Teaching Writing Skills to ESL High School Students

Introduction

English as a Second Language (ESL) is a necessary subject in the United States because it is difficult for people entering the country to succeed without a basic understanding of the primary language. ESL is therefore taught in adult classes, offered by certain businesses to help employees, and incorporated into elementary and high school curricula. It is hoped that when a student leaves high school they will be proficient in the language — as are native speakers — so that they can compete in the job market.

However, certain challenges make it difficult to teach English to people who come from other linguistic traditions. Most people who enter the United States and seek language instruction are either Hispanic or Asian. Spanish is structured differently from English — one is a Romance language, the other Germanic — and Asian languages are tonal, a feature entirely foreign to English. English is already a difficult system to learn as a newcomer, and it contains many rules that apply sometimes but not always. Mastering the complexities of the language can take many years, and those who learn English as a second language may never perfect their usage, though they can become very proficient.

Another challenge for ESL teachers is how to structure their classrooms and teaching style to best serve their students. Many different theories exist regarding the proper way to introduce a non-native speaking group to English, and some approaches have proven more successful than others. This paper examines several methods that have been tried, drawing on existing research to determine what has been more successful and what elements of certain teaching approaches can be adopted by other ESL teachers. The examination begins with a synopsis of each of ten articles, followed by a comparison of the different methods, and concludes with a critique addressing inconsistencies and areas for further study.

Article Synopses

This section details what dimension of teaching ESL to students each article addresses. Most of the articles discuss a specific technique that can be used in ESL instruction. A few, however, discuss the experiences of teachers who work with ESL students outside of a formal English-language setting.

This first article offers a general account of how ESL learners are taught. The author states: "My concern in this paper is with implications of quality teaching initiatives for students for whom English is a second or subsequent language" (Hammond). She makes this general statement because so many different initiatives have been tried with only moderate success. As an ESL teacher by profession rather than a professional researcher, she seeks to understand how best to impact her students — the primary goal of this paper as well. Hammond further specifies that her concern is with middle-year "second phase" ESL students who are beyond the initial stages of learning English and are located within mainstream classes in Australian schools. She acknowledges that many of her students are Asian (whereas ESL students in the United States are typically of Hispanic background), but she also cites research showing that the type of student matters less than the method of teaching.

The study was qualitative and completed in two separate stages (Hammond). The first stage "investigated teachers' responses and experiences in working with quality teaching frameworks in schools with high proportions of ESL students" (Hammond). Researchers conducted interviews with ESL teachers who agreed to participate. The second stage "consisted of a series of action research projects that built on outcomes from Stage 1, and were designed to implement programs with ESL students that were characterised by both high challenge and high support" (Hammond). In this stage, instructors were given new tools specifically designed to address the problems each teacher had identified.

The research found "an overall positive picture of the impact of the quality teaching initiatives in both primary and secondary schools" (Hammond). The initiatives implemented — ones designed to enhance students' intellectual functioning through rigorous coursework — included "deep knowledge, deep understanding, knowledge as problematic, higher-order thinking, metalanguage, and substantive conversation" (Hammond). Teachers reported the impact as considerable and noted that the initiatives also encouraged them to reflect on and discuss their own teaching against specific criteria (Hammond).

The research in this article was aimed at improving both reading comprehension and writing, with the expectation that students would thereby better learn spoken ESL as well. As the authors explain, "In recent years, dialogue journals have become a fixture in many English as a Second Language writing courses. Along with promoting written fluency, dialogue journals integrate reading and writing in the context of social interaction" (Strever & Newman). These journals were supplemented in this research by online technology — specifically email — allowing students to work with a partner at a similar level of English proficiency. Teachers also required that "students not only send journal entries to an 'E-partner,' they must also make meaning by summarizing their E-partners' journal entries. The summary is sent to both E-partner and instructor" (Strever & Newman).

The core of this research, written by two ESL teachers drawing on their own classroom experience, was to give students a safe medium for developing reading and writing proficiency. The researchers found that although students initially just recounted events of their day, they gradually began engaging in longer, more complex conversations involving their "personal histories and dreams" (Strever & Newman). It was at this juncture that many students showed significant growth in their independent ability to use English outside of spoken form.

