Jenna Maizes
Dr. Suhr-Sytsma
English 101-Living with Multilingualism
Project 2 Final Draft
April 2, 2015
English is a Second Language Courses are Not just about English
English as a Second Language (ESL) courses assist foreign language students in having a smooth transition into an English-speaking environment. The instructors of these courses must teach the students how to speak proper English. They do this by focusing on grammar, sentence structure, and word choice. In most ESL classrooms, there is not enough emphasis on relating genre and culture into a student’s writing. In “ ‘Will Our Stories Help Teachers Understand?’: Multilingual Students Talk about Identity, Voice, and Expectations across Academic Communities.” Anna Sophia Habib and Terry Myers Zawacki discuss how language and culture have an influence on a students’ academic writing. According to Youngjoo Yi’s “ESOL Teachers as Writing Teachers”, ESL teachers should not only focus on the grammatical aspects of the English language, but also emphasize the importance of writing in itself. An ESL teacher, Jamie Levitt confirms Yi’s idea through a recently conducted interview regarding her experiences through teaching ESL. Although these sources introduce the problem of lack of culture in the ESL classroom, they do not provide adequate solutions that will allow for students to incorporate culture and genre into their academic writing. Throughout this essay I will extend the ideas of Zawacki and Habib and Yi by offering solutions that will allow for culture to be an ever-present aspect of the ESL classroom. These solutions include allowing students to use their own culture in academic writing, changing the way ESL instructors are taught.
How ESL Sudents Learn To Write
ESL students struggle with comprehending American writing tactics, however this can be solved by using their cultural style in writing. Zawacki and Habib discovered that it is difficult for a multilingual student to be original in his or her academic writing because he or she is not fluent in the English language. They also concluded that different cultures have different ways of thinking, reasoning, and writing. In Yi’s piece, she discusses how the ESL teachers have a lack of preparation in teaching originality in writing. By reading Zawacki and Habib in relation to Yi, I can offer solutions to eliminate this cultural gap. One specific way to solve the problem of cultural illiteracy is to allow multicultural students to use their own culture in their academic writing. For example, Zawacki and Habib analyzed a Chinese student named Hanyan. Hanyan discussed the difference between American and Chinese writing:
“Thesis is very obvious, but in Chinese, we don’t write something so obviously. We like to allow the reader to think about it. Here organization, transitions, focus are very important; they want this essay to be easier for the readers. The readers don’t need to think about something because writers have to write everything,” (Zawacki and Habib 62)
ESL teachers should go beyond teaching just grammar because multilingual students, such as Hanyan, are unaware of how to use common American writing tactics. Students should be allowed to use their own cultural writing style in an academic setting; it is a manner that they are comfortable with, which allows them to clearly express their ideas. By adding more culturally oriented lessons to the ESL curriculum, students can explore the culture and traditions of the country that they are foreign to. This experience will give students the ability to create forms of writing that have meaning.
An absence of rigorous writing assignments in ESL classrooms is prohibiting students from representing their originality. Students can show their cultural personality through teaching other students about their heritage. Jamie Levitt, an ESL instructor for Spanish speaking students, states that she never learned about her student’s background (Levitt). To prove that grammar is a dominant aspect of the ESL classroom, I asked: “Did you experience anything surprising when teaching ESL students, and did this experience change the way you looked at the English language?” (Levitt Interview), Levitt stated; “When we had to explain specific contractions…like ‘don’t’, ‘wasn’t’, ‘didn’t’, where we break rules, it was very difficult because I didn’t know myself,” (Levitt Interview). Levitt’s experience is a prime example of what Yi believes is the main problem in ESL classrooms; they have a strong focus on grammar, rather than using culture to create a writing piece of originality. By using Levitt’s personal experiences, I believe that students should explain their culture to other students. This will benefit the students because they will become culturally aware while also having to ability to express their passion.
