Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
History of the English Language
Fall 2006
Week 13 - Answers
Cangarajah (1999) Chapter 7
1. What are some different approaches to the teaching of writing?
Cangarajah (1999) mentions four main different approaches to teaching of writing which fall within what he calls the mainstream teaching methods. It should be mentioned that the names of these approaches often appear differently in other books and more specifically books about writing such as Raimes (1984), which he mentions specifically in this text.
The form-focused approach (product oriented)
The basic idea behind the form-focused approach is to try to drill different rhetorical aspects into the minds of the learners. The basic idea is that writing necessarily employs a specific set of rhetorical structures and that these rhetorical structures, though more complicated that speaking, are still somewhat formulaic in their nature. In this approach then the goal of the teacher is to try to expose and get students to be able to internalize and subsequently employed these different rhetorical structures. These rhetorical structures are the necessary forms which a learner needs for writing. We often see this type of approach employed in the teaching of, for example, letter writing, wherein learners are supposed to and expected to memorize some of the specific rhetorical devices used in writing formal letters.
The writer-focused approach
As the name would certainly imply, the writer-focused approach is obviously most concerned with what goes on inside the head of the writer. For those of us who are somewhat familiar with what is called a process approach to writing, we can say that this writer-focused approach deals primarily with the pre-writing stages of the entire writing process. What this generally entails then are the specific thinking/planning stages that a writer needs to go through during the entire process of writing. From the standard perspective of English writing this would include a series of brainstormings and subsequent narrowings which allows the writer to identify important ideas as well as support for these important ideas. It sees writing as a cognitive process. From a teaching perspective we want to try to teach our students to go through these different stages in this involves getting them to employ what may very well be somewhat alien thought processes.
The content-focused approach
In this approach, which Cangarajah (1999) links to content-based approaches in general, the goal of the teacher is to try to get students to write clearly about specific content material. This involves providing them with the specific vocabulary, as well as structural and rhetorical aspects of each specific content area they are going over. Such is done based on studies in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) which show that different content areas do indeed employ different types of structures and not just obvious things like different vocabulary.
The reader-focused approach
Cangarajah (1999) separates the reader-focused approach from the content-focused approach and I think he was wise to do so because the reader-focused approach necessarily has a much wider application and is sadly indicative of what I believe to be a major mistake he has made here. The basic idea here is that writers need to write in a way which somehow matches the expectations of the reader. This may involve content and what needs to be mentioned and what does not need to be mentioned based on what the reader already knows and may also involve rhetorical structure. For example, if you are writing a paper for me about approaches to teaching writing, something which I have a fair bit of knowledge about, and you are writing a paper on the same subject for a high school student who is being exposed to this subject for the first time you obviously going to have to write these papers in very different ways based not on what you know, but based on what your readers (me or that high school student) know. We also know that English readers read in certain ways. Their attention will automatically go to certain aspects of a piece of writing, for example in the speakers have a very strong tendency to read first and final sentences of a paragraph while ignoring some of the internal sentences. If a writer does not somehow match the reading expectations of the reader (if they’re rhetorical style does not match the expected rhetorical style of the reader) then the writing will not be easily processed. It simply will not be clear. This is the fundamental underlying aspect of the reader focused-approach.
As mentioned above, I do believe that Cangarajah (1999) has made somewhat of a mistake here. As an experienced teacher of writing in the periphery of it like to point out that speaking in writing are not the same and cannot be treated as the saying. It seemed to me that Cangarajah (1999) is somehow mixing speaking and writing. Many of the problems he has pointed out here I believe are not necessarily problems with forcing people to write in ways which violate their own writing, but are problems with inexperienced writers. Inexperienced writers have a tendency to use what they know about speaking when they go to write. This is a necessary transitional stage between being a proficient speaker and becoming a proficient writer. Writing may certainly well I have been adapted from speaking and is certainly reliant on speaking but it is not the same. It is a much more abstract entity. Cangarajah (1999) is somehow mixing up orality and literacy. Many of the people he is talking about are primarily oral. This does not mean that they cannot read or write, it just means that they do not do so very well even within their own first language. By teaching them a new rhetorical structures in English, yes we have to try to get them to do things differently than when they speak, but this is also true if we were going to teach them specific structures of writing in their first language which in the case of Sri Lanka is Tamil or Singhalese. Writing does it involve thinking in different ways from speaking. To get our students to do this is not necessarily an affront to their normal rhetorical style, it is an extension of their normal rhetorical style.
The reason why I think Cangarajah (1999) has simply made a bit of a mistake here is that I have observed with novice writers from all different types of cultural or rhetorical backgrounds that they make similar types of constructions. This applies even to native English speakers who are novice writers. What Cangarajah (1999) seems to be all bent out of shape over is simply the transition from orality to literacy. And it should be mentioned that the two are at odds with each other particularly in more traditional, oral-based cultures, but that`s not a reason to simply ignore literacy. Literacy is an important skill.
