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Issues with Writing in an International ESL Setting

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  • ESL Writing

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  • Academic Writing

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  • Free Response Questions

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What kind of challenges do you have or expect?

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Chinese Students English Education

  • Kindergarten: Outside Classes, Basic Vocabulary

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  • Primary School: Basic Sentences and Grammar, Reading most emphasized, Some Writing

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  • Middle School: Exam Focused (ZhongKao), Precise Grammar, Some Essay Writing but not emphasized

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High School Curriculum

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  • Senior 1: Paragraphs Writing, More Complex Sentences, Diaries, Narratives, Stories

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  • Senior 2: Argumentative Essays, Basic Essay Format

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  • Senior 3: Academic Writing, More Sophisticated Techniques

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Student Ability Levels

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  • Top Students: Capable of Writing a variety of Essay Types, Complex Sentence Structures, Well Organized and Cohesive Essays, Independent Researchers

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  • Medium Students: Formulaic Essays, Correct but unimaginative use of English, Repeated Sentence Structures, Directed Research,

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  • Low Level Students: Struggles with basic format, numerous mistakes in word use, direct translations, research writing is impossible

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Average Student Writing Progression

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How Would You Approach This Prompt

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  • Should Students Be Allowed to Have Laptops in Class?

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  • How much should parents help children with their school work?

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  • Parents have different methods to help their children when the children meet challenges. Some people think parents should help their children to figure out these work. However, there are also many people object strongly to this method because they consider that encouraging children to do the work by themselves will be better for both parents and children. Actually, let the children to accomplish their work by themselves can develop their independent ability and learn more through working.

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  • “With the unprecedented development of the modern society, our world is moving into an era of extraordinary sophistication and versatility. We are confronted with the heated debate whether students should be allowed to bring their laptops to class. Speaking for myself, I agree that students should be allowed to take laptops with them to classes. My decision will be developed in three aspects as follows.”

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  • Golden, D. (2011) ‘U.S. college test prep is: a) turning Chinese kids into the latest threat to American competitiveness B) a hugely profitable legitimate business C) a crash course in cheating D) a source of revenue for American universities E) all of the above’, Bloomberg Business Review, May 9-May 15, p.58-63.

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  • Memorizing Essays

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  • Fill in The Blank

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  • Studying Vocabulary Translations

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  • Doing Test Questions over and over

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Virtually all students use these. Why?

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  • They can do it

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  • Exam Focused

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  • Objective vs. Subjective

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  • Who’s telling them?

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  • They Work

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Association of .8468

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Association of 0.7117

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Association of 0.8912

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Association of 0.2443

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�Effect on Students

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  • Top Students: Use test wise techniques to improve scores, but also use effective study techniques

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  • Lower Students: Use techniques ineffectively but still raise their scores

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  • Middle Students: Use test wise techniques and are rewarded for it

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Washback Effects: How does this Impact the Classroom?

  • ESL Writing

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  • Academic Writing

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  • Free Response Questions

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ESL Writing Problems

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  • Vague Generic Essays

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  • Unwillingness to improve

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  • Lack of Stakes

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  • Measuring Performance

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  • Wide gaps in achievement

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What do you think we can do?

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  • Specific Prompts

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  • Know the Signs

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  • Enforce Outlining

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  • Formative Assessment: Symbols, Self Correction, Peer Correction?

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  • One on One Conferences

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Academic English Problems

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  • Plagiarism

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  • How to Research?

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  • Paraphrasing

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What do you think we can do?

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  • Plagiarism Trap

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  • Wikipedia as a jumping off point

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  • Textbooks with Sources

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  • Enforced Outlining

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  • Ask them to paraphrase in their own language

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  • More exercises

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Free Response Questions Problems

  • Too Vague

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  • Don’t Use Subject Knowledge

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  • Use Formulas

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  • Follow Essay formats

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What do you think we can do?

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  • Use Models

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  • Emphasize writing more than you’d like to

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  • Use AV resources

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General Things to Look Out For

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  • Translations

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  • What they are taught

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  • Copied from example Essays

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General Things to look out for

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  • Following Directions

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  • Because

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  • And

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  • Always

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The development of Technology

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  • Starting with Pronouns

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  • Yes, No

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  • In my opinion, I think

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  • Obviously, Of course

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  • Excessive adjectives

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  • Against vs Oppose

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  • Insist vs Persist

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  • Nowadays

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  • Attractive vs like

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  • Go outside vs Go out