Week 5:The New Programmatic Issues In Teaching

Key Points:

The students’ EFL writing is deeply influenced by L1 writing instruction or experience. Now there are a lot of studies to analyze the effects. In the reading “Situated Writing Practices in Foreign Language Setting”, the author selected 12 studies which were divided into 3 stages in order to highlight the relationship between the students’ perceptions and use of rhetorical patterns from L1 to L2 or L2 to L1. And we also involve combine the cognitive and social perspectives to make sense of writing in teaching.

The author of the reading “Critical Evaluation of Writing Teaching Programs in Different Foreign Language Settings” collected lots of data to show EFL writing instruction in Germany, Poland, the USA, China, Japan and Spain. In every place, pedagogical practices and teacher education are completely analyzed. Therefore some considerations for the future of FL writing instruction are proposed.

From the reading “Training for Writing or Training for Reality?” we can know that it is necessary to balance the local realities and idealistic view in the education of writing teachers. As the language teachers, we should have the new view to face it.

My Interaction Portion:

The teaching environment is totally different in every country, especially in EFL writing teaching, which is influenced by a series of factors. Mostly, the previous knowledge and education training have the deep effects.

As an EFL writing teacher, everyone is responsible to have right teaching idea or way. However, maybe some aspects can constrain their abilities. The teaching program is nearly not been changed, so teachers need to adapt themselves to teaching in order to performance better. In detail, they are supposed to be prepared to listen, learn and adapt within the contexts and dynamics of their local teaching-learning situations. What's more, they’d better grasp the chance to improve themselves, for example going abroad to experience exotic culture and environment and so on. The aim of teaching is to encourage students and make the teaching get a better result. Thereby teachers and students should make effort to have a big success.

Week4: The Analysis of Genre-based Pedagogy

Main Points:

In the reading of “The Future of Gene in L2 Writing”, the author emphasized four fundamental instructional topics: naming, awareness/acquisition, pedagogical focus and ideology, which has deep influence on Genre-based Writing Instruction in L2 writing. And the three major genres (camps, their theories and related instructional practices) are presented to analyze the problem. In the end, he took his own issues relating to teaching of genres in L2 classes into consideration such as corpus studies and qualitative studies of graduate student. In addition, the teaching in the future should begin with texts and their structures using some suggestions in a genre-based approach.

In my opinion, “Genre-based Tasks in Foreign Language Writing” is a combination of genre and task. According to analyzing carefully novice foreign language writers, we can get the information about their changes and progress through some qualitative and quantitative ways (survey, interview and the emails written at the beginning and the end of the semester), which will help us to investigate their genre awareness, linguistics knowledge, and writing competence in a genre-based writing course and then create the communities between writing and language development.

Due to the analysis of the application letter, “A Focus on Purpose” is aim to make learners know the complexity between written texts and the social contexts in their studying. What’s more, we should learn to use the rhetorical patterns and languages and other dynamic ways in genre approach to achieve some specific social purpose.

Interaction Portion:

In teaching, people use the term ‘genres’ to describe some kinds of written texts that have recognizable patterns, syntax, techniques, and conventions. One of the fundamental parts of being writers, I think, is to know your purpose for writing. It is not only for yourself, but you should know the relevance of many things.

Genre-based pedagogy is a very good and suitable approach in L2 writing. It makes the conception clear that what is to be learnt and assessed. Then genre theory and research give teacher educators a more central role in preparing individuals to teach L2 writing. In detail, for teachers, genre-based pedagogies offer a valuable resource to help them assist their students’ abilities effectively and give them some ways to analyze texts, to reflect on the working of language. Also it enables students to write in their target texts and participate actively in L2 writing. However, the combination of theory and practice is still the core point. The task genre-based is in foreign language writing is to develop writers’ genre awareness, linguistic knowledge and writing competence. Thereby writers’ practices are very important side in L2 writing. It means we should not only pay attention to individual creativity but also meet students’ social, political, and cultural needs beyond the classroom. In the future, genre-based writing instruction will be developed and used widely, which offers teachers the most important teaching approach and gives students motivation to learn L2 writing, so that genre-based pedagogy is not a difficult thing.

