LEARNER-CENTERED LANGUAGE TEACHING
PEER REVIEW COMMENT SHEET Written by:
4. Clarify for Yourself and Your Students How Their Writing Will be Evaluated
In Chapter 12 , we look in detail at aspects of assessment and evaluation. At this point, however, it is useful to recall what I said in Chapter 1 about the difference between the two terms. ‘Assessment’ refers to the techniques and procedures for deciding how well learners are doing. ‘Evaluation’ is a broader term. In addition to determining how well learners have done, it also involves making judgments about why they have performed well on some objectives and not so well on others.
When it comes to assessment, one of the ‘buzz phrases’ these days is ‘assessment for learning’ rather than ‘assessment of learning.’ Assessment for learning builds assessment into the heart of the teaching learning process, rather than being some-thing that happens at the end of the learning process. Learners as well as teachers have a role to play here and are involved in self-assessment and self-evaluation.
In any kind of assessment/evaluation, it is important that learners are aware of the criteria being used to judge their written work. These criteria need to be made explicit. Are you, the teacher, giving weight to creativity, accuracy of grammar,
86 Writing
spelling, and punctuation, use of the imagination, ability to follow the generic structure of a text, or ‘all of the above’? If ‘all of the above,’ are you giving equal weighting to all of the criteria, or giving more weighting to some than others?
What Teachers Want to Know
The focus of this question and answer section is on the relationship between real-world writing tasks and classroom, or pedagogical, tasks.
Question : What are some of the things that we can do in our writing class that refl ect the kinds of things that learners want or need to do with writing outside of the classroom?
Response : Think about some of the fundamental reasons for writing in the fi rst place. Why do we write? First, we write to preserve information that might be lost if we didn’t have it written down. Second, we write to obtain information.
Third, we write to convey information across time and space. Next, and perhaps most importantly from a personal point of view, we write for social purposes.
Finally, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, we write as an aid to refl ection.
You need to think of tasks that learners can complete in their own time, that are authentic. Even better, get learners to think of tasks themselves. Have them list the kinds of writing they do in their own language, and get them to do the same things in English – sending emails, keeping a diary, extending birthday wishes on Facebook – there are lots of possibilities. Get them to the point where writing becomes a habit.
Question : If I ask students to do the writing in their own time, they often just don’t do it, so when they turn up for class, there’s nothing for me to work with and my lesson plan is ruined.
Response : This is a common problem. Try doing it in stages. For example, give them a guided refl ection task to do for the last ten to fi fteen minutes of the class.
Initially, give them sentence completion prompts such as the following:
“In today’s lesson I learned . . .”
“I enjoyed . . .”
“In the next lesson, I would like to . . .”
When they are familiar with this task, get them to do it out of class, and bring their refl ective piece to the next class for debriefi ng. Finally, abandon the prompts and simply ask them to write a 100–150 word refl ection on the lesson out of class.
In class, give them a speed-writing assignment. Put them into small groups and have them discuss a topic or issue. If you can come up with a subject that is topical, and perhaps a bit controversial, then that’s good. After they have discussed the topic for ten to fi fteen minutes, and made notes, tell them to work individually, and to write
as much as they can on the topic. Emphasize that you want quantity rather than quality. They don’t have to worry about grammar or fi nding the right word. The have fi fteen minutes to write as much as they can. You can make it competitive, if you like. Keep them in their groups, and get them to write individually, then at the end of the period, they each count the number of words they have written and cal-culate a group tally. The group that has written the most wins. Then they spend the rest of the class drawing on their individual speed-writing efforts to produce a group piece. They polish the piece and then exchange it with another group for a group conference. Using a procedure like this, you are combining both process and product approaches to writing. The students are not spending the entire class writing but they are producing something that can be used as the basis of a productive lesson.
Question : I heard that setting up an email tandem exchange is a good way of encouraging learners to write outside of the classroom. What is an email tandem exchange?
