teaching writing

In teaching writing research there are a number of issuses in recent research that do draw attention to different perspectives in first and second language acquisition camps. Some of these are authenticity, differences between L1 and L2 writing, and product versuse process.

Authenticity: How many writing exercises are authentic. what is the purpose for writing in the classroom. This is a real challene when trying to help students write for academic purposes. How can I help students become better academic writers. Real writing which is writing when the reader doesn't know the answer and wants to find out what it is. A strategy like this can be incorporated to create authentic and meaningful exercises for students.

L1 and L2 writing: research shows that students are less fluent and accurate in their writing. Students that write in their L2 have been shown to plan less when preparing to write. I think it is important to help students plan writing a paper whether it be there L1 or L2. Some students need help organizing their thoughts. Also, activities where students can broaden their vocabulary so that they can more easily express their thoughts and ideas.

Product vs. Process: in the product perspective the final form of the written sample is the most important. The written sample needs to a standard or certain criteria. Where as, the process perspective is more focus on the content and message that is trying to be conveyed by the author. As a an educator, I need to find an equilibrium between these two perspectives because students can not just write and not meet standards. Standards are a way of assessing a students progress. However, the content and message is also important. I think this perspective allows for more student creativity and is more meaningful for students.

emergent literacy: two perspectives

Two varying perspectives are outlined in Chapter 5 of P&B. They are the "reading readiness" and "emergent literacy" perspectives. The afore mentioned perspective is a more traditionalist view based on maturationist theories of development. While the latter is more contemporary and based research from children who learned to read before having formal reading instruction.

The reading readiness perspective has the children focus on four sub-skills auditor discrimination(identifying ryhming words), visual discrimination(recognize colors and shapes), visual motor skills(color inside the lines of a picture), and large motor skills(walk a straight line). By being able to complete these objectives the students then showed that they were ready to read. So this perspective believes that they are steps that need to be taken before learning how to read.

The emergent literacy perspective focuses on exposing children to rich environments that are filled with reading and writing in a variety of forms and purposes. From this children will construct knowledge about form and function. Emergent literacy encourages parents to read to children and emphasizes the importanct of home-school connections

Content reading and writing

Strategies to promote reading comprehension are grouped into three categories. They are prereading, during reading, and post reading. However, I will only be discussing prereading and during reading strategies.

Prereading strategies build a purpose and background for reading. Some techniques are simplying telling students why they are reading a particular text and what they will do with the information later. Building background through films, movies, video clips, newpaper articles, and field trips help students organize schema for the upcoming lesson. Students can also plays games or simulate situations at have real life implications.

During reading strategies building questions from the subheadings and headings and making sure that students read these. Doing this well help students create a purpose for reading.Clustering is an example where synonyms can be placed outside a main word and then students have to guess what word is in the middle and the word in the middle can come from the text. This can helps students generate meaning in context. Jigsawing activities and learning logs area also during reading activities for monitoring comprehension. Learning logs require students to formulate questions about what they think or puzzling over. This helps students assess their learning and also helps them get help. If many students are formulating similar questions than the teacher can discuss it to the entire class.