Language Learners Ing to College Graduates Holding a Grammatical Concept That Has Recently Conversation
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Including hile teaching at an academy in the United Second- States, I (LS) asked stu - dents to write personal- experience stories. One Wstudent, a girl from Burma, turned in language a painstakingly written account of her experiences coming to the United States from a refugee camp in Thai - Learners land. Unfortunately, despite all her hard work, her story made little sense in English. Since the paper needed a major in the overhaul, and we lacked the time in class, I invited her to my house. Start - ing at the beginning, we talked through her story step by step, crafting it on the computer as the details emerged from her memory. Yes, the writing came from me, but the story was hers. I believe that by giving her a voice in English, I was not only build - Writing ing her language abilities, but also bringing her story to life. Helping students to write across a language barrier is not always such a drastic process. Writing, however, is arguably one of the most cognitively demanding things that we do in school, and for that reason, it poses Classroom significant challenges to second-lan - guage learners and the teachers who work with them. A Significant Challenge with more diverse sending and re - In addition—and this is often over - Educators worldwide face a ceiving countries than in the past. looked—a skilled writer needs to growing challenge as migration Teachers in more and more countries know what different types of docu - brings learners from other parts of now face the daunting challenge of ments look like and how they are the world. According to the United working with learners struggling to constructed. What is appropriate and Nations Economic and Social Coun - write across a language barrier. typical varies with the genre—poem cil, in 2010, three percent of the Writing demands linguistic knowl - or personal letter, blog or résumé, world’s population lived outside their edge, fluency, and rhetorical exper - book report or literary analysis paper. country of origin. 1 In the United tise. Since writing is a productive Writing is a skill learned through ex - States, where we work, more than rather than receptive skill, writers perience in different settings where nine percent of American public need sufficient vocabulary and the expectations about language, style, school students—some 4.6 million, ability to construct sentences in the and structure may also differ widely. according to 2014-2015 statistics— new language. Further, they need Learning to write—in any language— were classified as English-language knowledge of the writing system for is a lifelong process. learners. 2 Migration is a global trend, that language, including spelling and punctuation rules. BY LAURIE STANKAVICH and AMANDA LIVANOS 16 The Journal of Adventist Education • July-September 2017 http://jae.adventist.org Younger learners can more easily the assignment. Hyland and Hyland ment. But periodic error correction surmount the obstacles posed by observe that “Teachers respond to stu- will give students a realistic idea of crossing a language barrier, not only dents in their comments as much as areas in which they need to improve. because they study more basic materi - texts, and experienced teachers often In some circumstances, indirect als, but also because they have a lan - tailor their feedback to suit each stu- feedback may be helpful as well. In guage learning advantage. Research dent, considering their backgrounds, this type of feedback, the teacher suggests that, if in an immersion situ - needs and preferences as well as the draws attention to errors without cor - ation, younger learners can attain na - relationship they have with them and recting them; for example, underlining tive-like proficiency in a few years. the ongoing dialogue between them.” 7 each instance or using an error coding Jill Fitzgerald’s survey of 56 studies Ultimately, teachers should keep the system. In this type of system, a of multilingual writing in preschool learners’ needs at the forefront. teacher might use a “V” to refer to through 12th grade uncovered few When a writer makes many lan- problems with verb tense, a “C” to de - surefire solutions, but several studies guage-related mistakes, teachers tend note comma errors, and so on. Coding did show that preschool and primary to focus their energy on those areas, goes a step beyond underlining by di - learners developed very similarly to often neglecting content as a result. recting students’ attention to the types native speakers of the same age However, the ideas shared by lan- of mistakes they frequently make and group. 3 In general, second-language- guage learners are as meaningful as pointing them toward the correction. acquisition research supports the per - those of the other students in the At high school and college levels, ception that younger learners have an classes. Teachers should strive to look depending on students’ maturity, push - advantage in terms of developing a past students’ language errors and ing them to correct mistakes them - native-like intuition about grammar hear what they really have to say. I selves with this approach can foster patterns in a second language. (AL) often read written assignments valuable proofreading skills. A study by The sensitive period for language at least once without marking any Ferris and Roberts showed that even learning seems to diminish around pu - mechanical errors in order to inten- when the results from only underlining berty, possibly because of neurological tionally give feedback about content. mistakes seemed equally effective com - changes that take place around that However, teachers are doing lan- pared with coding, students neverthe - age. 4 For this reason, emotional sup - guage learners a disservice if they sim- less preferred the coding option. 10 port from teachers may help younger ply ignore their errors. “Since lan- Both types of indirect feedback students adjust to learning in a new guage problems constrain the entire work best for easily defined types of language, but providing specific in - composing process, editing is a critical errors. If students already understand struction is not linguistically vital. and necessary facet of the text creat- the grammatical principle behind the Therefore, for the rest of the article, ing process, not just a clean-up activ- error, they will often be able to cor - we will offer recommendations about ity.” 8 Students must be taught the im- rect it themselves just by having their learners who are not conversationally portance of clean writing, and without attention drawn to it (like problems fluent in the language in which they help, they may be unaware of the er- with pronouns, articles, and even are writing and who are approaching rors they are making. This is why we verb tenses). However, fixing other or have passed puberty—in other (LS and AL) believe that teachers errors presents a challenge. For exam - words, those over the age of 12. should select specific assignments for ple, writing “wrong word” may not which they will correct all errors. help the student find the right word. Giving Effective Feedback Chandler’s study has shown such di- Instead, it may be helpful to provide One of the most hotly debated rect error correction to be the best suggestions, perhaps by underlining a challenges in teaching writing to sec - method at increasing accuracy both phrase and, above it, writing how a ond-language learners is how to effec - immediately and in the long term.9 native speaker might typically convey tively give them feedback. The litera - I (AL) often correct all the errors the idea. In one recent example, a ture is inconclusive about whether on my students’ short, in-class jour- student wrote that CD’s were “a com - direct correction or student self-cor - naling assignments. I don’t take off mon thing to listen to music.” The rection works best in the long term. 5 points for their mistakes, but when I teacher underlined the word thing For example, some teachers correct return their papers, I ask them to re- and, in class, pointed out that a more every error on every assignment, but view the corrections. They often ex- appropriate word was way . this time-consuming process may not claim, “Wow, I didn’t realize I made Since marking all errors can be help students write better. Other so many mistakes!” This exercise time-consuming, even if indirect meth - teachers believe that students should should not be discouraging, which is ods are used, it may be helpful at correct their own errors (self-correc - one reason we don’t recommend cor- times to focus the feedback on certain tion), but this may not always be ef - recting all errors on every assign- areas. Ferris and Hedgcock suggest fo - fective, either. 6 Most teachers rely on cusing on serious errors—those “inter - common sense, varying the approach fering with the comprehensibility of a to fit the learners and the purpose of http://jae.adventist.org The Journal of Adventist Education • July-September 2017 17 text”—and those that are “frequent” ment, students will benefit more from or “stigmatizing.” 11 Alternatively, reading preschool books than listen - teachers may choose to focus on a Language learners ing to college graduates holding a grammatical concept that has recently conversation. 14 Language learners been covered in class or a recurring may find it daunting may find it daunting to read materials problem for this particular student. to read materials beamed to their own age group, but Whatever type of feedback teach - books for elementary students and ers choose, they should also remem - beamed to their own even picture books with a few sen - ber the value of positive feedback.