Writing in ESL

In this essay, I will explore on different writing activities and writing feedback that would suit each of the 4 categories of student interest, as recognised by Lipstein & Renninger, and how their research, could be generalized for our own ESL students.

Introduction

Even though it is every teacher’s dream, to see all of their students becoming interested writers, but it didn’t occur to us that we can teach them to ‘love’ writing. But instead we chose to see interest in writing as something that a person was born with. Although interest plays a large role in motivation and confidence, we need a clearer misunderstanding of how teachers and classroom practices can influence student’s interest for the act of writing. Rebecca L. Lipstein and K. Ann Renninger studied the perceptions of 178 students in grades 7, 8 and 9 to develop this understanding. As a result, they had offer characteristics of students in four phases of interest and describe instructional approaches to meet students wants and needs.

Why does interest matters?

John Dewey (1913) explains that students that are interested in a subject will have more confident about their work in relation to that subject. Therefore it is effortless for them.

A person’s interest is said to the most powerful tool in learning. Because, interest can influence attention, goals and levels of learning.

“Even though interest has been recognized as an important condition for learning, educators continue to wrestle with the difficulties of working with academically unmotivated students”

(Hidi & Harackiewic, 2000)

Teachers didn’t know on how their role could help the students to flourish their interest. It is because that teacher’s often have thoughts that whether the students are interested or not, that they might miss to recognize that they could contribute in developing the student’s interest. A teacher’s dream is to see their students have interests in writing and becoming a good writer. But in reality, we find only few of our students with these traits.

As for writing, having an interest definitely affects the way how the students approach writing and the results that they receive.

“Research on writing and motivation indicates that students who have an interest for writing are more likely to set affective goals, make use of helpful strategies, and seek feedback as they work with writing tasks”

(Lipstein & Renninger, 2007)

Suitable writing strategy for each category of students.

Phase one students

Phase one students are students that are in primary school. These students are more likely to describe writing as ‘boring’ and needs a lo0t of work. Usually they are confused on how do they approach the task.

What they wants

§  Phase one students wants teachers to understand how writing is something that is hard for them to do.

§  They want writing to feel easier for them. Something they would enjoy and not hard work.

What they need

Teachers play the role of facilitating what the student wants. Teachers will need to facilitate them in receiving concrete suggestions and strategies for them to write.

Writing activities that could be done

1)      Creating sentence completion

§  Provide a worksheet that has a word written on it. For example, ‘Apples, Apples.

§  Ask them to write simple sentences to describe the word

Why?

§  Students can relate the words with what they know. So the task will not be a burden to them.

§  Students could trace the beginning part of the sentence and just add one or two more sentences to describe the word.

§  Students could build their grammar

2)      Create an organized and detailed writing prompts (this involves 4 worksheets)

§  1^st worksheet

-          Give a worksheet with unfinished sentence. For example ; ‘When I grow up I want to be              .’

§  2^nd worksheet

-          This worksheet will have an instruction. For example ; Let’s say the student wants to be a scientist. The instruction would be ‘What will I do if I want to be a scientist?’

-          Ask them to fill up the box with simple words explaining on what they will do if they want to become a scientist.

§  3^rd worksheet

-          Prepare the worksheet for sentence completion. For example ; ‘When I grow up, I want to be a scientist

-          Provide 2 boxes in the worksheet and label them :

-          Box 1 – ‘First I need to do                             .’

-          Box 2 – Then, I will                            .’

-          Ask the students to fill up those 2 boxes in simple words / sentences.

§  4^th worksheet

-          Give a blank piece of worksheet, have the students to join the words that they had provided to build up sentences.

-          During this exercise, teachers will need to walk them through it and have them help each other.

Why?

§  Students will know how to organize their writing, by which comes first method

§  They will be able to make up sentences by joining them together

§  Its fun and not pressuring, they will constantly have to use their imagination to make up words to complete their writing.

Phase two students

What they want

Phase 2 students already have the basics on how to write. At this phase they like getting feedback from the teachers. They take writing is to be done in order to please the teachers and getting back compliments / feedback.

What they need

These students have this impression of that the right way to do it is the teacher’s way. They need to be taught and encouraged to have their own say in their writing.

