please cite as: ortega, l. (2007). locating purposes and needs for writing in a foreign language....
Post on 20-Dec-2015
213 views
TRANSCRIPT
Please cite as:
Ortega, L. (2007). Locating Purposes and Needs for Writing in a Foreign Language. Plenary delivered at the 6th Symposium on Second Language Writing, Nagoya Gakuin University, September 15-17, 2007.
Copyright © Lourdes Ortega, 2007
Locating Purposes and Needs for Writing in a
Foreign Language
Lourdes OrtegaUniversity of Hawai‘i at Mānoa
6th Symposium on Second Language WritingNagoya Gakuin University, September 15-17,
2007
Purposes & Needs...
... FL writing is often felt to be less purposeful and less
needs-driven than SL writing
FL students have little reason to write in the L2 -- writing in the L2 plays no immediately apparent role in their lives
SL students often have pressing reasons to want to become better L2 writers -- material, academic, and social incentives
Location of culture through...
Right to difference-in-equalityLiminalityBorders, thresholds, bridges
in-betweenness (interstices)
interstitial perspective, double vision
Post-colonial experience affords interstitial perspective, double vision
“I do want to make graphic what it means to survive, to produce, to labor and to create, within a world-system whose major economic impulses and cultural investments are pointed in a direction away from you, your country or your people. Such neglect can be a deeply negating experience, oppressive and exclusionary, and it spurs you to resist the polarities of power and prejudice, to reach beyond and behind invidious narratives of center and periphery”
(Bhabha, 1994/2004, p. xi)
Post-colonial experience affords interstitial perspective, double vision
“I do want to make graphic what it means to survive, to produce, to labor and to create, within a world-system whose major economic impulses and cultural investments are pointed in a direction away from you, your country or your people. Such neglect can be a deeply negating experience, oppressive and exclusionary, and it spurs you to resist the polarities of power and prejudice, to reach beyond and behind invidious narratives of center and periphery”
(Bhabha, 1994/2004, p. xi)
Post-colonial experience affords interstitial perspective, double vision
“I do want to make graphic what it means to survive, to produce, to labor and to create, within a world-system whose major economic impulses and cultural investments are pointed in a direction away from you, your country or your people. Such neglect can be a deeply negating experience, oppressive and exclusionary, and it spurs you to resist the polarities of power and prejudice, to reach beyond and behind invidious narratives of center and periphery”
(Bhabha, 1994/2004, p. xi) ... reach beyond binaries
“What is theoretical innovative, and politically crucial, is the need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences... ‘In-between’ spaces [... nourish... ] new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation...”
(Bhabha, 1994/2004, p. 2)
think beyond narratives of originary and initial
subjectivities
Focus on those moments or processes that are produced in
the articulation of cultural differences
The experience of non-nativeness can also foster a double vision, a desire (indeed, a need!) to reach beyond binaries, and to look at the in-betweenness in things
Large-size classroomsOverloaded teacher schedules
... both particularly serious obstacles for “process” L2 writing pedagogies
e.g., Casanave (2004), Leki (2001), You (2004)
Teaching writing (or not),when tests ignore it
Writing-free national EFL mandates(e.g., Taiwan
Cheng, 2005)
Job-hunting test credentials(e.g., pre-2006 TOEIC in Japan)
tests that demand writing
School-leavingtests
University-entranceexams
University-exitingexams
China’s NMET (Qi Luxia, 2005, 2007); guided writing 6.5%
Hong Kong’s HKCEE (Liying Cheng, 1997); Grade 11 writing = 20% 1.5 hrs
Germany, Poland (Reichelt, 1997, 2005)
University home-made exams in Japan (Brown & Yamashita, 1995; Watanabe, 1996, 2000)
CET-Band 4 in China (Gan et al., 2004; You, 2004)
Tests impose a straight jacket on pedagogies:
“Three teachers said they required multiple drafts from their students on a regular basis [...] But as the writing tasks they gave to the students were almost all simulations of the writing section of the CET, which in most cases was a form of guided composition (i.e., students develop essays on topic sentences provided), the students’ revisions and the teacher’s feedback were predominantly concerned about grammatical and lexical errors rather than exploring and discovering meaning.”
