Teaching Grammar and Writing - Week 10 - Responding to Writing

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 10 of the course Teaching Grammar and Writing for the Master's in English Teaching at ULACIT in term IC 2023. In this class we will continue our focus on writing by considering important factors in providing feedback to help learners develop their writing. We'll also look at your PPP cycle and consider an alternative, deep end approach to lesson design called TTT. 

Today's Goals:

• Demonstrate the features of your original PPP sequence.
• Consider TTT as an alternative to the standard PPP sequence.
• Explore issues and best practices in the responding to students' writing?

Guiding Questions:

• How did PPP come to be the dominant planning framework in ELT and what are the conflicting views about it?
• How can a deep end approach to grammar lesson design be carried out in a practical way?
• How can I provide students with effective feedback on their writing?

Task 1: Activity Type Demo - PPP Sequence

In this course you will be asked to create sample grammar activities in order to compile a portfolio of grammar activitiy types that describes their basic features, strengths, and challenges. 

• Characteristics: What are the features of the PPP lesson design sequence?
• Example: What activity did you create?
• Strengths: In what ways is the concept of PPP beneficial in grammar and writing instruction?
• Challenges: What potential limitations or challenges are associated with the PPP approach to lesson design in the grammar class?

• Additional Considerations: CLICK HERE

Task 2: Reading Response - Responding to Writing

Let's take a moment to discuss these questions related to your assigned reading for this week.

• Initial Thoughts: How would you describe your approach to providing feedback on student writing? What does your feedback tend to focus on: content, grammar, organization, others? How effective do you think your feedback is on improving the quality of their final product? How time consuming is this process for you?

• Quote: "Response to student writing and its effects on writers is a vitally important topic for second language (L2) writing teachers and researchers. For many teachers, the act of responding (whether orally or in writing) represents the largest investment of time they make as writing instructors. For students, the feedback they receive from both instructors and peers may be the most significant component in their successful development as writers (Ferris, p. 119).”

• Historical Trends: Research into student response to feedback on their writing has led to changes in the ways that teachers approach the process.

• L1 Writers: "A frequently cited early L1 review asserts, 'We have scarecely a shred of empirical evidence to show that students typically even comprehend our responses to their writing, let alone use them purposefully to modify their practice...' worse, students seemed either to resent or ignore teacher feedback. To the 'composition slaves' of the world - teachers toiling away late into the night to provide comments or corrections on student papers - the conclusions of these research reviews were discouraging indeed (p. 119-120)."

• Consequence: This resulted in an increase in the use of peer feedback and teacher-student conferencing in writing classses following what became known as collaborative approaches.

• Reducing Appropriation: Soon a trend toward appropriation avoidance emerged, not forcing onto the students the teacher's views of what their writing should achieve.

• Questioning Previous Research: As a process approach to writing became more popular, much of the early research findings came into question since they were based mostly on feedback provided to a single graded draft. The huge variety of purposes and contexts of L2 writing instruction also demanded a need for increased research in feedback perception specifically for second language writing teachers.

• Generalizations from L2 Research: Click your link below to explore some generalizations that have been made based on extensive research into feedback on L2 writing.

• Group Link: CLICK HERE

• Additional Input on Writing Feedback: Chapters from both Hyland and Nation were also consulted in preparation for this lesson and a selection of practical ideas are included in the reference document.

• Reference Document: CLICK HERE

Task 3: Pushing Learners into the Deep End

Last week we looked at the history and ongoing contravesy surrounding the dominant instructional paradigm in language teaching today, Presentation, Practice, Production (PPP). Today we touched on the TTT alternative approach to grammar instruction which pushes students into the deep end of the pool. For your final activity design, you will transform you PPP lesson from last week into a TTT one.

References:

Anderson, J. (2017). A potted history of PPP with the help of ELT Journal. ELT Journal, 71(2), 218-227, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccw055

Ferris, D. (2003). Responding to Writing. In B. Kroll (Ed.) Exploring the Dynamics of Second Language Writing. Cambridge University Press.

Hyland, K. (2003). Second Language Writing. Cambridge University Press.

Nation, I.S.P. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing. Routledge.

Scrivener, J. (2005). Learning Teaching. Macmillan.

Thornbury, S. (1999). How to Teach Grammar. Pearson Education Limited.