Group items tagged

In this excerpt of Oliver's book, Oliver discusses much of what Rose discussed on "how writer's block comes to be" in our text--therefore, I will not go over those points. My main agenda is to see what sort of techniques Oliver uses in his work to suggest how to move past writer's block. On pages 165-168 Oliver discusses the first approaches to writer's block and then three ways that can resolve writer's block. To approach writer's block, Oliver puts the responsibility on the teachers to figure out if their students with writer's block use too rigid rules when composing, and if so, encourage students repeatedly that "Writing is rewriting" and that editing should be done after writing is complete. These notions Oliver states are very close to "better said than done" tasks, since teachers can repeat such things over and over until they are blue in the face but that doesn't mean the students will take those words to heart and change their composing habits. Oliver then moves on to his three "resolutions" to writers block, strongly putting responsibility on the teacher initially. Oliver offers that teachers should have a 10-15minute discussion with their students, using probing questions to prompt ideas for writing. In turn, the students should jot down notes of the ideas that come to their minds. The point of this is to tap into relevant knowledge for their paper assignments. This sort of prompt questioning can then be used by students on their own time, alone or with friends--the teachers just lay the foundation of understanding for their students on how probe questioning can be useful when composing (shift in responsibility of overcoming writer's block from teacher to student after the excercise is learned and understood). Next, Oliver offers the excercise of freewriting to help open the flow of ideas. He recommends that teachers should give their students 10-15 minutes of non-stop freewriting on their writing topics. Students should refrain from pausing or editi

In this article, the author describes how journal writing can help ESL learners improve writing by examples and introduces different types of journals. Journal writing is a popular tool used in writing class to get students practice and provide students the method and space to explore their ideas and reflect on action, questions and experience they have had out of class. I am interested in limited-free writing and journal can be considered a good method of limited-free writing. The general topic will not limit students' thoughts, and journals can build the conversation with teacher outside of class by written language; in this sense, journals can help students develop critical thinking skills and practice English writing. Besides freewriting, there are more writing practices helpful for students.

For me, it started with some initial ideas from David Orr's book Ecological Literacy, and along with it the argument in his other book Earth in Mind: that all education is environmental education, and the purpose thereof is to increase ecological literacy. What this article sets out to do is to provide a more general understanding of what ecological literacy is (a blend between ecological thinking and environmental literacy). Learning appears in a fusion between three big learning domains: behavioural, affective and cognitive learning, and such a learner is called an authentic learner. An authentic learner is one who "can not only identify relevant dilemmas but also appreciate how their understanding of a scientific concept can influence their decision. The difficult fulfilment of students who face today's education is the highly fragmented status of disciplinary studies (the so-called academia). Ecological literacy sets out not only to introduce students to ecological concepts, but to push them so far as to recognise their place within the current ecosystem. Ecological Misconception Ecology is a strictly inter-disciplinary field of study, which draws concepts from Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Geology. Misconception appears when there is a misconnection between the seemingly holistic view of the general concepts, or a failure to express the necessary link between related concepts. Where does writing come in? Writing, according to the authors, is a reflective process. Students are first introduced to the concepts relevant to an ecological discussion. They are then asked to write three iteration essays to demonstrate their understanding along with their ability to make connections within the given concepts. Since it is important that students go through an extensive study just to recognise their place within the current ecosystem, personal reflection through writing is an essential tool not only to "show", but to connect, and make connections (writing discou

I read chapter 3, "The Bourgeois Subject and The Demise of Rhetorical Education" from the book "Composition in the University" by Sharon Crowley. In this essay Sharon Crowley makes a specific assertion on the status of the practice in teaching rhetoric in universities, namely, relating to the development of the bourgeois subject. The essay begins with a general discussion of the relevance of historical development to the point of contemporary rhetorical education. Differentiating from the practice of education of rhetoric in the ancient tradition, which focuses more on oral and discursive skills to be in a given bound discourse, contemporary rhetorical education focuses more on literary views, which is governed, and reflective of, the overall picture of the bourgeois subjectivity.

