Mike T <shuaihengtao@gmail.

com>

Contact from Mike Tao

1 message

Mike T <shuaihengtao@gmail.com> Sun, Jun 5, 2022 at 5:26 PM

To: xiaoxing@163126.com

Dear Xiaoxing, 

I just heard from Aunt Tao that you had received a Master's degree in education at C

University and had decided to stay on campus and become a lecturer. Congratulations! I am

very proud of what you have accomplished! 

Aunt Tao also mentioned that you will be instructing an ESL Writing course next semester.

You and I, as former and current ESL students in undergraduate schools, definitely

understand how difficult it is for ESL students to improve their writing skills, and it will be

hard to teach them without appropriate teaching methods.

I do have some insights into ESL instructions and want to share them with you. In fact, I

was invited to a party last month. The owner of the party is an English professor who

monthly invites scholars to his parties to discuss different topics in writing, and the topic

from last month happened to be “How can colleges and instructors help students, especially

English as the Second Language (ESL) students, to improve their writing skills?” I believe

you will find the conversation useful, so I would like to retell what happened at the party

for you.
The party took place in the living room. With delicious European and Asian food and drinks

served by the owner, the party did allow us to be “spiritually” prepared for the scholarly

conversation. Twenty minutes after the start of the party, people seemed to have

temporarily filled their bellies. The light dimmed; the noise faded. Bonnie Auslander, who

used to teach a first-year composition class and has recently become a tutor in the

Reading/Writing Center, raised her hand and volunteered to be the first speaker in the

conversation. 

She put her plate on the table, came to the whiteboard, and wrote down “know the

audience and purpose well” and “reinforce the revising and editing stages” with a red

marker (you might be wondering why there was a whiteboard on the party; it’s actually used

for party games like Bingo). She explained that writers are supposed to make decisions

about shaping written work to suit particular audiences or make specific points (rhetorical

situations). As a writing tutor, nevertheless, she had seen a number of “obscure”

assignments that students could not identify either who would be interested in reading

their work or why they were required to write the work; this kind of vagueness frustrated

students. Hence, instructors should attempt to explain why students are asked to complete

such assignments explicitly. 

Patricia R. Reynolds interjected here and went along with Bonnie’s statement. She claimed

that, due to cultural differences, ESL students may not be able to correctly identify

rhetorical situations, which can be a difficulty in writing an argumentative essay in English.

However, certain textbooks used in ESL college writing classes would help students

handle these rhetorical problems. I had to say I couldn’t agree more with her perspective.
The textbook I used in my previous ESL writing course threw a deal of information at me

but did not explain rhetorical situations well: it didn’t consider the fact that I might not be

able to digest the knowledge on my own due to cultural differences.

Patricia then evaluated eight criteria for an ESL textbook, such as allowing the ESL

student to define the audience for a particular essay, containing samples of useful

grammatical structures, and helping students relate to realistic situations that meet their

actual needs. On balance, she recommended Leki’s Academic Writing as the textbook for

ESL students, which contained most of the criteria she mentioned. Patricia was the only

scholar there who brought up the importance of an appropriate textbook, and that was

indeed a novel perspective. I am looking forward to reading this textbook (my order is still

on the way, and I will let you know what I think next week).

Bonnie appreciated what Patricia had added to her standpoint. She cleared her throat,

drank some water, and moved on to her second point–revising processes. She believed a

perfect piece of writing usually could not be completed directly–it requires processes of

revision; instructors could provide students with peer feedback opportunities and allow

them to revise as many times as they wanted. Bonnie put the marker down and ended her

words. Although her speeches weren’t specifically aimed at ESL students, we all agreed

that her suggestions could be applied to ESL teaching. 

Muriel Harris, the founder of Purdue Online Writing Lab, dragged the conversation back to

ESL students. She found that ESL students’ drafts are noticeably different from native

students’ writings. For example, their vocabulary choices may be confusing, and their
essays may miss some important elements. There are so many errors, some of which are

supposed to be prioritized. Muriel also suggested that instructors could ask their ESL

students to write in stages, like focusing on content and organization on the first draft

and focusing on surface conventions on the second draft. Her suggestions did correspond

to Bonnie’s advice on the revision process. 

Adele MacGowan-Gilhooly, an associate professor of ESL teaching at The City College of

The City University of New York, stood up and appreciated what Patricia stated about

realistic situations in writing. She said she and her colleagues had found that ESL students

tend to produce better-written work when they write real letters to newspapers,

government officials, and others to complain about issues and to provide solutions. She also

smiled at Bonnie (I guess despite not stating explicitly, her emphasis on real letters–which

requires writers to know purposes and audiences well–also revealed the significance of

rhetorical situations). It was eight-thirty, and we decided to take a little break to have

some food and drinks. 

After everyone sat back in their seats, Barbara Kroll, an assistant professor of English and

linguistics at California State University, Northridge, came to the whiteboard and wrote

down the word “curriculum.” She emphasized that, just like Bonnie and Muriel said, the

most severe issues of ESL students’ writing were rhetoric and syntax. The current

placement test and curriculum for ESL students, however, could not place them in the

appropriate course. Barbara then proposed a new sequence, which includes three courses.

The beginner course focuses on rhetoric, and when students pass the course, they will be

placed in an intermediate course focusing on syntax.” The advanced course focuses on both
rhetoric and syntax, along with the emphasis on the style of writing. When grading the

placement test for ESL courses, graders must break down the sub-score–rhetoric, syntax,

style, etc.–of the examinees rather than just assigning a total score to decide which course

they should take. 

I go along with Barbara’s suggestion of breaking grading scales down into different sub-

scores and using them to assign students to appropriate ESL courses. I recalled that when

I first came to the U.S to attend first-year high school, I was almost a “grammar master”

because of the mode of English instructions in China. However, I had no idea how to

properly structure an academic essay. After a placement exam, which asked me to write an

essay, the first ESL course the school assigned me to take was all about silly grammar,

such as the simple present tense and simple past tense. I must say it wasted a great deal

of my treasured time.  

Adele stood up again, saying that she agreed with Barbara that a modified ESL curriculum

is necessary for students' success. However, she cast different opinions on the structure

of the curriculum. Adele believed that different ESL students need to focus on their own

problems as they attempt to improve their writing skills. Then, she introduced her

sequence of ESL curriculum, which includes three courses emphasizing the following

respectively: the ability to generate ideas in writing intelligibly and with relative ease, to

write expository pieces with proper essay structure like logical development of ideas and

effective evidence, and to pass standardized exams as well as to write a 350-word

convincing piece of work with few errors. Adele asserted that she had gained a great
number of quantitative and qualitative results from implementing the new ESL curriculum,

showing that she was headed in the right direction.

Adele’s speech concluded the conversation and the party, and that’s all I wish to tell you.

Hope this email can help you prepare for the structure of the course. Let me know if you

have any questions!

Sincerely, 

Mike Tao