TAI # 10 Literature and Generating Hypotheses

Share three pieces of academic or professional reading and explain how they and other sources helped your form hypotheses about aspects of teaching that might contribute to current patterns of learning.

In my previous post I wrote about professional perspectives and information offered by experts, researchers, trainers, and teachers on teaching writing to English language learners in variety of contexts. That was part of my literature search for information to help in generating my hypotheses about the most effective ways in providing teaching and learning experiences to help the learners in my inquiry group increase their writing ability. At the same time literature signposted some authentic and pragmatic approaches and strategies for teaching these learners. Central and driving my literature search were the profiled writing needs and challenges of these learners, which were already identified and shared earlier in this inquiry.

I found following information very helpful and relevant not only for formulating my hypotheses but to the writing needs of learners in my inquiry.

• Use of pragmatic approach with focused targets on skills required or desired by the learners ( Beare, 2019)
• Motivation is needed in teaching writing as a skill (Rhalmi Mohammed, 2018)
• Focus on productivity and must be fun (Croke, 2018) 
• Teaching writing is a necessity and takes time (Bonkowski, 2019)

I felt somehow I needed to continue searching the literature to tell me more about my hunch and effective approaches for teaching these learners.

Ismail (2010) in his study of 'Exploring Students' Perceptions of ESL Writing', came up with one key recommendation related to the importance of understanding students’ views and expectations about ESL writing. "Any decision about writing programs and textbooks should take into account not only students’ needs but everything that might affect their learning abilities such as the culture of L1 education in general and the convention of L1 writing in particular." As for the goals of teaching writing, Ismail identified two goals - to prepare ESL learners to become better writers and to learn to produce a well-structured piece of writing which is recognized and accepted in their academic departments. To meet these - learners need to be exposed to the writing process and situations where they can produce authentic piece of writing. 

Lin (2015) took on this issue of understanding the learners' views and their needs, but explored deeper into understanding the difficulties and the ELL students' experience in their writing development from their perspectives. She found that ELL students perceived their writing difficulties to fall into three main dimensions -  their highest writing difficulties in linguistic/ cognitive deficiencies, next highest in psychological/emotional deficiencies, and the third in sociocultural aspects of writing difficulties. Her study highlighted the importance of understanding the difficulties the learners face from their perspectives when teaching them writing. To meet these ELL students' writing needs, she reckoned that the "instruction strategies in ELL composition classes would need to differ from those in mainstream English composition classes.....also,... ELL composition teaching activities should include not only linguistic/cognitive aspects of writing but also psychological/emotional and sociocultural aspects of writing." This was a call for the ELL composition instruction to include linguistically, culturally, and psychologically responsive teaching. The study also discussed some of the influences of those writing difficulties on ELL writing and some implications for ELL teaching, which I found very helpful indeed and will incorporate into my inquiry. 

Ramos (2012) in her study on teaching persuasive argument essay writing to adolescents English language learners stated that "genre-based instructions framework may support adolescents ELL's progress toward the development of advanced literacy practices." For her, genre-based pedagogy recognizes that certain than others and is concerned with helping students from non-mainstream backgrounds to acquire and critique the genres required for success in school. ELL students therefore can benefit from explicit induction and teaching of certain genres required of them. 

I gathered some more interesting information from literature which can help me develop some more relevant hypotheses to explore in my inquiry.

• The need to identify the difficulties or needs ELL students have from their own perspectives
• Different dimensions to look at when identifying those learning needs and to focus the writing instructions on - cognitive/linguistic; psychological/emotional; and social/cultural
• Use of genres-based instruction
• Scaffolding.     

With these ideas from literature, they helped me generate my hypotheses for this inquiry. That will be the topic of my next post.