Official Blog Entry #5

Tarnopolsky, O.  (2000). Writing English as a Foreign Language: a Report from Ukraine.  Journal of Second Language Writing, 9 (3), 209-226.

This article continues the theme of EFL education in Central and Eastern Europe.  It examines the history of English education in the Ukraine and where it is heading i.e. what are the current needs and expectations of students.  As in Poland, the initial main focus was on communication and reading.  However, as the Ukraine moves forward in its efforts to become more international and part of the greater world community, there is a greater need and desire for EFL writing skills both for business/academics and pleasure.

Tarnopolsky outlines the challenges of developing appropriate course curriculums.  At the time of the article’s publication, there was a lack of specialists.  That may or may not have changed in the intervening 12 years.  There is also the economic consideration of the expensive of materials and teachers’ time.  Also a problem is the modification of Western training and instructional materials, most ESL oriented, to the diverse needs of students studying in a given country, in this case the Ukraine, and the somewhat different needs of an EFL classroom. 

In 1996/1997, Tarnopolsky was part of a survey that polled the needs of English language learners.  What they found was that

70 percent of potential students needed an ESP course, and not less than 65 percent of those that were eager to learn ESP preferred it to be Business English.  At the same time, all potential learners without exception said they wanted a course of General English to precede ESP (Tarnopolsky 214).

Further survey questions noted that 85% of interviewees felt a need for the four main areas of language skills.  Out of this 85 %, 99 percent claimed that they “absolutely needed reading and writing for communication” (Tarnopolsky 214).  Still further 21 percent indicated that “they required reading and writing skills in that language (English) even more for their jobs [than speaking and listening]” (Tarnopolsky 214).  Tarnopolsky attributes this to “well-established and regular contacts on personal and professional levels…[that] requires dealing with foreign friends and/or partners not so much in person as through written papers, documents, letter, etc.” (Tarnopolsky 214).  Students wanted to learn the basics writing skills but they also wanted them to be adaptive.

This survey resulted in 2 versions of writing courses.  The first was highly structured and used both the process approach and the genre approach.  For various reasons the course was unsuccessful and had a high dropout/boredom rate.  The second version was more successful and focused on writing for fun and team writing.  Writing for fun turns out to be Tarnopolsky’s main argument and it was back up by the results from the 2 versions of the writing classes and interviews of the students.  More was gained by the students when they learned things in a fun, collaborative and inductive reasoning type environment. 

Would I recommend this article to others?  Definitely!  It is even better than the previous article in that it gives concrete ideas on types of creative EFL writing assignments and the reasons behind them.

Official Blog Entry #4

Reichelt, M. (2005). English-language Writing Instruction in Poland. Journal of Second

Language Writing, 14(4), 215-232.

 I chose this article for several reasons.  One is that the Polish language is related to the Czech language, more so than other Slavic languages like Russian or Serbian, and the two countries have some cultural similarities.  Another is that I privileged to interview a Polish classmate for another Linguistics class and was curious to see if I recognized any of the problems with the system that she had identified from a student’s perspective while working on her Master’s degree in in Poland.  Yet another reason was that Reichelt cites the Leki article that I blogged about in “Official Blog Entry # 3” last week.  I was curious to see what Reichelt had to say about the observations made by Leki.

 Some of Reichelt’s main points are that English holds a special privileged place in Polish foreign language education on the basis that it will positively influence one’s career options, writing instruction is “shaped significantly by pressure to prepare students for the writing sections of various English-language exams” (Reichelt 225), and fears regarding English’s “potential to erode local languages and values” (Reichelt 225) are largely unwarranted.  English is seen as a handy tool to interact in the European community and is in affect being “Europeanized.” (Reichelt 225).

