4/17


As an ESL teacher, most of my experience has been with Learning to Write and Writing to Learn Language. All the writing done in my grammar classes focuses on eliciting specific forms.  It’s necessary to evaluate their language proficiency, but in the real world they’re never going to have to write a paragraph focusing on relative clauses and passives, hypothetical conditionals, or deliberately switching between perfect, progressive, and progressive perfect aspects.  In my undergrad writing classes, the focus was partially on WLL (using vocabulary skills, reporting verbs, academic language etc.) but mostly it was learning to write especially for American academia.  I once taught a graduate writing course which focused on all aspects. They learned the way to write a research paper and wrote one in their field.  The challenge for me is that although I was grading their work, I wasn’t actually a part of their audience in regard to content.  I remember one paper on vortices on the leading edge of insect wings, and I remember just feeling out of my element as I tried to at least assess the language and the structure. 

In the Writing Center, I’ve experienced the misalignment that Ortega mentions, especially with L2 writers.  They want me to focus on WLL (grammar and maybe word choice) whereas I want to focus on LW.  I’ve got two graduate students in enrollment, and all I can really help them with is WLL concerns as they’re both just working on research to publish. Their advisors and peers have already given any needed help on the structure and expectations for research papers.  I have nothing to contribute to content on topics like procyanids in the treatment of Alzheimer’s in patients with diabetes II, so I’m left talking about appropriate use of the passive, articles, prepositions, nominalization etc. The writers seem happy, but I don’t really feel like I’ve made a big difference.

The section on authenticity and needs was interesting because I’ve struggled with that in ESL writing classes.  My students come from a variety of backgrounds and all have different majors, so their needs as writers are all different—a business student, STEM student, and journalism student will have very different needs for their writing, so it’s difficult to create assignments where they can see “how will I use this?” So I focus on assignments that will be generally useful to prepare for rhetoric and other undergrad gen-eds, but sometimes it feels artificial to me, and I think to the students as well.

This semester I’m teaching a one credit course about hunting in American culture.  The students have three different final projects to choose from, and this will be the first time I’ve assigned and will assess students entirely on content-not their language skills or their process or their ability to craft a piece of academic writing.  I’m really excited about that.

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