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From the Didactics of Teaching to the Didactics of Learning Writing

Enviado por neryk

    1. The Didactics of Teaching Writing
    2. Towards a Didactics of Learning Writing
    3. Bibliography
    1. – The Didactics of Teaching Writing

    Earlier approaches to the teaching of writing have misinterpreted the nature of this skill. The fact that traditional approaches to the teaching of writing have focus on ¨problematic aspects¨ of the writing situation such as the teaching of grammar or sentence structure, have been repeatedly stated. See Nunan, (1991); Richards, (1990); Byrne, (1988), among others.

    1. The Structuralist Methods

    These methods share a conception of how to learn a foreign language as a process of acquiring its structures and patterns through habit formation. The theory of language underlying these methods is structural linguistics, and even though there are differences between British and American structuralism, both saw language as a ¨system of structurally related elements for the encoding of meaning, the elements being phonemes, morphemes, words, structures and sentence types¨.

    (Richards and Rodgers, 1988; cited in Cerezal Sierra, 1997).

    Both schools lean their theory of learning upon behaviorist habit-forming conceptions. Behaviorism, an American school of psychology represented by Skinner, had an antimentalist and empirical approach to aspects of social life like structuralism concerning language. Behavior can be conditioned by three elements: stimulus -which elicits a behavior-, a consequent response, and the final reinforcement.

    Two main approaches are representative of structuralism:

    1- The oral approach: it has its origin in the British applied linguistics of the 1920´s and 1930´s, represented by Palmer and Hornby. It was dominant from the 1930´s to the 1960´s. In the 1960´s, this approach was called the Situational Approach close to a bigger emphasis on the representation and practice of language situationally. In relation to the writing skill, this approach has the following characteristics:

    • Its syllabus is organized structurally in sentence patterns, gradually sequenced.
    • Correct grammar and spelling are considered crucial, so students must avoid errors.
    • The written language comes after the oral language.
    1. The audio-lingual method: this method corresponds with The USA structuralist tradition of FLT, which became the dominant orthodoxy after World War II. Its origin can be traced back to Bloomfield, who set up the bases of structuralist linguistics segmenting and classifying utterances into their phonological and grammatical constituents. Other followers were Fries, Brooks, Rivers and Lado.

    The characteristics and assumptions reflected by this approach gave primary emphasis to an oral approach to FLT and focus on an accurate speech, but grammatical explanations did not have an important role. Teaching units are organized following these three methodological points:

    Nothing will be spoken before it has been heard.

    Nothing will be read before it has been spoken.

    Nothing will be written before it has been read.

    In the 1960´s, the structuralist methods were still widespread, but those years saw as well the beginning of criticism from different sides. First, their ideas about language and learning theories were questioned; secondly, teachers did not fill their expectations, and finally; students had many difficulties to communicate inside the classroom and sometimes found the learning experience boring and discouraging.

    In relation to writing, these methods mislead the teaching of written communication by excessive emphasis on grammatical elements of secondary importance, and neglecting generalizations. Slight treatment is given to syntactic relations; it does not provide criteria for error correction. Accent was also placed on formal criteria at the expense of situational and semantic aspects; structures were seen as an end in itself while neglecting their application in real life communication, which left teachers and learners without a creative approach towards the language study.

    Two key writing teaching approaches are representative of the influence of structuralist methods on this linguistic skill, the following analysis appears in Byrne, (op. cit.):

    • An accuracy oriented approach, which stresses the importance of writer’s control, in order to eliminate mistakes.
    • A text- oriented approach, which stresses the importance of the paragraph as the basic unit of written expression, and mainly concerned with teaching the students how to construct and organize paragraphs.
    1. The Communicative Approach or Communicative Language Teaching

    This approach is usually called communicative though other labels – particularly functional or notional at its early stages- have also been used as synonyms. (Cerezal Sierra, op. cit.). The term communicative denotes a marked concern with semantic aspects of language (Wilkins, 1978; cited in Cerezal Sierra, op. cit.)

