What to expect of their writing and some helpful approaches

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Working with ESL Students in the University

• What to expect of their writing and some helpful
  approaches

David Hoffman and Robert Troyer May 19, 2008
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Connors and Lundsford (1988) Frequency of Formal
Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa
Kettle Do Research
Introduction Native speaker errors in writing
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Introduction An ESL texts list of most common
writing errors
from Writing Talk, fifth edition (2009) A.
Winkler and J. R. McCuen-Metherell Pearson
Prentice Hall
ESL focus?
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Vann, Meyer, Lawrenz (1984) Error Gravity A
Study of Faculty Opinion of ESL Errors Word
Order it-Deletion Tense Relative clauses Word
Choice Sub-Verb Agreem Pronoun Agreem Preposition
Spelling-2 Comma Splice Article Spelling-1
Introduction ESL students errors in writing
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Introduction ESL students errors in writing
Arani (1993) Inconsistencies in Error Production
by Non-Native English Speakers and in Error
Gravity Judgment by Native Speakers
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Introduction Misconceptions about differences in
writing
from Writing Talk, fifth edition (2009) A.
Winkler and J. R. McCuen-Metherell Pearson
Prentice Hall
In this list, where are Prepositions,
Articles Word Order, It-Deletion Plurality,
Conjunctions/transitions?
Misconceptions exist about the differences
between ESL students writing and native speaker
students writing.
Our approach to ESL student writing needs to be
informed by an understanding of the unique
challenges that these students face.
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Our Purpose

• to inform you about some of the ways that your
  ESL students writing will differ from that of
  your native speakers

Our Belief

• approaching ESL students writing with awareness
  and understanding will lead to more positive
  outcomes for you and the students

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Outline

• Interpersonal Communication
• Global vs. Local Issues
• Global Issues
• Local Issues
• Conclusion
• Q A

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Interpersonal Communication

• Expect differences in eye contact, verbosity, and
  social distance
• Be aware and take your cues from the student
• Respect differences without drawing attention to
  them
• Expect variation between individuals from the
  same country

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Global vs. Local Issues

• Approaching an ESL paper
• Read once before marking mistakes
• Determine the most important issues
• Balance Global vs. Local
• Global Content and Organization
• Local Sentence level Style

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Global Genre and Rhetoric

• Schema / frame / script theory
• What text genres do American students grow up
  with and practice in school?
• narrative (text and graphic),
• expository prose (academic topics, processes, lab
  reports),
• poetry, persuasion, news-style reporting,
  business/professional letters, informal journal
  writing
• novel / hybrid genres
• Expect that international students dont have
  experience with all of these genres, so provide
  examples.

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Global Rhetorical Differences

• Within a genre, rhetorical strategies are
  culturally determined
• Contrastive Rhetoric Kaplan (1966)
• ESL students may not be familiar with the
  rhetorical structure of American academic writing
• Introductions, Organizing and the writing
  process, Conclusions, when to use fact / opinion
  / outside sources
• Logic is culturally determined
• Paragraph structure (whole to part / part to
  whole)

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Robert Kaplan, 1966 Analysis of the paragraph and
sentence organizational structures of ESL student
essays. His diagram below has been criticized for
several reasons, and Kaplan, himself, later
called it his doodles.
English Semitic Oriental Romance Russian
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More recent contrastive rhetoric studies
Genre mode type writer / language /
country Literary analysis exposition academic
article German (L1) English (L1) English
(L2, L1 Germ) Business correspondence email Englis
h (L1) English (L2, L1 Japan) 3rd Grade
narrative one paragraph English
(L1) assignment Arabic (L1) English (L2, L1
Arab) Univ. Writing persuasive 2-page
essay English (L1), American course
assign. English (L2, L1 Finnish)
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Influences on a writers Rhetorical Structure
schema
History Ostler, Kaplan, Crismore Culture
Kaplan, Soter, Connor Lauer, Li School and
Teachers Folman and Sarig, Reid, Scarcella,
Eggington, Holyoak Piper, Heath,
McCreedy Parents and Family Heath, Clancy Peers
McCreedy, Eder, Williams, Fordham For advanced
writers Discourse Community Swales
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Global Rhetorical Differences
Example introduction to a problem-solution paper
about industrial pollution Humans today are
beginning to hear more and more on the problem
about industrial pollution. The world population
is growing very fast. Unfortunately, modern
industry is making the air, the soil, and the
water dirty, which we call pollution. Many
people, therefore, see pollution as only part of
a larger and more complex problem. Whatever its
underlying reasons, there is no doubt that much
of the pollution could be controlled if
companies, individuals and governments would make
more efforts. For instance, there is an obvious
need to control litter and waste, which everyone
can help to do by cutting out excess consumption
and careless disposal of the products we use in
our daily lives.
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Global Rhetorical Differences
Example paragraph transitions First of all it
is very easy Second, peoples emotions will
be Third, the ability to think is Fourth,
bad for health, such as A note on conclusions
Often they are entirely a summary of the main
ideas of the paper (even if the paper is only two
pages).
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Global Rhetorical Differences