The researchers also observed that "Writing journal entries to E-mail partners seemed to be an exciting event for our students. We noticed right away that most students wanted an E-partner and became concerned if their E-partners did not respond" (Strever & Newman). The engagement of the students was key. When an E-partner was paired with someone of compatible skills, the students challenged each other by sending longer and more sophisticated messages. The researchers also noted a change in behavior that exceeded their expectations: "as the semester progressed, less skilled students began to try to correct their journal entries before they sent them; having a peer as an audience encouraged them to spend more time than usual in writing" (Strever & Newman). This demonstrated that students not only learned to construct proper written English, but were motivated to make their writing more correct when a peer — rather than just a teacher — was the audience.

In this article the author established specific goals for the research: "to increase the overall reading proficiency of the ESL students; to improve the study skills of these students; to further their cultural integration into local society; and, to improve their general level of functioning in all academic subjects" (Kruger). To accomplish this, the researchers used both intensive and extensive reading plans for different student levels. An intensive program entails "choosing material selections of not more than 500 words, so that they can be completed within one class period. Brevity is also necessary because reading for content and for linguistic problem solving is the focus" (Kruger). In contrast, the extensive program "consists of longer selections, that are assigned to be read outside of class, like novels or short stories" (Kruger).

While English language knowledge and reading comprehension were central goals, "Vocabulary building is an intrinsic part of all aspects of the program too," and "Increasing reading speed is an integral by-product of this program, and comes about naturally as a result of increasing facility in reading" (Kruger). Reading speed was not treated as an end in itself, but as a natural result of improved comprehension. The author also emphasized the importance of ongoing assessment: "Feedback via the testing of students is important at all stages of the program, to assure that objectives are being met. The testing should be diagnostic, for identifying student problems in reading, and should measure their general proficiency levels" (Kruger). Because many ESL students have difficulty communicating when they need help, this kind of feedback gives teachers immediate knowledge of each student's areas of difficulty.

This study was conducted by three ESL teachers who began with the premise that "Literacy is part of language; thus, reading and writing develop alongside speaking and listening" (Ernst-Slavit, Moore & Maloney). They also emphasized the need to "focus on what students have rather than on what they lack" (Ernst-Slavit, Moore & Maloney), making their teaching approach more student-centered than subject-centered.

One major finding was that "second-language learners are capable of obtaining the everyday language used in conversation within a relatively quick period of time — around two years" (Ernst-Slavit, Moore & Maloney). While this had been demonstrated repeatedly with secondary school students and adults, ESL students were still failing at an alarming rate and not continuing to higher education because they did not reach their highest learning capability in high school. The reason is that "the acquisition of the academic language and literacy needed for high school coursework takes anywhere from 5 to 11 years depending upon which research you base your numbers" (Ernst-Slavit, Moore & Maloney).

The researchers conducted a study to identify where these deficiencies arose. "The ability to determine the stage the student is passing through and what strategies are effective in a given stage can provide both teacher and student with a means of communicating effectively at any point in the language-acquisition process" (Ernst-Slavit, Moore & Maloney). Understanding each student's stage is critical given that the range spans 5 to 11 years, meaning students do not all progress equally. Yet many teachers had been instructing as if all ESL students were at the same stage of development. The researchers also found that "Providing a stress-free environment with continued support and encouragement, where students are able to pass and not respond, is a requirement" (Ernst-Slavit, Moore & Maloney), a finding that grew more evident as data revealed the significant daily pressures these students faced.

This researcher is affiliated with the corrections system in Michigan and conducted research on the need for ESL training in prisons. The number of inmates who do not speak English — or who are severely below proficiency levels — is increasing. Because a GED or high school diploma was a condition of every parole hearing by state law (Emmenecker), these prisoners faced a severe disadvantage in attaining those credentials. The study's relevance to the high school population made it appropriate for inclusion here.

In 1999, Michigan made a decision, "due to the increasing number of non-native speakers of English in the prison school population, to more specifically address the language learning needs of LEP students by implementing a video-based ESL program and the accompanying text series" (Emmenecker). The study assessed how effective this program had been with the prison population. One significant finding was that the standard independent-study model used in correctional settings would not work for ESL students: "ESL instruction would not likely be successful in an independent study program model. Language learners need concrete direction, modeling, interaction, and feedback in order to succeed" (Emmenecker). This conclusion mirrors findings from mainstream ESL settings — regardless of the restrictions imposed by a correctional environment, the essential elements of effective ESL instruction remain the same.

It is difficult to identify the single most important element of learning ESL, but the environment in which a learner is placed may be paramount. Whether the goal is reading, writing, or speaking proficiency, English language learners from different cultural backgrounds need an atmosphere in which they can learn quickly and efficiently. One of the most effective methods is placing students in a mainstream classroom and allowing them to learn while doing regular schoolwork alongside native speakers. This was the approach that Cahyono observed with an Indonesian student immersed in an Australian mainstream classroom for three years.