Response : If you have students who are at the right level – intermediate and above – and if you have a connection with a teacher in another country, then tandem email exchanges are an excellent way of getting students to write outside of the classroom. It’s a bit like an electronic pen pal system. Two learners who are learn-ing each other’s language are paired up through email. For example, Carmen from Bogota is learning English, and Roxanne from Washington is learning Spanish.
Carmen writes to Roxanne in English, and Roxanne writes to Carmen in Span-ish. They communicate on topics of common interest, and can correct their part-ner’s mistakes and offer suggestions for improving their expression. The feedback will be in the writer’s fi rst language – Carmen writing in Spanish and Roxanne writing in English. So not only do they get to produce the target language, but they also receive native speaker models. Learners not only improve their linguistic knowledge, but they also get valuable information about the target culture as well.
TASK
Make a list of the ways in which learners can be encouraged to use the Inter-net to write in English beyond the classroom.
Use one of these as the basis for creating a ‘blended task’ in which the task is carried out partly in class and partly out of class.
Step 1: Pre-task: Teacher and students collaborate to prepare for the out-of-class task through one or more schema-building tasks.
Step 2: Task: Students complete task independently out of class.
Step 3: Post-task: In class, learners debrief and receive feedback.
88 Writing
Small Group Discussion
When teaching language, including the teaching of writing, we are also teaching culture. In the extracts that follow, the teacher and students discuss a concept known as contrastive rhetoric. As you read, think about your own examples and experiences with this concept.
TEACHER: During the week, I asked you to read up on contrastive rhetoric. In this discussion thread, I’d like you to address the following questions:
What is contrastive rhetoric?
What examples or experiences can you share in regards to this concept?
JENNIE: I liked what Ula Connor (1996) had to say about the study of contras-tive rhetoric being the study of how different languages and cultures have different rhetorical conventions of constructing discourse that are culturally based. When someone writes in their second language, they tend to carry the conventions of their fi rst language over to the second language.
PHIL: I read the Connor article but I didn’t quite get the point. Can you give an example?
JENNIE: Yes, well in English speaking cultures, we tend to make our position or argument clear at the beginning of our essay or whatever it is that we’re writ-ing, and then give examples to back up our point. Or we make a very clear statement of a problem and then work through to a position on, or a solution to, the problem supporting it with examples or evidence as we go along. In many Asian cultures, they don’t do this. They will begin by providing lots of contextual background information, and will kind of circle around the issue or problem. Sometimes, at the end of their writing, they may not even state their position explicitly but leave it up to the reader to infer their proposed solution. For Western readers, this kind of writing sometimes seems unstruc-tured or even pointless.
KIM: I didn’t read the Connor article or chapter, but I read what Bob Kaplan (1966) had to say. I read that he was the ‘father’ of contrastive rhetoric. In the piece I read, he had some nice diagrams to illustrate the ways that different cultures presented a text. So the Western culture was represented as a straight line, like an arrow, shooting in one direction. For Asian cultures, it was a spiral with the issue or solution at the center, and the spiral getting closer and closer to the center.
RICHARD: So does contrastive rhetoric only apply to writing? Wouldn’t it also apply to speaking?
TEACHER: You’re quite right Richard, it can also apply to spoken language. I had an interesting introduction to contrastive rhetoric when I fi rst went to a business meeting in Japan years ago. In a Western business meeting, there would be an agenda, and as each point came up for discussion, everyone would chime in with their opinion. Sometimes the discussion could get quite
heated. In the Japanese context, there was no explicit agenda. The fi rst half of the meeting consisted of the head of the meeting doing all of the talking.
He asked lots of what seemed like social questions that had nothing to do with the meeting, and I kept wondering “Are we ever going to get around to the point of the meeting?” Then he got down to business and spoke for a long time as though he was giving a lecture. I found it very strange and very frustrating. But today, we’re talking about writing, and that is where the focus is for this discussion.
