Hi Jack,
I apologize for the delay in responding. I've been working on a major
series and the deadlines are fierce. Thanks for your patience.
Your approach of working with sentence structures really resonates with me.
I see sentence frames as training wheels that allow students to produce
clear, coherent ideas. These "training wheels" level the playing field and
allow students to focus on their ideas rather than spend tons of time
thinking about structuring the ideas - a daunting task for most. Once there
is a level of comfort with the structures then students can explore
different ways of expressing their ideas and discard the "wheels". That's
how I see it at the moment.
I'm happy to send you a presentation Kate Kinsella gave at a TESOL
conference a few years back (please excuse the scratchy notes I've made
throughout). Her work involves teaching ESL and Academic English to
students at the junior high (and high school, I think), but I find the
approach and ideas incredibly helpful. Her assertion is that many students,
especially those in urban areas from disadvantaged backgrounds, are
"Academic English Second Language Learners." I spent five years teaching in
Harlem in the 90s, and I really felt that many students - not just my ESL
students - needed help in the language of textbooks. I think that children
who are read to at a young age acquire this passive understanding of all
these complex structures of English through the contexts of storytelling
(besides other interactions). As a result, they can make that transition
to reading academic texts and writing sophisticated prose more easily than
my ESL students or Gen 1.5ers and others without those experiences.
Sentence frames make this language more accessible in a very concrete way.
I'll be preparing for my first class of the semester this weekend, so I'll
be digging up the rubric. I'll send it out to anyone who's interested. The
texts I use for the activity are actually paragraphs, I noticed, not essays
as I mentioned before. At my level, students first review paragraph format
and then I introduce the essay later. Since students often 'test into' my
level, this class is the first they've taken at the college level, so I
need to generate awareness of the structure of a paragraph first. The ideas
are simplistic, but the activity works as a quick introduction without
being tedious for my level of students.
Terre
Teresa Lintner
Senior Development Editor
Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10013-2473
Telephone: 212 337-5070
Fax: 212 645-5960
Email: [log in to unmask]
From: "Dixon, Jack" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: 12/25/2011 06:54 AM
Subject: Re: Spoken vs. formal written English
Sent by: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
<[log in to unmask]>
Terre:
Thank you for your detailed response. I do want to check out Kate
Kinsella’s work in using academic vocabulary and sentence frames. (Any
titles in particular where I should start?) I am familiar with "They Say,
I Say" and agree that it can be useful for helping students understand
those deeper cognitive structures that academic writers use – actually used
by more than just academics.
I would like a copy of your rubric if you are willing to share. Are the
two essays you use pieces that you have collected or written yourself, or
are they published somewhere so that I could access them?
What I like about your strategies for teaching academic vocabulary and
using sentence frames is that you are teaching students how to communicate
without putting the focus on error. So many objectives that involve
developing language proficiency involve error avoidance or correction.
While correcting errors is important, teaching students how to accomplish
larger rhetorical goals seems more productive to me. In my classes over
the last few years (developmental writing and freshman English at an
open-admissions community college), I have worked with sentence imitation,
tied with comprehension. I take sentences with some level of structural
complexity that I can be fairly sure my students will understand when we
read and discuss them. I then model imitating the structure, not the
content; we do a few together; then, I have them write a few original
sentences which we read around the room. At the end of that session, the
students feel they have done something important.
My underlying goal is to show them that, in fact, they know more grammar
than they think they do and that we are going to build on what they know.
As we discuss how any given structure works, I begin to introduce them to
the concepts of phrases, clauses, punctuation – all tied to the ways the
meaning gets conveyed.
Jack
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Teresa Lintner
[[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2011 10:55 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Spoken vs. formal written English
Hi Jack,
Several people have contacted me individually about this exercise. I'm
happy to share my rubric with you (and anyone else), if you'd like. I'm an
editor by day, but at night I teach an intermediate level ESL grammar and
academic writing class at a community college. Every semester I've gotten a
few Gen 1.5ers and they're usually quite frustrated because they don't see
themselves as ESL students - and they're not the typical student in my
class. Because of learning English by 'ear', their level of proficiency is
hard to pinpoint - they use passive constructions but leave out verb
inflections and auxiliaries and have lots of SPEWD.The exercise has been a
way for me to address the issue of spoken vs. written English right from
the start in a way that makes my Gen 1.5ers feel a sense of accomplishment
that they've "mastered" a register in English. It also helps them
understand what they need to focus on in writing. The rest of the class
understands why they can't understand what English speakers are saying
around them even though they have some knowledge of the grammatical rules.
The challenge is figuring out ways of teaching that help them learn this
register in speaking and writing. I've been very influenced by Kate
Kinsella's work in using academic vocabulary and sentence frames in spoken
tasks to help students become familiar with this language. If the students
have learned the language by 'ear' then it seems likely that if they are
given opportunities to use academic language to express ideas, then this
language will seep into their writing more naturally. That's my thinking
and that's what I'm exploring more and more in my teaching. I'm also
reading "They Say, I Say", which, I think, takes a similar approach in
terms of sentence frames.
I'm happy to hear from others on this topic.
Terre
Teresa Lintner
Senior Development Editor
Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10013-2473
Telephone: 212 337-5070
Fax: 212 645-5960
Email: [log in to unmask]
From: "Dixon, Jack" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: 12/21/2011 09:26 PM
Subject: Re: Spoken vs. formal written English
Sent by: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
<[log in to unmask]>
This strategy sounds excellent.
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Teresa Lintner
[[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 10:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Spoken vs. formal written English
Hi Steve,
The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English would be a good resource.
One thing I do with my ESL students at the beginning of the semester is to
present them with two short essays on the same topic, one written in SPEWD
(I love that acronym!) and the other in academic English. Then I ask them
to analyze the two essays using a rubric that helps them recognize the
differences between the two registers. A revelation for my Gen 1.5ers is
realizing that "gonna" is actually "going to."
Terre
Teresa Lintner
Senior Development Editor
Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10013-2473
Telephone: 212 337-5070
Fax: 212 645-5960
Email: [log in to unmask]
From: Stephen King <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: 12/20/2011 06:57 PM
Subject: Spoken vs. formal written English
Sent by: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
<[log in to unmask]>
Can anyone direct me to a text that focuses, at length, on the differences
between spoken and written versions of language? It seems to me that a
great many of my community college students, especially those who have been
out of school for some time, use a version of English that could be
characterized as "Spoken English Written Down." (A colleague suggested the
acronym "SPEWD.") I have my own list of those differences, but am looking
for other resources. Many thanks in advance!
Steve King
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