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Teaching Writing as a Process and Teaching Sentence-Level Syntax: Reformulation as ESL Composition Feedback
Modern composition teaching has emerged primarily from observations of L1 freshman composition students, leading to a strong focus on writing 'process,' which does not address the need of ESL students for help with sentence-level syntax. Based on ESL students' documented preference for error correction (Leki, 1991) and the need for word usage and sentence grammar to become automatic, this article describes the rationale and procedures for using reformulation as composition feedback. These procedures are aimed at improving sentence level grammar. Survey responses of three sections (totaling 43 ESL students) of a one-semester university ESL composition class during which the procedures were used are also presented.
In his TESL-EJ article (1995), Tim Caudery reported the responses of second language teachers he surveyed to the question of what the "process approach" meant to them. The responses reflected a lack of consensus among the teachers as to the meaning of the "process approach." The confusion is not surprising, given that most ESL teachers do not come to their profession through courses that teach the history or theory of composition and until recently, much of the literature on teaching composition has been primarily concerned with L1 composition.
Caudery notes that "relatively little seems to have been done to develop a process approach which is specifically oriented towards L2 writing," and suggests that "the time for this may be ripe" (p. 11). I agree.
Beginning at the end of the 1960s and continuing through the 70s and 80s, composition was investigated as a cognitive process (e.g., Labov, 1970; Emig, 1971; Flower and Hayes, 1981) and as a social process (e.g., Freire, 1968; Perelman, 1977; Shaughnessy, 1977; Kinneavy, 1983; Bartholomae & Petrosky, 1986; Bizell, 1986; and Rose, 1989). These studies led to discussions about the pedagogical role of reading, the demands of different discourse communities, and the layers of cognition based on class, race, and gender folded into the process of writing. This work began to be reflected in L1 freshman composition textbooks and filtered eventually into ESL writing textbooks. ESL composition scholars and practitioners began their own investigations of L2 writing informed by the insights of L1 investigators (Cohen, 1984; Connor, 1994; Kroll, 1990; Leki, 1991; Raimes, 1976; Reid, 1988; Spack,1984; White, 1988; Zamel, 1985).
One of the most valuable perspectives to come out of this work and be incorporated into classroom teaching is that of the recursive nature of writing. Students are introduced to invention techniques to help them discover and engage a topic. Rather than being expected to turn in a finished product right away, students are asked for multiple drafts of a work and taught that rewriting and revision are integral to writing, and that editing is an ongoing, multi-level process, not merely a hasty check for correct grammar.
Our understanding of writing processes has been enriched and the teaching of writing much improved through this 'process' approach. However, ESL teachers are confronted with students whose needs may differ in both content and degree from the needs of L1 freshman composition students addressed by the process approach.
While invention techniques, drafting and revision do lead to more thoughtful work by both L1 and L2 writers, I find that the university ESL population I teach is not one lacking in habits of observation, critical thought, or substance to express. Most of them are placed in ESL composition classes because they do not have enough control of English vocabulary or syntax to write fluidly, not because they cannot generate meaning. In fact, the international [-2-] students are often both psychologically and socially more mature than their L1 freshmen counterparts and often have plenty to say. Figuring out what to say is not so much a problem as how to say it in English. This is reflected in Ilona Leki's (1991) survey of 100 ESL students who were predominately concerned with producing error-free writing.
Leki and Carson's (1994) survey of students' perceptions of EAP writing instruction and cross-curricular writing needs also found that the largest percentage of responses to the question of what students would like to have learned or learned better in their writing classes was "... more language skills." The most frequently expressed specific needs were vocabulary and grammar (p. 89). Hedgcock and Lefkowitz (1994) also note that "[both] FL and ESL responses" to their survey concerning student response to feedback conventions "indicate a strong concern for formal text features, such as lexical and grammatical accuracy" (p. 150).