Writing activities that could be done

1)      Creative story writing

The teacher could either give them a topic or let them choose a topic on their own. Have them construct a story. During this session, the teacher will facilitate them on how they should write their stories, giving suggestion for them to ponder on or why they had chosen that particular topic. Have them give ideas to each other, while the teacher gives comments or feedback about those ideas.

Why?

§  Promotes creative writing

§  During the session, the teachers will facilitate, they like getting feedbacks on the article that they are currently doing, from what the teacher comments on, they improvise.

§  With active interactions between teachers and students during the sessions and getting instant feedback at the same time, they will put in extra effort, effortlessly.

Phase Three students

What they want

Students in this phase loves writing and consider it as a place where they can go and be free. It is fun for them because they get to make their own rule on what they wanted to write. And because they like writing they would revise and will gladly spends more time on writing. They do not prefer feedback and peer conferencing on telling them how to write.

What they need

To encourage them to write and to channel their enthusiasm and to broaden their awareness of writing conventions and audience expectations.

Writing activities that could be done

Because of their need to express themselves through their ideas, this kind of activity would suit them. In this phase, the students already know the different types of writing that they need to use when they are given a topic to write. (narrative, persuasive or expository).

§  Find an article for them to express their ideas. For example; write an expository essay on the topic ‘Heavier punishments for traffic offenders.’

§  Have them explain reasons to support this topic. Use several examples to support that reason.

Why?

§  As they love to express themselves in writing, by providing a topic and let them write it however they want it, could encourage them more.

§  They don’t mind the extra revision that they need to do, and by doing research ti expands their ideas.

§  They could read aloud their essays and take part in a teacher – guided discussions to defend their own point of view.

Phase Four students

What they want?

In this phase, the students wants to please audiences and themselves by showing balance between their personal standards to a more widely accepted standards of good writing.

What they need

They need to continuously be challenged in order to improve and they want and do not mind receiving constructive feedback about their writing.

 Writing activities that could be done

Research writing

§  The objective is to help the students incorporate sources in their essay

§  Why we use sources?

§  They will need to do some research as a way to sort out different reasons.

§  Facilitators need to emphasize that in order to prove that the ‘thesis’ is correct, they will need to go beyond and research all ideas.

§  Let the students look at the author’s use of sources. Asking some possible questions along with it. For example ; ‘What do quotes do?’, ‘How does the author use the quote?’, ‘What is the balance between the quotes and the author’s own voice?’

§  Outline to the students what are the ideal structures for quotes.

§  Break them into small groups and have them discuss from each other’s papers

§  Write out their essays.

Why?

§  As they do not mind peer conferencing, it will help them construct and improvise.

§  A more detailed topic was given because they are already good writers. And from that detailed topic, they will need to do a lot of revising as their writings will then be presented to audiences.

Suitable writing feedback

Phase one students – Indicidualised feedback

As they are not good in writing, they are a bit confused on how to approach the task. So, an individualised feedback is the best because they want a concrete suggestion type of feedback from the teachers, to tell them whether they are doing it correctly in a constructive manner. So, the suggestions are manageable and easier for them to digest, thus making the writing feels easier.

Phase Two students – Individualized feedback

These students most likely will accept suggestion given to them without any questions. And if they completely accept those suggestions, it could not progress them to be a good writer. Those suggestions could be posed as questions, such as,

‘What if ….?’

‘Why did you choose these?’

‘What did you choose these?’

‘What are you trying to state in the paragraph here ….. is that what you mean?’

By posing the suggestions as questions, it will make them think of other options that they can use.

Phase Three students – Individualized feedback

The problem here is for the teachers to give feedback without dismissing as contrary or intrusive to their way.

Feedback could be given through audience response. It is due to their desire to impress an audience.  For example ;

                  ‘Could you make the point clear to me, because I am not sure what

                  you mean?’

With this type of comments, these students most likely won’t dismiss it. The reason being is that these comments do not state negative comments about their writing.

Phase Four student – Individualized feedback and peer conferencing

Individualized feedback

It is important for comments or suggestions to be balanced. Adding in constructive suggestions, for their improvement. Reason is, it challenges them and help them grow as good writers.

Peer – conferencing

Constructive comments given by peers could help them realise what are other ideas that other people might have. Therefore by comparing their writing to their peers, they could stretch their writing in order to improve.