Week 3: Research on L2 Writing Process

                     Week 3: Research on L2 Writing Process

Key Points:  A Critical Examination of L2 Writing Process Research is to make a critical analysis of the cognitive process in L2 written composition. Then some methodological ways are proposed including data collection, the participants' command of L2, the contexts of studies, the type and number of participants involved and the type of task used. According to the specific research, such as skilled and unskilled L2 writers and so on, the limitations and suggestions of the future research are also discussed. As a result, we not only consider the current process but also the conceptual, linguistic rhetorical choices in L2 writing process.

In the reading of Building an Empirically-based Model of EFL Learners’ Writing Progress, according to detailed analysis of writing process of 34 Japanese EFL writing experts and novices, the author draws a conclusion that we should make the qualitative research in present studies and take into account affective an emotional factors in future studies.

My Interaction Portion:  Maybe for most English L1 writers, the writing process is not difficult. However, for English L2 writers, the process of writing in an academic environment is challenging. L2 writing has always been a difficult area for second language learners and a heated topic for second language researchers.

L2 writing is a challenging and complex process. The ability to write well is not a naturally acquired skill and it is usually learned or transmitted as a set of practices. Writing skills must be practiced and learned through experience. The experts and novices will have different performances in L2 writing process. From my perspective, the main reason is that experts have done a lot of experience carefully and many effective methods are also been used in their learning. I want to tell my students that the only way to improve their writing is to keep writing--thinking with enough practice in writing and revision (involving problem solving and reflection), then they will eventually acquire the fundamentals, or at least the standard required. In addition, students writing in their L2 have to acquire proficiency in the use of the language as well as writing strategies, techniques and skills. For us, L2 writing process is not a simple path, but we should keep it with persistence and make great progress.

The research on Chinese scholars writing for international publication

The key points:

There are two stages of the project on Chinese scholars writing for international publication: Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong scholars writing for scholarly publication in English and investigating Mandarin-speaking Mainland Chinese novice scientists in this chapter. Globalization including the economy, the polity and culture is emphasized and the research on English as an additional language scholarly literacy provides the overall view of EAL scholars in different EFL/ESL contexts. Then the theoretical, methodological and pedagogical implications of this research are discussed and we classify the studies into issue-driven studies and single-case studies. The main goal of this research is to reflect on the research process as they have developed it and consider what implications this might for similar sorts of research in future.

The studies of second language (L2) writing can be classified by the focus of the study and the research method. In the latter one, the eight types ways: surveys, interviews, meta-analysis, classroom observation, ethnography, content analysis, text analysis, and process research are analyzed through the specific examples.

Interaction:

As an English learner, I realize that learning English is by no means easy. It takes great diligence and prolonged effort. English, as a global language, is widely used there. In today’s world, if you don't understand English, then how can you know more about the world and how can you get more knowledge. Today globalization has become the trend nearly in all aspects of our life. In order to pursue higher education, we have to come up with it. In Mainland China, publication has become a graduation requirement for Master’s and PhD students. English publication is no surprise written in Hong Kong, while it is sporadic in Mainland China. As for me, I remember I wrote my paper in English for my bachelor’s degree. Also in China, imitation is necessary in the student’s process of learning to write papers in English, but this behavior has to been limited. English writing is a serious thing, we should treat it accurately.  

Hence the English education also has become a necessary task. In particular, teaching students to write is very important in the world. Pedagogically, teaching has confirmed the need for English for academic purpose (EAP), which refers to language research and instruction. I think the process of teaching for teachers is not an easy task. According to a lot of studies of second language writing, there are some processes in teaching. We should teach students to analyze all sides of writing including content and text and so on. What’ more, teachers should grasp more methods to teach and encourage students. And then students will have active performance in learning and teaching will get the best result.   

Myself

Hello, everyone! My name is Yin Tong and you can call me English name Helena. I graduated from North University of China on July 1^st 2012, where I spent 4 years happy life. And I have had a strong interest in learning English since I was young. Therefore I came here to pursue my English study. Being an English teacher is my dream. Then for myself, I don't have enough experience in teaching, but I believe nothing is impossible and I will make my effort to do it better. In my opinion, teaching is a cooperative work of students and teachers. For students who are the leading roles, they should grasp some necessary skills in reading and writing. At the same time, I will try my best to make students active in the classroom, which will get the interaction between us. In addition, I think teacher is just the instructor and teaching five years from now mainly replies on students. Hence we’d better learn more teaching ways. Finally studying here, I will devote my greatest enthusiasm to face my teaching and life in the future optimistically.