(You, 2004, p. 102)
Testing burdens FL pedagogies directly by affecting teacher decisions but also indirectly via student expectations and textbooks
(Gorsuch, 2001)
Consequences are long-ranging
Tests can contribute to “students’ narrow definition of writing”
(Luce-Kapler & Kingler, 2005)
Consequences are deep
Yet, we shouldn’t imagine these constraints as homogeneous or deterministic
Differences between urban & rural geographies in China (e.g., Hu, 2005)
Differences between academic and vocational schools in Japan (e.g., Gorsuch, 2001)
We need to imagine: beyond originary, inherited space and time
differences in life experiencesdifferences in negotiating constraints
(e.g., MacPherson, 2005)
Societal-structuraltexture
Individual agency
Globalization & Local context:tension-ridden interpenetration of values and practices from centers to peripheries
and (only rarely)back from peripheries to
centers
Cumming (2003) reports that “writing process” and “genre” were well known concepts for 17 experienced writing instructors across a variety of FL contexts he investigated (Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand, as well as French Canada)
Well documented:
Spread of center pedagogies...
... and tension between professional knowledge and local needs...
“Most of the teachers I interviewed told me that they had read about the process approach, genre-based approach, and writing for academic purposes approach. But they could hardly use them in their classes because ‘‘We teach the students examination writing,’’ as one of the teachers remarked.”
(You, 2004, p. 102)
Yet, we need to see in-between
Attested local adaptationsLeki (2001) : Ambivalence in them (p.
205):
“the right to resist center imposed materials and methods” (p. 197)
‘failures’ to properly understand and implement best methodologies
conscious or unconscious solutions to resist the impositions from the center
Table 1. EFL studies in JSLW 1992-to date (36% of 148 primary studies)
Countries Schools (K-12)
Higher education
Other Total
China 6 6
Hong Kong 4 9 13
India 1 1
Japan 12 12
Korea 1 1
Singapore 3 3
Taiwan 3 3
Other FL countries
5 6 4 15
Total 10 40 4 54
Table 2. EFL studies in TQ 1992-to date (33% of 48 primary writing studies)
Countries Schools (K-12) Higher education
Other Studies
China (3) 2 1 Li (2007), Shi et al. (2005),
Shi (2001)
Hong Kong (4) 3 1 Braine (2005),L. Flowerdew
(2003), J. Flowerdew
(2000), Pennycook
(1996)
Japan (1) 1 Kobayashi (1992)
Singapore (1) 1 Stroud & Lee (2007)
Other EFL countries (7)
1 5 1 Liebowitz (2005), Curry &
Lillis (2004), Turner &
Upshur (2002), Angelil-Carter (1997), Thesen
(1997), Culk (1994),
Albertini (1993)
Total 2 11 3 16
Table 3. Some themes in EFL scholarship (JSLW & TQ 1992-to date; N=70)
Theme Illustrations
Cognitive processes of composing Pennington & So (1993), Roca de Larios et al. (1999), Sasaki (2000), Wang & Wen (2002)
(Critical) contrastive rhetoric & instruction
Kubota (1998), Gosden (1998), Sengupta (1999), Lee (2002), Kang (2005)
Feedback/response and revision Brock (1993), Jacobs et al. (1998), Ashwell (2000), Min (2006), Miao et al. (2006)
Writing for publication in English Gosden (1996), Casanave (1998), J. Flowerdew (1999a, 1999b), Curry & Lillis (2004), Shi et al. (2005), Li (2007)
Plagiarism, voice, and their (trans)cultural dimensions
Deckert (1993), Pennycook (1996), Matsuda (2001)
L1/L2 composing pedagogical & curricular landscapes
Kobayashi & Rinnert (2002); Reichelt (1999, 2005); Ramanathan (2003); You (2004)
Contributions of FL Writing scholarship to L2 writing theory
Two Japan-basedresearch programs
Two Europe-basedResearch programs
Miyuki Sasaki
Keiko Hirose
Hiroe Kobayashi
Carol Rinnert
Rosa Manchón
Liz Murphy
Julio Roca de Larios
Rob Schoonen
Amos van Gelderen
Kees de Glopper
L2 proficiency
L2 composing ability
Overall (L1) composing ability
Experience(=practice)
L1 & L2 training(=meta-knowledge)
Problem-solving(L1 use, restructuring,
backtracking)
L2 fluency vs.L2 knowledge
Context (SA)
In a nutshell:
But What of Purposes and Needs for FL
writing?In-between what we should know, and what we should be trying to
imagine
TENAR, TENOP, TENOR?Courtesy of Akiko Katayama to Sandy McKay, to me
TENAR = Teaching English for No Apparent Reason (one of several facetious expressions used to describe a learning situation where the purpose is, at best, vague; this includes language courses that apparently exist merely to allow students to meet university graduation requirements; common in Japan)
(ELT Acronyms, in ELT News, http://www.eltnews.com/guides/acronyms_3.shtml)
Purposes for FL writing
UtilitarianWriting toLearn FL
Humanistic
Exams
Trade
Tourism
Science
Technology
Practicing FL
Motivational boost
Creativity & self-expression
Critical thinking
Identity construction
Personal
CMC
Pop culture
After all these years: Grammar, lexis, & ‘control of language’ still important in S/FL writing
(Hinkel, 2006)
Writing --- metalinguistic reflection (Cumming, 1990; Swain & Lapkin, 1995)
Writing -- collaboration and interaction (Swain, Brooks, & Tocalli-Beller, 2002)... (in FL contexts this may happen in the L1; Pennington et al., 1996)
Text reconstruction studies (Izumi & Bigelow, 2000; Izumi, 2002)
Reformulation studies (Adams, 2003; Tocalli-Beller & Swain, 2005; Qi & Lapkin, 2001)
Writing -- attention & practice (Manchón & Roca de Larios, 2007)
Writing Language Development
Yet, not so much is known about writing as a site for L2 development
(emphasis on linguistic profiling and rhetorical analysis, not development)
Q: Pushed output applied to L2 writing?
Q: Ways to motivate writers to write (more and better) in the FL?
Powerful effect of changing contexts for writing: 8-to-11 month study abroad experiences (Sasaki,
2004, in press)Rethink tasks: Uncorrected journal assignments (Casanave, 1994) Guided vs. unguided picture stories (Ishikawa,
1994) Create writing tasks that connect with student
interests and backgrounds (Lo & F. Hyland, in press)
Q: How is teacher agency exercised to motivate students creatively, even in the most difficult of contexts?
“The writing tasks in the CETB-4 ask students to write short argumentative or expository essays. [Mrs Meng] explained that writing for daily applications and writing for examinations serve different purposes. In her own teaching, she encouraged students to translate Chinese notices and graffiti into English, or to keep an English diary, all of which interested her students enormously”
(You, 2004, p. 107)
“The writing tasks in the CETB-4 ask students to write short argumentative or expository essays. [Mrs Meng] explained that writing for daily applications and writing for examinations serve different purposes. In her own teaching, she encouraged students to translate Chinese notices and graffiti into English, or to keep an English diary, all of which interested her students enormously”
(You, 2004, p. 107)
Reichelt (2005, p. 230) FL writing in Poland: Tenth-graders’ Advertisements for a New Teacher
WANTED!!! An excellent upper-intermediate class is searching for a new English teacher. If you think (optional) you can handle a group of loud, unorganized, annoying students who never do their homework, you are welcome. We offer you a headache, stomach diseases, concussion, neurosis, and lots of ulcers. If you are a real man, prove it, and take your chance.
Q: Accuracy & motivation, how do they affect each other?
“... giving students real topics where they had real information and feelings to communicate taxed their second language resources to the maximum and thus resulted in less accurate language”
e.g., more direct and inappropriate translations from Chinese to English
e.g., more occasions when students asked for direct translation of a phrase or sentence from Chinese to English while writing
(Lo & Hyland, in press, p. 13)
Utilitarian/InstrumentalPurposes & Needs
Exams
ScienceAcademia
TradeTourism
Technology
Globalization
Q: What antagonistic and affiliative engagements (Bhabha, 1994) does globalization afford various FL writers?