2. What are some of the different contexts in which writing occurs?
Cangarajah (1999) points out three major content areas and puts them on a continuum. The interesting thing about these different contexts that he gives us is that they are both or mostly internal as opposed to external. These are contexts which may at some point have originated from the surrounding culture but as he presents them are highly and internalized within the cognitive system of the learner in question.
Indigenous versus Western forms of knowledge
The idea Cangarajah (1999) wishes to make here, and I think it is an important one which we should be reminded of, is that knowledge is not absolute. There are different, let`s not say types of knowledge so much as, ways of linking knowledge. In the Western tradition knowledge is seen as being neutral or benign. It is separate from other things such as the world. There is little or no cause and effect relationship with bits of knowledge in this western tradition. In other traditions however knowledge is not separate, nor can it be separated from the things it affects and the things which affect it. Therefore, knowledge can not simply be listed or manipulated in what Cangarajah (1999) calls indigenous traditions. These differences certainly have a large affect not only on how teachers go about teaching things like writing but also in the discourse structure or the rhetorical structure of the writing itself.
Oral versus literate discourse conventions
This relates in part to what I mentioned above, specifically that orality has a necessarily different way of presenting itself than literacy. This is not limited to any specific oral culture but tends to be quite general across the board. Oral cultures regardless of their location, religion, or specific social structure have a tendency to employ similar conventions in their use of oral prose. These obviously are at odds with some of the conventions of literate prose. As mentioned above inexperienced writers regardless of whether they come from an oral culture or a more literate culture will often employ oral conventions in their writing during initial stages of learning and practice.
Non-academic versus academic discourses
For more literate cultures, such as Korea or the United States, we not only have to contend with certain aspects of orality but there is also the problem of non-academic literacies which the learners employed with a certain degree of finesse. Obviously they will transfer this knowledge and the accompanying skills on to more formal, academic type of discourses which we are asking them to perform. This causes problems in their writing.
3. How can we deal with written language and negotiate approaches to writing?
In thinking about written language and how we can negotiate approaches to writing may be the simplest thing is to fall back on what Crystal (2003) says that the end of his book, specifically that in the future more and more people will increasingly need to be both local but also global. We can see how this necessarily applies to writing and much more so than speaking. Writing needs to be more global (I should probably use the word standard, but I somehow can`t force myself to do so) simply because of its purposes. One of the important aspects of writing is that we as a writer are never quite sure exactly who is going to read our writing. Since we do not know who is going to read it (it could be anyone all over the world) then the writing needs to employ standard types of acceptable conventions for the specific type of writing. Cangarajah (1999) opens a chapter by saying that all sorts of writers in the Perot story have complained and whined about being forced to write in English in certain ways but this is the reality unless you are doing creative writing. When doing more academic or formal types of writing certain conventions need to be employed.
Employing certain conventions, however, does not mean that one needs to totally ignore local contexts. Studies on how memory actually works (Friedlander, 1990) have shown that it is not only useful but actually quite important to try to use aspects of the first language of the writers in the writing process. For example, it is extremely important to try to have writers brainstorm in their L1s, depending of course on the topic of the writing. Since the L1 is probably going to be dominant in almost all aspects over the L2 we want much of the planning process, which primarily involves dealing with the content, to be conducted through the first language. This is one major way I have found to negotiate some of the processes of writing. We must, however, be careful that at some point influence from the L1 be halted or diminished because, as is clearly shown through good case studies in this chapter, writers can wind up with very strange pieces of writing from the viewpoint of a reader. The bottom line is that there are certain conventions which must be followed in order for a piece of writing to be deemed acceptable.
Kecskes and Papp 2000, Chapter 5
1. What is transfer and what kinds of things transfer?
The simple idea underlying transfer is that certain bits of knowledge will be made available for use from one language to another. In its most optimal conditions it is like throwing a ball from one hand to the other. For transfer though the ball may only be sent from one hand to other in bits which arrive separately and may need to be pieced back together again. With transfer, as with many things, it is generally thought that such phenomenon occurs from a stronger point to a weaker cognitive system (language) and this is generally the case, but it is important to remember that in a bilingual situation the different languages might have different centers of strength. As Kecskes and Papp have gone to huge pains to point out because of the different acquisition histories and different foci of a first language and a foreign language students often windup having different strengths in each.
For the first language the main strength revolves around its fluency. The first language is always available for use, particularly in its spoken form, and through its multitude of connections is much more fluent and automatic in both processing and production. It requires little thought to use although it controls our thought. For the foreign language, as we well know, it is not linked to sound so much as to sign. We don`t actually learn the sounds of foreign language in the same way we learn the sounds of our first language. Our attention is focused on signs/abstract symbols which we used to represent the language. We learn to use our foreign language in an overprocessed way. We don`t and can`t use it fluently because of the paucity of connections between elements on the foreign language and even between elements of the foreign language and the first language. The way we are taught our foreign language forces us to process it in a much more controlled way. In addition, the particular language forms we are exposed to in the foreign language require more specific types of processing strategies. Such processes lead to what have been called the metas.
