A Refocused Approach to Writing Instruction

ISSN: 1756–5839 (print) ISSN: 1756–5847 (online)

writing & pedagogy

Reflections on Practice

A Refocused Approach to Writing Instruction: Incorporating a Focus on Genre into the Writing Process Lisa Nazarenko and Gillian Schwarz Abstract This article describes an approach to writing instruction that involves a combination of the genre approach and the process writing approach. The stages of the writing process that students often do not take time for, namely brainstorming, organizing ideas and drafting, are done as much as possible in the classroom. In preparation for this, students are introduced to models of the type of texts they will have to write, so that they can become familiar with the features that are typical of that text type (genre). These features form the basis of a checklist that will serve as a form for teacher feedback, which is given to the students at various stages of the writing process up to final revision. In addition, certain points are focused on in peer feedback. Throughout the entire process, students are encouraged to become aware of their progress through written reflection. We have found that such an approach, overseen and monitored by the teacher, leads students to writing more focused texts that conform to genre conventions. For the purposes of this article, the text type of argumentative (opinion) essay is used as an example. Keywords: writing instruction, genre approach, process writing, feedback, reflection, writing models, argumentative essay

Affiliations University of Vienna, Austria. email: [email protected], [email protected]

WAP vol 2.1 2010 103–116 ©2010, equinox publishing

doi : 10.1558/wap.v2i1.103 LONDON

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Introduction The ideas presented in this paper were developed over a period of several years in response to increasing frustration with the writing performance of our English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at the University of Vienna, Austria. We have found that our students’ written work tends to be disappointing and that the writing difficulties they experience are the same as we have noticed in classes in other countries and at other levels of language study. These difficulties include problems with grammar and vocabulary, of course, but we find that the underlying problems the students have regarding understanding the organization of English discourse and their lack of strategies when approaching writing assignments present a greater barrier to their achievement of written fluency. In addition, students are often completely unaware of any typical features in the different text types they write, so that the work they produce does not conform to what a reader might expect of a text written in a certain genre (see also Nazarenko and Schwarz, in press). We feel that the current stage of development of our ideas to combat these problems is something we can usefully share with colleagues, many of whom (as we have discovered when presenting our ideas at conferences) are struggling with the very same problems. Our method is based on three pillars: the process (how we set up the stages of writing), feedback (what the students receive from us and their peers on their writing), and reflection (how the students react to and learn from what they have written). Each of these three areas is discussed in more detail below.

Context Approximately seventy-five percent of our students are Austrian nationals, and the other twenty-five percent come from other countries (the majority from Eastern Europe). Austrians begin formal instruction in English at the age of 10, and continue for eight years until they take their school-leaving exams. English is the first foreign language taught in the grammar school system (where the majority of our Austrian students study before coming to the university). From the age of 12, English is accompanied by Latin and, possibly, one other major European language such as French or Spanish. English is widely spoken in Austria, which has a heavily tourism-based economy, and students view proficiency in the language as an essential skill for future success. The majority of students we teach are taking our language classes as part of the program for undergraduate degrees in the English Department (either English Literature or English Linguistics), with many training to be English teachers, although a small percentage of them come from other departments:

A Refocused Approach to Writing Instruction 105

Law, Medicine, and Modern Languages. Recently, increasing numbers of students are deciding to study English because they are not quite sure what else to study, and English is seen as an “always useful” subject. This results in the interest and commitment of the students not always being particularly high and in a relatively high drop-out rate when students discover that although they might have been good at English in secondary school, they are now in a different league and struggle with the workload. Before beginning their first semester, they are required to take an entrance examination which ensures that their level of English is at least B2 on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), 1 which is upper-intermediate academic proficiency. They then take a program of six courses over six semesters, each one building on the previous one and covering the range of language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). However, time pressure results in most of the work focusing on reading and writing as the skills being of most immediate (i.e. academic) value to our students.