Nor is this concern misplaced. There is abundant evidence reflecting negative reaction on the part of native speakers and faculty to sentence level and/or vocabulary errors in ESL writing (Casanave & Hubbard, 1992; Green and Hecht, 1985; Khalil, 1985; Santos, 1988; Sweedler-Brown, 1993; Vann, Meyer, & Lorenz, 1984). Indeed, Vann, Lorenz, & Meyer (1991) have found that in relation to faculty reaction to errors in spelling, article use, and verb form, the "essential pattern found when errors were embedded in isolated sentences remains when errors are embedded in complete essays"(p. 187).
Insofar as L1 and L2 populations are similar, what holds true for one may be assumed to be true for the other. However, L1 composition teaching today strongly de-emphasizes a focus on grammar and correctness as obstructive to students' efforts to write. Concern with sentence level errors, it is implied, is a vestige of the bad old days from which we have, luckily, emerged enlightened. What L1 students do with English syntax, however, is not comparable with what ESL students do with it, either quantitatively or qualitatively. Our students know this, their readers know it, and however de-emphasized in the consciousness of enlightened teachers , it doesn't go away. While not underestimating the need for teaching the more sophisticated levels of discourse addressed in the process approach, it is important for ESL students to develop some degree of automaticity in the use of articles, verb tenses, subject/verb agreement, spelling, and other "surface" features. This is not a matter of disowning the insights of the process approach, but of incorporating those insights into our instruction while still addressing the need to teach our students syntactic features of our language which come automatically to native speakers but not to L2 writers. How do we do this and not interfere with our students' development as writers? How do we do it and still remain true to what we now know about the processes of writing at other levels? [-3-]
If the student-writer is able to consciously learn all the rules of punctuation, spelling, grammar, and style that linguists have discovered and described, his reward should be a Ph.D. in linguistics. Unfortunately, this will not guarantee him writing competence, since so much of what good writers do routinely and subconsciously remains to be discovered (1984, p. 25).If accurate grammar needs to be developed at a subconscious level, then how? Simply pointing out what is wrong, whether through grammar lessons, proofreading symbols, or underlining, does not correspond at all to the process of producing a flow of writing, nor does this feedback seem to promote "acquisition" (as Krashen understands it) of correct grammar.
Marking papers with the mysterious language of English teachers ("ab, dm, cs, empha, frag, agr," and that most dreaded epithet of all, "awk!") requires that ESL students learn a new specialized system of symbols, learn where to find them, find them, interpret what they mean, and try to correct what they seem to point to. All of these laborious procedures lead the student farther and farther away from his or her text into ever more abstract, unrelated operations. Supplying corrections in a straightforward manner as feedback for sentence level errors may not be effective, either. Burkland and Grimm (1986) found that many L1 students look at their grades and then simply toss the laboriously marked papers.
Gatbonton and Seglowitz (1988) have suggested that many traditional teaching methods have failed to make correct grammar automatic because they have been aimed, not at particular utterances, but at structures . They feel that repetition of utterances would work better, that an exercise to promote automatic production of correct language would have to "provide opportunities to elicit many tokens of each utterance" (pp. 477-478). What is problematic, they write, is "how to make the [-4-] repetition itself natural"(479). While they were referring to spoken language, I think this is probably true for writing as well.
Ilona Leki and Joan Carson express similar concern for natural repetition when they write about "efficiency":
It seems important to address ESL students' ongoing need for efficiency in language processing, including vocabulary retrieval. We...argue that this need is not addressed by isolated work with grammar and vocabulary but rather that speed of language processing only develops through extensive and repeated acts of language processing in the service of accomplishing writing goals (1994, p. 98).Hypothesizing that indeed repetition works, and based on some of my own learning experiences in my second language, I began to work out some classroom procedures and a method of marking compositions modified from the feedback mode known as 'reformulation.'
The marking scheme I have developed is less elaborate than Cohen's version of reformulation, but somewhat more extensive than what Pit Corder described as reconstruction. The remainder of this article will be a description of this method and of student response to its use throughout a one semester composition course required of all incoming international students who receive a score of less than 85 on the writing section of the Michigan test. I would like to emphasize that this procedure is systematically incorporated into these writing classes (among other activities, including reading, [-5-] discovery techniques, rewriting, revision, and conventional student editing). It is not the central focus of the writing class, but it is incorporated to address L2 students' need for help with vocabulary, word usage, and grammar. The three sections of this class were made up of 43 students. Their first languages were as follows: Arabic, 1; Chinese, 23; Hindi, 3; Korean, 5; Spanish, 3; Thai, 2; Turkish, 4; Urdu, 2.