To support this theory, Reichelt focused on a large metropolitan area of central Poland and studying English language learning at several levels:  “the university’s English Department, two secondary schools and the city’s largest private language institute.” (Reichelt 216)  Her interview questions, samples of a major writing exam, some writing assignments and writing samples are provided in the article appendices.  She discovered that following the fall of Communism English language learning became more popular than ever and surpassed Russian and German as the foreign language of preference in the schools.  Primary students receive basic grammar and language instruction.  Secondary students receive more and a little writing instruction.  The majority of L2 Writing instruction takes place at the college level and in private language instiutes.  While the writing assignments given at the college level are primarily for English majors and rely heavily on genre theory, they appear to neglect the reality of L1 writing tradition in Poland and are mostly geared to aiding the major required English writing exam.  Most adults that attend the private language institutes do so to further their careers or to aide in business communication throughout Europe and the world.  The fears of English surpassing Polish are not an issue as it is primarily a tool of international communication, not a replacement for Polish thought and literature and everyday interaction.

I would recommend this article to colleagues, particularly those interested in TEFLing in Central and Eastern Europe.  The insight into the system of this one particular country is invaluable.  It also helps solidify the reality of L2 language writing in a world environment.  It echoes the problems observed by my Polish friend during her studies and supports Leki’s arguments from last week’s blog post.  I consider this to be one of the most useful articles I have read so far for better understanding the EFL attitudes of my former Czech students and work environment.

Official Blog Entry #3

Leki, I. (2001). Material, Educational and Ideological Challenges of Teaching EFL Writing at the Turn of the Century. International Journal of English Studies, 1(2), 197-209.

The main point of Ms. Leki’s article is to outline the challenges facing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Writing Instructors and programs and to challenge teachers and EFL language programs to include writing instruction in their boarder programs while acknowledging the inherent challenges and obstacles.  She does this by reviewing the 2 groups of challenges.  On one hand are the common problems language and writing teachers struggle with “such as class size, time constraints, accommodating local needs, and coping with the problems connected to lack of both teacher experience in teaching L2 writing and student training in L1 writing” (Leki 197).  On the other hand are the “more ideological” challenges of justifying the “large investment required…, the right to resist center imposed materials and methods, the need for dialogue with students about the role of writing in their lives, and the need to make L2 writing enhance learner options rather than limit them…” (Leki 197)

In the first group of challenges, the common problems, Leki points out the following problems:

·         Large classes of 30 or more severely challenge a writing teacher who must grade not only for obvious grammatical problems, but must also wade through multiple drafts per student per assignment in order to give essential and detailed feedback to the student for their overall writing development. 

·         Administrators are often unaware of these time requirements and may or may not be prepared to support the teachers in both their time needs and the material support/limited class size required for a successful writing program.

·         There is also a need to take into account the unique needs of the locale and to develop methods for meeting those needs and tailoring a program for meeting the writing goals accordingly.

·         It is not uncommon for EFL teachers without writing instruction training to be called upon to teach L2 writing and writing textbooks may or may not be available to assist the EFL teacher to improve their own L2 writing instruction skills.

·         As L1 writing is not always as valued or common in every society, it is wrong to assume that every EFL teacher has had the same personal writing experiences in their L1 language. 

·         Students also may have limited experience in L1 writing to draw on for developing their L2 writing skills.

·         There is often a heavy emphasis on grammatical “correctness” in both L1 and foreign language learning environments.  This in turn often inhibits the development of a sense of personal “voice” in the L2 as the emphasis tends to be on translating rather than expression.

·         Even those students with limited writing experience in both their L1 and their L2 have been exposed to the literature and rhetoric of their first language.  Allowances must be made by both teacher and student to adopt the rhetoric and cultural styles of their target L2 audience.  (Leki 200-202, paraphrased)

The group 2 “ideological” challenges are too many to list in detail in this brief summary and review.  Briefly, she points out once again the inherent expense of writing programs in both time and materials, the need to make L2 writing a reality and necessity for the student, and the appropriate times to resist externally imposed pedagogy from first tier English-speaking countries in favor of locally adapted methods.  In conclusion, Leki supports a “balancing act” of the challenges that face students in developing their L2 writing skills and the investments needed by both teachers and institutions to develop reflective and supportive writing programs that focus on the finding the writer’s voice and expand their skills to match their individual intellects.