Refocusing Our Approach With writing being an essential part of all courses students attend in the English Department, it was chastening for language lecturers to hear the complaints of colleagues in other subject areas as they bemoaned the performance of students on term papers and assignments. Discussions with our colleagues and our own observations led to our summarizing the problems students faced as follows:

• No focus on the purpose of the text. Students saw their “job” as producing an

error-free text and paid no attention to what type of text it was to be. Whether an essay, a report, or a summary, they went about their writing in exactly the same way, with their main focus being on avoiding verb tense and spelling mistakes.

• Difficulty focusing on features of a specific genre or text type. Students lacked

any conscious knowledge about the features of genre or particular text types and how a text might vary depending on what the writer’s purpose and audience are.

• Ideas not selective or well thought out. Many students seemed to have a

compulsion to write down everything they knew on the topic with little consideration as to whether these ideas were appropriate for their audience and purpose.

• No organization plan. There was little thought given to logical organization of ideas, resulting in essays that read like the student’s thinking process.

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• No linking of ideas; poor use of linking vocabulary. Students made abrupt changes of topic so that readers were strained when trying to follow the student’s ideas; or students recognized the lack of logic when it was pointed out to them but instead of reorganizing material, used linking vocabulary inappropriately to try and make everything fit together.

• Focus on surface correctness. The production of texts which were grammati-

cally correct on the sentence level but which were confused and difficult to follow on a macro or global level was common, and students who produced these polished but incoherent texts found it difficult to understand why the text did not receive a good grade.

• Lack of effective writing strategies. Students generally had no strategies to deal with these problems themselves and became demotivated and resigned to “not being good at writing.”

Previously, we had presented writing as the development of skills, emphasizing writing as a process, with the use of revision and editing skills to create a text in stages. This involved our students having to write a first draft of their paper and then revise it by taking into account our feedback, which consisted of a series of symbols indicating the type of error (vocabulary, grammar, organization, etc.) and written comments making suggestions for improvements in style, content, and/or organization. However, we found that if the text was disorganized, on either a paragraph or whole-text level, then such revisions were too late. It was demoralizing for the students to have to change huge tracts of their text and a waste of time for us to put effort into detailed feedback which was not really made use of. In effect, it would have been better for the students to rewrite the whole paper. It was clear that students were not going through the prewriting stages we had presented to them (brainstorming ideas, organizing those ideas, focusing on aspects of genre, writing a rough draft, and revising the draft), and were instead writing the assignment all in one sitting. This set of circumstances led us to reconsider our mode of operation and to try to develop our own strategies to work on prevention rather than cure. We began developing these strategies by returning to the literature on writing instruction. Nunan (1999) pointed out that there is no good reason why a process approach to writing and a product-oriented approach cannot coexist in a writing instructional program and that just as students benefit from a specific focus on the processes involved in producing a text, they also benefit from working with model texts and being given the opportunity to dissect, imitate, and transform successful texts from a genre which they are then required to produce themselves. Likewise, the genre approach (Swales, 1990) can be combined with the process approach (Badger and White, 2000; Yan, 2005) – or


indeed the product-oriented approach – in order to give students a variety of tools with which to tackle writing. We saw in this range of approaches a way in which we could deal head on with the problems we had identified and provide our students with a sound foundation on which to build their writing skills. We decided to continue with our generally process-based writing approach, but to include elements of these other approaches and to change the focus of our intervention from the end of the process (revision) to the beginning (prewriting). We also decided to have students do more of their prewriting during class sessions instead of at home, following the advice of White and Arndt (1991: 3): “[O]f all the skills, writing is the one which most needs and benefits from time. So, we advocate devoting classroom time to writing.” In this way, we would be able to make sure that students were indeed going through the processes we were introducing them to. We were also convinced that students needed to take time during these early stages to reflect on what they were doing and to receive feedback on their work so that revisions could be made before, in their eyes, too much time had been invested in writing the end product. In addition, we started to give the students more model texts (examples of the text types they would eventually write) with accompanying activities designed to highlight the aspects of the genre of those texts that make them effective. This gives the students a better understanding of both the assignment and which features make up effective writing in a variety of genres. As a result of these changes, we have developed an extremely flexible, workshop-based method of writing instruction which tackles the problems we faced in order to use class time, our own time, and students’ time efficiently and effectively. Each workshop can be designed to suit a particular group, language level, and genre, and students’ problems are dealt with in an individualized manner.

