Running Head: IMPROVING ENGLISH WRITING

Title: Improving Argentinian Secondary School Students’ Performance in English Language Writing

Andrea Marina Valek

María Fernanda Walter

Universidad CAECE

Abstract

Although new methodologies have been applied in English language learning and teaching, most students’ writing performances in Argentina may still be restricted to product- oriented approaches.  This study reports on the prospective implementation of the process- oriented approach in writing classes in two secondary schools of  Cordoba province, Argentina, as it might improve students’ written productions.  There exists secondary schools´ teachers in Córdoba province who may continue adopting product-oriented approaches in their writing classes and focusing on students’ final pieces of work rather than on their learning processes. However, adapting the  process-oriented  approach  for the teaching and learning of   English language writing could be an  effective technique as it would enable students to share,  discuss, reflect and learn writing skills in a more cooperative and colaborative environment.

Keywords:  Writing, Argentinian secondary schools, process oriented approach, learning, teaching.

         

     
A large number of various views of writing show that there has not yet been any consensus of what writing is although its importance has been recognized in its own right. Traditionally, writing was considered as transcribed speech. It was often assumed that the acquisition of spoken proficiency had to take precedence over the learning of written language, and that students would be able to write once they ‘mastered’ spoken language and orthographic conventions. According to Grabe and Kaplan (1996) and Matsuda (1997), writing is “far from decontextualized because every writing task is situated in a rhetorical context, involving complex interrelationships among various elements of writing: the writer, the reader, the text and reality”. (p.5)

     According to Canale and Swain(1990),  the ability of writing can be considered as “ a manifestation of, as well as the process of manifesting, sociolinguistic, strategic and grammatical competences mediated by the use of orthographic systems” (as cited in Silva & Matsuda, 2002, pp. 252). It is important to mention that, for scholars, writing might be a language skill difficult to acquire since it is not readily picked up by exposure but it occurs over a period of time and is sometimes carried out in extended periods of thinking and creativity (Tribble, as cited in Reid, 2001, p. 33).

     In general terms, what teachers shoud try to do is to make students be aware that any piece of writing is an attempt to communicate something; that the writer has to have a goal or purpose in mind and has to establish and maintain contact with the reader; organize his/her material and that is done through the use of certain logical and grammatical devices developed and acquired in different stages of the teaching and learning process.

     For this reason, adapting the product-oriented approach into a process-oriented one could be a more suitable strategy in English language writing. Many studies have tried to prove and analyze the effectiveness of applying a process approach. Theoretically, this approach calls for providing and maintaining a positive, encouraging and collaborative workshop environment in all the English language classes.

Literature Review

Traditional approaches to teaching writing

     In the recent history of second language writing, a number of different approaches to the practice of writing skills have vied for the attention of second language writing professionals. Among these approaches, controlled composition and the paragraph pattern approaches are the most prominent and widely used in a series of new English textbooks for Argentinian secondary school students.  Classroom writing practice has its own purpose and structure, and is not simply a reflection of the outside world. In this sense, writing activities can be considered not only from the instrumental perspective of what is useful for external purposes, but also in terms of their educational function and the reality of the classroom itself.

     Controlled composition.

     In the controlled composition classroom, the primary focus is on formal accuracy. The role of the teacher is to provide accurate and carefully selected language samples that students can repeat and memorize. Within this tradition, students can write a lot without being afraid of making many errors, and the teacher can deal with these pieces of writing more easily. (Grabe and Kaplan, 1996, p. 102)

   Overall, controlled composition sees writing as a secondary activity; as a means of practicing structures and vocabulary learned in the classroom. Therefore, the context for writing is the classroom and the audience is the teacher. This approach focuses on form and accuracy rather than the fluency of the language, and writing is simply a means of assessing students’ ability to manipulate the structures practiced in the classroom. Audience and purpose are not taken into consideration.

    The paragraph pattern approach.

    Increasing awareness of second language writers’ need to produce extended written texts led to the realization that there was more to writing than constructing grammatical sentences. The result of this realization was what Raimes (1983) has called the paragraph pattern approach, which emphasizes the importance of organization at the above-sentence level (as cited in Silva & Matsuda, 2002, p. 259).

   Classroom procedures associated with this tradition have tended to focus students’ attention primarily on form. Students are asked to read and analyze a model text and then write another piece of writing that has the same organization with the original one. Besides, some common writing activities, within this tradition, require students to group provided relevant facts, rearrange them in the logical order to form an outline, and then write a complete text based on that outline. Students may also be asked to complete a paragraph or a story by adding an ending or a beginning or a middle section and so on (Grabe and Kaplan, 1996, p. 115). These kind of patterned drilling makes language  (and writing) be used in de-contextualised meanings thus carrying little communicative function among teachers and students.

    To sum up, these traditional approaches to the teaching of writing focus on both accuracy and the finished product. Besides, imitating models inhibits writers rather than liberating them. There is little or no opportunity for the students to express their own ideas. It is inevitable that little attention is paid to the ideas and meaning of students’ pieces of writing. What is more, over-emphasis on accuracy and form can lead to serious writing block sterile and unimaginative pieces of work (Halsted, 1975, p. 102).

     Dissatisfaction with controlled composition and the paragraph pattern approach paved the way for the process approach, an expressive approach which became prominent in English-speaking composition classrooms during the 1980s. The understanding of what constitutes the writing process instructional model has evolved since the 1970’s, when it emerged as a pedagogical approach. As Zamel  (1982) states, “this approach entered the classroom as the process movement: a concentration on personal writing, student creativity, and fluency” (as cited in Reid, 2001, p. 38).

       In general, those studies that view the process model as encompassing more teacher direction in the process show positive effects on the quality of students’ writing, on their view of themselves as writers, and on their understanding of the writing process. Thus teachers are designing curriculums based on the balance of institutional, programme and student needs rather than around dogmatic theories or approaches. Placed in the classroom context, this process approach calls for providing and maintaining a positive,

encouraging and collaborative workshop environment, and for providing ample time and minimal interference so as to allow students to work through their composing processes. The objective is to help students develop viable strategies for getting started, drafting, revising and editing.

     From a process perspective, then, writing is a complex, recursive and creative process that is very similar in its general outlines for first and second language writers; learning to write requires the development of an efficient and effective composing process. “The writer is engaged in the discovery and expression of meaning; the reader, on interpreting that intended meaning. The product (that is, the written text) is a secondary concern, whose form is a function of its content and purpose” (Silva & Matsuda, 2002, pp. 261).  Therefore, writing instruction seems to involve practice in composing strategies; whereas learning to write seems to entail obtaining and using these strategies to manage the creation of a text and monitor its development.

Working process-oriented writing framework.

     Writing, like reading, is in many ways an individual, solitary activity: The writing triangle of communicating, composing and crafting is usually carried out for an absent readership (Reid, 2001, p. 32). However, it should be remembered that our students are language learners rather than writers, and it would not be particularly helpful to have them spend all their time writing alone. Although process research points to a need to give learner-writers space and time to operate their own preferred individual strategies, the classroom can be structured in such a way as to provide positive intervention and support in the development of writing skills.

     Placed in the  Argentinian secondary school context, one of the disadvantages of getting students to concentrate on the process of writing is that it takes time: time to brainstorm ideas or collect them in some other way; time to draft a piece of writing and then, with the teacher’s help perhaps, review it and edit it in various ways before changing the focus, generating more ideas, redrafting, re-editing and so on. This process  could not be done in two or three periods of forty minutes in which English lessons take place every week. However, the various stages could be adapted so that  process writing is handled appropriately and it stretches across the whole.

    From the above reasons, a working process-oriented writing model which is used as a framework for the lesson plans in this study is proposed. The classroom can provide the following stages adapted from Seow (2002)’s process model:

1.      stage 1: pre-writing: helping students to generate ideas and building

      awareness of discourse organization;

2.       stage 2: drafting: letting students write freely;

3.      stage 3: peer evaluation: enabling students to appreciate the criteria for 

      an effective text;

4.      stage 4: revising: helping students to develop crafting skills.

Research Aim

     This study aims to find out whether adopting the process-oriented approach into the English teaching and learning of writing in the most advanced courses at two Argentinian high schools has more positive effects than adopting the product-oriented approach in said environment. One of them is a state-run secondary school, the other is a private Roman Catholic high school. Both are located in the province of Córdoba, Argentina; the former is in a large town in the south and the latter in the capital city. When investigating the effectiveness of the process-oriented approach in writing classes at said secondary schools, the improvement of the students’ English language writing performance shall be taken into due consideration.

Methodology

     In this study, the implementation of the process-oriented approach  will be monitored and the students’ writing performance will be measured. The main purpose of the writing activities adopting the process-oriented approach is to offer upper-secondary students of two different secondary schools, a cooperative learning environment in order to improve their quality of English writing by sharing their written products and learning from their peers, not only from the teacher.

     During the 16-week semester, two writing groups will be equally instructed by the researchers. However, the main difference between the two conditions is that adapting the product-oriented approach will be applied in one group whereas adopting the process-oriented approach will be implemented in the other.  In both conditions, the researchers will grade the students’ written products

Instruments

     The test types selected for this study are popular kinds of writing test similar to those which students are instructed, and those which are often used in the secondary school classroom context (Appendixes a and b). Therefore, the students are supposed to be familiar with the test format.

     For the purpose of this study, one type of rating scales will be used: analytic scales. As McNamara (1996) states, the scale that is used in assessing performance tasks such as writing tests, represents, implicitly or explicitly, the theoretical basic upon which the test is founded; that is, it embodies the test (or scale) developer’s notion of what skills or abilities are being measured by the test. For this reason the development of a scale (or set of scales) and the descriptors for each scale level are of critical importance for the validity of the assessment (as cited in Weigle, 2002, pp.109).

     Analytic scoring has some advantages. On the one hand, it is particularly useful for second language learners who are more likely to show a marked or uneven profile across different aspects of writing. On the other hand,  analytic scoring can be more reliable than holistic scoring since a scoring scheme in which multiple scores are given to each script tends to improve reliability (Hamp-Lyons, as cited in Weigle, 2002, p. 120)

     In analytic scoring, scripts are rated on several aspects of writing or criteria rather than given a single score. Depending on the purpose of the assessment, scripts might be rated on such features as content, organization, cohesion, register, vocabulary, grammar, or mechanics. Analytic scoring schemes thus provide more detailed information about a test taker’s performance in different aspects of writing.  For this reason it is usually preferred over holistic schemes by many writing specialists. (Weigle, 2002, p. 121)

     One of the best known and most widely used analytic scales in ESL was created by Jacobs, H. L., Zingraf, S. A., Wormuth, D. R., Hartfiel, V. F., & Hughey, J. B. (1981, cited in Weigle, 2002, p. 116) (Appendix C). In such scale, scripts are rated on five aspects of writing: content, organization, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. The five aspects are differentially weighted to emphasize first content (30 points) and next language use (25 points), with organization and vocabulary weighted equally (20 points) and mechanics receiving very little emphasis (5 points).

     From the above discussion, it is relevant to add that  Jacobs et al. ‘s scoring profile (as cited in Weigle, 2002, p. 115) shall be implented in this study as a marking scale and a framework for the graders’ evaluation.

Participants

      The participants in this study are 57 students at two distinct secondary schools. One of them is a state school located in a small town and subsidized by the provincial government. The other one is a private school which is partly subsidized by the provincial government  and belongs to the Catholic Church. Unlike the former, the latter is located in the provincial capital city. 

   All of these participants are in the sixth year. As they belong to two different schools, they are permanently arranged in two separate classes. One of the researchers will teach 30 students at one of the schools and the other one will manage 27 students at the other . The writing classes will be met every two weeks for 40 minutes. And eight sessions will make up one semester.

     Both researchers will be responsible for implementing the project and collecting as well as analyzing data. Other two writing teachers in the English Department will get involved in the project to help both researchers grade and evaluate the tests.

Limitations

     Though the main aim of this research is to show that the  secondary students at two Argentinian schools could improve their performance in English language writing through the implementation of the process approach, some kind of trouble may arise and hinder the aims of this study. One of the main drawbacks is that in the context of the highest courses in Argentinian high schools the exposure to English is limited to  only three periods each week. Thus students receive little practice in writing in English, in fact, only one period of 40 minutes a week. When they do write, they find themselves confused with word choice, grammatical use, organization and generation of ideas. Besides, they tend to translate ideas from mother tongue into English, express ideas in long sentences as well as they are not aware of different kinds of writing.

    The pressures of the formative tests and summative examinations that lead English teachers to focus on grammar rules, linguistic accuracy and students’ final pieces of work instead of functional language skills is another potential setback that may limit the outcome of the research. Thus teaching English writing in Argentinian secondary schools is a challenging job for many English teachers because it requires the application of appropriate writing instructions and the accurate decision making with respect to time use. The reality of teaching English writing at the two distinct secondary schools  involved has revealed that most students have problems in writing.

Conclusions

      It seems the majority of writing activities in the Argentinian secondary school syllabuses are designed on the basis of the product-oriented approach, in which students are encouraged to mimic a model text, which is usually presented and analyzed at an early stage. This process may discourage students’ creativity because they cannot use their own experiences to express themselves. Due to the fact that there are too many students in a class, and most classes are mixed ability, revision may become a burden to teachers as marking and correcting is time-consuming. What is more, teachers may feel they cannot manage it when they have only 40 minutes allocated for each writing lesson. Therefore, what English writing teachers in upper secondary schools could do is to improve the quality of students’ pieces of writing, to give them a more cooperative learning environment, and to encourage them to share their written products with their peers’. Among the pedagogical methods which could help deal with the above mentioned problems, adapting the process-oriented approach could be an effective strategy.

    All in all, there exists  many advantages which deserve being exploited when it comes to the implementation of the process  approach  for English language teaching and learning. In the pre-writing stage, students have the possibility of sharing and discussing their ideas in groups in such a way that students become aware of the features of different genres of writing in English. Then, during drafting, the most important feature is meaning so students can get helpful tools to better express their own ideas. What is more, at the revising stage, they would also learn from their errors rather than be told about theirs. Therefore, the effectiveness of the process approach may prove to be one of the major tools in the English language classroom to promote communicative competence in second language writing.

     Evidently, writing continues to serve as a vehicle for second language practice. However; this function is integrated into a broader and more diversified perspective. Teachers need to make students aware that writing is a complex, recursive and creative process that is very similar to the one developed by first language writers. All in all, learning to write requires the development of an efficient and effective composing process since the writer is engaged in the discovery as well as the expression of meaning.

References

Grabe, W., & Kaplan, R. (1996). Theory and Practice of Writing. London: Addison Wesley Longman.

Halsted, I. (1975). Putting error in its place. Journal of Basic Writing 1,

1, 72-86.

McDonough, J., & Shaw, C. (1996). Materials and Methods in ELT. A teacher’s guide.

Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.

Matsuda, P.K. (1997). Contrastive rhetoric in context: A dynamic model of L2 writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 6 (1),45-60.

Reid, J. (2001). Writing. The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages. (R. Carter & D. Nunan, Eds).  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Seow, A. (2002). The Writing Process and Process Writing . (J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya, Eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Silva, T., & Matsuda, P. K. (2002). An introduction to applied linguistics (N. Schmitt, Ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Weigle, S. C. (2002). Assessing Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Appendix A

TEST on Writing

Time allotted: 40 minutes

Student’s name: ……………………………………….           

Class: ……………………….

School: ………………………           

Date: …………………………

Marks	In words	Teacher’s signature	Teacher’s signature

     
These days, many people begin to catch fish in the lake behind your house. What makes you worried most is that they use electricity to catch fish. A lot of small fish died and floated on the water surface. Other animals such as frogs, toads, and even birds also died from electric shock waves. You think that local authorities should prohibit and fine heavily anyone catching fish in this way.

Now, write a letter of 100-150 words to the head of the local authorities to complain about the way of catching fish in the lake behind your house. Follow the format provided:

Situation             states the reason for writing

Complication      mentions the problem

Resolution          makes a suggestion

Action                talks about future action

Politeness           ends the letter politely

…………………………………………………………………………………………….