During the process of doing this assignment, I had read a few online journals and e-books that I found on the internet, regarding Lipstein & Renninger’s research. I am not an ESL teacher currently, but I can relate their findings to what I experienced during my school years. I still can recall on how I hate writing. But, from the activities that were used by my teachers to grab our attention and help us write, makes writing seems like we are not doing writing, compositions and sort at all. At the same time, we would actively participate in giving or voicing out our opinions and putting it into words. And at the end of the day, voila! We had written something.

If I were to ask from the point of view of an ESL teacher, I think that Lipstein & Renninger had helped all teachers by summarizing the phases of students and by what they prefer and don’t prefer. So, teachers could start building their lesson plans from there. According to types of phases that the students are categorized in.

It is important for all teachers to know the strength of their students. It will make activities be done much easier. 2 things could be accomplished, the student understands what they are learning because the teachers does not only teach but facilitates them on what they need. Teaches on the other hand achieved their teaching goals.

What I understand from their work also, is that to teach writing to student is age – related. Most important thing is interest. Because according to them, interest for writing affects the ways that students approach writing and the results they achieve. To have them be interested in writing is the first step to sculpt a good writer.

Student wants to be heard. So, by facilitating their needs according to the phases, it will deepen their interest for writing.

“It is worth noting that the needs of students in one phase becomes the wants of students in the next phase.”

(Lipstein & Renninger)

Therefore, by noting their needs, students will then develop more interest in writing, enjoying what was once hard for them.

Also, in their research, they had provide, the proper ‘what kind of feedbacks’ on student’s paper, according to their phases.

We cannot use only certain kind of feedback for all of the students. Certain phases might use or need more than 1 type of feedback in order for them to be a strong writers.

Advantages of peer – conferencing

Lipstein & Renninger spoke about peer – conferencing in their work. It is a successful ambition, students could learn a lot not just about what are their strength and weaknesses, but also how and what it takes to make a good story.

But not all phases likes peer – conferencing. Because to them, at that stage they don’t like to be criticise especially by someone whom they think who is not superior enough to be commenting their work.

But at certain phases, peer – conferencing are needed and could be useful because it helps  them see their work from other people points of view, not just one particular person.

There are many pros and cons of peer – conferencing, and every pros will have its cons.

The pros of peer conferencing are we get to view our own writing from other people’s perspective. From there we would know what did we do wrong, how do we correct it and so on. Peer conferencing is good because we get to share ideas with other people. No one can say the same thing as someone else; therefore, we get wide variety of opinions.

Furthermore, I do believe that the more students are actively engaged in something, the more and the better they learn. Through peer conferencing students takes an active role, because all these times, teachers and students worked in an isolated environment. A situation where students write and teacher’s grade. Therefore, students missed out on an opportunity to learn from each other, having conversations about their writing and read more. So, by having student participates in peer conferencing, they will take interest at other’s writing. Also a root for them, when they receive back their essays from their teacher’s.

Promoting peer conferencing will have the students understand that they are not being lectured to but they can teach each other. Students must know what is wrong before having to correct it. Therefore by viewing their peers work, the more they could learn and apply that knowledge to their own writing. They train their eyes to spot the mistakes, so that they won’t repeat that same mistakes.

Lastly, the pros of peer conferencing are less paperwork for teachers. When peers edited their work, teachers could concentrate more on the students.

Disadvantages of peer conferencing

Peer conferencing has no grading system on the qualities of peer review. Different journals have different sets of standards. We would not know the reviewer’s quality and expertise.

There might be chances that a good writing could get rejected, whilst a poor writing could easily pass. Because, maybe writing are judged whether the other peer likes them or not, rather than the results of the writing.

Students don’t really know how to evaluate writings. Perhaps more on minor, mundane mistakes, for example; grammar and punctuation mistakes rather than the content.

Having students to judge their peer’s work could be uneasy. Resulting to them not giving honest comments.

Can Lipstein & Renninger research be generalized.

After reading through their work, I would suggest their theories can and should be generalized. Because, we would just focus on the needs that they had stated, and enhance student’s interest in writing rather than making them feel like it’s a burden. Therefore, understanding of the student’s characteristic according to their phases could really help teachers.