How ESL Students Analyze a Text
Another problem that students face is learning how to analyze a text by using American strategies. Zawacki and Habib use dialect, accents, and ways of thinking and knowing to analyze how ESL students in an American classroom are expected to always have an opinion about a text (Zawacki and Habib 61). They do not offer realistic solutions as to how students can become more culturally oriented using both the American methodology and their native methodology. They believe that multilingual students struggle to express their originality when writing in an American classroom. For example, in Zawacki and Habib’s research, they asked a student from India to compare the ways she was taught to analyze a text in an Indian classroom versus an American classroom. She responded; “in India, you seem to agree with what the text is saying but you never pause to say ‘OK, why am I agreeing with the text?’ but here when professors say they are looking for critical thinking, they are looking for us to ask that question,” (Zawacki and Habib 60,61). This shows the distinction between the writing tactics of two cultures. A beneficial solution to allow students to incorporate their own writing tactics into ESL classrooms is to train the ESL instructors to be conscious of this cultural difference. This is a resolution to Yi’s argument regarding ESL instructors’ being unaware of how to teach various cultural writing styles.
Integrating Culture into Writing
Multilingual students have a difficult time integrating their native culture and American culture in their academic writing. Students can have an easier transition if ESL teachers were to allow them to write about topics that interest them. A fellow peer, Selwyn Hernandez, created a blog post discussing what it is like being Latin American in an academic setting. Hernandez wants to draw on his Latin American culture when writing, but feels that he needs to include mainstream American culture. This is a problem because students of a racial minority should not feel obligated to use mainstream American culture in their writing. There would be an absence of diversity if every student were to use this American aspect in his or her writing. The different languages of students allow for a variety of culture and perspectives. In a personal conversation, I asked Hernandez, “How does your sense of pride in being Latin American influence your academic writing?”, he responded, “With college and this sense of freedom, I chose to explore and became passionate about it. So my pride influences my choice of topics that I would prefer to write about and for what I stand for with these issues.” (Hernandez). Hernandez is extending the ideas of Yi, Habib and Zawacki by using his passion of his culture to allow for originality in his own writing. This conversation allowed me to come up with ideas that allow students of different cultures to incorporate their native traditions into their work. Teachers should offer several different culturally oriented writing topics when assigning an essay or other major writing piece. This will allow each student to have the opportunity to express their culture in their writing.
Displaying Identity
ESL students struggle with displaying their identity through persuasive writing, because they are not taught how to create an argument that properly expresses their opinion. ESL instructors can teach students how to create an argument by allowing them to incorporate strong cultural values into their academic writing. A student’s cultural background will cause them to have different perspectives on certain topics. Yi discusses how several schools in the state of Georgia are requiring students to take a standardized test that includes an opinionated essay. This creates a problem for ESL students; they may be able to form perfect sentences without any spelling mistakes, but will have great difficulty expressing their views on a specific topic. A solution to this problem is to have ESL students practice writing a persuasive essay on topics that relate to culture, such as; the days and hours school should be held. The arguments towards this topic will vary depending on culture; some may consider different days to be the weekend, and others may eat meals at different times. These factors will influence a student’s argument, allowing for originality to be present in his or her essay.
The experiences of Hernandez and Levitt, offer examples of the main ideas created by Habib and Zawacki and Yi. To extend the idea that culture and tradition need to become incorporated into ESL classes, I offer another problem associated with ESL courses. Although English may be the most common language spoken in the United States, it is not the only one. ESL courses limit students by only offering English; instead they should teach students how to communicate in other commonly spoken languages in the United States, such as Spanish or French. Students will eventually gain a broader knowledge of common languages, which will make it easier for them to communicate with other citizens of the United States. Not only will the students become multilingual, but they will also discover several interesting parts of cultures beside their own. This knowledge will allow students to become more accepting of other cultures, and incorporate that acceptance into their own writing.
