Teaching Reading and Writing

This week’s readings focused on teaching reading and writing in English-learning contexts.  In my opinion, the most useful and practical parts of the readings were those that gave explicit strategies for teaching reading and writing to students.  Reading can be taught from a bottom-up or top-down perspective, but I favor a combination of both methods.  I want to use an interactive method that focuses on comprehension and idea development but also has students focus on form (Brown 358).  Of all of the reading strategies depicted on pages 360 & 361, I find the teaching of strategic reading to be most helpful.  Numerous studies have demonstrated that active reading is more beneficial than passive reading.  Students need to look for patterns when reading, use context to aid understanding, and be able to make inferences.  However, it is important to note that how a student should read depends on the context (Brown 362).  For example, one would read a diary entry different than an academic textbook.  One would analyze a map differently than an expository essay.  Teachers also need to keep this in mind when assessing reading comprehension.  The purpose for reading needs to be identified before assessments are created.  A multiple choice assessment may be appropriate for checking student comprehension after reading a textbook chapter but not after reading a journal entry.  

The second chapter of the Brown reading focused on teaching writing.  Brown described the importance of writing as a process rather than a product (391).  From my own experiences, I have found that the writing process is a more beneficial learning tool than the end product.  The process of brainstorming, drafting, editing, and then publishing a work is very cognitively demanding.  Most of the learning takes place from this rigorous process rather than simply putting the words on the paper.  Other teaching principles from the Brown chapter include connecting reading and writing and providing as much authentic writing as possible (Brown 403).  Although this makes perfect sense, many teachers center student writing assessments on vague prompts from textbooks rather than authentic communication opportunities.  For example, good teachers will have students learn to write persuasive letters, summarize articles, and create presentations rather than simply “writing 500 words about topic X”.  As we have described in this class over and over again, learning is much more meaningful when it can be applied to authentic contexts.  

Ferris’s article focuses on correcting—or not correcting—students’ writing errors.  The main point of the article is that teachers should not waste their time or students’ time by correcting every single grammatical mistake in a written composition.  Error correcting should be limited to correcting major mistakes or mistakes that follow a common pattern.  There are multiple reasons for this logic.  First, a one page paper filled with red circles, slashes, and comments could destroy the confidence of an ESL student that worked hard by putting her thoughts on paper in a foreign language.  Second, most L2 errors are not due to laziness or failure to proofread; most errors are structural errors caused by interference from the native language (Ferris 93).  While writing in Spanish, I have often made mistakes by trying to write something word for word how I would in English.  This tendency to translate often results in unnatural writing.  According to Ferris, the best way to change these tendencies is not to explicitly mark down mistakes but to continue exposing students to authentic examples of good writing.  After excessive exposure to native-like writing, students will be able to produce similar structures.  The combination of teaching strong writing practices (such as the self-editing strategies listed on page 96) and reading authentic texts is more likely to produce better writing than correcting every single comma splice and spelling mistake.