For blog post by Monday, noon: Choose a quote or concept about culture, digital technologies,  plagiarism, error correction, or automated marking that resonates with you from one of the “boxes.” Explain why it resonates with you, applying it what else Hyland says about the concept and to relevant writing experiences, life experiences, and/or teaching experiences.

Our first guest writing researcher, Warren Merkel, will come class on Tuesday to talk about his L2 writing research.  His dissertation focuses on UI L2 undergrad writers' pereceptions of and experiences with plagiarism using interviews and students' writings.

 Can you post a question or two for him?

For blog post by Thursday noon.  Choose a quote or a concept about context, literacy, technology, identity, or dominance that resonates with you from one of the quote or concept “boxes.” Explain why it resonates with you, applying it to what else Hyland says about the concept and to relevant writing experiences, life experiences, and/or teaching experiences. 

Try to make sure all the concepts are covered.  If you choose the same concept as a classmate in a previous post, make sure you reference that post and its author.  Thanks!

Read the chapter carefully, not only the material on your chosen concept and quote or concept box. 

For blog post by Monday afternoon: Are you more inclined toward text-oriented, writer-oriented, or reader-oriented understandings of writing?  Please explain why you are attracted to one orientation over the others. In terms of the writer-oriented theories, do you subscribe more to the Expressivist, Cognitivist, or Situated understanding of writers and writing?  Why?

 

pass-nonpass option form (due by Jan 30th)

HOPEFULLY this will work. I just watched a youtube video on how to post PDFs here. Here goes nothing...

or something, I hope.

FORM

Challenges and Purposes for Teaching a FL (with) Writing

Challenges:

As an instructor, the biggest challenge I have faced when teaching EFL (with) writing has been to make students understand two important concepts: that writing is a process, and that writing in a FL is not simply translating literally their thoughts from their L1.

First, most of the EFL students I worked with back in Venezuela thought that they worked better “under pressure,” and used to write their papers last minute. It didn’t matter how long back I had given the assignment details, it was easy to see their papers had been written in a rush, and they never had drafts. I am not sure if I can associate that mentality to age (young college students) or culture.

My Venezuelan students had some difficulty grasping the idea of writing different drafts until getting to the final version of a paper. Some colleagues and I encouraged this idea all the time in our classrooms, but the only way to make them have different drafts was by assigning each a grade, or making them mandatory.

The second challenge I have encountered, students writing in the TL with L1 structure, is something I noticed with my EFL students back home, but also recently with American students writing in Spanish as a Foreign language. It is hard to make them see how this is not right without telling them how to write the sentence, because, how do you change the way someone has been thinking their whole life?

Purposes:

After reading Reichtelt et.al., I realized that I had a very narrow view of teaching a second or foreign language (with) writing. In my teaching practice, I used writing to reinforce grammar or language structures, to motivate students in their own learning by, for example, asking them their opinion on a particular aspect of the TL culture they were interested in; and to teach content related to culture or literature. Because of the nature of my courses, I never needed to teach or ask for writings they might find more practical, such as résumés, application letters and the like.

Hi SLA: Writing Class! Or should we call ourselves the Language Ladies' Lodge?  I am eager to meet those of you I don't know yet and to accompany you on this journey to learn about second language writing.  Can you please introduce yourselves on this blog before the first day of school?  


Tell us the program you're enrolled in, the languages you speak and write; what types of writing you do in each language; what kinds of writing you like to do and why; what languages, courses, and levels you have taught and/or tutored; and what your language-related research interests are.


I can start.  I speak English as an L1 (first language) and Spanish as an L2 (second language). At various times, I have also spoken Italian and Quichua (an indigenous language in Ecuador), but I probably couldn't speak them now on demand--it would be a huge embarrassment! 


I like to write non-fiction in English, mainly essays about travel and family.  As part of my job, I also write academically in English, mainly reviews, proposals, articles, comments on student papers, and of course, endless emails!


I've written some stories, both fiction and non-fiction, in Spanish, and have taken Italian Composition,  where we did many imaginative and fun writing exercises.  In Quichua, the only original piece I've written was a short speech for my son and daughter in law's engagement ceremony in Ecuador.


I used to teach various levels of Composition and ESL Writing at different colleges in Chicago.  At Iowa, after a few years of teaching Rhetoric, I now mostly teach travel writing, tutor-training courses for the writing center I direct, and this SLA-writing course. For better or worse, I spend as much time on administration for the Rhetoric department and the writing center as I do on teaching and research.