    The crisis of structuralist methods had began with Chomsky’s criticisms about the incapability of structuralism to take into account the fundamental characteristics of language. The Situational method was criticized by the British applied linguistics because it lacked the functional and communicative potential of language. Applied linguists made use of the British functional linguistics (Firth, Halliday…), American socio-linguistics (Hymes, Gumperz, and Labov), as well as Philosophy (Austin and Searle).

    The criticism was also growing among the FLT profession about the production of structurally competent but communicatively incompetent students, unable to transfer outside the classroom the amount of classroom work on repetitive habit-forming exercises. Dissatisfaction showed as well from the new educational realities created by the development of the European Union.

    The Council of Europe decided to face the new reality and asked some experts to study the needs of European students. This work culminated in the document called Threshold Level of the Council of Europe, which includes list of situations, topics, general and specific notions and adequate language forms, as well as some methodological implications. This document, together with the contribution of some applied linguists (among them Widdowson, Brumfit, Johnson, Trim, Richterich and Chancerel), textbook writers, educationalists, etc, led to the consideration of the new approach known as communicative (Cerezal Sierra, op. cit.)

    However, this process does not mean a coherent community based on the Communicative approach, as there is no single text over any single model. The understanding of the approach varies from some authors to others, and there are several different models for syllabus design (see Richards and Rodgers, 1986)

    Type References

    1- Structures + functions Wilkins, (1976)

    2- Functional spiral around a structural core Brumfit, (1980)

    3- Functional Jupp and Hodlin, (1975)

    4- Notional Wilkins, (1976)

    5- Interactional Widdowson, (1979)

    6- Task- based Prabhu, (1983)

    7- Learner generated Candlin, (1976)

    The Communicative Approach brings about some changes and innovations coming mainly from applied linguistics. Language is seen as a social phenomenon and as a means of communication and interaction between members of a community. The goal of FLT is to develop students´ communicative competence (Hymes, 1972).

    The impact of the communicative approach to language teaching has been strong in spite of the fact that it is not a totally defined method and has been subject to several interpretations. See the following summary from McDonough and Shaw, 1993, cited in Cerezal Sierra (op. cit.):

    1. Increasing concern with the meaning potential of language.
    2. The relationship between language form and function is of a rather complex character.
    3. The concept of communication goes beyond the sentence to texts conversations.
    4. Appropriacy of language use is considered alongside accuracy, which has implications for error correction, materials and activities.
    5. It provides realistic and motivating language practice.
    6. The concept communicative is applied to the four language skills.
    7. It can use learners´ knowledge and experience with their mother tongue
    8. It has introduced a better level of language reflection and awareness in its later times.

    In relation to writing, some approaches have emerged as result of those developments:

    -A fluency-oriented approach, which encourages students to write as much and as quickly as possible without worrying about mistakes.

    – A purpose-oriented approach, which considers the reasons for writing, and the audience for whom to write. It is concerned with the students learning when they write something, to whom, under what circumstances.

    The Communicative Approach to writing entangles with the purpose-oriented approach, since the former demands teaching why they should write something, to whom, under what circumstances, what the purpose could be, and what consequences could result from the writing. All these elements refer to providing a context for writing, with task-oriented activities that involve the exchange of information and the free use of the language without undue concern for mistakes. (Byrne, op.cit.)

    However, on the other hand, it is evident that there are still some unresolved problems with the CA:

    2. Too much emphasis has been given – particularly in its early stages- to speaking and listening, to the detriment of reading and writing.
    3. There has been a lack of reflection on language aspects.
    4. Critics have pointed out that it is not appropriate to foreign language situations, so advocates more emphasis to language awareness.
    5. It is not clear the criteria for selecting and grading the chosen functions and grammatical exponents to be taught.
    6. Again, not all the teachers whose mother tongue is not English are confident enough to work with this approach.
    7. In fact, some of the proposals imply a new selection of language through functions, as the structuralists did with structures.
    8. Its advocacy of a meaningful use of the language is not always clear, or the activities or tasks to be undertaken are not always really meaningful.

