week 4 assignment Writing Strategies for ESL Students

View the video of approaches which focus on writing, what strategies would you apply in your writing lessons?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd3ezbUBbLo  

Summary of video ‘’Writing Strategies for ESL Students’’

There are four domains of language, which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Among them, listening and reading are the quickest ways for learners to achieve.

        In general, we can see ESL students have five steps or stages to develop during their learning.

Stage One: Pre-production (Silent Period, few months)
Characteristics	Writing Strategies	Instructional Focus
-Up to 500 words in receptive vocabularies	-Structure and consistency in the daily schedule -Journals	-Beginning writing

Stage Two:  Early Production (6 months)
Characteristics	Writing Strategies	Instructional
-Up to 1000 vocabularies -Single words and 2-3 words	-Free writing (Don’t correct grammar!!)	-Beginning writing -Group interaction (encourage conversation) -Scaffolding

Stage Three:  Speech Emergence (1-3 years)
Characteristics	Writing Strategies	Instructional
-Gain 7000 vocabularies -Start to know a few academic words -Increased comprehension	-Graphic Organizers -Sentence Combining	-Comparing -Description

Stage Four:  Intermediate Fluency (4 years)
Characteristics	Writing Strategies	Instructional
-Speak very fluency but still have a large gap with the native speaker -Can correct their own error -Start participating reading and writing -up to 12000 vocabularies	-Brainstorming (a rough draft)	-Expand literature through content

Stage Five:  Advance Fluency (4-7 years)
Characteristics	Writing Strategies	Instructional
-Master social speaking -Academic words are pretty strong -Sometimes forgot they are learning a second language	-Consistency and Practice -Activities mirror native speakers	-Creating meaning and application from content -Maintain Fluency in the second language

BIC (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills)

-Take 2 years for student to master the social language

-Also called as ‘’Playground Language’’

CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency)

-Take students 10 years to learn and master all the academic words

Strategies

1.Word Walls-Build Vocabularies

2.Graphic Organizers-Visual Representation

3.Partnering-Interaction

Summary

-Writing in an expressive language skill.

-Each stage unique characteristics.

-Learners benefit from explicit vocabulary instruction.

-BICS can be deceiving.

-Strategies when explicitly taught will enhance language acquisition and content understanding.

KNOW THE STAGE OF YOUR STUDENTS!!

Response:

When we talk about writing, in my view, it's very difficult to have a clear-cut with reading. Apart from audio expression as the listening and speaking, reading and writing seem higher level in our cognitive learning. After watching the video, I have more differentiated definitions on basic interpersonal communication skills (aka BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency(aka CALP). Each standard demands explicit capability for students to strive. As a teacher, it's crucial for me to accommodate efficiently diverse/multicultural lesson plans to assist students. I assert students, especially older ELLs, should learn the language in the subject areas to acquire both social and academic terms effectively. I recommend the sheltered instruction observation protocol (aka SIOP) approach. In my understanding, there are tips as below.

1. The teacher develops the fitting plan based on the observation of students' level.
2. The teacher tells students explicitly what the purpose of the lesson in the beginning. 
3. Undergoing this process, the teacher uses visual realia or vivid body language to demonstrate new vocabulary. Asking students questions always related to the topic. 
4. Students can be provided some activities and have meaningful opportunities to interact their English-speaker classmates socially and academically. 
5. Going through the well-designed lesson plan, the teacher often encourage students to listen, read, speak and write! By these faucets, the teacher can clarify some misunderstandings and make sure students understand the text as well.
6. With patient, the teacher would wait for longer to get responses and adjust the teaching depending on the real-time situation.
7. This approach also includes writing, all these profiles can be the recordings to reflect students' improvement and provide value for observation.