1- Notice for teachers
Edwards (1983), claims that being able to speak a language is no guarantee of being able to write it. Writing is not simply a case of putting speech onto paper. One reason for this is the need for greater accuracy in writing. Writing also has many conventions, notably the way the subject and the audience affect the style of a piece - the register. Before a writer can produce an acceptable piece of writing he must be aware of the different styles available to him and select the appropriate one(s) for his subject matter and intended audience. Furthermore, some EFL students may not be good at it in their L1 either, which will adversely affect the quality of L2 writing, (Carson and Kuehn 1992). Teachers, therefore, must bear this in mind when judging a student’s L2 writing. The language may not be the limiting factor, rather the student may lack the necessary writing skills. It is the skills, as much as the language, that I attempt to teach my students.
The aim of this 'course' essay, therefore, is to examine teaching an Arabic writing task, as a second language, via a writing-process approach rather than a product oriented one.
The writing task project will be directed to Arabic learners who are speakers of other languages. They are roughly of an advance level and they have different backgrounds, coming as they are from different nationalities. The intended students obtain scholarships from the government of Saudi Arabia to study the Arabic Language at the Arabic Language Institute at King Saud University (KSU) in the capital ‘Riyadh’, for two years. Their ages generally lies between eighteen and twenty five. They are males, as the education system there separates each sex into different institutes, though the curriculum and the measurement systems are substantially same for both the sexes. Their purpose of coming to learn the Arabic language is, as I suppose, one of two goals or both. First, the desire to learn Arabic for religious purposes as it is the language of Islam and its principal scripture - the holy Qur’an. This is a strong origin for increased motivation in the students. Second, some students may come in order to gain the scholarship which might be better than a high salary in some of their countries. This might not reflect a high motivation and perhaps not a very positive desire for learning Arabic. There are usually a number of about 15 subjects per class.
3- The Learning and Teaching Context
The actual learning environment takes place in the modern campus of KSU which is the oldest and the biggest University in Saudi Arabia. The teachers’ motivation is in general very positive and the teachers are highly trained. The teaching ideas and the other facilities for teaching are normally placed at hand. However, the learning context differs from some students to others depending on their differences in motivations. The positive motivation towards learning the Arabic language by some conservative students is enhanced by the need to know more about Islam, requiring possession of excellent Arabic in order to realise a commendable understanding of the holy Qur’an and the Prophet Mohammed's speech. Add to this, the students motivation is even more positively affected by the extremely accommodating facilities provided for such studies at KSU.
However, learning Arabic in the Arab countries is hindered by a social problem which can limit the learning attainment of the students if it is not aborted. This is illustrated by the fact that there is no actual usage of the standard Arabic, which the student are taught , in the every day life outside the classes. The dialects spoken in Saudi Arabia and other Arabic speaking countries are not close enough to the standard Arabic to be easily understood by the foreign students. Moreover, it is not acceptable to speak the standard in normal social situations even when it is understandable. This has two negative affects toward learning Arabic there. First, it will affect the students’ motivation as the Arab themselves do not speak what they are taught. Second, the student wont find a chance in real life situations to practice the second language.
Additionally, though the students are adults, which might help in some aspects of learning, nevertheless, it is widely accepted that the younger the learner the better - especially if the period of learning is quite long. Cook (1991) claims that if learners intend to spend a long time learning the second language, they might start as children rather than adults since they will probably end up as better learners.
To improve the students writing competency skills and to enable them to gain the ability of producing a well structured piece of work.
1. To write a mini essay about “the differences between the Saudi customs and your own custom.
2. To place more emphasis upon the method of compare and contrast.
3. To introduce some vocabularies and structures related to comparison and contrast.
4. To help the students to use them in their writing.
1. The Over Head Projector (OHP).
2. Previously prepared OHP slides (see Appendix 2).
3. The blackboard.
(Two sessions, one hundred continued minutes):
1. Dividing the class (approximately twelve students) into several groups to discuss the topic ideas, each one involving three to four students from different backgrounds. (5 minutes)
2. Discussing each groups ideas. (10 minutes).
3. Presenting the flow chart of vocabulary and structure for comparison and contrasting and writing on the blackboard if there are more suggestions from the students. (15 minutes).
4. Planning the content of the essay’s structure. (5 minutes).
5. The students writing of the mini essay (approximately 200 words) (30 minutes). Correction of the students homework during their writing and/or observing their writing.
6. Collecting the essay papers from the students and disseminating them to alternate students for comments (not on the original text but on the back page of the essay). (10 minutes)
7. Returning the essays to their respective writers and discussing the comments by the whole class before taking the essay home for a final draft, and also informing them of the date for resubmission. (20 minutes)
8. Returning the homework, pointing out some well structured sentences and styles, and raising common mistakes. (10 minutes).
When they teach writing, the majority of the language teachers concentrate on the final product, although this product comes after several stages of difficult writing processes affecting the final piece. The following will explore some important aspects of the writing process by drawing on my method of teaching task.
It is very unusual for people to ask themselves what they do when they write, and indeed this would be a difficult question to answer as it involves the question of an internal cognitive process ( White and Arndt 1991). However, knowing how the process of writing is carried out and being able to relate individual learners’ techniques to this should allow us, as teachers, to help them develop their writing ability. The old linear stage theory of writing, which concentrated on the finished piece of writing, has been replaced by the process theory. Three main groups of activities are involved in this theory: planning, translating (transcribing) and reviewing, each containing sub-processes from a recursive process (Mcdonough, 1995).