Antagonistic and affiliative engagements:
Former student, quoted with permission
My weakness is grammar and academic voice:I did not think I was weak in my grammar but when I got
comments from a lot of professors about my grammar, I still feel I’m not legitimate academic writer. Their comment make me to think I’m not academically appropriate, but still need to go to ESL English classes to fix my grammar. I feel often I’m a long-term patient in a hospital to get a 10 year long surgery. [...]
[My other weakness is] Academic voice. I’m getting into post-modernism. But I don’t have post-modernist’s academic voice in my writing. So, I really wish I can get their voice in my writing. So that I can be part of their community.
(Chen et al., 2005, p. 610)
“Across the Greater China region, residents can read Harry Potter books or Scientific American, watch the Discovery or Disney channels, and follow NBA stars or Hollywood idols—all in Chinese. Outside of school, young people may participate in global culture without English”
In Germany, many teachers think that “writing in one or more foreign languages, especially at the advanced level, trains students’ overall linguistic sensitivity and often helps them with writing in German”
(Reichelt, 2005, p. 93) “writing may be the perfect vehicle for accomplishing the eventual construction of an appropriate and comfortable identity in the FL”
(Leki, 2001, p. 205)
Writing may be one of the most powerful sites for
escaping the native/non-native speaker dichotomy
and inventing a new space in which nativeness
eventually may not matter (finally!)
Joseph Conrad Franz Kafka
Nobody remembers them for being non-native writers,but for being seminal writers
Q: How do humanistic purposes and center-periphery dialectics collide and change each other?
Ramanathan & Atkinson (1999) ideology of individualism
Matsuda (2001) identity unavoidable, discursive and social repertoires context-specific
Kubota (2002, 2004) liberal humanism that supports essential, imagined “us” and “other”
More personalpurposes & needs
Q: Less conventional, less school-oriented genres: Email, pop culture... How much FL ‘writing’ is there in them?
How can FL researchers & FL teachers imagine and craft richer and generative purposes and needs for FL writing?
Second ForeignNative Non-
nativeL1 L2C self C other
We need to go beyond binaries:
in-betweenness (interstices)
A pedagogy of shuttling between languages/contexts:
Focus on multilingual writers and her/his mutiplicity of contexts, not only texts
Focus on versatility as much as consistency
Canagarajah’s (2006) suggestion:
...Will we be able to imagine more purpose-ful, and needs-informed FL writing
... at the interstices?
Writing in a foreign language...
Thank [email protected]
References: Adams, R. (2003). L2 output, reformulation and noticing: Implications for IL development.
Language Teaching Research, 7, 347-376.
Bhabha, H. (1994). The location of culture. New York: Routledge. [2004 Routledge Classics]
Brown, J. D., & Yamashita, S. (1995). English language entrance exams at Japanese universities: What do we know about them? JALT Journal, 17, 7-30.
Canagarajah, A. S. (2006). Toward a writing pedagogy of shuttling between languages: Learning from multilingual writers. College English, 68(6), 589-604.
Casanave, C. (1994). Language development in students' journals. Journal of Second Language Writing, 3, 179-201.
Casanave, C. P. (2004). Controversies in second language writing: Dilemmas and decisions in research and instruction. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Chen, J. F., Warden, C. A., & Chang, H. T. (2005). Motivators that do not motivate: The case of Chinese EFL learners and the influence of culture on motivation. TESOL Quarterly, 39, 609-633.
Cheng, C.-C. P. (2005). There is no standard way to struggle or succeed: Taiwanese students’ stories learning to write in English. Unpublished scholarly paper. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Honolulu.
Cheng, L. (1997). Does washback influence teaching? Implications for Hong Kong. Language and Education, 11, 38-54.
Cumming, A. (1990). Expertise in evaluating second language compositions. Language Testing, 7, 31-51.
Cumming, A. (2003). Experienced ESL/EFL writing instructors’ conceptualizations of their teaching: Curriculum options and implications. In B. Kroll (Ed.), Exploring the dynamics of second language writing (pp. 71-92). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gan, Z., Humphreys, G., & Hamp-Lyons, L. (2004). Understanding successful and unsuccessful EFL students in Chinese universities. Modern Language Journal, 88, 229–244.