Within the metas we have two basic types of interest to our discussion here; metalinguistic awareness and metacognitive awareness. Metalinguistic awareness is being more aware of some particular aspects of language, such as specific elements of word meaning, structural relationships, morphological tendencies and practices, among other things. Because of this metalinguistic awareness we are not only better able to control our language, but we are able to create much more complex types of language. This results as mentioned above from not only the way foreign languages are taught but also the language forms which are taught (remember, we generally teach not English speaking but writing in sound form). Metacognitive awareness involves being aware of cognitive processes. Through metacognitive awareness we have a better understanding of not only what were thinking but how were thinking and based on this how we actually go about doing things, such as problem solving. Think of the effects of the English testing regimen on cognitive processing. Because language involves cognition both of these skills are necessary for higher types of language use or what we can simply describe as literate language use.
The main point of what Kecskes and Papp are trying to say, actually in this entire book, is that we learn metacognitive and metalinguistic skills through the acquisition of another language and particularly in a foreign let language acquisition setting. This sets up a perfect scenario for transfer. The thinking skills that one learns from foreign languages helps them in being able to use their native language in a more formal manner while the fluency and productive skills one has in the first language will hopefully be able to transfer onto the foreign language as well. This is our hope anyway.
2. What are some of the variables that affect transfer?
First and foremost it is the level of proficiency in the two languages and obviously particularly in the foreign language which affects a person`s ability to transfer. When the L1 totally eclipses the L2 (and the L2 is totally reliant on the L1 for any kind of meager existence) then the possibility of transfer is small because of the way the L2 has fused onto the L1 forms. Kecskes and Papp mention two types of bilinguality in the book without (annoyingly) stating what those two types are. We will go so far as the say there are, in reverse acquisition order, three: compound, coordinate and dependent. In the earliest stages of language development it seems most appropriate to define the relationship of the L2 to the L1 as being dependent. The specific forms of the words in the L2 are linked directly to their translation equivalents in the L1. From our earlier studies we know this is a link only at the lexical level and probably will not lead to transfer because there are no links at the conceptual level all and at this low level of proficiency well-established metacognitive and metalinguistic knowledge and strategies have yet to develop.
When the L2 forms begin to develop their own conceptual bases things change. Translation partners will still be linked at the lexical level but the L2 forms will have their own specific underlying concept to support the form. It is at this point that metalinguistic and metacognitive skills begin to develop. The learner begins to notice strong differences in the different languages that they are now exposed to. By looking at these differences they begin to develop new strategies for analysis. Once more, it does seem in a very general way that human beings are to a certain extent genetically programmed to look first for differences before looking for similarities. Looking back in an evolutionary way we might argue that this is a basic type of survival skill. While we need to look at both we will probably first and foremost look at these differences because that is what will give us more important immediate information on what to do and what not to do. Based on an as it is at this point we can argue that people first form a coordinate type of organization in relation to forms and their concepts.
With more exposure and more equal exposure to the foreign language it then becomes clear that there are not only differences but also a large amount of similarities between the languages and this is when we start to form a compound type of organization. The neutralization we have talked about previously kicks in to action and a common underlying conceptual base (CUCB) is formed. It is in this compound type of organization that we expect the most transfer to occur and not only from the L1 to the L2 but also from the L2 to the L1. Transfer can be used to fill certain gaps in skills and knowledge between the two languages. Important to remember, however, is that transfer really can only ensue when there is this CUCB. The development of a CUCB seems to be a prerequisite for other types of transfer to occur. Without the common underlying conceptual base transfer will have difficulty taking place because transfer is based on the awareness of similarity rather than the awareness of differences between languages.
3. How might memory and language affect mental operations?
The bottom line is that we have different types of memories. Two of the main types discussed in Kecskes and Papp (2000) are declarative (static) and procedural (dynamic). Of course there are more different types of memory and researchers disagree how many types there are and how they might develop and affect each other but this is a good place to start. These two different types of memories will transfer differently and separately depending on the specific cognitive makeup of the person in question as well as the type of exposure they receive and practice they do with the new language. Someone with a lower level of proficiency and little practice in the L2 will transfer declarative knowledge (knowledge about the lexical forms of language) from the L1. A person with a higher proficiency as a result of a more intensive exposure to and practice with the L2 (resulting in a CUCB) will show more sophisticated transfer patterns. They will be able to transfer procedural knowledge from one language to the other without necessarily interfering strongly with the language itself. Again this is a special skill available only to bilinguals and it makes them much more adaptable and suited to different environments. It has also important to remember that this type of skill can only take place where we are focusing not on differences but on similarities between different languages. Authentic exposure and practice is the key here.