Advanced Community College ESL Composition: An Integrated Skills Approach ADVANCED COMMUNITY COLLEGE ESL COMPOSITION: AN INTEGRATED SKILLS APPROACH JENELL RAE, JACOB SKELTON, EDGAR PEREZ, AND SARA BESETA Los Angeles Advanced Community College ESL Composition: An Integrated Skills Approach by Jenell Rae, Jacob Skelton, Edgar Perez, and Sara Beseta is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. CONTENTS Introduction 1 To the Instructor 2 To the Student 3 Acknowledgements 4 Part I. The Writing Process Introduction to Academic Writing 6 Methods of Organizing Your Writing 21 Writing Thesis Statements 25 Writing Paragraphs 30 The Writing Process 46 Comparison and Contrast 91 The Cause and Effect Essay 98 Elements of Fiction Writing 105 Joe Moxley The Persuasive Essay 112 The Research Paper 123 Part II. Sentence Structure Grammar 182 Subject-Verb Agreement 199 Avoiding Fragments 204 Subordination and Coordination 207 Comma Splices and Fused Sentences 211 Parallelism 215 Verb Tenses 222 Part III. Literary Analysis Literary Analysis 229 Short Story Analysis 235 Glossary of Literary Terms 241 Part IV. Critical Thinking and Reading Annotating a Text 248 Critical Thinking: A Must! 250 Time Management 261 Appendix A 273 Appendix B 277 Sample comparison-contrast essay Appendix C 279 Sample comparison-contrast outline and essay Appendix D 283 Synthesis essay by Malvina Torbay (E.S.L. 8) Appendix E 285 Appendix F 290 Introduction Advanced Community College ESL Composition: An Integrated Skills Approach (2019) is a textbook adapted under a grant from the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. This text is a transformation of Successful College Composition a text created by Kathryn Crowther, Lau- ren Curtright, Nancy Gilbert, Barbara Hall, Tracienne Ravita, and Kirk Swenson who adopted it under a grant from Affordable Learning Georgia to Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) in 2015. This text is a revision of a prior adaptation of Writing for Success led by Rosemary Cox in GPC’s Department of English, titled Successful College Writing for GPC Students (2014, 2015). Successful College Composition is a trans- formation of Writing for Success, a text adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. Section 1.3 was authored by Rebecca Weaver. A Handbook for Writers published and adapted by Saylor Academy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensor. To the Instructor Thank you for considering this textbook for your advanced ESL writing class. We hope that the fundamental rhetorical modes in the chapters on writing will provide helpful information to your class. We also realize that every instructor should have the freedom of choosing content, so our recommended topics for the essay assignments may be changed to suit your specific purpose. Our theme-based approach, with content from professional writers, will give your students the opportu- nity to delve deeply into the readings, learn annotation strategies, and apply critical thinking to their assign- ments. This approach allows students to build their skills, but it doesn’t expect the instructor to be the content expert. We hope it will encourage collaboration, active learning, and provide guidance towards academic topics. According to Teaching by Principles by H. Douglas Brown, “Theme-based instruction provides an alternative to what would otherwise be traditional language classes by structuring a course around themes or topics. Theme-based curricula can serve the multiple interests of students in a classroom and can offer a focus on content while still adhering to institutional needs for offering a language course, per se. …The major principles underlying both theme-based and content-based instruction are: • The automaticity principle (focus on purpose and meaningful use of language) • The meaningful learning principle (subsume new information into existing structures and memory systems) • The intrinsic motivation principle (behavior stems from wants, needs, desires from within) • The communicative competence principle (attention to language use and fluency) All these principles are well served by theme-based instruction and/or courses that are successfully able to get students excited and interested in some topic, issue, idea, or problem rather than bored or weary of over-analyzing linguistic rules. Numerous current ESL textbooks, especially at the intermediate and advanced levels, offer theme-based courses of study. Such textbooks catch the curiosity and motivation of students with challenging topics and as they grapple with a whole array of real-life issues ranging from simple to complex, they can also focus on improving linguistic skills” (222). We have also included samples of authentic ESL essays written by non-native speakers at the high- intermediate and advanced levels. By allowing your students to read and critique these pieces, we hope that they will begin to pay more attention to their own errors and gain confidence in self-editing as part of their writing process. To the Student This book has been created to provide a framework for building your skills in writing and critical thinking. It provides access to published samples from professional authors along with essay drafts from ESL stu- dents who have polished their skills in their respective writing courses. The themes in the readings will give you a variety of topics to discuss with your classmates, which may inspire your own deeper thinking and writing. Overall, we hope that as you proceed through these chap- ters, you will build confidence and develop your voice in the classroom and beyond. Welcome to the world of academic writing! Acknowledgements Thanks to all who have provided guidance and support for the creation of this textbook. Jenell Rae: A special thanks to my family for their patience during this project, my colleagues at East Los Angeles College who always share ideas and inspire me to grow as an educator, and finally, the OER movement for making life easier for students nationwide. Sara Behseta: Special thanks to Shana Pacheco and Kevin Van Houten at East Los Angeles College for their annotation ideas, which were used in the appendix of this text. My gratitude also to the ESL and English faculty at East Los Angeles College along with my district colleagues, three of whom are authors of this text, for all their wise words that made a profound impact on my teaching. And most importantly, I wish to thank my parents and particularly my husband, Sam, whose support can only be described as the most meaningful of all. Edgar Perez: First, I want to thank the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges for their sup- port in the OER initiative. I also want to specially thank my E.S.L. colleagues at the Los Angeles Commu- nity College District for their support in this textbook project. This text is a testament of your knowledge and collaboration efforts. I want to thank Dr. Reginald Hubbard for your encouragement, support, and ideas for this textbook. Finally, to my family, thank you for your patience and understanding during this project. PART I THE WRITING PROCESS Introduction to Academic Writing Becoming a Successful Writer In her book On Writing, Eudora Welty maintains: “To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most.” But writing well is difficult. People who write for a living sometimes struggle to get their thoughts on the page; even people who generally enjoy writing have days when they would rather do anything else. For people who do not like writing or do not think of themselves as good writers, writing assignments can be stressful or even intimidating. And, of course, you cannot get through college without having to write—sometimes a lot, and often at a higher level than you are used to. No magic formula will make writing quick and easy. However, you can use strategies and resources to manage writing assign- ments more easily. College will challenge you as a writer, but it is also a unique opportunity to grow. Writing to Think and Communicate One purpose of writing is to help you clarify and articulate your thoughts. Writing a list of points, both pro and con, on an issue of concern allows you to see which of your arguments are the strongest or reveals areas that need additional support. Putting ideas on paper helps you review and evaluate them, reconsider their validity, and perhaps generate new concepts. Writing your thoughts down may even help you grasp them for the first time. Another important—and practical—function of writing is to communicate ideas. For your college classes you are required to write essays, research papers, and essay responses on tests. If you apply to other col- leges or universities, you will have to compose letters of application, respond to specific questions, or write an autobiographical sketch. When you enter your chosen career you may have to send emails and write reports, proposals, grants, or other work-related documents. You must correspond with clients, business associates, and co-workers. And on a personal level, you want to contact friends and relatives. You may even find yourself responding to a community or national issue by writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Writing is an essential skill you must have in order to function in the twenty-first century, but like any skill, it is something that can be acquired and refined. Some people naturally express themselves better than others, but everyone can learn the basic craft of writing.