^ means "add" (put in)
( ) means "omit" (take out)
> means "indent" (go in 5 spaces to the right)
? means "mystery" (I can't interpret this. Rewrite or leave out)
| means "separate" (leave a space between these items)
If there is a letter, word, punctuation mark, or phrase enclosed
within the parentheses with a letter, word, punctuation mark, or
[-6-]
phrase directly above, it means "take out what is between the
parentheses and put in what is above the parentheses."That is the extent of the symbol system although it may be augmented by circling some word or material and drawing an arrow from it to another location in the text, in case the order of the material (word, words, punctuation mark, even a paragraph) needs to be changed.
In this way, the text is corrected. It is not corrected by an underline, which simply draws attention to "wrongness," or by a symbol naming the error. It is, rather, simply corrected by supplying the right word or material. Once the text has been so marked, I write "CC" or "CCSO" at the top of the paper. "CC" means "Return this text as a clean copy in which all corrections have been incorporated." "CCSO" ("Clean copy, sentences only") means "Turn in your original as well as a paper in which only the sentences in this text which have been corrected are copied in their correct form." CCSO is less common and is for students who have made so few errors that it makes no sense for them to recopy the whole paper. They may choose to copy their papers if they do not want the rest of the class to see the corrections. However, if they don't mind, they can leave the corrections as they stand and hand in the separate CCSO paper to me, demonstrating that they have paid attention to and used the correction. No one can ignore the corrections I have made in the papers, and in fact must pay attention to them to satisfy the assignment.
This means that the students have to go back to their individual works and attend to them at the sentence level, not at the speed of thought but at least at the speed they copy. They copy them incorporating the corrections, so that the text and meaning remain theirs. The corrections are a matter of processing and putting in an appropriate word or phrase in the sequence each actually occurs in the text, embedding the syntax in their own reading and copying of their own written thoughts and words. In this way, the feedback is absolutely individualized. Each student incorporates the corrections peculiar to his or her paper into the flow of his or her own intended meaning.
These clean copies (which, like the originals, must be at least double-spaced) are then handed in and published. No one has to display his or her errors to other members of the class and in their role as readers of each other's texts, class members can attend to the meaning of their classmates' papers and enjoy and discuss them at other levels. Everyone is reading good English undistracted by errors; no one is embarrassed by a low level of grammatical proficiency. Students who otherwise cringe at having to show their papers in class often feel pride in their writing. The others can discuss content, but no one is going to quibble about grammar. [-7-]
After the corrected papers (CCs) are handed in, I distribute them at random to the seated students who are asked to read each paper and comment about what works in each or what strikes them as good or interesting about it. (I tell them that we are together to learn about what works. We do not need to study what doesn't work, which is obvious anyway). As each finishes a paper, he or she places it on a table at the front of the room and picks up an unread composition at the same time. In this way the papers circulate throughout the class. If one person is left for a few minutes without a composition to read, he or she is expected to use the time to write comments or make journal entries.
After the papers have circulated, the whole class talks about what they have read. Having formulated some thoughts in the "comments" part of the assignment, everyone has something to say even if he or she hasn't commented on every paper. Everyone knows which papers were the best; they don't have to be told. At the same time they don't have to worry about a humiliating comment being made about their work in public. If anything is said at all, it will be positive. Students are very interested to read each other's work and to calibrate it for quality as well as meaning. I think they learn a lot about writing from each other through these readings and if there is a little competitive edge to improve the next paper, so much the better. It comes through the group dynamic, not through comparing grades, because I don't grade these assignments. If the assignments are poorly done or incomplete, I note it on their originals and in my records, so it works against their grade in class but otherwise the papers are ungraded.
Following are two example excerpts from texts, marked versions, and final CCs. These have been marked using the computer in this text, but I usually do it quickly by hand.