Gorsuch, G. (2001). Japanese EFL teachers’ perceptions of communicative, audiolingual and yakudoku activities: The plan versus the reality. Education Policy Analysis Archives [online], 9(10), 2-26. Available: http://olam.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v9n10.html
Hinkel, E. (2006). Current perspectives on teaching the four skills. TESOL Quarterly, 40, 109-131.
Hu, G. (2005). Using peer review with Chinese ESL student writers. Language Teaching Research, 9, 321-342.
Ishikawa, S. (1995). Objective measurement of low-proficiency EFL narrative writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 4, 51-69.
Izumi, S. (2002). Output, input enhancement, and the noticing hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 541-577.
Izumi, S., & Bigelow, M. (2000). Does output promote noticing and second language acquisition? TESOL Quarterly, 34, 239-278.
Kubota, R. (2002). The author responds: (Un)raveling racism in a nice field like TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 36, 84-92.
Kubota, R. (2004). The politics of cultural difference in second language education. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 1 (1), 21-39.
Leki, I. (2001). Material, educational, and ideological challenges of teaching EFL writing at the turn of the century. International Journal of English Studies, 1(2), 197-209.
Lo, J., & Hyland, F. (in press/2007). Enhancing students’ engagement and motivation in writing: The case of primary students in Hong Kong. Journal of Second Language Writing(3).
Luce-Kapler, R., & Klinger, D. (2005). Uneasy writing: The defining moments of high-stakes literacy testing. Assessing Writing, 10, 157–173.
MacPherson, S. (2005). Negotiating language contact and identity change in developing Tibetan-English bilingualism. TESOL Quarterly, 39, 585-607.
Manchón, R. M., & Roca de Larios, J. (2007). Writing-to-learn in instructed language learning contexts. In E. Alcón Soler & M. P. Safont Jordà (Eds.), Intercultural language use and language learning (pp. 101-121). Dordrecht: Springer.
Matsuda, P. K. (2001). Voice in Japanese written discourse: Implications for second language writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 35-53.
Pennington, M. C., Brock, M. N., & Yue, F. (1996). Explaining Hong Kong students’ response to process writing: An exploration of causes and outcomes. Journal of Second Language Writing, 5, 227-252.
Qi, D. S., & Lapkin, S. (2001). Exploring the role of noticing in a three-stage second language writing task. Journal of Second Language Writing, 10, 277-303.
Qi, L. (2005). Stakeholders’ conflicting aims undermine the washback function of a high-stakes test. Language Testing, 22, 140-173.
Qi, L. (2007). Is testing an efficient agent for pedagogical change? Examining the intended washback of the writing task in a high-stakes English test in China. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 14, 51 - 74.
Ramanathan, V., & Atkinson, D. (1999). Individualism, academic writing, and ESL writers. Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 45-75.
Reichelt, M. (1997). L2 writing instruction at the German ‘Gymnasium’: A 13th-grade English class writes the ‘Abitur’. Journal of Second Language Writing, 6, 265-291.
Reichelt, M. (2005). WAC practices at the secondary level in Germany. WAC Journal, 16, 89-100.
Sasaki, M. (2004). A multiple-data analysis of the 3.5-year development of EFL student writers. Language Learning, 54, 525-582.
Sasaki, M. (in press). Effects of study-abroad experiences on EFL writers: A multiple-data analysis. Modern Language Journal.
Swain, M., Brooks, L., & Tocalli-Beller, A. (2002). Peer-peer dialogue as a means of second language learning. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22, 171-185.
Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (1995). Problems in output and the cognitive processes they generate: A step towards second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 16, 371-391.
Tocalli-Beller, A., & Swain, M. (2005). Reformulation: The cognitive conflict and L2 learning it generates. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15, 5-28.
Watanabe, Y. (1996). Does grammar translation come from the entrance examination? Preliminary findings from classroom-based research. Language Testing, 13, 318-333.
Watanabe, Y. (2000). Washback effects of the English section of Japanese university entrance examinations on instruction in pre-college EFL. Language Testing Update, 27, 42-47.
You, X. (2004). “The choice made from no choice”: English writing instruction in a Chinese university. Journal of Second Language Writing, 13, 97-110.