The Process This description of the process we have developed takes a common academic genre which occurs throughout university level – the argumentative essay – as an example. The basic steps of the process are as follows: First, the lecturer determines the guidelines for the genre or type of text being written and how it will be assessed; this information is then used to prepare assessment guidelines which are given to students so that they can see what they need to do to produce a good assignment. For example, the criteria for assessment of an argumentative essay have been determined by the teaching staff for the essay that is part of a common final test that all students take at the end of the first year. The Assessment Guidelines sheet given to students is shown in Table 1 below.

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Table 1: Assessment Guidelines for an Argumentative Essay Assessment Guidelines: Argumentative Essay In order to write a good essay, you should: I Content, Arguments, and Evidence • Make sure you understand the topic (the specific issue). • Present a clear and reasoned argument. • Support your argument with evidence and examples. • This evidence should be relevant and of interest to your audience. • Do not digress from the topic. II Organization • Structure your essay into introduction, body, and conclusion. • Organize your paragraphs clearly, and use topic sentences. • Use a variety of appropriate linking devices between paragraphs. • Logical relations between sentences and the overall method of development (e.g. result, cause and effect, comparison, etc.) should be indicated by the appropriate use of vocabulary, conjunctions and discourse markers. III Vocabulary • Use a wide range of vocabulary appropriate to the task. • Avoid repetition by using paraphrase and synonyms. • Use register ranging from neutral to formal. IV Grammatical Patterns and Sentence Structure • Write correctly. • Use a range of patterns and structures. • Keep the grammatical structure more formal (e.g. complex sentences). • Be careful about spelling and punctuation. V Length • Keep to the required length.

The lecturer then finds, or prepares, sample texts which illustrate some of the features of the argumentative essay which they want students to incorporate into their writing. For example, opinion/argumentative pieces can often be found in publications such as Time, Newsweek, or The Economist. These examples of the genre are then used for the students to do a range of preparation/familiarization exercises which emphasize the features that lecturers want to draw attention to. These exercises might include: underlining the topic or topic sentence of each paragraph, identifying support for the topic or topic sentence which occurs in the paragraph, identifying and categorizing linking vocabulary used to develop the argument, eliminating all paragraph divisions from a text and having students decide where paragraph breaks should go, or having students supply missing topic sentences. After this has been done, a prewriting session is held in class, in which the topic is presented (for example, an issue or question for an argumentative essay)


and students individually, in pairs, or in groups brainstorm ideas and organize them into a rough organization plan. In the initial stages, lecturers should be fairly prescriptive and insist on students showing their text organization plan including topic sentences and points of information which will support the topic sentence in each paragraph; as students become more competent, this requirement can be relaxed and students can develop their own preferred method of organizing their writing if they wish. Failure to be strict about topic and organization at the beginning of the process often leads back to the initial problem of texts which are grammatically correct on the sentence level, but which are confused and difficult to follow. At this stage, lecturers review the organization plan and give brief feedback on the structure of the text (not language or grammar). Students do not start writing a full text until they have received approval for their plan and it is clear that they know what they are going to say and in what order they are going to say it; again, this preempts one of the initial problems: essays which read like the students’ thinking process and which have no logical structure. As with the writing of the organization plan, this feedback part of the process is initially undertaken by the lecturer and fairly tightly controlled; however, as students become more competent, we have found that this stage of the writing process can also be carried out by the students themselves, giving them opportunities to give and receive peer feedback. When they have a clear plan for writing, students either start writing a rough draft during a class session (being able to get feedback from peers or their lecturer while working) or take their material to work on at home. The finished draft they hand in is given feedback by the lecturer (more on this later) and returned to students so that they can then start their revisions and rewriting. We have found that this focus on pre-writing and bringing writing into the classroom allows lecturers to guide the students in brainstorming ideas and in making organization plans for their text, consequently dealing with many of the major problems which used to arise in their written work before students have invested their time in writing a complete text. This strategy has the advantage that when the first draft of an assignment is finally handed in for feedback, many of the major organization, content, or style errors, which previously required major rewriting, have been dealt with already, and the types of revisions that students are having to make are more on the sentence level (grammar, vocabulary) and thus more manageable. As Tribble (1996: 122) has noted: “What we need are strategies that make it possible to give constructive comments on drafts of student writing rather than waiting until the text is deemed to be finished. If this can be done effectively, by the time a text is handed in for a final evaluation most of the problems that the writer might have had should have been eliminated.”