• Using and documenting outside sources
• Expectations of student writers in other
  countries
• Also related to local issues of sentence
  structure, vocabulary, and punctuation
• Online searching practices
• Reading ability

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Local 3 Levels of Understanding

• World Englishes paradigm (Smith 1992)
• Intelligibility word/utterance recognition
  sounds like an English word
• Comprehensibility word/utterance meaning I
  know what that word represents
• Interpretability word/utterance purpose
  I understand what is intended by that word

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Application to ESL Writing

• Intelligibility
• At the phrase level, everything is in English.
• Spelling is close to correct.
• The words used are actual words in English.
• It can be read in English.

• Comprehensibility
• At the phrase level, the elements combine to
  produce meaningful chunks of information.
• The words work together in typical English
  fashion.

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Application to ESL Writing

• Interpretability
• At the phrase level, the elements are coherent
  and produce a transference of meaning from the
  writer to the reader in English.
• All components work together to bring meaning out
  from the words.

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Examples
1. The cows drought dead forever kill
water. intelligible yes comprehensible no
interpretable no 2. I went home and the sandwich
is alone. intelligible yes comprehensible yes
interpretable no 3. Yesterday, I bought some
shoes and today my feet hurt. intelligible yes
comprehensible yes interpretable yes
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Local ESL Grammar

• Typical American students grammar

• ESL students grammar

Interlanguage English lexis influenced by L1
grammar and pragmatics (as well as learners
guesses about English)
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Local Articles and Determiners
one, many, some, etc.
a, an, the

• Usage is obvious to native speakers, but rarely
  effects comprehensibility or interpretability

Examples In authors opinion, key point is to
improve the educational research. because we
are foreigner who came from other country and
have different culture.
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Local Prepositions

• Semantic functions

• Phrasal verbs
• make up, get over, ran into, showed up, etc.
• On her way to the office, she ran into a friend.

• Variations are extremely difficult to learn
• Correct students, but dont judge harshly

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Local Word Forms

• Example
• Many students consideration how to choosing words
  but lacking sufficiently knowledgeable of
  vocabularies in contextual.

Inflectional affixes -s, -ies (plurality) -ing
(pres participle) -s (possession) -s (poss
pronoun) -ed (past tense)
Derivational affixes -ation (verb to noun) -ly
(adjective to adverb) -able (noun to
adjective) -ual (noun to adjective) un-
(opposite), non- (not)
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Local Word Forms

• Examples
• Some crimes, such as hi jack and rob are
  conducted using Airsoft guns.
• hijacking and robbery
• It accurately point_ that lots of farmlands
  losing is one factor which led to food lacking
  around the world.
• points out, farmland, loss, a lack of food (or
  food shortage)

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Local Subject-Verb Agreement

• Simple mistakes
• Example
• If the customer break the contract or mess with
  the...
• More complicated
• Example
• But this time when one instrument played the
  melody line and the other two instruments as
  accompaniment part the sound heard very
  harmonious.
• We cant ignore verb semantics and clause meaning.

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Local Punctuation

• Nearly always correct periods, commas with
  lists, apostrophes
• Sometimes correct commas with coordinating
  conjunctions, introductory phrases, and
  non-restrictive modifiers hyphens
• Rarely used semi-colons, dashes
• Frequent mistakes quotation mark direction,
  periods with quotes and parentheses, overuse of
  colons

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Local Sentence Structure

• ESL sentence spectrum
• from short, simple sentences to
  out-of-control sentences
• Example
• Smoking cigarettes has harmful effects. It will
  cause many kinds of cancers. The components of
  cigarettes have many carcinogenic matters. Those
  carcinogenic matters are all in the smoke of the
  cigarettes.
• Example
• Proven energy resources per capita are only 135
  tons of standard coal equivalents to the world
  average of 264 tons of standard coal with 51 per
  cent, of which, Chinas per capita coal proven
  reserves of 147 tons, 208 tons of the world
  average of 70.

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Local Conjunctions / Transitions

• Coordinating (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
• Occasional incorrect and/but choice
• Subordinating (if, when, though, as, because,
  etc.)
• Occasional wrong choice
• Conjunctive adverbs (however, therefore, thus,
  etc.)
• Frequent wrong choice
• Frequent overuse

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Local Word Choice

• Too informal
• Too general or too specific
• Absolutes
• Not PC
• Close but no cigar
• Non-idiomatic / wrong collocation

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Local Word Choice
Examples First of all, it is very easy for
everyone to get the mental illness such as autism
and the blahs. Computers are everything in our
lives. First draft title More Sex More
Abortions Second draft title Minor Pregnancy
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Q A

• Can we assess ESL students writing with the same
  standards as native speakers writing?

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End