Home › Forums › Linguistics for Teachers of Emergent Bilinguals Fall 2018 › Week 5 Writing › Formal vs. informal writing?
- This topic has 2 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 6 months ago by Frannilba Maria.
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October 28, 2018 at 12:05 pm #866Ingrid HeidrickKeymaster
Lenski & Verbruggen (2010) take a slightly different view of teaching writing to emergent bilinguals than Hochman & Wexler (2017), arguing that students need practice forming identities as writers with low stakes activities like journal writing.
What do you think of the activities they propose? Would they be valuable to your writing instruction? How could we balance formal vs. informal writing in the classroom?
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October 28, 2018 at 4:56 pm #869Roxanna LedesmaParticipant
I think of the activities proposed in the articles would be very valuable to my writing instruction. For instance, you need to practice and practice, because practice definitively makes perfect. The same principle holds true for the writing component of any new language acquisition. I agreed with the article about students, especially ELLs, need to practice writing in order to build the kind of writing fluency that good writers need. I have been trying to better the writing component of English all my life and I can attest that it gets better, especially if one is invested with fidelity. There are a few strategy teachers can implement to foster facilitating writing fluency; as the article states that writing fluency can be developed by simply participating in informal writing activities. I encourage my students to write every morning about a topic of choice or about a prompt provided by me. This has helped them improve on the aspect of writing on demand and responding to a prompt. Also, this informal writing activity can take the form of writing in journals to respond to reading, or writing to learn. I believe these strategies are very useful because in each case, ELLs express what they are thinking without focusing too much on the conventions of language. In this article, is also stated that with informal writing, it is the work of the mind that is more important than language conventions. Students need to know that for informal writing, it’s the thought that counts, but more formal writing requires attention to details such as conventions. I wish I was given that much reassurance when I was earning to write whether formal or informal. In addition, informal writing can help ELLs learn that writing is not simply a way for them to demonstrate what they know. It is a way to help them understand what they know and what the still need to learn going forward. At the very beginning of the school year, I get the picture of which of my students will need extra help processing their thoughts and writing about a task as well as forming their letters all from writing their names letter by letter. Students won’t be able to write fluently if they’re not used to the English alphabet. In fact, I teach an ICT Dual Language class where I faced many confused students when it comes to writing letters and letter sound as well as writing these sounds to form letters. I have 32 ELLs, whose speak Spanish and English but are very unfamiliar with most of the letters in both English and Spanish alphabet. So I decided that I needed to differentiate basic alphabet teaching and word work starting at a kindergarten level. Kindergarten level in both languages help me determine how best to teach these first graders the English and Spanish alphabet. The writing system in kindergarten starts with basic representation of consonants and vowels (alphabets) and then moving on to represent syllables.
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November 4, 2018 at 10:21 pm #890Frannilba MariaParticipant
I think the different activities proposed in the article are very important to develop emergent ELLs students confidence in writing. The activity the author proposed are very good because it gives students the ability to write an informal piece focusing on their thoughts and the ideas they when to show. I think when students are given an opportunity to write about things that they are familiar with, it becomes easier for them to put their thoughts in writing. I like the fact that the articles give explicit instruction about writing the different parts that need to be taken into consideration in order to increase writing fluency. I like the fact that in the article, the author Hofman & Wexler talks about the different strategies to help students write. For instance, the article talks about teaching students sight words and how to properly use them. I think, that teaching students sight words is very important because it help emergent writer, write a better piece and help use sight words properly. I also, like the “Let me tell you a story” worksheet, this give students the opportunity to write about any topic they might check. Having this types of activities, allows students to pick a topic and really be open about their topic. Students would have a better opportunity to succeed because they would have more ideas and details of their topic. Some students might feel not prepared to write about a specific topic but when they are offered different writing topics, they might experience less stress during writing. And of course, another part of the article that I think is good to use is journaling, this gives the students an opportunity to write about different topics as well. I think journaling is amazing for students, it allows them to write about school, the different subjects, their day etc. I can say that even though, my students can’t write, I really like all the different ideas and strategies offer in the articles for emergent writers.
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