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Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Addendum I Addendum II Addendum III Syllabus Templates Downloadable Formats |
Addendum I Multi-Language and ESL Writing Issues I. Teaching Tonal Language Speakers w/Vietnamese as an Example Language fossilization, the carry-over of grammar and narrative structures from one language or dialect to another, causes us all to deviate from 'standardized' usage. For example, though I grew up in an English-speaking household, and my parents both speak native English, we still use the language patterns of my grandparents who were translating from Yiddish. So, to this day, just like my Yiddish speaking grandparents, I often put referent pronouns before objects: "This, what I'm saying, is wrong..." Fossilization errors follow patterns that are based on the language and the culture of their origin. Teachers who teach speakers of tonal languages * such as Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese will find these students’ fossilization errors particularly distinct. There are many such students at UTA, especially Vietnamese students. Fossilization errors, many of them anyway, are easier to fix for these writers once the writers and their teachers see the errors in context of linguistic and cultural differences. Students make faster easier improvement when they can find identifiable patterns of their own fossilization errors. Teachers who are aware of these problems are far more effective. However, a word of caution before I begin to list fossilization errors from tonal languages: Your students are all individuals with individual needs. Lumping all their problems into the "Vietnamese," or any other "other" box has consequences. Be sure to also see the individual: Grammar and Narrative fossilization errors of maternal speakers of tonal languages in English 1. Article Use. Native speakers of Indo-European languages generally use a general article (a, an, or the) the first time they trot out a noun in a conversation and specific articles thereafter: "I saw a dog. The dog was mean." Tonal language users generally use articles to indicate type and quantity of objects, consistently throughout a conversation. When they write in English they will either use the specific article when you want them to use the general article or vise-versa. Solution : Teach them what an article is in English (with a re-enforcing exercise or two from any grammar book), and tell them to write as they normally would, then to go back and circle all the articles after the fact, and simply ask themselves if they think it's correct. Half the errors will disappear on the first read through. 2. Verb conjugation. Tonal languages do not conjugate verbs by tense or person. In Vietnamese "Yesterday he went..., today I go..., tomorrow she goes..., and next Thursday they will go...." all use the verb form "di." Moreover, though I haven't proved this empirically, contingent temporal succession in narrative (the order in which events unfold) seems more important to speakers of Indo-European languages. The ramifications of playing fast and loose with tenses can be amusing, but often baffles, as you will see. Still, if you read an essay aware of the fact that the writer is not aware of the subtleties of tense and verb conjugation, you'll be able to make a lot more sense of things. Solution : A verb conjugation reference text and practice, practice, practice. 3. Prepositions. Sadly, preposition use is language specific. I have yet to discover any rule that explains which preposition to use. And don't try the instinctive idea of trying to get your students to "think about it logically." It's not logical. In English we get on the plane, which seems a silly thing to do in Spanish or French, because in those languages that means you' have to hold on to the wing when the plane takes off. Speakers of these languages much prefer getting in the plane (as do I). Solution : Tell your tonal languages speakers not to look for rules, to simply memorize which preposition goes with which noun. Surprisingly, this will help them a lot. Knowing when not to look for a pattern does just as important as know when to look. 4. Pronouns. English language pronouns will baffle your Vietnamese students because these pronouns are so vague. Vietnamese does not have general pronouns that point to someone the way "he" does in English. Or, rather Vietnamese has dozens and dozens of pronouns based on the age, profession, and class of the speaker in relation to the age, profession, and class of the person referred to. As a consequence of this very strange, very general pronoun use in English, Vietnamese students will often go too far to the other extreme, and mix up case or use the wrong gender. Solution : After making sure a student knows what a pronoun is, simply tell them to proof for gender concordance. If they proof, gender concordance problems disappear. The difference between he, his, and him are a little more difficult to explain, but any basic grammar handbook has enough exercises to make clear distinctions between possessive pronouns, direct objects, indirect objects, etc. Assigning grammar exercises may not seem fun or creative, but it is pedagogically and empirically sound. 