This article explores the reflective attitudes of college students concerning high school. College students are asked to reflect on whether their high school experience helped or hindered them. It also interviews teachers in high school and college to survey how each educator felt about their students and whether or not adequate methods were/had been empolyed to prepare them for college.

This article is looking at the differences in Non-Native speaker (NNS) and Native speaker (NS) in their writing discourse. The main focus is on the usage of tense, aspect, and active/passive voice in their writing. The subjects include NS, and NNS Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Arabic. They were given a class periods to answer one out of three questions. The result is very interesting for it shows the difference between the different groups of NNS and the overall differences of NNS and NS. At the conclusion of the finding, it says that NNS are less likely to use passive voice in their writing. I reflected it back to professor Wyrick's question about passive tense in Hmong. I notice that the reason we never pay attention to passive voice because we rarely use it in everyday communication that when I translated to my parents they said it's possible but it's hard to make sense out of it. I also tried to translate some transition words and found it to be very disturbing to the flow of the sentence.

Best tools and reflections to introduce creative and collaborative learning in our lessons... especially in ESL. Super cool website I found just "surfing" the web and I think it could be of some use to students interested in fun, creative ways to learn as well as ESL!! This is like a board where interesting articles related to innovative education are posted! Enjoy!!!

This is quite a small article, but it presents a certain interest as it connects writing with other social practices. I guess this assumption is crucial for teaching because it presupposes writing in the classroom with real-life purposes. The article also mentions interculturality and constant interaction of two languages, which is important when teaching writing to ESL students. The author is concerned about the specifics of effective transfer of literacy skills in bilinguals and heritage speakers. According to Martinez, as a result of traditional teaching, bilingual students tend to write with "conformity to rhetorical traditions in the dominant language" ("backwards literacy"), which creates certain problems with style, thoughts expression, choice of words and sentence patterns (i.e., mechanical transfer of the dominant language features into L2 writing). Therefore, it is necessary to develop "forward literacy", which accepts a non-standard way of writing ("writers carve out their own transcultural paths of expression"). In other words, writing of a bilingual or heritage learner implies constant shifts (transfers) between languages and cultures, and using the multiple resources of both languages in order to create an original pattern. The instructor's task is: (1) to identify multiple literacies (i.e. writing practices) that students possess and / or should possess in their heritage language and their dominant language; (2) to teach the students how to shift without mixing two languages. E.g. in early works of Spanish heritage learners, English norms penetrate Spanish writing: estoy the acuerdo instead of estoy de acuerdo. The shift should concern rhetorical strategies, which reflect cultural and aesthetical values of the two languages worlds, but not grammar or writing vocabulary; (3) teaching writing in the context of multiple social practices and contents While teaching writing, it is important to distinguish between positive transfer of skills already acqu

Wow, i like your article. It state purposely on how to help ESL student to write English better.

The study, "Prospective Teachers' Insights towards Scaffolding Students' Writing Processes through Teacher-Student Role Reversal in an Online System", researches how teachers may better understand the difficulties faced by students and how to facilitate student writing in a classroom. To do this, fourteen prospective teachers enrolled in a three week long, online, computer-supported environment where they would switch into roles as students instead of teachers. The prospective teachers were a group of second year graduate students in a Master's program in English teaching and had been studying English as a foreign language for ten years. Every week, the prospective teachers took on a different role; first as a student writer, then as a student editor, and finally as a student commentator. As student writers, they wrote and posted first drafts of their essays. Then, as student editors, they revised their peers' drafts and provided suggestions. Next, the prospective teachers evaluated their peer editors' suggestions. Finally the prospective students rewrote and posted their final essays. The prospective teachers perceived the role reversal as "a valuable experience through which they were able to understand their students' actual needs and difficulties in writing" (365). The prospective teachers also learned how to empathize with their future students' possible difficulties and will now reflect constantly on their own roles as English as a foreign language teachers and as students.

