Chapter 10 Reaction: Assessing Writing

"However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once."  
-Jean Jacques Rousseau


The author of this quote is most certainly referring to the art of creative writing and its development, but this quote can also be applied to writing as it exists in the second language classroom.  Writing is complex and learning to write takes time.  There are various levels of writing ability.  At the most basic level writing involves forming letters properly and putting them together to create intelligible words and phrases.   Spelling and phoneme-grapheme correspondence both fall into this level of writing called imitative writing.  At the most involved level, extensive writing, language learners can show not only their ability to form correct sentences, but the ability to appropriately use transitions, to vary vocabulary and structure, and to involves elements of personal style into writing.  


Writing is a process.  Even as an adult native-speaker of English I am aware that my writing is imperfect and I can be unbearably self-conscious when writing in my second language, French.  It is important for me to keep this in mind when I approach writing with my students.  Writing has the added stress of perceived permanence: "What I say will disappear in a moment, but what I write will be there for all to see and judge long after I have written it." 


When teaching ESL to advanced students, the main focus was developing the writing skills of my students.  I had to work with them on vocabulary development, proper grammatical structures, and the concept of the 5 paragraph essay.  The most important part of the class, however, was to help them put all of the pieces together.  This was challenging and admittedly in my first year, I was not as successful as I would have liked to be.  Over time, I found the best way to develop writing was by giving students numerous opportunities to write and taking the time to give some feedback on as many of those writing responses as I could.  Every day they wrote a reflection on a topic of their choosing.  I had them write summaries of the stories they read.  I had them write about what they did over the weekend.  I had them write out responses to questions when they worked in small groups.  For major writing assignments I gave them a choice of two topics or prompts.  They would choose one, brainstorm using a graphic organizer , by jotting down an outline, or free-writing a paragraph response.  From there I would work with them to develop the skeleton of their essay and flesh it out with details and supporting statements.  The process was long and sometimes challenged my patience, but in the end I found the experience to be very rewarding.  In their portfolios I could see how their writing had developed over time and it was impressive.