5. Narrative Structure A. Direct vs. Indirect The best (read "most persuasive") essays in Vietnamese do not even mention their subject directly. Such is true of many Asian cultures--this is not unique to tonal languages. Essays in Japanese and Korean (neither of which are tonal languages) can exhibit the same qualities. These essays refer to all of the subjects that surrounding the main topic so well that it's obvious what one is supposed to infer. So, when you get an essay that does not seem to address the assigned topic, consider explaining the need to be direct. Solution : I often tell students with this issue to think of English language essays as explanations to small children: One must be very clear and direct and repeat themselves a few times in a few different ways. Give simple examples: "Cookies taste good. However, don't eat too many or you'll get sick...[paragraph] Don't eat to many because you'll get fat...[paragraph] Don't eat too many because they are not very nutritious...[paragraph] In conclusion, it's clear, one should not eat too many cookies. B. Grammatical structures that result from narrative structure. If one's culture values very direct, clear, concise explanations, it makes sense that one's preferred sentence syntax and grammar follow suit. Hence, English sentences today are comprised of a subject and predicate, tout courte. If your culture values inference and gesturing towards things from multiple perspectives, you will likely have many psuedo-subjects and predicates rolled into one sentence, and you'll happily employ pronouns with obscure or non-existent referents. You will often see these mystery laden, run-on sentences among students who translate from Vietnamese and other tonal language. My first reaction to these sentences used to be to ask pointed questions about what referred to what. Then I tried to explain how to "break up" the sentence, and what grammar rules the sentence breaks. A logical, straightforward approach, yes? It didn’t help. Solution : Now, I refer back to the difference in the narrative structure of the two languages: "Remember my cookie example? Remember how rude and direct Americans can be?..." This last question always illicit a giggle, then we talk about the need to express simple ideas in a very direct way, one idea at a time, one idea per paragraph. This explanation works miracles, if you accompany it with very clear models and examples of what you want. You will see light bulbs going on during the conference. Explaining these above points to students who need such explanations, can lead to almost miraculous improvement. However, remember my earlier caution about seeing each student as an individual and consider that explanations can cause problems as well. Students can take expressions of understanding as permission or assurance that they will pass the course. Students must understand that their success is tied to their performance in comparison to their peers, and that correcting fossilization errors takes time and lots of repetitive practice, editing, and proofing. —Joshua Kretchmar II. Goal-Oriented ESL Conferences If an instructor hasn’t had experience working with ESL students, conferencing with them can be overwhelming. Having some planned activities can get you beyond simply telling them they have ESL issues—generally, they are aware and this can seem condescending or even insulting. Usually, ESL students are easily identified upon reading their first writing assignment. For me, the best way to individually help ESL students learn Standard American English is to conference with them on a regular basis. Although time consuming, this one-on-one interaction allows me to address their specific problems and assign exercises from the handbook (often I refer to Ann Raimes’ How Grammar Works in addition to the course handbook). Also, I talk to International students about what they think about living in Arlington. Often, students tell me that they are not happy here and they have found a group of friends from their own country to spend all of their time with, which allows the students to retain a sense of culture and comfort. At the same time, this means these students are not speaking English when they are not on campus, are renting movies in their own language, reading newspapers online in their native language, etc. If students feel isolated, it is only natural that they would gravitate towards what feels comfortable to them; however, I discuss striking a balance between retaining a sense of culture, while still doing activities to learn conversational and written English. I usually assign some of the following activities and set goals for our next conference depending on the student’s needs and interests:
Occasionally, these methods result in a student incorporating jargon into an essay (i.e. “fixin’ to”), but identifying and eliminating jargon in academic writing is much easier than trying to tell someone why a preposition “just doesn’t sound right.” Encouraging listening to, reading, and practicing conversational English, in addition to grammar exercises, greatly benefits ESL students’ writing. —Heather Levy III. Using Technology to Enhance Self-Correction for ESL Writers We all know that grammar and spell-check functions in word-processing programs are not foolproof. I would postulate that they are particularly inadequate for native speakers who are very creative with their language. But, with second language learners, who are more formulaic in their approach to language, I believe that being educated to use these technological helps can be a great asset. Students who can locate errors and then use other resources like dictionaries and grammar reference materials to correct them are empowered. Example: Yesterday I bought a bread. “a bread” will show the green grammar check underline. A student with the Longman dictionary can look up bread and find that it is an uncountable noun. “a” is not a possible collocation – the student can change “a” to “some” and the correction is made. Example: Yesterday he buyed a car. Here, the red spelling check underline will appear. If students are taught to look up the base form “buy,” they will easily find the irregular form “bought” in their English learners dictionary, or the list of irregular verbs that appears in a grammar reference text. Of course, they could take the first substitution recommend by the grammar check program – but that might not have the correct result and in many cases would not help the student to understand the error. While peer revision is a great tool, the difficulty that it presents in the classroom is one of time. Reading/comprehending/correction take much more time for the second language learner. For a first revision, consider having students start the revision process in class so that any questions can be addressed. But let the expectation be that the task will be completed outside of class. Always caution students never to give away their only copy of an essay. For later revisions, letting students exchange disks [again, not the only copy] will allow the peer reviewer to see the spell-check/grammar check indicators for correction clues. Likewise, if an instructor collects disks now and again, it is easy to copy and paste sections to use as examples in class and annotate how spell-check/grammar-check functions can aid self-correction. (If there is a way to print those markings, I have not yet found it.) — Diane Van Den Oeer IV. ESL Student Handouts
V. Helpful ESL Websites
Even Though Sentence Fragments Seem Hard To Understand The title of this worksheet is a fragment. Can you tell me why? Imagine I enter the classroom, and the first thing I announce is, "Although some people did well on the test!" You will probably be anxiously waiting for more information because my announcement was a sentence fragment. Every sentence has to have a subject and a verb in order to be complete. If it doesn't, it's a sentence fragment (incomplete sentence). That's easy enough to understand if you have something like:
Unfortunately, there's more to understanding fragments than that. You can have a group of words with both a subject and a verb that is still a fragment. So, before we go any further, we need to cover some basics. You need to understand the terms phrase, clause and the difference between an independent clause and dependent clause: A PHRASE is nothing more than a group of words. A CLAUSE is a group of words with a subject and a verb. There are two types that you need to be able to distinguish:
An independent clause is a complete sentence; a dependent clause, because it depends on something else, isn't – even though it has a subject and a verb. A few examples should make this clear (subjects and verbs are bolded):
These three examples (above) are all independent clauses. The information might be sketchy, but the sentences are complete. Compare those above with the following, which are all dependent clauses. There is a subject and a verb, but the ideas are incomplete (subjects and verbs are bolded):
These three examples (above) are fragments because they are dependent clauses punctuated incorrectly, as if to convey a complete thought. There are ways to help spot this kind of mistake: read your paper aloud, slowly and carefully, exactly as punctuated (that is, stop at each period). If anything is incomplete (a fragment), you may be able to hear it. Notice how you can combine the dependent clauses and the independent clauses to convey a complete thought. A way to put the above fragments together clearly and correctly is to use correct punctuation:
Notice the punctuation in the three sentences above. When a dependent clause begins a sentence, always put a comma after it, as in #1. If the dependent clause comes after the independent clause, you usually need no punctuation, as in #2 and #3. With sentence 1 and 2, you could just as easily have written (again, pay attention to the punctuation):
Some words that create a dependent clause are: after, although, as, because, before, if, since, that, unless, until, when, whether, which, while, and who. Watch out for these words, and if you use these words, check your sentences carefully to make sure they are punctuated correctly. Remember: Whatever is between the opening capital letter and the closing punctuation mark of a sentence has to express a complete thought. Otherwise, you give your instructor something to mark on your paper! Parts of this worksheet are adapted from http://aliscot.com/bigdog/fragments.htm * Tonal languages use tone and pitch to determine the overt meaning of a word. Individual words are often monosyllabic, and meaning is more contingent upon context than in Indo-European languages. |
Department of English, Carlisle Hall, Box 19035, Arlington, Texas 76019-0035
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