TESOL 2005 -

Meeting the Challenge of the National Commission on Writing - Writing and English Language Learners in Secondary School

The information below is a summary of Joe Bellino's response to the National Commission on Writing report from the point of view of an ELL teacher in a secondary school. It was presented at the 2005 TESOL Convention in San Antonio, Texas (March 29 - April 2, 2005). This page was created as a source of information for those who attended his presentation.

Joe Bellino teaches English Language Learners at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland (Montgomery County Maryland Public Schools) and is a Teacher-Consultant for the Maryland Writing Project. He can be reached at <jbellino@mbhs.edu>.

1. Teacher Training Is Critical

The Maryland Writing Project, a site of the National Writing Project has been very influential in helping me (and many other teachers) improve my skill as a teacher of writing. The National Writing Project Web site is www.writingproject.org. Go to this site to find the location of local writing project sites.

2. Writing Is a Process as Well as a Product

Most writers agree that writing well involves many steps. Writers who take time to get feedback and revise their work create better products than those who write once and submit. Writing teachers know that providing time for feedback and revision are important parts of formal writing assignments. In writing instruction, product is also important. However, busy teachers know how to distinguish between writing for communication and writing for publication.

Those who were at the TESOL presentation heard me ask if anyone would buy this house. I compared the first impression one gets from looking at this house with the first impression one might get from looking at a composition written by an English language learner. A house inspector was able to see through the the piles of junk and disrepair of the house and say, "This house has a lot of potential." In a teacher-research project in which I studied my own conferencing with students writing for a publication, I learned that I was like the house inspector. I could look through the many errors in a writing assignment, help the students focus on the message, and guide them in"rebuilding" their work. (If you'd like to see what the house looks like today, click here.)

3. ELL Writing Instruction Begins in Beginning Classes

Writing instruction should start at the beginning level of instruction for English language learners.

• From the beginning students need to be writing and speaking complete sentences and learning the shape of writing. How does good writing LOOK? Sentences should look like sentences with capital letters and periods. Students should know the shape of paragraphs and why we use them in English. They should have practice grouping similar ideas into paragraphs. (This is easy to do with pictures that tell stories.)
• Students should be generating ideas from text and graphics. They should be asking questions and making inferences. They should try to guess what people are thinking and how they feel. They should guess what happened before and what will happen next.
• At all levels writing and speaking complete sentences is still VERY IMPORTANT. Students need to be learning lots of new vocabulary words - but teachers should NOT focus on definitions. Instead they should use "explanations" that include examples of how words are used. Students at all levels need to be practicing the new words orally, not just reading and writing them. Learning new vocabulary should be an adventure that students are always participating in, even when they are not in English class.

4. Writing Helps Learning

One of the techniques I learned during the Summer Teacher Institute of the Maryland Writing Project was called a double entry log. It is a technique that I teach my students to use and one that was the subject of one of my teacher-research projects. To get an Acrobat Reader version about the results of my research project, "Reading and Thinking in a Sheltered ESOL Social Studies Class: What Happens when High Beginning ESOL Students Keep Double Entry Reading Logs" click here. In addition to reading logs, students can keep think logs, learning logs, interactive notebooks, and class journals as ways to help them interact with text and classroom discussion.

5. Writers Benefit from Real Audiences

When students know that different people will read what they write, they pay more attention to what they say and how they say it. There are different ways to give students real audiences. Here are a few ideas:

Set up Writing Partners - I like to assign a writing partner for each student in a class. Writing partners have the job of reading their partner's work and giving feedback based on the rubric for that assignment. Writing partners are not expected to correct grammar. (In a teacher-research project in which I studied ESL students involved in peer editing, many students complained about grammar corrections that their ESL partners made. Usually the corrections were either not necessary or wrong. However, students learned a great deal about their own writing when they READ the writing of others.)

Set up Writing Mentors - Some teachers have been successful in getting students to use writing mentors, native English speaking students in mainstream English classes. One teacher has gotten mentors to meet with English language learners during lunch to discuss major writing assignments that the teacher has assigned. I have set up mentors with my own students and a mainstream class that meets at the same time. The students meet each other at the beginning of an assignment, but most feedback sessions occur online using Nicenet (see Nicenet explanation below).

Use an "Internet classroom" (like Nicenet or Blackboard) to allow students to post their writing and get feedback. The link below gives a sample of project that one ESL teacher created on the Internet in her classes. Students in one class posted persuasive writing essays that were read by native English-speaking student, ESL students in another class, and the teacher. Link to sample writing that students responded to on Nicenet. If you are interested in directions about how to set up your own Internet classroom or sample directions to give to others to join a class, click here.

 

Publish Student Writing. Publishing the writing of students has many benefits. An article in the Maryland Writing Project's Writing Works discusses some of them. Click here to download an article titled "Get Student Writing into Students' Hands" (in Acrobat Reader format).

Teachers who want to get their students published in a publication that has a wide circulation should check out Silver International at <http://silverinternational.mbhs.edu/>. It is produced by students at Montgomery Blair High School but includes writing of students in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools in the U.S. and other countries. For an article about Silver International titled "I'm a Writer Now! The Who, Where, and When of an ELL Newspaper" published in the National Writing Project's Quarterly click here.

6. Writing Is a Total School Commitment

Teachers in all subjects should be getting students to write. In our school PE teachers require students to keep exercise logs. Art teachers require students to review and write about pieces of art. Math teachers have students write about the steps they used to solve a problem. Students in technology classes write project plans and final evaluations of team activities. Administrators require that all students sent to the office write about why they were sent there.

7. Get Inspired! Get a Copy of Because Writing Matters

Here's a book published by the National Writing Project that I highly recommend. Because Writing Matters can be purchased directly from the National Writing Project's Web site <http://www.writingproject.org/pressroom/writingmatters/>.

Information presented at the TESOL 2005 Conference in San Antonio, Texas, March 31, 2005