    (Cerezal Sierra, op.cit.)

    Other criticisms came from teachers and researchers of FLT.

    • Lack of input ( nothing for beginners)
    • Lack of support for second language acquisition.
    • Communicative language teaching trivializes the students´ attempts for learning language.
    • Lack of authenticity of discourse
    • One generalized type of discourse ( Initiation- Response/ Initiation- Response- Evaluation)

    (Pat Currie, 1999)

    The structuralist methods, and the earlier models of the CA are also called propositional or product.

    Their ways of teaching and learning are through formal and systematic statements (expressed as structures, rules and functions…) and they have had an outstanding influence on the teaching of writing. Besides, their scope of influence has shifted from excessive care for language accuracy to fostering writing fluency without paying much attention to mistakes.

    1.2- Towards a Didactics of Learning Writing

    1.2.1- The procedural Approaches

    The last decade brought about a new perspective in the views of writing. As Richards, (op. cit.) remarks ¨If our goal I teaching writing is to develop fluent writers, it is necessary to examine how fluent writers compose and to reexamine our writing methods logically in the light of this information.

    This position is theoretically congruent with the new paradigm in FLT: the procedural approaches (task-based and process approaches) which represent important innovations in theory, research and classroom experience, and which have introduced sound changes in FLT ( Cerezal Sierra, op.cit.).

    These innovations mean a change of emphasis from the subject to be learned to the learning process and imply interesting consequences of negotiation, evaluation and retrospective planning. The following list of contrasts between product and process approaches of FLT is taken from Gray, (1990, (cited in Cerezal Sierra, op. cit).

    What is to be learned? How is to be learned?

    – Subject emphasis Process emphasis

    – External to the learner Internal of the learner

    – Determined by authority Negotiated between learner and teacher

    – Teacher as decision- maker Learners and teachers as decision makers

    Content=what the subject is to the expert Content = what the subject is to the learner

    Objectives defined in advance Objectives described afterwards

    Assessment by achievement or mastery Achievement in relation to learner’s criteria

    of success

    – Doing things to the learner Doing things for or with the learner

    Process models focus on three types of processes: communicating, learning and the classroom social activity. The ways things are done in the classroom are the means through which communicating and learning can be achieved. The Process Model is a plan for classroom work, which provides:

    1. The major decisions that teachers and learners need to make jointly in an on-going and negotiated way.
    2. A bank of classroom activities in a not sequenced way.

    The roots of Process Approaches are found in educational thought and practice coming from humanistic approaches (Dewey, 1974; Holt, 1976; Freire, 1970), the importance given to learning in groups, learner interpretation of a new knowledge, as well as arguments against the need to plan a syllabus of content. (Cerezal Sierra, op. cit.)

    This approach has had a considerable influence on the teaching and learning of writing. It has implied transformations in the role teachers and learners have had traditionally and consequently in the types of instructional activities carried out. There is a general recognition of a minimal three-stage process (Richards, op.cit.; Murray, 1980 cited in Richards, op. cit.; Nunan, op.cit.; Raimes, 1987; Terroux and Woods, 1991; Hedge, 1988; Conrad, 1983…)

    Collaborative writing, and highly interactive patterns are proper of this approach, which concentrates more at the level of discourse, and teachers are much more interested in the process writers go through in composing a text. The interaction patterns cover a wide range of types: expert –novice, novice- novice, writer-reader, writer-writer, reader-reader, and teachers as fellow writers away from judge and critic.

    The instructional activities are numerous and varied: rehearsing activities, journals, brainstorming, free associations, clustering and word mapping, quick writing, strategic questioning, elaboration exercises, group drafting, redrafting, getting feedback, using check lists, etc.

