SLAT6827 Second Language Literacy Semester 2, 2003

1
SLAT6827 Second Language Literacy Semester 2,
2003

• Lecture slides and notes
• Week 8
• Teaching writing

2
Differences between teaching spoken and written
discourse

• Permanence
• Explicitness
• Density
• Detachment
• Organisation
• Slowness of production, speed of reception
• Standard language
• A learnt skill
• Sheer amount and importance

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Differences between teaching spoken and written
discourse (1)

• Permanence
• - writing is fixed and stable, reader control
• Explicitness
• - context and reference made clear
• Density
• - less redundancy in written language

4
Differences between teaching spoken and written
discourse (2)

• Detachment
• - writing detached in time and space
• Organisation
• - careful formulation of structure
• Slowness of production, speed of reception

5
Differences between teaching spoken and written
discourse (3)

• Standard language
• - writing uses highly conventionalised forms
• A learnt skill
• - writing is deliberately taught and learned
• Sheer amount and importance
• - which is more important?

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Writing as a means or an end

• Writing to learn about the language or a topic
• Writing to improve writing.
• Writing to do both.

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Writing for content and form

• Balancing the need to communicate ideas
  information and mastering the conventional forms
  required.

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Writing and composition

• What is the difference between writing and
  composition?

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Writing and ideology

• Recent research in teaching writing show evidence
  of approaches that favor diversity and
  complexity rather than idealizations and simple
  solutions, favors negotiation and inquiry rather
  than transmission models of teaching, and values
  what students can do rather than what we perceive
  as their deficits. (Raimes 1998, p142)

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Is writing a process or product?
Product approach Emphasis placed on the final
product. Attention given to the provision of, and
practice with models.
Process approach Emphasis on the processes of
writing. Attention given to planning, drafting
revising and the development of learner
expression in writing
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The effect of L1 language and culture
contrastive rhetoric

• Contrastive rhetoric Identifying patterns of
  learners L1 and based on these patterns
  recommending teaching practices based on
  initiating students into the target culture
  rhetorical patterns.
• ...literature about the cultural norms and
  expectations that students bring to their
  writing in English leads to a deterministic
  stance and deficit orientation as to what
  students can accomplish in English and what their
  writing instruction should be (Raimes, 1998
  p143)

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Recent research issues

• Instructional settings
• Should L1 and L2 writers be separate?
• Curriculum EAP
• Is academic literacy neutral, value-free and
  nonexclusionary?
• Content and genres
• Should the student select?

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Instructional activities

• What do we teach?
• 1. Generating ideas in journals.
• 2. Connecting writing and other language skills.
• 3. Collaborating in peer groups.
• 4. Responding to writing. (Ur, pp170-171)
• 5. Revising.
• 6. Teaching with technology.