This model raises serious issues for teachers of writing. Dickinson (1987) states that successful L2 writers use just such a cyclical process, doing a great deal of rereading and editing as they write and producing multiple drafts. Another important feature of this theory is that the writer may often not be aware of what he is going to say until he actually writes something. This process of discovering and making meaning by the act of writing.
For many students the hardest part of writing is getting started. Beard (1984) points out that finding a topic to write about is often a problem for both adults and children. This is particularly true if the task is very open. Graves (1983) claims that giving the students a free choice of subject often results in those students being unable to find anything to write about .
A number of different techniques should be used to help the students generate ideas for inclusion in their writing. For example, starting by identifying the constraints and requirements implicit in the question is useful. This would lead on to pre-writing activities such as discussion and debate on the topic and class brainstorming around the subject, the ideas being written on the blackboard. I also use pair or small group brainstorming sessions, with feedback to the whole class on each group’s ideas.
Planning the structure of a composition is complex. The student should be elicited and taught a variety of possible planning structures for each composition type before they are asked to design their own. Structuring and sequencing of the ideas should also be undertaken in small groups. with alternative plans being discussed by the class. In the past, I have accepted any plan that was sensible. Some writers, both L1 and L2, begin writing without any clear idea of where their writing will lead them. Their planning therefore occurs during the process of writing.
Once the pre-writing activities had generated sufficient material for the students to work with, I engaged the groups on a short writing task, though the can be performed individually as well. This could be one paragraph from a longer composition, a mini-essay or any other time-limited activity. The purpose of this was for them to work together to produce the finished piece, negotiating the ideas for inclusion and the language used to express them, including any corrections necessary. As with all writing, the students read back what they had written to check that the piece was logically structured and had cohesion, and to provide the stepping-stones to the next section. Writing in class lets the students try out a plan and structure which they do not have to use for their full composition. They are therefore more likely to make significant alterations to both. Writing in class also permits the learners to experiment with the language or structure of their writing and to get immediate feedback from the teacher.
Many consider it a waste of time getting the students to write in class, but I do not agree. Bringing writing back into the classroom has several benefits. Poorer writers are likely to benefit from working with other students and will hopefully then have the confidence to write at home. Teachers can also observe their students as they write and thus see at what stage in the process they are having trouble. For inexperienced writers, generating and selecting ideas is usually the stumbling block, while good writers often need help with revising their texts. This is not to say that good writers are poorer at revisioning, rather that they have overcome their other difficulties. In fact, inexperienced writers revise less than more competent ones and their alterations are less likely to improve the text (McDonough, 1995).
At the end of each writing lesson, setting an extended version of the writing exercise for homework which the students would bring to the next session, is useful. This extensive work, to be completed before the full composition had to be written resulted in improved pieces of writing from almost all the students.
Once a piece of writing has reached a certain stage, someone other than the author will read it, and correct any mistakes or errors if it is piece of student writing,. The question is, who should do this? Many students believe their role is to produce the piece of writing and the teacher’s role is to correct and grade it, with no overlap between the two, Initially I took the same view and dutifully corrected and returned compositions with comments and grades on the bottom. I soon realised that most of the students took a quick look at the comments and grade, ignored the rest of the corrections, and hurriedly put the composition into their book or even in the bin, and promptly forgot about it. Hubbard et al (1983, p.149) make the point that learners need motivation to learn from corrections and I was not providing this, consequently the feedback I was giving was being largely ignored. I was not alone in finding this.
Cohen (1987) finds that the learners in his study generally just ‘made a mental note’ of the teachers feedback. A small number did not even read the corrections and comments - generally the poor learners most in need of help. Few, if any, introduced the feedback into a new draft. This suggests that teacher feedback has less influence on the students than we would like to think, perhaps because of the nature of that feedback. Zamel (1985) points out that too many teachers treat the compositions as final drafts and do not allow time for the students to alter their texts. However, if feedback is to have any value it must occur at a stage where it can still be incorporated into the final draft. Also, teachers may make marking and correcting activities with an involvement of the students.
My solution to the lack of student response to feedback was to change my system of correction. Instead of writing in the correction to an error, I highlighted the position and type of error present using a correction code which I developed (Appendices 3). I also involved the learners themselves in the correction of their own and each other’s work. The procedure was as follows.
Compositions were written at home and brought to the lesson. Working in pairs, the students would read and try to correct each other’s writing. The students would be encouraged to comment on the composition as a piece of writing as well as to look for individual grammatical and lexical errors. This would often lead to intense discussion about the proposed corrections and the students could call the teacher to arbitrate. Once the students had corrected and discussed the compositions, I collected them, marked them using the correction code and wrote general comments on the main errors, the overall structure and the realisation of the task. They were returned to the students at the beginning of the next lesson, the first ten minutes of which were devoted to correcting the errors. The students then took their writing home, finished correcting it and returned it in lesson three. I checked the corrections, amending any that were wrong and finally gave the work back in lesson four. Good selected examples were then read out to the class by the authors. The course timetable did not permit the further redrafting and correction of the students’ compositions although this would have been desirable.
The use of peer correction involves a number of advantages. Bartram & Walton (1991) recommended that the use of self and peer correction helps learners become more accurate in their use of language by involving them in judgements about what is correct.
6.- Adapting the Task for Different Learners
The task can be modified slightly to satisfy various learners, for example, lower level, by reducing the extent of writing involved and the expected standard. This kind of flexibility is important if the task is to be made portable and useable by teachers catering for foreign language students of diverse backgrounds and abilities. This task has concentrated on comparison and contrasting, nevertheless it can quite easily be adjusted to activate other writing competencies. Although teaching a language as a first differs from teaching it as a second/ foreign one, this task can be changed and applied to improve the writing skills of Arab students in the intermediate schools.