I found this to be a very insightful and dense summary of the challenges facing EFL and L2 writing instruction in general.  I would recommend this article to colleagues that are particularly interested in L2 writing from an EFL perspective as this can have different challenges from an ESL environment.  Teaching English in a foreign country where it is not a primary language has unique problems that may not be found in an environment where English is the dominant language of business and everyday experience.

Official Blog Post #2

Zhai, L. (2008). Research Methods in the Study of Influencing Factors on L2 Writing Performance. Canadian Social Science, 4(6), 66-74.

The journal source for this week’s article is a little different than the usual selection of Linguistic, TESL, TESOL, TEFL or composition journals.  However, it is still refereed and pertinent to my focus for the semester.

Lifang Zhai’ article is a review of research studies and methods.  Ten studies are reviewed and analyzed for classification, method and effectiveness. Most of the studies selected for review are survey type studies and quantitative in the data gathered with most of the data being statistical in nature.

Again this is a scientifically arranged article with an abstract, an introduction, a review of methods/procedure and a conclusion.  The main goals of the article as stated in the introduction are to answer the following:

            What research methods are adopted in the study?

            What possible improvements can be made? (Zhai 67)

After discussing the various study methods used, Lifang Zhai returns to his 2 questions in the conclusion.  He has already answered the first question in great depth during the types of research, participant and instrument sections.  The part that most has my attention is the suggestions he offers for improvements based on his analysis.  He has specific areas that he sees could stand improvement in future studies.

1.    As for participants, future studies can be improved by increasing the size of samples to enhance the representativeness and generalizability of the results.

2.    And the proficiency level can be more accurately evaluated by a combination of several methods.

3.    …Future studies can pay more attention to controlling extraneous variables like time restriction, dictionary use, conducting pilot studies before the main ones and adopting more than one data analysis tool for cross-checking.  (Zhai 72)

Lifang Zhai’s recommendations are aimed at scientific objectivity of the studies and improving the chances of repeat results by other researchers under similar circumstances.

An observation…I suspect that either Lifang Zhai is a World English speaker or there is a yet another unnoticed difference between British or in this case Canadian English and American English.  At different times throughout the article, he comments on things like “the rest 8 studies” (Zhai 68).  My usual inclination as an American English speaker would be to say either “the remaining 8 studies” or perhaps in the right context “the rest of the 8 studies.”  I understand that British English sometimes has different approaches to collective nouns than American English and this may be one of those cases, or it may be a World English influence of which I am not aware.  Either way, I found it both interesting and mildly distracting (for the obsessive proofreader that I tend to be when reading other people's work...).

Would I recommend this article to colleagues or students?  Probably yes.  It is good to see what studies are being done on Second Language Writing performance and influences.  This study reviews a varied number of studies and analyzes them from both an objective and informed perspective.  It offers insight into how future studies can improve on the lessons learned in the test studies and hints at how teachers may adjust their teaching methods to better take advantage of L1 writing style and literacy in the L2 classroom.  This is a fairly valuable little tool regardless of quirks.  J

Official Blog Entry #1

Crossley, S. A., & McNamara, D. S. (2011).  Shared features of L2 writing: Intergroup homogeneity and text classification. Journal of Second Language Writing, 20(4), 271-285.  doi:10.1016/j.jslw.2011.05.007

This is a study reported in the style of a scientific report.  Not unlike the format used by the physical sciences for lab and research reports at both the academic and professional levels.  It rather reminded me of research reports that I referenced in college when I was Biology major.  The objective of the study “is to investigate the potential for linguistic features related to text cohesion, lexical sophistication and syntactic complexity to discriminate between texts written by L1 and L2 writers” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  In other words, they were hoping to identify and prove certain linguistic markers and patterns can be used to predict and identify L2 writers and L1 writers in a diverse collection of argumentative papers. 

