[A}dd words or phr ses to the ? as students locate information about the topic. [Nlote new understanding of information and use it in instruction. Socal Sues Language Arts PARTS OF SPEECH™ ‘CULTURES OF THE WORLD vit No s Economic Systems? conntaton? conjunction? 8 language denotation? Scienc WAVES GEOMETR: amplitude wavelength Characteristics measurement ? formulas Evaluate the answers that individual students provide to the questions in their organizer. Teaching Writing Writing is among the most complex human activities. It involves the development of an idea, the capture of mental representations of knowledge, and of experiences with subjects. It can be viewed as involving a number of thinking processes which are drawn upon in varied and complex ways as an individual composes, transcribes, evaluates, and revises (Arndt, 1987; Raimes, 1985 as cited in White, 1995). In first language settings, the ability to write well has a very close relationship to academic and professional success. Grabowski (1996 as cited in Weigle, 2002, p.4) notes that: “Writing, as compared to speaking, can be seen as a more standardized system which must be acquired through special instruction. Mastery of this standard system is a pre-requisite of cultural and educational participation and the maintenance of one’s rights and duties.” Brown (1994), as cited in Weigle, 2002, pp.15-16) provides the following list of characteristics that ordinarily differentiate written language from spoken language: + Permanence: oral language is transitory and must be processed in real time, while written language is permanent and can be read and reread as often as one likes; * Production time: writers generally have more time to plan, review, and revise their words before they are finalized, while speakers must plan, formulate, and deliver their utterances within a few moments if they are to maintain a conversation; * Distance: between the writer and the reader in both time and space, which eliminates much of the shared context that is present between speaker and listener in ordinary face-to-face contact and thus necessitates greater explicitness on the part of the writer; + Orthography, which carries a limited amount of information compared to the richness of devices available to speakers to enhance a message (e.g. stress, intonation, pitch, volume, pausing, etc.); + Complexity: written language tends to be characterized by longer clauses and more subordinators, while spoken language tends to have shorter clauses connected by coordinators as well as more redundancy (e.g. repetition of nouns and verbs); + Formality: because of the social and cultural uses to which writing is ordinarily put, writing tends to be more formal than speaking; * Vocabulary: written texts tend to contain a wider variety of words, and more lower-frequency words, than oral texts.Thus, in L; education, le ring to write involves leaming a specialized version of a language already known to students. This specialized language differs from spoken language, both in form and in use, but builds upon linguistics resources that students already posses. In this sense, one can say that L; writing instruction is relatively standardized within a particular culture. In contrast, Weigle (2002) posits that the same cannot be said of L2 writing because of the wide variety of situations in which people learn and use second languages, both as children and as adults, in schools and in other settings. She further emphasizes that one cannot write in L2 without knowing at least something about the grammar and vocabulary of that language. Thus, the differences between L; and Le writing are considerable, and in particular the variety is much greater for Le writers than for L+ writers. Wh: N Know Tribble (1996, p.430) enumerates the range of knowledge that writers need to know in order to write effectively when undertaking a specific task: 1. Content Knowledge — knowledge of the concepts involved in the subject area 2. Context Knowledge — knowledge of the context in which the text will be read 3. Language System Knowledge — knowledge of those aspects of the language system necessary for the completion of the task 4. Writing Process Knowledge — knowledge of the most appropriate way of preparing for a specific writing task Writing Theories Writing as a social and cultural phenomenon Itis important to note that writing is not solely the product of an individual, but as a social and cultural act. Hamp-Lyons and Kroll (1997 as cited in Weigle, 2002) claim that writing is an act that takes place within a context, that accomplishes a particular purpose, and that is appropriately shaped for its intended audience. Expanding in the social nature of writing, Hayes (1996 as cited in Weigle, 2002, p.19) states that: “Contrastive rhetoric, on the other hand, gained respectability when it became clear to researchers that many aspects of writing are influenced by culture”. Leki (1992) and Grabe (1989, as cited in Weigle 2002) point out that variation in writing in different cultures does not reflect inherent different in thought patterns but rather “cultural preferences which make greater use of certain options among linguistic possibilities Cultural expectations can have a consequence for the coherence of texts — that is, the organization of a text into meaningful whole. Coherence, as Leki (1992) notes Is not an inherent quality of the text itself, but rather comes from the accuracy