By learning writing, students enhance their skills in grammar, spellings and learning new words, in their way as how they want it to be. Provided that lesson plans be carried out effectively, the results would be amazing.

Conclusion

I concluded that, and we all know that to educate people is a tedious process. Everyone has their own sets of mind and their own way of thinking. But in an overall manner, in writing, each phase of students has their own ways on how they need their lessons be taught to them. it is important for teachers to listen to their students need, to make them be successful and achieve the satisfaction of being a good educator.

REFERENCES

v  5 reasons student should be doing peer editing, viewed at http://secondarysolutionsblog.com/5-reasons-students-should-be-doing-more-peer-editing/ accessed on 12^th Nov 2013.

v  Renninger, K. Ann, (2009)'Interest and Identity Development in Instruction: An Inductive Model', Educational Psychologist, 44:2, 105 — 118

v  Rebecca L. Lipstein and K. Ann Renninger (2007), Interest for Writing: How Teachers Can Make a Difference, The English Journal, Vol. 96, No. 4 (Mar., 2007), pp. 79-85,

vEngaging students in the writing process, viewed at http://engagingstudentminds.wordpress.com/author/bethanyalder/ accessed on 12^th Nov 2013.

Communication skills for ESL teachers

  

A fundamental to good teaching and learning are questioning. When teachers have effective questioning methods, as a significance feature of their lessons, students will most likely to:

1.                  Develop a much fuller understanding because they would try explaining it by themselves

2.                  Could easily recall their existing knowledge

3.                  They are clear on the main point of the lesson

4.                  Able to handle tasks or problems at a higher level, therefore expanding their ability to think

5.                  Able to link their prior knowledge with the ideas in the lessons

6.                  Clear about the task and knows what to expect; easily connects with the task

7.                  Be able to develop independence thinking and learning

Common issues

Students understanding of a topic or idea is usually not fully developed as the teachers would expect them to be. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds may respond with negativity to some form of questionings due to lack of self – esteem and their desire to appear respected in front of their friends. Therefore by modifying on how questions are asked will improve their interest in learning.

Handling the issues

Effective questioning is a skill that can be learned. All teachers’ questions their students, but in order to do it well, it requires an understanding and planning on how to make a student engage with the lesson and thus pushing them to think.

How can we be an effective questioner?

1. Knows how to promote responses and having students to response on questions that are given
2. Knows how to plan questions for and during learning
3. Knows how the technics used for questioning could improve students cognitive abilities
4. Knows how to avoid pitfalls and knows how to plan alternative questioning technics
5. Learn classroom tactics on how to be an effective questioner
6. Able to respond to students answers, that will encouraged them to participate more

The most important feature in the classroom are the interactions between the students and their teachers. It doesn’t matter if teachers are to help learners to learn basic skills or better understanding in solving problems, or to be engage in high level thinking, questions are vital. Questions doesn’t have to be only the teachers asking them to students it could be done the opposite way. Both is important in teaching and learning. Questioning is a principal skill that anyone can learn and use it. Therefore, ways to help students to develop their own ability and knowledge on how to raise and formulate questions could be learned. Raising questions and knowing the right questions to ask is one of the important skills that pupils need to learn.

Research into questioning has given us some clear points on how it works. These provides the basis to improving classroom practice. The common issue identified is that students are not given enough time for them to think of an answer, the other issue is, some teachers has the tendency to ask too many questions of the same type.

What is the purpose of questioning?

Teachers ask questions for several reasons.

1. To get students attention and interests
2. To challenge students thinking
3. To check on their understanding and prior knowledge
4. Stimulating their prior knowledge in order to create new meaning and understanding
5. To have students focusing on key concepts and issues
6. To extend students way of thinking from concrete and factual to evaluative and analytical
7. To lead students with planned sequences which in turn establishes key understanding
8. To nurture their way of reasoning, evaluation and problem solving
9. To promote students way of thinking on what they have learned.

Open and closed questions asked will depend on the reason for asking it. If teachers wants to check on their students understandings, they can use close questions. Close questions have only one clear answer. Example questions like, “What is the name of the main character in this story?”.

But, if we want to help our students develop a higher level of thinking skills, we should ask open ended questions. This allows the students to give variety of responses that are acceptable. Open ended questions are useful to ask during debriefings and discussions. Example questions like, “Based on the story, what moral values that we can learn from it?”. Questionings tactics is sometimes used to bring the students attention back to the lesson. For example, “Do you agree with this Gary?”.