Students may feel limited when expressing their ideas in ESL classrooms because of the language barrier. To eliminate the language barrier, teachers can help students express their culture by creating different lesson plans that allow each ESL student to use their passion when writing. This solution leads to an interesting question; should teachers encourage their students to focus specifically on their own culture? Or should they explore the mainstream American culture? To answer this question, I believe that ESL students should represent both their native culture, and the culture of the environment they are living in. For example, a French student living in The United States can add originality to his or her writing by incorporating French culture. The student can also include aspects of mainstream American culture to add contrast to his or her writing piece. Another problem that is often present in ESL classrooms is that all students learn at different rates. It is difficult for ESL instructors to teach at these different levels, so they must accommodate. For further information regarding how the culture of writing instruction in ESL classrooms should be changed to accommodate all students, please reference my fellow peer Paavali Hannikainen’s analysis.
Work Cited
Jamie Levitt Interview: "1st Interview." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
Selwyn Hernandez Blog: Hernandez, Selwyn. "English Blog." Life and Multilingualism. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
Youngjoo Yi “ESOL Teachers as Writing Teachers”: Yi, Youngjoo. "ESOL Teachers as Writing Teachers: From the Voices of High School Pre-Service Teachers." L2 Writing in Secondary Classrooms. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 133-50. Emory University Library Data Base. Web. 15 Mar. 2015.
Will Our Stories Help Teachers Understand?’: Multilingual Students Talk about Identity, Voice, and Expectations across Academic Communities- Anna Sophia Habib and Terry Myers Zawacki: “‘Will Our Stories Help Teachers Understand?’: Multilingual Students Talk about Identity, Voice, and Expectations across Academic Communities,” Anna Sophia Habib and Terry Myers Zawacki
Selwyn Hernandez Personal Communication: (S. Hernandez, personal communication, March 23, 2015)
Jamie Levitt Personal Communication: (J. Levitt, personal communication, March 23, 2015)
Paavali Hannikainen’s Analysis: "Paavali's Analysis." - ESL Teaching. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
Photographs: Sullivan, Laurie. "Camera Roll-5890." Flickr. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
RT Library. "English Club First Meeting Dover Library." Flickr. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
Oggiono, Ilmicrofono. "Students-in-class-with-teacher-reading." Flickr. Yahoo!, 05 Apr. 2014. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
DFID. "Syrian Refugee Children in a Lebanese School Classroom." Flickr. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
Dr. Suhr-Sytsma
English 101-Living with Multilingualism
Project 2 Final Draft
April 2, 2015
English is a Second Language Courses are Not just about English
English as a Second Language (ESL) courses assist foreign language students in having a smooth transition into an English-speaking environment. The instructors of these courses must teach the students how to speak proper English. They do this by focusing on grammar, sentence structure, and word choice. In most ESL classrooms, there is not enough emphasis on relating genre and culture into a student’s writing. In “ ‘Will Our Stories Help Teachers Understand?’: Multilingual Students Talk about Identity, Voice, and Expectations across Academic Communities.” Anna Sophia Habib and Terry Myers Zawacki discuss how language and culture have an influence on a students’ academic writing. According to Youngjoo Yi’s “ESOL Teachers as Writing Teachers”, ESL teachers should not only focus on the grammatical aspects of the English language, but also emphasize the importance of writing in itself. An ESL teacher, Jamie Levitt confirms Yi’s idea through a recently conducted interview regarding her experiences through teaching ESL. Although these sources introduce the problem of lack of culture in the ESL classroom, they do not provide adequate solutions that will allow for students to incorporate culture and genre into their academic writing. Throughout this essay I will extend the ideas of Zawacki and Habib and Yi by offering solutions that will allow for culture to be an ever-present aspect of the ESL classroom. These solutions include allowing students to use their own culture in academic writing, changing the way ESL instructors are taught.