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Feedback The issue of feedback was a problematic area. We were aware that students needed fairly detailed feedback in order to make significant improvements to their papers, but it is difficult to give meaningful feedback to several classes of students, which could number well over 100 in any given semester. We found the answer in a relatively simple approach: we designed a Feedback Sheet based on the Assessment Guidelines which are given to students at the beginning of an assignment. To return to the example of our argumentative essay, the Assessment Guidelines tell students, for example, “Support your argument with evidence and examples”; the Feedback Sheet (see Table 2) turns this around and asks, “Did you support your argument with evidence and examples?” Table 2: Feedback Sheet for an Argumentative Essay yes

½

    

    

    

    

    

    

  

  

  

  

  

  









no



Further comments:

1. Content, Arguments, and Evidence: Did you focus on the topic (the specific issue)? present a reasoned argument? support your argument with evidence and examples? provide evidence that is relevant and of interest to your audience? not digress from the topic? 2. Organization: Did you structure your text into introduction, body, and conclusion? present the topic / viewpoint in the introduction? organize your paragraphs clearly, using topic sentences? use a variety of appropriate linking devices between paragraphs? use appropriate vocabulary and linking words to indicate relations between ideas (e.g. result, cause and effect, comparison, etc.)? 3. Vocabulary: Did you use a wide range of vocabulary appropriate to the task? avoid repetition by using paraphrase and synonyms? use register ranging from neutral to formal? 4. Grammatical Patterns and Sentence Structure: Did you write correctly: grammar / awkwardness / unclear? use a range of patterns and structures? keep the grammatical structure more formal (e.g. complex sentences)? use correct: spelling / punctuation? 5. Length: Did you write: too short / too long?


The series of boxes to check allows lecturers to indicate whether, yes, the student has done what is required; no, they haven’t; or – which is often the case – ½, to show that they have made some progress to achieving the goal, but not achieved it fully. Students are able to see at a glance which areas they need to work on (e.g. for the argumentative essay, content, arguments and evidence, organization, vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure, and length) and, depending on the time available, the lecturer is able simply to provide a checklist or to add written comments. This change in our style of feedback means that the feedback we give is more specific, and also more clearly focuses on the positive aspects of the writing and not just the problems. This has been one of our primary aims because, as Simpson (2004: 4) observes, “evaluation is often viewed negatively, mostly due to the traditional technique of merely highlighting the errors in a learner’s work. The teacher’s task is to provide evaluation that will lead the learner into reflecting on their work….” This was something we identified as being particularly important to students, who often commented that on “good” assignments they would like to know exactly what was good so that they would be able to repeat it in future written work. In providing this information, we enable students to make better use of our feedback, resulting in a better return on investment for the time put into an assignment. However, our approach does not focus only on teacher feedback. By encouraging peer feedback at different stages of the writing process, we have also started to shift the emphasis from our formerly teacher-centered approach, based on the idea that only a teacher-expert can help students become better writers, to a more learner-centered approach, based on the idea that students can help each other to become better writers – an idea which our students are almost universally unaware of. Initially, peer feedback may be done through a simple checklist (a basic version of the feedback sheet) to check off whether a student has done what was indicated on the Assessment Guidelines, or by asking students to underline the main and supporting points in each paragraph of another student’s work (reflecting back on the genre familiarization exercises done at the beginning of the process when introducing features of the particular text type to the students and so reinforcing these). Repeated opportunities to respond to each other’s work foster the essential skill of being able to give feedback in a constructive and inoffensive manner. Reading each other’s work “…is an important part of the writing experience because it is by responding as readers that students will develop an awareness of the fact that a writer is producing something to be read by someone else” (White, 1987: vii). In fact, the opportunity to read each other’s work is one of the points frequently mentioned by our students when they give feedback on their writing experiences: they find the