Questioning pitfalls and solution

Even though the common form of interaction between a teacher and her students are questioning, but, sometimes, those questions are not always well said or productive for students learning.

Not clear on why the question was asked: teachers need to refer back to what kind of lesson that they are planning. Does it focuses mostly on the facts, or rules? Or sequences of actions? If that is the lesson plan, close ended question is much more suitable. It relates directly to the knowledge. But if the lesson plans are made to focus more on concepts or comprehensions, open ended questions would be more appropriate. Because it will relate students on how to analyse and evaluate.

Too many questions are asked at one time: asking about an issue that is complex will result to complex questions. And because these questions are done orally, students will find it difficult to understand what is needed and easily become confused. When dealing with complex issues, teachers need to tease out the issues first and to focus on one idea only. This helps student’s use concrete, direct language.

Asking difficult questions without constructing the students: when there is no planning of questions with increasing difficulty the above happens. Sequencing questions helps students to climb to a higher level of thinking.

Not serious in treating students answers: sometimes teachers ignores answers that is a little off topic. By doing so, they fail to see the effects of these answers and would certainly missed out the opportunity to construct on them. Teachers should ask the pupils why they gave that answer in the first place, also ask them if there is anything that they would like to add to that answer. Ask other students to help extend the answer, but it is important not to cut them off and moving on too quickly if the answer is wrong.

Dealing inefficiently with misconceptions and wrong answers: teachers’ sometime has the idea that they might risk damaging their students self – esteem if they correct them. But, there are ways of handling this, the positive way. Teachers could use scaffoldings or providing prompts to help their students correct their mistakes.

Some other practical tips for teachers when practicing questioning sessions are, teachers should be clear when asking questions. We need to make sure that the students do what we want them to do. Next is, to plan sequence of question to challenge students cognitively. Always give time for the students to answer and when necessary, provide prompts.

How to make effective questioning

Effectiveness is central to how questions are asked. All students will respond well to teachers that shows interest in their ideas and opinions. The way teachers asking the questions or listening to how students’ response is important. Good teachers always shows genuine curiosity when asking questions, this is to invite their students to think together with the teacher. For example, “How do we know that this is the correct way?”. And the way teachers respond to students’ answers are also important.

Creating an environment where students feels that there is no harm in making mistakes: This is vital. If students to build their own confidence and taking risks. To avoid students feel vulnerable, teachers may ask the students to write the answers at the same time and then hold them up so the teachers could see. And it is also vital that whatever students contributes are to be taken seriously by both teachers and the whole class. Contributions from students are listened to and taken seriously by both the teacher and the class. Ensure that the other students give proper responses and not be critical. Teachers could also model making mistakes, just to show their students that it is alright to make mistakes.

Probing: when a student’s responds to questions, probing’s are useful and can be used to dig into more informations, to clarify on their responses and to get the students to extend their answers.

Providing students the sufficient waiting time: if a teacher could spend around 3 seconds to wait for the students respond and before giving out the next questions, there are several benefits for that. Teachers could encourage students to give variety of responses and also building confident in them to take the ‘risks’.

Why is repertoire of questioning strategies important?

When students gives active responses to the learning, then the questioning is effective. As suggested by Borich 1996; Muijs and Reynolds 2001; Morgan and Saxton 1994; Wragg and Brown 2001, effective questioning has the following characteristics:

• Objectives of the lessons are linked closely with the questions prepared.
• Close end questions used to check understanding of the students
• Open end questions dominates.
• Learning of basic skills are increased by having questions that exposes new content.
• Sequences of questions are planned for the cognitive level to increase as the questioning goes on. Ensuring the students are to answer questions that needed higher thinking skills.
• Students have their own opportunity to ask and answer questions amongst them.

Their research tells us the importance of using open, higher level questions in order to develop students thinking skills. There must be a balance between open end and close end questions, but, depending on the topic or objectives of the lesson.

If students did not respond to the teachers, then there is no point whether you have structured and planned a good set of questionnaires. This is the drawback with students that are shy, students that are not interested in learning or older students that are not used to interactive learning.