How ESL Sudents Learn To Write
ESL students struggle with comprehending American writing tactics, however this can be solved by using their cultural style in writing. Zawacki and Habib discovered that it is difficult for a multilingual student to be original in his or her academic writing because he or she is not fluent in the English language. They also concluded that different cultures have different ways of thinking, reasoning, and writing. In Yi’s piece, she discusses how the ESL teachers have a lack of preparation in teaching originality in writing. By reading Zawacki and Habib in relation to Yi, I can offer solutions to eliminate this cultural gap. One specific way to solve the problem of cultural illiteracy is to allow multicultural students to use their own culture in their academic writing. For example, Zawacki and Habib analyzed a Chinese student named Hanyan. Hanyan discussed the difference between American and Chinese writing:
“Thesis is very obvious, but in Chinese, we don’t write something so obviously. We like to allow the reader to think about it. Here organization, transitions, focus are very important; they want this essay to be easier for the readers. The readers don’t need to think about something because writers have to write everything,” (Zawacki and Habib 62)
ESL teachers should go beyond teaching just grammar because multilingual students, such as Hanyan, are unaware of how to use common American writing tactics. Students should be allowed to use their own cultural writing style in an academic setting; it is a manner that they are comfortable with, which allows them to clearly express their ideas. By adding more culturally oriented lessons to the ESL curriculum, students can explore the culture and traditions of the country that they are foreign to. This experience will give students the ability to create forms of writing that have meaning.
An absence of rigorous writing assignments in ESL classrooms is prohibiting students from representing their originality. Students can show their cultural personality through teaching other students about their heritage. Jamie Levitt, an ESL instructor for Spanish speaking students, states that she never learned about her student’s background (Levitt). To prove that grammar is a dominant aspect of the ESL classroom, I asked: “Did you experience anything surprising when teaching ESL students, and did this experience change the way you looked at the English language?” (Levitt Interview), Levitt stated; “When we had to explain specific contractions…like ‘don’t’, ‘wasn’t’, ‘didn’t’, where we break rules, it was very difficult because I didn’t know myself,” (Levitt Interview). Levitt’s experience is a prime example of what Yi believes is the main problem in ESL classrooms; they have a strong focus on grammar, rather than using culture to create a writing piece of originality. By using Levitt’s personal experiences, I believe that students should explain their culture to other students. This will benefit the students because they will become culturally aware while also having to ability to express their passion.
How ESL Students Analyze a Text
Another problem that students face is learning how to analyze a text by using American strategies. Zawacki and Habib use dialect, accents, and ways of thinking and knowing to analyze how ESL students in an American classroom are expected to always have an opinion about a text (Zawacki and Habib 61). They do not offer realistic solutions as to how students can become more culturally oriented using both the American methodology and their native methodology. They believe that multilingual students struggle to express their originality when writing in an American classroom. For example, in Zawacki and Habib’s research, they asked a student from India to compare the ways she was taught to analyze a text in an Indian classroom versus an American classroom. She responded; “in India, you seem to agree with what the text is saying but you never pause to say ‘OK, why am I agreeing with the text?’ but here when professors say they are looking for critical thinking, they are looking for us to ask that question,” (Zawacki and Habib 60,61). This shows the distinction between the writing tactics of two cultures. A beneficial solution to allow students to incorporate their own writing tactics into ESL classrooms is to train the ESL instructors to be conscious of this cultural difference. This is a resolution to Yi’s argument regarding ESL instructors’ being unaware of how to teach various cultural writing styles.
Integrating Culture into Writing
Multilingual students have a difficult time integrating their native culture and American culture in their academic writing. Students can have an easier transition if ESL teachers were to allow them to write about topics that interest them. A fellow peer, Selwyn Hernandez, created a blog post discussing what it is like being Latin American in an academic setting. Hernandez wants to draw on his Latin American culture when writing, but feels that he needs to include mainstream American culture. This is a problem because students of a racial minority should not feel obligated to use mainstream American culture in their writing. There would be an absence of diversity if every student were to use this American aspect in his or her writing. The different languages of students allow for a variety of culture and perspectives. In a personal conversation, I asked Hernandez, “How does your sense of pride in being Latin American influence your academic writing?”, he responded, “With college and this sense of freedom, I chose to explore and became passionate about it. So my pride influences my choice of topics that I would prefer to write about and for what I stand for with these issues.” (Hernandez). Hernandez is extending the ideas of Yi, Habib and Zawacki by using his passion of his culture to allow for originality in his own writing. This conversation allowed me to come up with ideas that allow students of different cultures to incorporate their native traditions into their work. Teachers should offer several different culturally oriented writing topics when assigning an essay or other major writing piece. This will allow each student to have the opportunity to express their culture in their writing.