I found this video actually looking for an informative video about students liking writing ---- goes to show that most students "hate" writing for multiple reasons. Many of the reasons in the control of educators. Teachers have the power to change the negative connotation students interpret writing to be - just an assignment, no further significance to, no interest to write ---- students should enjoy writing <<< school stems from learning through writing and reading ---- students want to write on things that interest them not pedagogical theories and research assignments. Students like to learn through their own eyes - students enjoy different genres of writing. Teachers have the power to enable their students in finding their interest in the writing realm. However, students should know the general rules and process of writing whether it be a narrative or research assignment, etc. Also, (as a teacher comments within the movie) - students don't always take blogs or social-media oriented writing forums with interest since self-representation is then transmitted into a educational institution. The video also covers the public's views on possible preventing of "writing hatred." This video also reflects the concept in the Casanava article in our class packet - teachers need to work on getting students immersed in writing through allowing their personal knowledge be combined with the values and lessons deemed by the institution they are writing for.

In this article by Ken Hyland, he examines how the role of the writer and "writer intrusion" affect the impression given by a body of writing, and particularly how terms like "writer intrusion" reflect an unnecessarily negative view on the personal involvement of the writer with the subject. While he acknowledges that different contexts require different levels of formality and passive voice, new writers benefit from learning how their role shapes the meaning of their work, and how to take a particular identity as the author. He focuses here specifically on the use of the first person in academic writing and what options are available for its use across many fields; however, this is only the tip of the iceberg, he says, in the formation of an authorial identity in an academic setting.

The amount of different types of social networking existing in today's students' lives is gigantic, also fascinating for me. I find it important and interesting to think about many different aspects of social networking, its effects on our lives. I am also interested in looking at how people's writing can reflect their true identity at that particular point in their lives. So, this article, which is based on a research project, seemed relevant to me. Basically, it examines and discusses 5 things: a) what SL (Second Life) is; b) how SL fits the definition of a Web 2.0 technology; 3) how SL can be beneficial in composition classrooms; 4) brief review of the research methodology; and 5) how identity and otherness can be viewed in a virtual world and the writing that comes from that. The author says: "SL is a medium that challenges students and gives them experiences, and ultimately confidence, helping to make their writing more engaging to read and more enjoyable for them to write". As I was reading this article, it was interesting to look at SL as an example of liminal spaces for those who are newbies and feel as outsiders. Will they always feel and be viewed as "others"? Will this affect the writing they will do? To what degree is composition linked to literacy today? Can we predict its future and take measures accordingly?

This article by Donald Reitzes and Peter Burke reflects a sociological study into college students' perceptions of their college role in relation to their self-concept and identity. It is suggested that for these students their role performance is heavily affected by how well this role is integrated into their identity as a college student, and that students that have a greater sense of identification with their college student status will perform this student role and its accompanying responsibilities better than those who deviate from the student role identity - that is, those who identify more strongly with counter-roles. While this doesn't directly address composition proficiency and mastery, the basic theoretical approach would seem to follow that those students who are encouraged to incorproate their role as writers into their student and general identities would perform this role better and with more zeal than those who feel that this role is a performance unrelated to their fundamental identity.

In this article, there are 30 different ways in which this website tries to get students into their writing. Some of the ideas are probable and others not so much, but the main focus of the article seems to be relating the writing the students are doing back to the students themselves. We see in the article one idea that is really great. Number eight states to have student write on their own writing. How interesting would it be to read your own writing? Maybe not always as interesting as you would have thought? Well... how can you change that? How can you write something that you would not mind reading? These are the challenges students face, but by reading their own writing and reflecting on it, we could see a possible change in the writing being produced. Another example and method that the article shows is to have a writing buddy. Yes, I know this sounds kind of immature for college students, but in reality, I believe it would be nice to have someone that always read my works and I read theirs. You can make a friend, and you can also get a better idea of how important your writing really is.

This website/article lists, in detail, many, many (30) different ways one can teach writing. It lists exercises and methods and ideas. I don't have to explain that much of it, because it relates directly to a lot of the stuff we're learning and discussing in class.