This article was a follow-up study completed by an ESL teacher from the same school, written as part of a doctorate in education. The main focus of the student's education included:

"Reading activities, which included classroom reading, home reading which involved parents' support, and summarizing from reading materials encouraged her to read various stories, fairy tales, fables and other children's literature and to write summaries of books she had read. Writing activities which included handwriting, spelling exercises, diary writing, and story writing enabled her to hand-write clearly, write most of the words correctly, describe her weekly activities, and produce her own creative stories" (Cahyono).

Of particular interest are the writing activities, which were varied and designed to help the student become more proficient in written English. The primary intervention was immersion in a mainstream classroom, where the student was required to complete the same activities as her classmates, with only minimal special assistance. The student was "highly motivated" (Cahyono), and the results reflected that motivation. The study concluded that this approach can be very successful: after only three years in an English-language classroom, the subject scored above grade level in reading.

The researcher, a professor of English, wanted to determine whether writing interventions used with United States children who spoke Creole-English could help ESL students more broadly with their writing difficulties. The specific focus was on clause-structuring in writing. Clause structuring is one of the foundational skills writers learn when understanding how sentences are put together, and it is integral to grammatically correct writing in any language. Previous research had found that Creole students wrote as they spoke, which was problematic because the resulting clause structures did not conform to grammatical norms. One proposed solution was to place these students in ESL classrooms to help them form proper English phrases.

The researcher articulated her goal clearly:

"In order to produce a well-written task, students need to have a clear notion of the textual form that this written task will assume and they need to master the lexical and grammatical resources that reflect the textual form. These requirements are captured by the concept register. Register refers to the configuration of lexical and grammatical resources that define particular uses of languages" (Clachar).

This means that a student must first understand what they want their writing to accomplish. The issue for Creole students was not comprehension of instructions but rather the grammatical framework they had already internalized, which differed significantly from standard academic English. The outcome of the study was that Creole learners, having some prior knowledge of English, were not the same as other ESL students — and in fact had a harder time with certain writing tasks than traditional ESL students, who came to English without a conflicting prior framework. The final conclusion was that ESL learners have highly varied needs and must be assessed individually for understanding, ability, and motivation. Teaching Creole students to restructure their grammatical understanding proved more effective than any other type of intervention.

Of the many interventions available to ESL classrooms, only a few can be considered broadly successful. Since the advent of computer technology, students worldwide have been drawn to what computers can do, and teachers have tried to incorporate that engagement into instruction. The researcher, a computer professional specializing in educational software and interactive processes, was concerned that available technology was not being used to its fullest potential with non-native English speakers. His hypothesis was that if students had access to the best available educational software for developing writing proficiency, they would learn more quickly and retain knowledge more effectively.

The author reviewed several technologies but focused on the success of certain programs at the lower elementary level. It is well established in the literature that students can acquire a second language more easily the younger they are; because the brain is naturally primed for language learning at a young age, earlier ESL interventions yield better outcomes. The primary success educators were seeing with computer-based writing programs was among children from kindergarten through fifth grade. One popular application used "visual components called Picture View and Writing View" that allowed students "to brainstorm ideas with pictures and words, organize and categorize information visually, create stories and descriptions, and explore new ideas with thought webs and visual mapping" (Waters). The ability to create stories and to increase the difficulty level of the content were identified as the most important features of the program. This computer-assisted approach to writing instruction was found to be very successful with young ESL learners.

The author, a professor of English at Petra Christian University, sought to continue prior research on how culture affects the writing abilities of ESL students. She found that "L2 students' writings, especially their paragraph organization, exhibited the students' L1 cultural thought patterns" (Kuntjara). In other words, a student's second-language writing is significantly shaped by the cultural and rhetorical conventions of their first language. The researcher's guiding premise was "the notion that the rhetorical structure of languages differs" (Kuntjara). Where a student comes from is as important as what prior knowledge they have of the language they intend to learn.

The patterns by which students organized their thoughts were a primary concern of this study (Kuntjara). These deeply ingrained rhetorical patterns had to be understood by the instructor before they could be used to support the student in learning to write in the new language. The primary intervention in this context was aimed not at the student, but at the teacher. ESL teachers who do not understand the basic written structure of their students' first languages face a significantly more difficult task. The author found that when she studied Indonesian and understood its written conventions, she was better able to assist her students. This study demonstrates the need for ESL teachers to research the cultures and languages of the students in their care.