I had a bycicle. I really loved that bike. It was the best toy that I ever had. I bought in Miami in one trip that I did with my father and my brother. My father bought a bike for my brother too. It was better than mine, but now I know that I prefer mine.[-8-]Those times I used to ride my bike with my friends. My friends lived in the same block where I live. We used to go to the park and to make longs trips in the city. My bike was red and beautiful. It was litle because I was litle too. It was easyto ride it. It had low weight and strong tires. Maybe, it was one of the best in the block.
One day we planed a exciting trip to the mines of stone. We didn't go. We planed another trip, and this time was to the hills of north part of the city.
i y
>I had a b(y)c(i)cle. I really loved that bike. It was the best
it on a made
toy that I ever had. I bought in Miami (in one) trip that I (did)
^
with my father and my brother. My father bought a bike for my
I know
brother, too. It was better than mine, but now that I prefer mine.
^
on
>(Those times) I used to ride my bike with my friends. My friends
^
on d
lived (in) the same block where I live. We used to go to the park
^
and to make long(s) trips in the city. >My bike was red and
t t
beautiful. It was litle because I was litle too. It was easy|to
^ ^
was light had
ride it. It (had low weight) and strong tires. Maybe(,) it
^ ^
on
was one of the best (in) the block.
n a rock quarry
>One day we planed a exciting trip to (the mines of stone).
^
n it
We didn't go. We planed another trip, and this time was to
^ ^
the ern
the hills of north part of the city.
^ ^
I had a bicycle. I really loved that bike. It was
the best toy that I ever had. I bought it in Miami on a
trip that I made with my father and my brother. My
father bought a bike for my brother too. It was better
than mine, but now I know that I prefer mine. [-9-]
I used to ride my bike with my friends. My friends
lived in the same block where I lived. We used to go to
the park and to make long trips in the city.
My bike was red and beautiful. It was little
because I was little too. It was easy to ride it. It was
light and had strong tires. Maybe it was one of the best
on the block.
One day we planned an exciting trip to a rock
quarry. We didn't go. We planned another trip, and this
time it was to the hills of the northern part of the
city.
ESSAY ABOUT IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION TO THAI WOMEN
Thailand is classified as the developing country.
Its industrial and financial indexes have recently high
enough to group into those "NICs" (Newly Industrialized
Countries), which are now consisted of 4 countries in
Asia: Korea, Republic of China, Singapore and Thailand.
THE ON
(ESSAY ABOUT) IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION (TO) THAI WOMEN
^
a
>Thailand is classified as (the) developing country. Its
been
industrial and financial indexes have recently high enough
^
it the category of the
to group into (those) "NICs" (Newly Industrialized Countries),
^
four
which (are) now consist(ed) of (4) countries in Asia:
the ,
Korea, Republic of China, Singapore and Thailand.
^ ^
THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIALIZATION ON THAI WOMENThis five-symbol marking can be done swiftly by a native speaker, and very swiftly after one has become accustomed to it. It is more work than an L1 teacher would do with student text, but our students have to wrestle with the language at additional levels. The extra time marking the L2 papers in this way is more than compensated for by student gratitude (they much appreciate this kind of attention to their language.)Thailand is classified as a developing country. Its industrial and financial indexes have recently been [-10-] high enough to group it into the category of the "NICs" (Newly Industrialized Countries), which now consist of four countries in Asia: Korea, the Republic of China, Singapore, and Thailand.
In the second half of the course students wrote two papers explaining controversies in their respective fields, using direct and indirect quotes and field-specific citation conventions. These were about 300 words long, aimed at our class as the audience, and published. Each of these was drafted and revised over a two-week period, and the final version reformulated.
The course included some grammar consciousness-raising directed to the whole class, but the process of the students repeatedly incorporating the vocabulary and structures they needed for their own meanings into their own papers, to be communicated to the whole class was the primary mode of grammar instruction.