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opportunity to see how other students have completed the task extremely rewarding, in many cases stating that they find it reassuring to see that they, having completed the assignment in a similar way, must have done it “right,” which gives them much needed confidence.

Reflection The final pillar of our approach is reflection. We believe that in order for students to develop as writers, and to be able to recognize and solve their writing problems, they need to develop the ability to reflect on their work. It is important for them not only to understand their strengths and weaknesses, but to be able to make changes in areas they are not satisfied with. Therefore, at various stages of the writing process (both in class and at home), we have students fill in a Reflection Sheet (Table 3): this involves their considering questions such as what they feel confident about in writing, what seems to be easy or difficult for them when addressing the task at hand, why they think this is so, and what they might be able to do about it. We try to get them to consider various reasons for what could be helping or hindering them when tackling an assignment; these reasons range from how they are feeling as they are writing to aspects of general language ability. For example, if a student notes, “I’m tired, under stress,” it could lead to problem-solving, such as: “Take short breaks, or do the writing at a different time of day.” Again, the aim is to move students away from a reliance on their teacher and towards developing the insight that by recognizing and addressing what their writing problems are, they can become better writers by solving these themselves. Of course, as with the development of feedback skills, reflection is something that takes time. Santos (1997: 10) pointed out that students “do not readily grasp the procedures and purpose of reflection,” an opinion with which our experiences lead us to concur wholeheartedly. Students tend to be largely descriptive rather than reflective in the initial stages of learning to navigate the writing process in a reflective way, with comments like, “I couldn’t do this task” or “I found it useful working in a group.” Hence, reflection has to be carefully guided by the teacher when the idea is introduced. In our case this means that it is made clear that the Reflection Sheet is a tool for the student and is not graded in any way, but that assignments without a reflection sheet will not be accepted. Students are given time to fill in the Reflection Sheet after different stages of the work in class, and lecturers respond to comments on the Reflection Sheet with further questions to encourage reflection rather than pure description. For example, in the two illustrations above, we might ask: “Can you identify what exactly you had problems with? Was it ideas, vocabulary, or just lack of interest in the topic?” or “What exactly did you


Table 3: Reflection Sheet for Argumentative Essay

Reflection Sheet: ___________________

Name: ________________________

How do you feel?  tired  hungry  upset  distracted  okay  great  other: ______ 1 Prewriting understand topic brainstorm ideas support for ideas organization plan topic sentences potential vocab timing other

2 3 4 5 comments

Peer Discussion / Feedback: usefulness of feedback: ideas generated, changes made, etc. – WHY?

Reflection on Rough Draft: strengths / weaknesses; easy / difficult; etc. – WHY?

First draft organization ideas / support introduction conclusion vocabulary grammar / sent structure timing

1

2 3 4 5 comments

Reflection on First Draft: are you satisfied / unsatisfied so far? WHY?

Overall Comments: with Final (revised) Draft – anything learned? Changed? WHY / WHY NOT?