The authors state that their objective is "based on the use of technology to help second-language learning children express their culturally-diverse backgrounds and perspectives" (Peng, Fitzgerald & Park). Because a student's cultural background is recognized as central to second-language learning, these authors — engineering professors and students of educational technology design — sought to understand how technology could best be designed to support ESL learners' goals. "The children [who participated in the study] successfully participated as design partners by writing and illustrating their stories and by sharing decisions about multimedia features in the stories" (Peng, Fitzgerald & Park), making the ESL students active participants in developing the interactive multimedia learning tool.

The success of the project was ultimately measured by the students' gains in English language proficiency. "Regardless of the challenges, the intercultural collaborative story-writing project was judged to be very successful" (Peng, Fitzgerald & Park). Students used their own stories to improve their writing proficiency while simultaneously helping the researchers refine the program.

Conclusion

The central focus across all of the research examined here is how writing proficiency can be acquired by ESL students. Some articles addressed this directly and proposed concrete ways to better serve students; others focused on broader conditions for success — reduced stress, more supportive faculty, and access to additional help with reading or social integration. Despite their overall quality, the individual studies share certain methodological limitations that should be addressed in future research.

Most of these studies were qualitative and relied on interviews as the primary data-gathering tool. Two specific concerns arise from this. First, self-report — whether through interview or survey — is an imperfect instrument. Participants will generally try to present themselves favorably, which can bias the results. Second, interview-based studies necessarily involve smaller sample sizes. Conducting and analyzing in-depth interviews is far more time-consuming than gathering statistical data from large groups and processing it computationally, as in quantitative research. Smaller sample sizes make it difficult to generalize findings beyond a narrow range of individuals. For the conclusions of these studies to be more broadly applicable, either larger or more numerous studies would need to be conducted.

Beyond the problems of sample size and self-report, many of these studies also used relatively generic samples. Several discussed Hispanic, Asian, and native European subjects without fully accounting for important differences within and between these groups. There is also a noted issue regarding cultural attitudes toward seeking help. People from many cultures are reluctant to discuss personal difficulties with a third party, and the therapeutic and counseling culture prevalent in the United States is by no means universal. In more collectively oriented societies, taking personal or family problems outside the cultural group is often discouraged. Interventions that depend on openness and self-disclosure may therefore be less effective — or culturally inappropriate — for some ESL populations.

Despite these limitations, the studies are generally sound and offer solid conclusions within their stated parameters. For future research, scholars could expand their study populations and test whether current findings translate across different groups. Researchers could also examine outcomes among specific immigrant communities — Mexican, Vietnamese, and others — to determine whether conclusions hold across distinct cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Given that the number of immigrants learning English as a second language in the United States continues to grow, this remains a critical and worthwhile area of scholarly inquiry.

Works Cited

Cahyono, Bambang Yudi. "After Three-year Immersion in the Australian Mainstream Classroom: Towards More Advanced ESL Literacy Learning Development." K@ta 8.1 (2006): 35–43.

Clachar, Arlene. "Re-Examining ESL Programs in Public Schools: A Focus on Creole-English Children's Clause-Structuring in Written Academic Discourse." A Journal of the Oxford Round Table (2006): 1–14.

Emmenecker, Kathy. "Customized ESL Program Development for Correctional Education." Journal of Correctional Education 54.2 (2003): 79–86. Print.

Ernst-Slavit, Gisela, Monica Moore, and Carol Maloney. "Changing Lives: Teaching English and Literature to ESL Students." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 46.7 (2002): 116–128. Print.

Hammond, Jennifer. "Intellectual Challenge and ESL Students: Implications of Quality Teaching Initiatives." Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 31.2 (2008): 128–148. Print.

Kruger, Arnold. "A Meaning-Based ESL Program." Reading Improvement 37.2 (2000): 50–53. Print.

Kuntjara, Esther. "Cultural Transfer in ESL Writing: A Look at Contrastive Rhetoric on English and Indonesian." K@ta 6.1 (2004): 13–24.

Peng, Hsinyi, Gail Fitzgerald, and Meeaeng Ko Park. "Producing Multimedia Stories with ESL Children: A Partnership Approach." Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia 15.3 (2006): 261–275.

Strever, Jan, and Kathryn Newman. "Electronic Peer Audience and Summary Writing with ESL Students." Journal of College Reading and Learning 28.1 (1997): 24–29. Print.

Waters, John K. "The Universal Language: The Number of Immigrant Students in U.S. Schools has More than Doubled in the Past 15 Years." The Journal 34.1 (2007): 34–42.