Overall, sentence-level accuracy in the response papers improved over the semester, though it varied considerably across individuals. Comparison of impromptu essays written on the first day, midterm, and at the end of the semester in which students had very little time to revise or edit, showed noticeable improvement in the use of articles and verb tenses for most of the students. It is not possible to claim that the composition feedback method was responsible for the improvement rather than the reading or even just the additional time in the second language environment. It will take careful research to measure the effect, but there is no question [-11-] that the overwhelming majority of the students very much liked the method and felt that they were learning from it. Their enthusiasm alone creates conditions for learning.
Some teachers I have told about this method of feedback are clearly suspicious of it because in the response assignments, students are simply given the words they need; they don't have to "work" for them. But why not just give them the words? Why not directly supply the words needed as soon as possible so that the writers can encounter them and manipulate them in the flow of their own intentions? It is in such communicative use that language seems to be acquired. In a stream of spoken discourse, we do not hesitate to supply the word or phrase needed by a speaker. Students appreciate the prompt and detailed feedback, and the method provides them with frequent contextual opportunities to reorganize the syntax most troublesome to each individual. The object of the reformulation feedback is not to teach the students editing, which is another part of the course, but to promote learning by providing students contextual opportunities to repeat correct use of structures through repeated tokens of written expression. In fact, the repeated reformulations do lend themselves to grammar consciousness-raising and therefore indirectly to the ability to edit. Again, this is in agreement with the observation of Gatbonton and Seglowitz (1988) that many traditional teaching methods have not promoted the automatic use of correct grammar because they have been aimed at abstract structures rather than at particular utterances.
While the new insights into composing processes are important, we also know that "Grammar is important; and learners seem to focus best on grammar when it relates to their communicative needs and experiences"(Savignon, 1993, p.43). In second language settings, we can't ignore grammar nor can we relegate it to handbooks and refer students to page numbers. Learning the syntax and vocabulary of the new language is basic to our students' ability to write. The feedback method proposed here suggests only one way to address the need of L2 writers to increase vocabulary and learn the syntax of their new language as they learn to write in it. We need to develop many ways of doing so. Second language learning is as much a process as writing is a process, and among our students writing is firmly embedded in the matrix of second language learning.
Bizell, P. (1986). What happens when basic writers come to college? CCC,37, 294-301.[-12-]
Booth, W. C. (1963). Boring from within: The art of the freshman essay. Speech delivered in May to the Illinois Council of College Teachers of English.
Burkland, J. and Grimm, N. (1986). Motivating through responding. Journal of Teaching Writing, 5 , 237-247.
Casanave, C. P. and Hubbard, P. (1992). The writing assignments and writing problems of doctoral students: faculty perceptiions, pedagogical issues, and needed research. English for Specific Purposes, 11, 33-49.
Caudery, T. (1995). What the "process" approach means to practising teachers.TESL-EJ 1.4 (A-3).
Cohen, A. D. (1989). Reformulation: A technique for providing advanced feedback in writing. Guidelines, 11 (2), 1-9.
Cohen, A.D. (1984). Written reformulation as a source of input for learners. English Teachers' Journal (Israel), 30 , 62-67.
Connor, U.M. (1994). Second-language processing: Writing. In D. Wilkins (Ed.), Encyclopedia of linguistics . London: Pergamon Press.
Corder, S. P. (1971). Idiosyncratic dialects and error analysis. IRAL, 9(2), 147-160.
Elbow, P. (1973). Writing without teachers . New York: Oxford University Press.
Emig, J. (1971). The composing processes of twelfth graders . Urbana, Ill.: NCTE.
Flower, L. S., and Hayes, J. R. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. CCC, 32 , 365-387.
Freire, P. (1968). Pedagogy of the oppressed . Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Seabury.
Gatbonton, E. and Seglowitz, N. (1988). Creative automatization: Principles for promoting fluency within a communicative framework. TESOL Quarterly, 22 , (3), 473-492.
Green, P. S., and Hecht, K. (1985). Native and nonnative evaluation of learner's errors in written discourse. System, 13 , (2), 77-97.
Hairston, M. (1986). On not being a composition slave. In C. W. Bridges (Ed.), Training the new teacher of college composition . Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 117-124. [-13-]
Hedgcock, J. and Lefkowitz, N. (1994). Feedback on feedback: Assessing learner receptivity to teacher response in L2 composing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 3 , (2), 141-163.
