CHAPTER SUMMARY Ilona Leki, Understanding ESL writers

1
CHAPTER SUMMARYIlona Leki,Understanding ESL
writers

• Chapter 3
• English as a Second Language and Basic Writers

2
Comparing ESL and SESD students

• ESL students
• English as a second language
• International or visa students seeking education
  in an English-speaking country
• Often completed high school in home country

3
SESD students

• SESD
• Standard English as a Second Dialect (e.g.
  African-American, Hispanic-American, etc.)
• Native or bilingual speakers of English
• No or limited facility with Standard Written
  English (SWE)
• Cummings BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication
  Skills)

4
Mixing ESL and SESD writers

• ESL and SESD students are often taught together
• ESL students are not proficient in English but
  this says nothing about their writing skills
  (e.g. graduate students)
• Similarities are only superficial (e.g. ESL
  inexpert in English and in writing)
• Not all strategies that work with SESD will work
  with ESL

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Mixing ESL and SESD writers

• Affective aspect of mixing
• Risk of offending both groups
• SESD
• together with foreigners
• reminded of social and/ or economic distance from
  mainstream
• another instance of marginalization
• ESL
• SESD students are educationally and
  intellectually inferior

6
Linguistic difficulties

• Contrastive analysis and error analysis
• Contrastive analysis compares two languages and
  notes the areas of difference
• Error analysis a catalogue of actual errors L2
  learners make with difficulty levels

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Linguistic difficulties

• Potential advantages for ESL students in writing
  classes
• Dialects of English are closer to SWE than are
  other languages
• SESD are often unaware of differences to SWE
• Greater difficulty level of changing dialects
  than changing languages
• ESL students tend to use more formal a register
  than informal

8
Formal and informal language

• Intimate and informal registers have a greater
  lack of redundancy than has formal language
• Speakers of informal language assume shared
  background information with the listener
• Formal language information usually has to be
  made explicit (routine for ESL students)
• gt Greater advantage of ESL students since
  familiar to formal language features

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Personal Histories with Writing (ESL)

• ESL
• Probably little experience with writing in
  English
• No or little experience with writing for
  consolidating knowledge or expressing opinion
• Error correction is welcomed
• High self-esteem due to writing success in L1
• ESL students are respected by teachers and
  privileged because they are from another country
  and writing in L2 gt less motivation to master
  written English but also less stigmatizing back
  in home country

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Personal Histories with Writing (SESD)

• SESD
• Plenty of experiences but obviously bad (since
  placed in basic writing classes)
• Writing apprehension and low self-esteem
• Endangered sense of identity (ineffective use of
  native language) Illiteracy stupidity
• Corrections are regarded as signs of failure
• Emotional and psychological barrier from
  isolation (racial, socio-economic, cultural)
• Less tolerance from teachers when committing
  writing errors

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Cultural History

• In many countries writing has an elevated status
• The written word is considered to be the truth
• Skillful writers are considered to be superior

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SESD and Cultural History

• SESD usually havent been taught about own
  linguistic traditions
• have no respect for own dialects and no
  understanding of linguistic equality of dialects
  gt despise, deny or disparage of their own
  language
• SESD students have hard time giving up their own
  dialect as they (often unconsciously) identify
  themselves with their group by using their accent

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Strategies of ESL writers

• likely to violate more basic rules than SESD
• more likely to misunderstand classroom
  interactions and classroom management
• Sense that options in writing exist but cannot
  employ them like in their native language
• Usually no possibility of substituting words with
  spoken forms
• No appeal to which phrase sounds right
• By using bottom-up processing they can hardly
  correct mistakes of the written piece by reading
  out loud
• strategy of teacher summarizing what he/she
  believes is meant, may not work well

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Strategies available to SESD writers

• Can substitute written forms with spoken ones
• Have a better feeling as to what sounds right
• Reading out loud leads to automatic error
  correction
• by using top-down strategies they can easily
  predict the words they meant to use
• Able to use context and linguistic environment
  when filling out a cloze passage
• Strategy of teacher repeating back to the student
  what he/she understood from the text may work
  better with SESD students as they at least
  understand the teacher
• SESD have shared cultural and linguistic
  assumptions with their teachers

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Hearing impaired students

• All students with special needs are often grouped
  together in ESL or basic writing classes
• TESOL organization tries to determine and adopt
  techniques from ESL teaching to employ with
  hearing impaired students
• Signed English based on structure of English
• American Sign Language language with a structure
  of its own unrelated to English and more related
  to signing
• Signed languages are visual and simultaneous, not
  linear

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Conclusion of the author

• ESL, SESD and hearing impaired students have
  varying needs and different backgrounds but they
  can benefit from each other offering help in the
  area they are good at
• Prerequisite trained teachers need to be
  provided for these mixed classes

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Questions

• Why does the author include hearing impaired
  students?
• The author talks a lot about differences between
  ESL and SESD writers. What are similarities
  between these groups and what works well for
  both?