                They compared a selection of 904 L2 argumentative papers (a mixture of German, Czech, Spanish and Finnish L1 writers) from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and 211 L1 essays from “native English speaking college students in first year persuasive writing classes” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  Several tests and measures were used for data collection and analysis.  After presenting their reasons for the methods selected and presenting the results that they found, they discussed the findings.   They felt that the results supported their claim that “intergroup homogeneity exists in the linguistic patterns of L2 writers” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  They argue that their results show that L2 writers use “less sophisticated lexical features and less sophisticated morphological features” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  These are indicated in the four linguistic features of hypernymy, polysemy, stem overlap and lexical diversity.  L2 writers words are more general resulting in lower hypernymy scores and less ambiguous and so give lower polysemy scores (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  For stem overlap, L2 writers are not as likely to use words that “share stems between sentences” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011).  That is they are not as likely to repeat the same root concept in different morphologies in the same paper or paragraph (i.e. artisic and artistically).   While L2 writers were found to employ a greater lexical diversity than the L1 writers that did not mean that they were more proficient than the L1 writers.  That is more an indicator of “rhetorical strategies” (Crossley & McNamara, 2011). 

While their study and findings appear to prove their point, I am not sure that this article has aided my focus for the semester or done anything for my personal development other than to add to my lexical knowledge of field specific terminology.  I will say that it has me wanting to explore the test and measures they used for future personal academic use.  Would I recommend this article to peers and scholars?  I would say ‘yes’ with qualifications.  If the individual is looking to determine factors that influence L2 writing styles or methods for identifying L2 writers from L1 writers in a mixed pool of essays, then yes this article could be a useful tool.  However, for myself, it did not offer as much insight into the Czech EFL psyche as I would like and only gave me limited clues as to how to specially tailor L2 writing exercises for Czech and other Slavic EFL students.

Purpose of the Blog…

This blog is in part a writing exercise for my current class:  Second Language (L2) Writing Pedagogy.  There will be about 5 posts that are reflections on articles geared toward my personal focus for the semester.  However, this blog may continue past this semester and, with that in mind, I hope to include more reflections on class readings and discussions from this current class and others,  comments on pedagogy and my development as a both a linguist and a teacher.  In that sense, I hope that this will be more like a blog in the true sense of the word…a biography/log of my development of thought, discourse savvy and understanding of my chosen profession…an online journal of sorts.

An Introduction

My name is Cathryn J.  I am a Masters of Applied Linguistics student with an emphasis on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).  I have studied, to varying degrees, about 8 other languages than my native American English.  In chronological order, these are German, Spanish, French, German, Latin, Italian, Russian, German, Czech and American Sign Language (ASL). 

As you can see by the list, I have an affinity for German and have studied it independently in grade school, intensively in high school and again non-degree seeking after completing my BA.  My first introduction to German came at the family dinner table in casual phrases tossed into conversations and the names of traditional food favorites.  In addition to an ancestral link to German food and culture, my family lived in Germany for about 5 or 6 years before my birth and most of my siblings and both parents have varying degrees of proficiency in the language.

Russian was an attempt to get as close as I could to a foundation in Slavic Languages on my path to living and working in another ancestral homeland, the Czech Republic.  Towards that end, I enrolled in an intensive 4 week certificate program in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Prague, Czech Republic.  Immediately following completion of the program, I sought work in Prague.  I eventually ended up working for 3 different schools and agencies.  My six months of teaching taught me several lessons about myself, the expectations of my teaching clients, teaching support from the agencies and ultimately how much more I would have to learn to make future international English education endeavors a success. 

The issues of second language writing that interest me are how to best interpret the needs of your students and mold your lesson plans to build on existing skills and develop better English writing techniques.