Displaying Identity
ESL students struggle with displaying their identity through persuasive writing, because they are not taught how to create an argument that properly expresses their opinion. ESL instructors can teach students how to create an argument by allowing them to incorporate strong cultural values into their academic writing. A student’s cultural background will cause them to have different perspectives on certain topics. Yi discusses how several schools in the state of Georgia are requiring students to take a standardized test that includes an opinionated essay. This creates a problem for ESL students; they may be able to form perfect sentences without any spelling mistakes, but will have great difficulty expressing their views on a specific topic. A solution to this problem is to have ESL students practice writing a persuasive essay on topics that relate to culture, such as; the days and hours school should be held. The arguments towards this topic will vary depending on culture; some may consider different days to be the weekend, and others may eat meals at different times. These factors will influence a student’s argument, allowing for originality to be present in his or her essay.
The experiences of Hernandez and Levitt, offer examples of the main ideas created by Habib and Zawacki and Yi. To extend the idea that culture and tradition need to become incorporated into ESL classes, I offer another problem associated with ESL courses. Although English may be the most common language spoken in the United States, it is not the only one. ESL courses limit students by only offering English; instead they should teach students how to communicate in other commonly spoken languages in the United States, such as Spanish or French. Students will eventually gain a broader knowledge of common languages, which will make it easier for them to communicate with other citizens of the United States. Not only will the students become multilingual, but they will also discover several interesting parts of cultures beside their own. This knowledge will allow students to become more accepting of other cultures, and incorporate that acceptance into their own writing.
Students may feel limited when expressing their ideas in ESL classrooms because of the language barrier. To eliminate the language barrier, teachers can help students express their culture by creating different lesson plans that allow each ESL student to use their passion when writing. This solution leads to an interesting question; should teachers encourage their students to focus specifically on their own culture? Or should they explore the mainstream American culture? To answer this question, I believe that ESL students should represent both their native culture, and the culture of the environment they are living in. For example, a French student living in The United States can add originality to his or her writing by incorporating French culture. The student can also include aspects of mainstream American culture to add contrast to his or her writing piece. Another problem that is often present in ESL classrooms is that all students learn at different rates. It is difficult for ESL instructors to teach at these different levels, so they must accommodate. For further information regarding how the culture of writing instruction in ESL classrooms should be changed to accommodate all students, please reference my fellow peer Paavali Hannikainen’s analysis.
Work Cited
Jamie Levitt Interview: "1st Interview." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
Selwyn Hernandez Blog: Hernandez, Selwyn. "English Blog." Life and Multilingualism. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
Youngjoo Yi “ESOL Teachers as Writing Teachers”: Yi, Youngjoo. "ESOL Teachers as Writing Teachers: From the Voices of High School Pre-Service Teachers." L2 Writing in Secondary Classrooms. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 133-50. Emory University Library Data Base. Web. 15 Mar. 2015.
Will Our Stories Help Teachers Understand?’: Multilingual Students Talk about Identity, Voice, and Expectations across Academic Communities- Anna Sophia Habib and Terry Myers Zawacki: “‘Will Our Stories Help Teachers Understand?’: Multilingual Students Talk about Identity, Voice, and Expectations across Academic Communities,” Anna Sophia Habib and Terry Myers Zawacki
Selwyn Hernandez Personal Communication: (S. Hernandez, personal communication, March 23, 2015)
Jamie Levitt Personal Communication: (J. Levitt, personal communication, March 23, 2015)
Paavali Hannikainen’s Analysis: "Paavali's Analysis." - ESL Teaching. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
Photographs: Sullivan, Laurie. "Camera Roll-5890." Flickr. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
RT Library. "English Club First Meeting Dover Library." Flickr. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
Oggiono, Ilmicrofono. "Students-in-class-with-teacher-reading." Flickr. Yahoo!, 05 Apr. 2014. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
DFID. "Syrian Refugee Children in a Lebanese School Classroom." Flickr. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.