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like about working in a group?” This aims to encourage specifics rather than generalities. We are also helped in our endeavors by the fact that our students are required to submit a portfolio of their work at the end of the fourth semester which includes a reflection piece commenting on how they feel their writing has developed throughout the course of their university studies. This future requirement gives legitimacy to the task in the students’ eyes, as they feel they are practicing for something they are going to have to do later and so are more inclined to invest their time in their writing. However, with or without this legitimacy in the students’ eyes, we agree with the observation of Santos (1997: 12) that: “building reflective activities into the curriculum helps to familiarize students with learner reflection on an on-going basis.” Building reflection opportunities into the curriculum on an ongoing basis is important, as students generally find it difficult to see the relevance of reflection for their own learning situation and need a great deal of exposure to reflective activities in order to start realizing their usefulness.

Results In the time we have been using this approach, there has been a noticeable improvement in both the first draft of texts that students hand in and in their final product; this is particularly evident in the structure and organization rather than the language of the texts. The text types for which we have developed and applied this system have included argumentative essays, summaries, text analyses, and process descriptions in both academic and technical settings. We are convinced that having students follow the steps of our writing process, focusing on the relevant aspects of genre and reflecting on their own learning process, have helped them understand English discourse better and develop strategies to help themselves become better writers. Student feedback has shown that the students also feel that they are writing more efficiently; and, perhaps most useful of all from their point of view, they are very enthusiastic about the feedback they receive. They appreciate that the feedback is very specific about what is good or needs improvement in their texts and so allows them to improve future texts. As busy lecturers with far more to do than time in which to do it, we have been motivated by the flexibility of the approach – the outline given here is only one way of approaching the basic idea. So, for example, when the prewriting session takes place, students have many options:

• They can work first individually and then in groups or pairs; • They can work in groups or pairs first and then individually;


• First draft writing can take place at home or in the classroom; • Peer feedback can be done on the first or on the final draft; • Peer feedback can be given through a checklist or can mirror some of the

initial exercises given to familiarize students with the features of a particular text type.

The results show that our program for writing instruction, combining the process writing and genre approaches, giving focused instruction and feedback to students, and promoting ongoing student reflection, can be designed in a way that is practical, adaptable, and effective for both teachers and students in a variety of circumstances and classroom environments. About the Authors Lisa Nazarenko (MA, Hunter College, City University of New York) is a Lecturer in the English Department of the University of Vienna and Lecturer and Didactic Advisor at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien (Vienna). With academic background in TEFL, Nazarenko has taught EFL, ESP, and Academic English for over 20 years in the USA, the former USSR, Portugal, and Austria. Professional interests include writing, vocabulary, reading skills, and materials development in those areas. Gillian Schwarz (MA, University of Leeds) is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department of the University of Vienna. With academic background in English Language Teaching and Linguistics, Schwarz has taught EFL, ESP, and Academic English for over 20 years in England, Kuwait, Argentina, and Austria. Her professional interests are in the areas of curriculum and materials development, focusing particularly on writing and reading skills. Note 1 The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is a guideline of language assessment developed by the Council of Europe to validate the levels of language ability throughout Europe for all European languages. It “provides a basis for the mutual recognition of language qualifications, thus facilitating educational and occupational mobility” (Council of Europe website: www.coe.int).

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References Badger, R. and White, G. (2000) A process genre approach to teaching writing. ELT Journal 54(2): 153–160. Nazarenko, L. and Schwarz, G. (in press) The write path: Guiding writers to self-reliance. In M. C. Pennington and P. Burton (eds.) The College Writing Toolkit: Tried and Tested Ideas for Teaching College Writing. London: Equinox. Nunan, D. (1999) Second Language Teaching and Learning. Boston: Heinle and Heinle. Santos, M. G. (1997) Portfolio assessment and the role of learner reflection. English Teaching Forum 35(2): 10–14. Simpson, A. (April 2004) A process approach to writing. Developing Teachers. Issue 4/04. Retrieved on 15 July 2007 from http://www.developingteachers.com/articles_tchtraining/pw1_adam.htm. Swales, J. M. (1990) Genre Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tribble, C. (1996) Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. White, R. (1987) Writing Advanced. Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press. White, R. and Arndt, V. (1991) Process Writing. London: Longman. Yan, G. (2005) A process genre model for teaching writing. English Teaching Forum 43(3): 18–27.