    With the emergence of the process approach to teaching and learning writing, a growing interest on the different kinds of strategies and cognitive processes and activities has been the focus research on writing. Thus, contemporary trends of teaching and learning foreign languages, and writing specifically, have moved towards a didactic of learning, centering on how learners learn aside from the earlier views, which concentrated more on the process of teaching and the up coming product. These theoretical foundations are also supported by the great influence the emerging Theory of Learning Strategies is having on educational research and FLT specifically. The works done by researchers such as Raimes, (1995); Lapp, (1984) and Zamel, (1987), both cited in Richards, (op. cit.) mean important prompts in discovering how experienced writers compose their texts, what behaviors and strategies they choose and which elements take part in the process of writing. As a result, a more logical and composite picture of the process of writing is coming through.

    1.2.2- A Theoretical Model of Writing

    A graphic representation of the process of writing can be visualized in the following diagram:

    This theoretical model of writing intends to represent the components of the writing process

    and their relationships.

    The process of writing is composed by three main stages: pre- writing, writing and post-writing, within each of them various phases take place.

    In the pre-writing stage, occur the generation, focusing and structuring of ideas, which refer to establishing the purpose of writing, defining the audience and the form the text will have. The drafting phase refers to the composition of the text, i.e. putting ideas into paragraphs coherently. The post- writing stage implies revision, evaluating critically what has been written, considering content, form and other parameters; and rewriting, which is a natural part of the writing process as a whole, successive reconstructed drafts are done till the desired standards are met.

    The arrows that establish the relationships among the stages and within each stage show the recursive nature of the process.

    The three stages are lead by the rhetorical problem – that is the interpretation the writer does of the task or instruction to be performed-; the declarative knowledge the writer has- previous background knowledge that can be verbalized-; the procedural knowledge –

    linked to knowledge about how to act and execute tasks-, and the last leading component is the audience, because it is important that the writer anticipates the possible reactions, backgrounds, etc. of those who will be reading and creating meaning out of what is produced (Richard- Amato, 1996). A sense of audience creates a context for writing without which it is impossible to produce a genuine communicative product.

    At the bottom of the diagram, the external and internal factors that are not to be overruled are presented. The inclusion of these factors intends to precise that writing is not only determined by the task in itself, the demands imposed by the declarative and procedural knowledge, but also by the action of these factors that is not to be neglected.

    All of these factors intervene to a greater or lesser degree in the whole process. Their influence varies from individual to individual, but the teacher should not overlook their relevance, being more or less important, if he or she wants to elicit a harmonic writing process and a corresponding product.

    1.2.3- Assumptions about Learning

    Our views on knowing how people learn a foreign language and particularly, how learners learn to write are supported in the following six research-based assumptions about learning (Jones et al, 1987 c.f.Takala, 1996)

    1. Learning is goal oriented. Expert learners have two major goals during the learning process: to understand the meaning of the task and to regulate their own learning. In other words, learners have either declarative knowledge, or content goals, and procedural knowledge, or strategic goals for a learning task.
    2. In learning, new information is linked to prior knowledge. Prior knowledge is stored in memory in the form of knowledge frameworks or schemata, and new information is understood and stored by calling up the appropriate schema and integrating the new information with it. Knowing how and when to access prior knowledge is a characteristic of effective learners.
    3. Learning requires knowledge organization. Knowledge is organized in recognizable frameworks such as story grammar, problem/solutions structures, comparison/contrast patterns, and description sequences, among others. Skilled learners recognize these organizational structures and use them to assist learning and recall.
    4. Learning is strategic. Good learners are aware of the learning processes and of themselves as learners, and seek to control their own learning through the use of appropriate learning strategies. Strategies can be taught but many do not transfer ton new tasks. Although each content area may require a particular set of strategies and skills, a number of core skills underlies all subject areas. Examples of these core skills are using prior knowledge, making a representation of the information, self-monitoring, and summarizing.
    5. Learning occurs in recursive phases. All types of learning are initiated with a planning phase, followed by an on-line processing, and editing with consolidation and extension of the new information. In the planning phase, the problem is identified, goals are set, and prior knowledge is activated. During on-line processing new information is integrated, assimilated, and used to clarify or modify existing ideas. During consolidation and extension, the learner summarizes and organizes the new information, assesses achievement of the goal established in the first phase, and extends learning to applying to new situations. During each phase, the learner may return to a previous phase to rework one or more of its aspects.
    6. Learning is influenced by development. Differences between older and younger students and between more or less proficient learners are due in large part to differences in prior knowledge and learning strategy used. These differences may be present when children begin school or may develop over time, but in either case, they tend to persist unless intervention is undertaken.