Horowitz, D. (1986) . What professors actually require: Academic tasks for the ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 20 , (3), 445-462.
Khalil, A. (1985). Communicative error evaluation: Native speakers' evaluation and interpretation of written errors of Arab EFL learners. TESOL Quarterly, 19 , 335-351.
Kinneavy, J. L. (1983). Writing across the curriculum. ADE Bulletin, 76 , (Winter), 14-21.
Krashen, S. D. (1984). Writing: Research, theory and applications . Language Teaching Methodology Series. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Kroll, B. (1990). Introduction. In B. Kroll (Ed.), Second language writing: Research and insights for the classroom . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Labov, W. (1970). The study of nonstandard English . Urbana, Ill.: NCTE.
Levenston, E. A. (1978). Error analysis of free composition: The theory and the practice. Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4 , (1), 1-11.
Leki, I. (1991). The preferences of ESL students for error correction in college-level writing classes. Foreign Language Annals, 24 , (3), 203-218.
Leki, I. and Carson, J. (1994). Students' perceptions of EAP writing instruction and writing needs across the disciplines. TESOL Quarterly 28 , (1), 81-101.
Macrorie, K. (1970). Telling writing . Rochelle Park, N. J.:Hayden.
Murray, D. M. (1980). Writing as process: How writing finds its own meaning. In T. R. Donavan and B. W. McLelland (Eds), Eight approaches to teaching composition (pp. 3-20). Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Perelman, C. (1982). The realm of rhetoric . Trans. W. Kluback. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press. Trans. of L'Empire Rhetorique . 1977. [-14-]
Raimes, A. (1976, March). Not control vs. Freedom but control with freedom: A model for ESL composition instruction . Paper presented at the 10th Annual TESOL Convention. New York, NY.
Reid, J. M. (1988). The process of composition (2nd ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary: The struggles and achievements of America's underprepared . New York: Free Press.
Santos, T. (1988). Professors' reactions to the academic writing of nonnative speaking students. TESOL Quarterly, 22 , 69-90.
Savignon, S. J. 1993. Communicative language teaching: State of the art. In S. Silberstein (Ed.), State of the art TESOL essays: Celebrating 25 years of the discipline . Alexandria,VA: TESOL, pp.35-51.
Shaughnessy, M. P. (1977). Errors and expectations: A guide for the teacher of basic writing . New York: Oxford University Press.
Spack, R. (1984). Invention strategies and the ESL college composition student. TESOL Quarterly, 18 , 649-670.
Sweedler-Brown, C. O. (1993). ESL essay evaluation: The influence of sentence-level and rhetorical features. Journal of Second Language Writing, 2 , (1), 3-17.
Vann, R., Meyer, D., and Lorenz, F. (1984). Error gravity: A study of faculty opinion of ESL errors. TESOL Quarterly, 18 , 427-40.
Vann, R. Lorenz, F., and Meyer,D. (1991). Error gravity: Faculty response to errors in the written discourse of nonnative speakers of English. In Liz Hamp-Lyons (Ed.) Assessing second language writing in academic contexts . Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex. 181-195.
White, R.V. (1988). Academic writing: Process and product. In P. C. Robinson (Ed.) Academic writing: Process and product (4-16). London: Modern English Publications: British Council.
Zamel, V. (1985). Responding to student writing. TESOL Quarterly, 19 , 79-102.
[-15-]
To gather information about this technique, it would be helpful if you would respond to the following questions.
1. This technique helped my grammar:
not at all a little more than a little very much
1 12 15 15
2. This technique helped increase my vocabulary:
not at all a little more than a little very much
5 17 13 8
3. This technique helped me learn word usage:
not at all a little more than a little very much
0 6 25 12
4. This technique helped my mechanics (spelling, punctuation,
formatting):
not at all a little more than a little very much
0 11 18 14
5. For learning to write in English in general, this technique was
not useful slightly useful moderately useful very useful
0 9 18 16
6.** In general, I_________ using this technique.
liked disliked felt indifferent about
32 0 9
** two students did not respond
[-16-]
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