RICHARD: So, how does contrastive rhetoric apply to the writing classroom?
TEACHER: Would anyone like to share his or her ideas?
JOHN: Maybe the fi rst thing is to make the issue explicit. I’d say that my learn-ers aren’t even aware of these differences, so they subconsciously transfer the rhetorical patterns from their fi rst language. The next step would be to give them lots of models of different text types in English, showing them the rhetorical patterns underlying an argumentative text, a problem-solution text, a report, and a narrative. Finally, get them to produce their own texts following the model.
NICOLE: Since I came across the concept of contrastive rhetoric, I make sure that I build it into my writing class. I have heterogeneous language groups from a variety of different fi rst language backgrounds. First of all, I get them to write a paragraph on a particular topic following the cultural format of their own language. Then I get them in small groups of mixed nationalities to discuss the similarities and differences between their different versions. Next I give them examples that have been written by native English speakers. Finally, I get them to rewrite their own paragraph following the rhetorical pattern of English.
Commentary
In this discussion thread, the students discuss the concept of contrastive rhetoric, exploring what it is, and how it can inform the teaching of writing. One student also makes the point that the concept also has implications for certain spoken genres such as a business meeting.
TASK
Summarize the ideas presented in the small group discussion and add three ideas of your own for exploiting the concept of contrastive rhetoric in the writing classroom.
90 Writing
Summary
Content focus Writing in a second language
Vignette Scaffold class time on learning – not writing, collaborative peer teaching, personalizing, generic structure of the target text
Issue in focus The process/product debate
Key principles 1. Understand your students’ reasons for writing.
2. Provide many opportunities for your students to write.
3. Make feedback helpful and meaningful.
4. Clarify for yourself and your students how their writing will be evaluated.
What teachers want to know The relationship between real-world tasks and pedagogical tasks; turning real-world tasks into learning tasks
Small group discussion Contrastive rhetoric and the place of culture in the writing classroom
Further Reading
Weigle, S.C. (2014) Considerations for teaching second language writing. In M. Celce-Murcia, D. Brinton, and M.A. Snow (eds.) Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language . Boston: National Geographic Learning.
This contribution expands on some of the key themes of Chapter 6 , including a discussion of the nature of second language writing, needs-based teaching, the process approach, the pre-task, task, follow-up teaching cycle applied to writing, and the connections between writing and the other skills.
References
Connor, U. (1996) Contrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of Second-Language Writing . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaplan, R. (1966) Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education. Language Learning , 16, 1–20.
Nunan, D. (2005) Go For It Level 2 Students’ Book . 2nd Edition. Boston: Thomson/Heinle.
Nunan, D. (2013) Learner-Centered English Language Instruction: Selected Works of David Nunan . New York: Routledge.
Rodrigues, R. (1985) Moving away from the writing-process workshop. English Journal , 74, 24–27.
Sokolik, M. (2003) Writing. In D. Nunan (ed.) Practical English Language Teaching . New York: McGraw-Hill.
White, R. and V. Arndt (1991) Process Writing . London: Longman.
Goals
At the end of this chapter you should be able to:
• differentiate between segmental phonology and suprasegmental phonology • defi ne the following terms: phoneme, stress, rhythm, intonation, contrastive
analysis
• describe strategies and techniques for teaching segmental and suprasegmental phonology
• describe four important principles for teaching pronunciation
• make decisions about which pronunciation features to teach particular student groups
Introduction
When it comes to pronunciation, language teachers can be divided into two groups:
those who love teaching it, and those who hate it. Many years ago, when I started teaching, I belonged to the latter group. This probably had something to do with the fact that I had little idea of what I was doing. At the time, I didn’t know much about the teaching of vocabulary and grammar either, but I found words, and how they were put together to make grammatical sentences, fascinating. Problems with the teaching of pronunciation are compounded by the fact that in order to teaching pronunciation, you need to know about phonetics and phonology. These subjects are fi lled with horrifying terms such as phonemes, segmentals, suprasegmentals, bilabial plosives, fricatives, allomorphic variation – the list goes on and on. One other problem had to do with the fact that when I began teaching, the language
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PRONUNCIATION
92 Pronunciation
teaching profession was still dominated by the audiolingual method, which is based on behaviorist psychology and structural linguistics. From behaviorist psychology came the notion that learning was a matter of habit formation. Structural linguistics emphasizes the importance of contrast when analyzing structures in the language.