of the writer's assessment of what the reader will be able to infer from the text. * Writing as a Cognitive Activity In an attempt to discuss the cognitive aspects of writing in detail, a number of researchers have looked at the process of writing, specifically the use of retrospective interviews or think- aloud protocols. ‘Models of the Writing Process * Hayes and Flower (1980) = Described the writing process in terms of the task environment, which included the writing assignment and the text produced so far, the writer's long-term memory, including knowledge of topic, knowledge of audience, and stored writing flaws, and a number of cognitive processes, including planning, translating thought into text, and revising. - Emphasized that writing is a recursive and not a linear process: thus, instruction in the writing process may be more effective than providing models of particular rhetorical forms and asking students to follow these models in their own writing. * Hayes (1996) - Viewed the writing process as consisting of two main parts: the task environment and the individual. The latter is the focus of the model Individual aspects of writing involves interactions among four components: 4. Working memory 2. Motivation and affect 3. Cognitive processes 4. Long-term memory = Emphasized the importance of reading as a central process in writing, and discussed three types of reading that are essential in writing. 1. Reading to evaluate2. Re ding some source texts 3. Reading instructions * Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) - Proposed a two-model description of writing that addresses an apparent paradox in writing “ 1. The fact that virtually everyone in a literate society can learn to write as well as they can speak Expertise on writing involves a difficult, labor-intensive process that only some people master - Made a distinction between knowledge telling and knowledge transforming Knowledge telling - similar to impromptu speaking which involves very little planning or revision. This is the kind of writing which is natural and problematic. The writing of most children and adolescents falls into this category Knowledge transformation — involves much more effort and skill, and is not achieved without a great deal of practice Ferris (1998, pp.7-8) categorized the different approaches to Lz composition according to the following four foci, each of which can be linked to a particular school of thought: 7. Focus on Form and “current-traditional rhetoric", 1966 - ~ In Lo writing instruction, early emphasis was on the production of well-formed sentences; a writing task that typifies this paradigm is the controlled composition, @ narrowly focused paragraph- or essay-length assignment designed principally to give students practice with particular syntactic patterns (e.g. the past tense in English) and/or lexical forms (Kroll, 1991; Silva, 1990, as cited In Ferris, 1998). - In an extension of this model, “current-traditional rhetoric” (Berlin & Inkster, 1980; Kaplan, 1967; Silva, 1990; Young, 1978, as cited in Ferris, 1998), students were also led to generate connected discourse by combining and arranging sentences into paragraphs based on prescribed formulae. Representative composing tasks might involve the imitation of specific rhetorical patterns (e.g. exposition, illustration, comparison, classification, argumentation, etc.) based on authentic and/or student-generated models. 2. Focus on the writer: expressionism and cognitivism, 1976 — - Researchers in this paradigm have attempted to characterize the houristics and procedures used by writers as they plan, draft, revise, and edit their texts - Classroom procedure resulting from this writer-based orientation include practice with invention strategies, the creation and sharing of multiple drafts, peer collaboration, abundant revision, and attention to content before grammatical form. 3. Focus on content and the disciplines, 1986 — - Rather than replacing writing process with the pedagogical material characteristic of traditional English courses (vis., language, culture, and literature), content proponents assert that ESL writing courses should feature the specific subject matter that ESL students must learn in their major and required courses (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989, Horowitz, 1990, Shih, 1986; Snow & Brinton, 1988, as cited in Ferris, 1998). - In this model, students in adjunct, multiskill, and/or English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses are given assistance with “the language of the thinking processes and the structure or shape of content. - The main emphasis “is on the instructor's determination of what academic content is most appropriate, in order to build whole courses or modules of reading and writing tasks around that content’ (Raimes, 1991, p.411 as cited in Ferris, 1998) 4. Focus on the reader: social constructionism, 1986 — - A reader-focused composition pedagogy is instead founded on the social constructionist premise that ESL writers need to be apprenticed into one or more academic discourse communities and that writing instruction should therefore prepare students to anticipate and satisfy the demands of academic readers. - Clearly, the reader-focused approach is highly compatible with the content- Obased approach both philosophically and methodologically. ‘The table below presents the distinct features ofthe various approaches to teaching writ: