July 25th
I had the opportunity to pick up some papers of an initial exercise I asked the students who came to class this week did: they had to write basic information about themselves in a piece of paper, with no any other instruction or requirement than writing whatever they could about themselves.
This is a sample of what they wrote about.
- Observing the students' compositions gathered as part of the diagnosis I found these evidences:
- There is not a linear construction of the paragraph.
- There is not connection necessary between a paragraph and a descriptive composition.
- There is not clear understaning of the purpose of the task demanded (students often simply wrote what they knew and supposed regarding themselves, but not necessarily paid attention to the requirements established in the istructions of the task.
- There are several levels of language and written production among these students, as some of them have a deeper comprehension of both the instructions and an evident background that allowed them to expres many more ideas in their writings.
- Most of sentences are single and there are not connecting words among them.
- As fragmentation is very frequent, most ideas seem apart from the others. these are most running-out sentences.
- The level of vobabulary is also varied.
- Some students did not write any thing.
- There is high presence of Spaglish and mother tongue interference.
- Unattendance during the current week did not allow to gather enough data from the students in this group.
What now?
I am going to implement a more formal diagnosis test to identify all students current estate in their writing process in English.
This is the body of the entry test:
Dear student,
You are invited to participate in a Research Project developed by your current English teacher, with the purpose of helping you improve your writing skills. The aim of this diagnosis is identifying your strengthens and needs regarding your knowledge and abilities when writing, in English.
Please read the instructions and answer the questions below:
A. Fill in the chart with your personal information, as requested:
Name:
Age:
Major:
...
Name:
Age:
Major:
...
B. Read the following text and identify ten mistakes, regarding spelling (deletreo), punctuation (puntuación), grammar (reglas gramticales) and wording (selección de las palabras adecuadas):
My name are Paula and I am study in university. Actually I am in semester one and i study psycologi. I laiv with my fathers in Bogota in a smoll apartment I have a boyfriend her name is Giovanny He is in third semester of administración de empresas in Universidad Libre. Her favourite sport is football he watch football all the time. Sometimes he is boring and i hate football games. This is why we discuss all the time.
C. The text in exercise B contains many mistakes. Read and re write it appropriately.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
D. Write a short description about you, your physical appearance and personality. Say where you live and who you live with. Describe the members in your family and the place where you live:
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What I found out when Sts were solving their writing entry test (diagnosis)
Well, I have Alberto, who is blind...up to this initial sessions I have not idea what his skills are both linguistic and communicative.
I could see that some students felt anxious because they did not have words to express their ideas, some of them remained mute and inactive during the exercise. Later some others asked their peers and me what they could write about so they got ideas from their peers. I do not know if this may change the sense or affect the purpose and results in the task. There is a boy who is always asking 'teacher' cómo se escribe?
August 7th
As I will be implementing during twenty sessions, and the syllabus just gives me an hour for writing practice during the week, some weeks it is not possible to use the spaces for writing and there are three weeks for exams application. I have started observation right away. This week is intended to observe my students behaviour regarding writing in their natural learning environment.
We have spent the past two weeks presenting the introduction of the course. However, what I gathered does not evidence a formal writing previous process made by the learners, neither some significative sample that can be later be contrasted and appreciated as an outcome resulting from a learning strategy apart from the normal daily procedures. I will use the resources my colleages group and me are designing for the independent work so that students are having this and next week to show their products with any specific strategical stimuli.
Pre Application Stage
Date | Activity | Purpose |
August 6 (1 hour) | Diagnose: 1. Free composition. 2. Independent workshop 1: A famous landmark. 3. Independent workshop 2: My family. | Identify my false beginners’ proficiency level before implementing any specific learning strategy to their writing skill. Introduce the rhetorical structure of a descriptive text. Train Sts in the use of the list of conventions for writing. |
August 1o | 4. First PN learning guide: My hometown. | Train Sts in the use of the PN learning strategy. |
August 13th
Before the lesson
Today I have to start the implementation. This is the way I will proceed: students have to hand in their independent workshop called 'Meeting people around the world' completely solved. Based on the conclusions of the feedback, I will ask students their insights regarding the way they solved it and how creative they were to complete the last composition exercise in which they had to describe themselves to a friend. then I will apply the initial survey , so that I can collect an overview of their initial tasks and their feelings about their background in writing and the way tehy are addressing their writing tasks. With both elements I will learn about their perceptions and the reasons why their tasks have been developed in the way they did, so that we both can identify the learning strategies that students are using currently.
 |
During the lesson: |
The task had not been developed by most of them at home as part of their independent work. Students were expected to use the list of conventions for writing to solve an exercise in which they had to correct spelling and punctuation mistakes. Linda, Lorena, Laura Gutierrez, developed the tasks completely, and followed the suggestions and developed the final written composition regarding the family members, but they were not certain about either the structure nor the content of their descriptive texts. Lorena just kept the list of conventions for writing.
In the current learning guide, that they had to develop and hand in solved for today, they had to read and find and get appropriated of elements to introduce another person. Most Students did not solve it, so they were given 20 minutes to read and solve the guide and respond to the initial survey about their rearning styles and their initial compositions.
After class, checking the tasks solved by the students in class, these texts continued to be very vague and students complained they did not completely understand what to do. Some writings are extremely poor as most students just wrote from two to five not connected sentences about a friend. Most students did not consider the adequate layout for a mail, as it was expected. All but Laura Gutierrez, Linda and Lorena just wrote a single paragraph describing their friend and supplied data regarding their age and some aspects of their physical appearance. One artefact given to them was a list of adjectives to describe their character and personality besides their phyisical appearance, but most did not use this tool. Now, checking the corrections students continued missing some details.
August 17th
Students were given back their independent workshops for them to check and correct their writings using the list of conventions for writing. Only Andres asked for results about the survey and what it was about. Now I told them we were carrying out a project in which we were going to implement the Practicing Naturalistically learning strategy to improve their writing.
I used the learning guide about the family to explain them the difference between using and not using Practicing Naturalistically (PN) and asked them to solve this last guide by themselves before friday to verify if they can find the differences by themselves.
Sts have to write a short descriptive text with introductory, developmental and conclusing paragraphs about their own families, as a final product after solving the workshop with the family trees.
In this session, students commented that it is difficult to write by themselves because they say that they do not have enough grammar elements. Check their comments about the task:
L: a strategy to help us learn to write quickly would be very useful. Linda does lots of exercises to practice at home, but she writes single phrases that do not connect to each other. She practices repetition, indeed. Lorena likes writing only one phrase for each idea she understands, she does not like too many explanations but she is ommitting too many grammar elements in the sentences, like missing the subjects in each descriptive sentence, doing long ennumerations that take her to forget the appropriate possessive adjective and possessive pronoun she needs to use:
CR: My brother is tal, handsome, fat, hardworking, intelligent. Her occupation is a medicine.
S: my mother is a beautiful, tall, thin, long hair, eyes black, his name is Olga. Her is from Cali.
Solving the writing activities by themselves has implied double work for the teachers because students need mcuh more feedback, and individual attention out of the classroom. The implementation of the strategy will facilitate the Sts' comprehension and the immediate analysis, solving Sts' doubts at once, which seems to be te most complex aspect, because when Sts are in class they seem to get incomes appropriately, but when working by themselves many questions and uncertainties appear that cause trouble in their writing process.
August 19th
Today Sts handed in their learning guides to work in class practicing naturalistically. A introduced them a new character, Jennifer. she will be their key pal who lives in NY and she is interested in knowing about Colombia through them. They are going to tell her many things according to the things she asks them through her mails.
Today most students brought their learning guide photocopied and, as I should have expected, L, L and C brought it almost completely solved. They are always very responsible with their tasks. So, when I explained the strategy they felt happy they have done most of the things appropriately. PN meant for them, as I asked, providing a real context in which they can express their outcomes in a natural way, as with mails, letters and other documents. The only difference is that they have to find some real recipient of their messages and I will have to find the solution for all. A solution that does not affect the class work, does not impede anybody to find that someone, that allows all the students to have the same conditions so that I can avoid bias.
May be the creation of this common character may provide these conditions.