In this chapter, I will try to keep technical terms to a minimum, although famil-iarity with some key terms is both necessary and desirable. If you are interested in a little more detail than is provided here, you might like to take a look at my introduction to language (Nunan, 2013). For a book-length treatment of pronun-ciation, I recommend Celce-Murcia et al. (1996).
Two terms that you need to know are ‘segmental phonology’ and ‘suprasegmen-tal phonology.’ Segmen‘suprasegmen-tal phonology has to do with the individual sounds of the language (the phonemes) and the differences in conceptual or semantic meaning brought about by different phonemes. ‘Buck’ and ‘duck’ both belong to the animal kingdom, but are very different creatures. One has four legs and fur, the other has two legs and feathers. The words denoting the creatures are identical except for the phonemes /b/ and /d/. Suprasegmental phonology also has to do with cont-rasts. However, the contrasts here are concerned, not with differences in individual sounds, but with differences in stress, rhythm, and intonation. These signal differ-ences, not of semantic meaning, but of attitudinal meaning.
When I started teaching, the macroskills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and language systems (grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation) tended to be taught separately, rather than being integrated. My initial distaste for pronunciation classes had to do with a teaching technique called minimal pair drilling. The creator of the drill would identify two contrasting phoneme such as ‘i’ /i/ and ‘e’ /iy/ as in the words ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’ and create a forty-fi ve-minute lesson designed to get the learners to hear the difference between the two sounds, and then to produce them accurately. The learners would have to listen to an utterance such as ‘Point to the ship’
while the teacher held up two pictures, one of a ship and one of a sheep. They would then have to point to the appropriate picture. This would be followed by a production exercise in which the teacher would say, “Listen and repeat, ‘ship,’ ‘ship’.” The students would chant “ship, ship.” Then the teacher would say “ship, sheep” and the stude-nts were supposed to make the appropriate oral discrimination. I found this mindless repetition excruciating, and those forty-fi ve-minute lessons seemed to go on forever.
Vignette
This vignette takes place in a private language school in Brazil. The teacher is a young, British male who has been teaching for three years. In a previous lesson, the students started on a unit of work which had three main goals:
• understanding descriptions of everyday objects • understanding vague descriptions
• indicating non-understanding by requesting repetition.
The topic was kitchenware. The students had done various listening, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar tasks involving objects such as a frying pan, chopsticks, corkscrew, cutting board, spatula, can opener, etc.
The teacher turns to the board and writes What is this called? He turns back to the class and says, “Listen to me read this question twice. Can you hear the difference between the two times?” He reads the sentence through twice, the fi rst time with-out any stress and the second time with the stress on ‘what.’ He then asks, “What was the difference? Lucio?”
Lucio replies, “I have diffi cult to hear.”
“You have diffi culty hearing the difference? Did anyone hear the difference?”
One student replies, “The second time ‘what’ is different.”
“Different? How different?”
“The sound is . . .” the student pauses, searching for the right word. “Stronger.”
“Stronger,” repeats the teacher. “Yes, stronger and louder, and what do we call this?”
“Stress,” replies another student.
“Stress, yes, stress. Very good, Patricia. You remembered from last week. So . . . what was the difference in meaning? Why did I stress the question word the second time?”
The students discuss the teacher’s question among themselves, and then one of
The students discuss the teacher’s question among themselves, and then one of