their home countries, they may certainly struggle with English academic writing. If, on the other hand, they learned to write academically, their struggles may be fewer. Certainly, Adult ESL students usually fit the first category—no previous academic writing experience—so in learning academic writing, they will need to be made aware of different types of writing, and what each accomplishes (Refer to my earlier post on the rhetorical situation). We as teachers would also benefit from familiarity with and embrace of those narrative traditions when planning reading and writing lessons; the "your way"/"my way" idea you mention in your post, Leecy, would be a good way to connect students' prior knowledge about writing with the academic writing they will need to learn for college and career readiness. To take that idea one step further, teachers might help students produce academic essays in which they apply "your" way to explain and analyze stories and poems from their cultural traditions.
Thanks for expanding the cultural influences on writing patterns, Rebeca. I am very familiar with Kaplan's work and, even more, with Edward Hall's work on cultural types, which I believe is even more helpful in understanding cultural influences on teaching and learning, and, by extension, on writing. Like you, I use Kaplan's interpretations as a starting point upon which to reflect.
I believe I've told this story her some time ago. A brilliant student from South Africa spent a year living with me and my "kids" many years ago. She had finished high school in her country but wanted the experience of living and studying in the US. She wrote beautifully. I enrolled her as a HS senior. She came back after her first English class and asked, "What is this stuff about thesis statement and main ideas? I've never heard of that! It seems so silly to me!" Of course, she applied all of those logical-sequence rules, but she was not taught to write through rules. I wasn't either as a high-school student in Brazil. We just wrote a lot. :) Leecy
Thank you so much, Rebeca, for sharing your expertise with all of us during last Friday's webinar and this week's discussion. You've given us a wealth of information to chew on and so many practical ideas for teaching academic writing while supporting reading, listening and speaking, grammar and vocabulary. Also, integrating social media into writing instruction is a fantastic idea. Utilizing social media for writing is an excellent way to support learners to consider aspects of formal and informal language.
So ... given the theme of the lesson plan you shared with us, Rebeca, I need to tell my own snake story, which also happened to take place in North Carolina.
My sisters and I have enjoyed a hiking vacation in the spectacular mountains of western North Carolina several times. One year recently we experienced torrential downpours almost every day, which we think may have displaced the snakes. On the last day of our vacation, one of my sisters reported that there was a black racer snake on the porch. We shouted at her to shut the cabin door. She slammed the door shut, but before she could get the door all the way closed, the snake had slithered half-way into the cabin. Its 6-foot-long body was now half inside and half outside the cabin. It pulled itself upright and hissed at us in anger and fear. Needless to say, we weren't happy either-- even though we had figured out that it was not a poisonous snake. We knew that we couldn't open the door or the snake would come all the way inside the cabin. We ended up calling the sheriff who came and killed the snake with a stick. Sad but true!
If anyone else has comments to share or questions to pose about teaching academic writing, please do. Also, if you have a snake story to share, let us know!
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP
Susan,
I cannot locate a link to the recorded webinar by Dr. Rebecca Fernandez. Can you show me where to find it?
Thanks,
Phil
Hello Phil and all, This webinar recording is not yet available, but I'll be sure to post the link when it is. I was told to expect this recording to be added to the archives in a couple of weeks.
Cheers, Susan
Hello all...this is a great topic because reading is so important to English learners' success. I would like to add that, for beginning adult students, learning pronunciation basics through phonics helps these students learn to read with more ease and confidence.