    (Jones, Ogle and Carr, 1987 c.f. Takala, 1996)

    For work on learning strategies in language learning, O’Malley and Chamot, (1990) c.f. Takala, (1996), consider it important that cognitive theory makes the following assertions:

    1. Learning is an active and dynamic process, in which individuals make use of a variety of information and strategic modes of processing.
    2. Language is a complex cognitive skill that has properties in common with other complex skills in terms of how information is stored and learned.
    3. Learning a language entails stage wise progression from initial awareness and active manipulation of information and learning processes to full automaticity in language use; and
    4. Learning strategies parallel theoretically derived cognitive processes and have the potential to influence learning outcomes in a positive manner.

    Naiman, Frohlich, Stern and Todesco (1978) identified the following five strategies in their seminal study on good language learners (GLLs.). The five major strategies describe the overall approach to language learning that appears to be essential to successful language acquisition. The minor strategies subsumed under the major ones were not considered necessarily applicable to all successful language learners. The five strategies are:

    Strategy 1: Active task approach

    Good language learners (GLLs.) actively improve themselves in the language-learning task:

    1. By responding positively adding to given learning opportunities or by identifying and seeking preferred learning environments and exploiting them.
    2. By adding related language learning activities to the regular program and/or identifying their efforts.
    3. By engaging in a number of practice activities.
    4. By identifying individual problems connected with their language learning and actively dealing with them.
    5. By changing the usual purpose of an activity in order to focus on L2 learning.

    Strategy 2: Realization of language as a system

    GLLs. Develop or exploit an awareness of language as a system. In dealing with language as a system GLLs:

    1. Refer back to their native language(s) judiciously (translate into L1) and make effective cross-lingual comparisons at different stages of language learning.
    2. Analyze the target language and make inferences about it; they guess by using clues.
    3. Develop learning techniques, which make use of the fact that language is a system.

    Strategy 3: Realization of language as means of communication and interaction

    GLLs. Develop and exploit an awareness of language as a means of communication (i.e.conveying and receiving messages) and interaction (i.e. behaving in a culturally appropriate manner).

    1. In the earlier stages of language learning GLLs. May emphasize fluency over accuracy. They may concentrate on speech flow rather than error- free production.
    2. GLLs. seek out situations in which they can communicate with members of the target language and/or increase their communicative skills in the language.
    3. GLLs. display critical sensitivity to language use, for example, to be attempting to find out socio-cultural meanings (even before first contact with native speakers).

    Strategy 4: Management of affective demands

    GLLs. realize initially or with time that they must cope with the affective demands made upon them by language learning and succeed in doing so.

    Strategy 5: Monitoring of L2 performance

    GLLs. constantly revise their L2 systems. They monitor the language they are acquiring by testing their inferences (guesses); by looking for needed adjustments as they think corrections are needed.

    C. F Takala, (op. cit.)

    Unfortunately, the majority of the learners do not inherently share the cognitive, strategy- related, and personality characteristics of GLLs. (Brown, op. cit.). They are not aware of the power of language learning strategies for facilitating their learning, many of them know little about learning of a language as a process. Nonetheless, the teacher may change this situation by developing the learners’ awareness and the use of learning strategies by offering conscious and explicit training of writing learning strategies.

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    (1999)

    Autoras:

    Nery Karen García Pando

    Lic. en Educación Especialidad Lengua Inglesa, 1999

    Yinmia Reyes Blanco

    Lic. en Educación Especialidad Lengua Inglesa, 1999

    Key Words: writing strategies, learning strategies, writing, skill, writing skill, strategic training,