Rowe 1986; Black and Harrison 2001; Black et al. 2002 had identified some strategies to attract students attention and to get them to respond. To provide an environment where students feels safe in making mistakes and not be judged or ridicule. Good prompts given by the teachers to build confidence for the students to at least try to answer. A ‘no – hands’ approach on answering questions, where teachers chooses the respondent. And lastly, wait time of 3 seconds.  Rowe 1986; Borich 1996, their research shows that the average wait time is 1 second.

“Lower-level questions usually demand factual, descriptive answers that are relatively easy to give. Higher-level questions require more sophisticated thinking from pupils; they are more complex and more difficult to answer. Higher-level questions are central to pupils’ cognitive development, and research evidence suggests that pupils’ levels of achievement can be increased by regular access to higher-order thinking”

The above are research done by Borich 1996; Muijs and Reynolds 2001; Morgan and Saxton 1994; Wragg and Brown 2001; Black and Harrison 2001.

It is useful to use Blooms Taxonomy (Bloom and Krathwohl 1956) when creating and structuring high level questions. It classifies on levels of intellectual behaviour that is important during learning into six levels of complexity and abstraction. Those are:

1. Knowledge – to describe, recall
2. Comprehension – to translate, review, report
3. Application – to interpret, predict
4. Analysis – to explain, analyse, criticise
5. Synthesis – to design, create, construct
6. Evaluation – assess, compare, argue, select.

From the scale of order, knowledge is the lowest and evaluation is the highest.

Therefore it can be concluded that, researches has suggested that good teachers uses a great number of open questions. With, of course, mix of both open and close end questions depending on the lessons objectives. Teachers that doesn’t provide open end questions may provide inadequate cognitive challenges for their students. Because of its main importance in teaching and learning, questioning is by far the most researched area and the most successful.

Referring to Blooms Taxonomy, the questions that are prepared according to the text ‘The Arrogant Swans’ are as follows.

1. Knowledge – for students to retain information for specific task or other related informations

§  What is the story about?

§  Who paid golden feathers to the King?

2. Comprehension – for students to process the knowledge that they already had to answer the questions

§  What do you think happens to the swans when the bird went to see the King?

§  What did the bird plead to the swans?

3. Application – students to apply their existing knowledge to apply to a new context.

§  What do you think happen to the swans after the King gave his orders?

4. Inference – to link students to a more abstract, conceptual thoughts

§  What moral qualities does the story teaches you?

§  Why do you think the swans doesn’t allow the bird to stay in the river?

5. Synthesis – for students to collect from available knowledge and respond to new knowledge

§  What would you do if you were in the bird’s situation?

6. Evaluation – students to use their knowledge to form their own judgement and to stand by them

§  Is the King’s action towards the swans appropriate? What do you think?

§  What conclusion could you draw from this story?

Summary

Why repertoire questioning? Repertoire questionings will assist students to expand the way they think that are usually based on contractual and factual thinking, to ways of thinking analytically and to evaluate. Repertoire questionings also helps to establish key understanding, students must be lead through a planned sequences of questioning. This method also allows students to problem solving, formulation of hypotheses and also to promote reasoning and the way they have learned. Researchers has proven that questioning technics helps develop critical thinking and cognitive ability for the students. The way teachers imply them is important. Teachers must learn on how to attract students in the lesson and in way of questioning. It is crucial for the students to feel that the questions put to them are not as if they are being interrogated. As said before, questioning is something that both teachers an students can both learn and benefit from it.

“we learn 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we hear and see, 70% of what we discuss with others, 80% of what we experience ourselves and 95% of what we teach”

(William Glasser)

REFERENCES

v  Morgan, N. and Saxton, J. (1994) Asking better questions: models, techniques and classroom activities for engaging students in learning. Pembroke. ISBN: 1551380455.

v  Rowe, M. B. (1986) ‘Wait time: slowing down may be a way of speeding up!’. Journal of Teacher Education 37 (January–February) 43–50.

v  Black, P. and Harrison, C. (2001) ‘Feedback in questioning and marking: the science teacher’s role in formative assessment’. School Science Review 82 (June) 43–49.

v  Pedagogy and Practice: Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools (2004). Viewed at http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/5671/2/cea27fdd968639560cb245efafd9c2ff.pdf. Accessed on 12^th March 2014