From Reading to Writing-A Basic Rhetorical Pattern

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From Reading to Writing-A Basic Rhetorical
Pattern

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What about other universities?

• TungHai University(1)
• TungHai University (2)
• FuJen University
• Taiwan University

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What Ill do today

• Introduce a basic rhetorical pattern.
• Work on an activity
• Analyze structure/organization of a lesson from
  ASR 3.
• Show how to write a model paragraph using this
  pattern.
• Introduce an interactive model
• to approach reading

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Analyze Students writings(1)

• What do you think are the physical effects of
  astronauts living in space for a long time?
• I think that living in a gravity-free environment
  is not easy. Astronauts suffer from physiological
  and psychological problems. When it comes to the
  physical effects of living in space, I have read
  a report about the disorders of astronauts in the
  outer space. Living in space is different from
  living on earth. Astronauts dont eat ordinary
  foods and cant exercise in space. After they
  return to the earth, terrible things happen to
  them. For example, they cant stand still and eat
  normally and they often feel sick. Astronauts
  sacrifice their lives in order to let humans live
  a happy life and I really appreciate what they
  have done for us.

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Analyze Students writings(2)

• What do you think are the physical effects of
  astronauts living in space for a long time?
• Weakening of muscle strength, having a puffy face
  and losing bone density are the three major
  physical effects of astronauts living in space
  for a long time. Due to the non-gravity
  environment, astronauts do not have to use muscle
  in doing most things, so their muscle strength
  weakens. Moreover, their body fluids flow to the
  upper parts of their body, such as the head and
  the face. As a result, they have a puffy face.
  Another phenomenon is that astronauts might lose
  bone density due to the loss of calcium. To sum
  up, if astronauts want to live in the space for a
  long time, these effects must be dealt with
  carefully.

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Share my own writing

• Did I use the basic rhetoric pattern while I was
  writing essays?
• Cultural difference

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Outline of an Expository Paragraph (not a
narrative paragraph)

• A paragraph is defined as a group of sentences
  that develops one main idea (topic). This main
  idea is expressed through three sections of a
  paragraph
• (1) Beginning (the topic sentence) Introduce
  your idea.
• (2) Middle (body/paragraph development) Explain
  your idea.
• a. Supporting detail (1)
• b. Supporting detail (2)
• c. Supporting detail (3)
• (3) End (the concluding sentence) Make your
  point again (summary, advice, hope for change),
  transition to next paragraph.

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The Topic Sentence

• State your idea, point, opinion, or attitude
  about the topic
• An easy way to make sure your reader understands
  the topic of the paragraph is to put your topic
  sentence near the beginning of the paragraph.
• (A topic sentence is a sentence that indicates
  in a general way what idea the paragraph is going
  to deal with. Please note that not all paragraphs
  have clear-cut topic sentences. )

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Supporting sentences

• Provide explanations and support for the topic
  sentence (main idea) of your paragraph
• Supporting sentences that include facts,
  statistics and logical reasoning are much more
  convincing than simple statements of opinion.

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Concluding sentence

• Restate the main idea (found in your topic
  sentence) in different words and reinforces the
  point or opinion.

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Transitional sentence

• Prepares the reader for the following paragraph.
• Should help readers logically understand the
  connection between your current main idea, point
  or opinion and the main idea of your next
  paragraph.

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Adequate Development

• The topic (which is introduced by the topic
  sentence) should be discussed fully and
  adequately. Again, this varies from paragraph to
  paragraph, depending on the author's purpose
• To make your writing interesting and convincing,
  you need to develop your ideas logically and
  thoroughly. You want to avoid writing superficial
  paragraphsthat is, paragraphs in which the ideas
  are not carefully developed or fully explained.
  Superficial writing leaves the reader with many
  questions. Well-developed writing tries to answer
  as many of the readers questions as possible.

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An activity

• Work in groups trying to analyze the structure of
  the paragraphs
• Exercise 1

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What to do in class

• Use Active Skill Reading 3, Unit 9-2, Changing
  roles Stay-at-Home Dads, as an example

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Some pre-reading activities

• Word Associationprovide them with words from the
  text (to replace the words they already know)
• Activate their schemata (sociolcultural content,
  connecting to their real life), not just
  linguistic content
• Predicting how the author will present his/her
  point of view, whats the authors main idea,
  whatll happen in the story, etc.

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Students will

• Do silent reading
• Find the topic sentence
• Find the main idea
• Find supporting sentences
• Find the concluding sentence
• Write them on the board

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Other Activities

• Write an outline
• Write a summary
• Answer short answer questions
• Others??

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Bottom-up model

• Some teachers teach reading by introducing new
  vocabulary and structures first and then going
  over the text sentence by sentence and paragraph
  by paragraph with the students. This is then
  followed by questions and answers to check
  comprehension. Also a lot of time is spent on
  having students read aloud the text.
• This way of teaching reflects the belief that
  reading comprehension is based on the mastery of
  the new words and new structures as well as a lot
  of reading aloud practice.
• It basically follows a linear process from the
  recognition of letters to words, to phrases, to
  sentences, to paragraphs, and then to the meaning
  of the whole text.

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Top-down model

• A different view believes that ones background
  knowledge plays a more important role than new
  words and new structures in reading
  comprehension. For example, we all have
  experiences of reading something that does not
  contain any new words or new structures, but we
  still fail to understand its overall meaning.
• In other cases, we may read an article which
  contains quite a number of new words as well as
  difficult structures with reasonable
  understanding. This is because we have made use
  of our knowledge about the topic to assist our
  comprehension.
• Therefore, it is believed that in teaching
  reading, the teacher should teach the background
  knowledge first so that students equipped with
  such knowledge will be able to guess meaning from
  the printed page.

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Interactive model ?

• The current theory views reading as an
  interactive process.
• The brain receives visual information and at the
  same time, interprets or reconstructs the meaning
  the writer had in mind when he wrote the text.
• This process does not only involve the printed
  page but also the readers knowledge of the
  language in general, and of the world.
• During the process of reading, all these factors
  interact with each other and compensate for each
  other.

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Interactive model ?

• During the reading process, our mind by
  interacting with the printed page its words,
  phrases, sentences, as well as the context it
  provides can be stimulated and a proper schema
  will be activated to allow us to relate the
  incoming information to already known
  information.
• If we do not have the type of necessary schema
  for a particular reading text, lets say cultural
  specific knowledge, we may have to resort heavily
  to other knowledge which is available, such as
  our linguistic knowledge to aid our
  comprehension.
• Similarly, when we do not have the necessary
  linguistic knowledge, we will have to resort to
  our world knowledge to help ease the difficulties
  in comprehension.
• Obviously, a good knowledge base of all the above
  is essential for good reading comprehension and
  we believe a good linguistic basis is the
  fundamental as far as foreign language reading is
  concerned.

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References

• ????????? http//myweb.scu.edu.tw/cynthiay
• ??????????? http//write.scu.edu.tw
• ??????? http//www.mychinesetea.net/enghome_b2.htm
  
• ??????? http//www.mychinesetea.net/enghome_b3.htm
  
• http//esl.about.com/od/writingintermediate/a/para
  graphs.htm
• http//owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/print/gener
  al/gl_pgrph2.html
• Langan, John. 2001. English Skills (7th ed.).New
  York McGraw-Hill.
• Smalley Regina L. et al. 2001. Refining
  Composition Skills Rhetoric and Grammar (5th
  ed.). Boston, MA Heinle Heinle
• Lougheed, Lin. 2004. How to Prepare for the TOFEL
  Essay (2nd ed.).Hauppauge, New York Barrons
  Educational Series, Inc.