Research Insights on Second Language Writing Instruction
Ilona Leki, University of Tennessee
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Most educators applaud an increased focus on writing in academic settings, taking for granted the value of a literate public. But learning to write well for academic purposes, beyond basic literacy, is difficult in a first language and more so in second one. Ostensibly to address this difficulty, most universities require students, including second language (L2) students (i.e., those for whom English is a second language), to take freshman writing courses. This digest focuses on insights from my long-term research on the writing experiences of a group of L2 university students. These insights suggest possible ways of making writing classes more useful to such students.
Insights from the Research
Although not all L2 writing professionals would agree, I start from the assumption that L2 academic writing courses exist to help prepare students for writing in disciplinary courses. This assumption leads to two initial ironies. First, during their first 2 years at the university, while the students in my study were enrolled in writing classes, they were required to do almost no writing in any of their other courses. Second, the students who were able to produce successful papers by the time they graduated learned to do so not in writing classes but over the course of their undergraduate years, mainly through writing in courses for their majors, despite the fact that the instructors for those courses often did little more to teach writing than simply assign it.
Despite these ironies and despite the fact that most L2 students I have encountered would postpone or avoid writing courses if given a choice and simply get on with their disciplinary courses, once these students are enrolled in writing classes, they want to benefit from them. If institutions require the students to take these courses, they have an obligation to make the courses as useful as possible.
The conditions that allowed the research participants in my study to become successful L2 writers by the end of their undergraduate careers included the following:
• Time. Several years spent developing knowledge of the topics they wrote about in their majors.
• Experience. Experience in writing not as a goal for its own sake but as a tool required for gathering, examining, and relating information.
• Guidance. Help in writing in courses for their majors, which often came in the form of feedback on early draft attempts.
• (Again) Time. Several years using writing as a tool for real purposes.
If these conditions are indeed significant in helping students become successful writers, L2 writing classes are most likely to be effective when we can reproduce these conditions. How might we do so?
Matching Goals of Writing Instruction
Writing courses are more efficient and useful to learners when learner and curricular goals match. L2 students come to writing classes with their own ideas about what would be useful to them and not wanting to waste their time (or money). But when course goals do not match student goals, both teacher and learner have uphill battles. Even for motivated students, learning another language and learning to write in that language are difficult, long-term processes. If learners feel the writing class is not serving their needs and purposes—a perception reinforced by having no writing to do outside the writing class—the difficulties inherent in developing writing ability are exacerbated.
The goals of college-level L2 writers coming into writing classes are often primarily to learn to write faster, with better vocabulary, and with fewer grammatical errors. Those would be some (though not all) of my goals for such students as well, but we might not necessarily agree on how to achieve them. For that reason, it seems essential to discuss and negotiate course goals with students. But lines of communication must not go only from teacher to student and never back or, equally detrimental, go back but with no effect. It is critical to explain to students, particularly adults but also high school students, why we assign the tasks we do and how we expect those tasks to further both our and their goals, and then to take into account students’ responses to the tasks and adjust the tasks as needed.
Student Needs
One unfortunate feature of most L2 academic writing classes is that they are freestanding, self-contained, and detached from the rest of students’ academic lives. Yet the rationale for these classes and the purpose for learning to write usually reach beyond the writing class into other courses or into real-world needs. For this reason, it would be better for L2 writing courses to be attached to, not detached from, real writing needs. One way to do this is to consider how to place these courses strategically in students’ academic careers, rather than, for example, shoveling L2 students through writing courses in their first year in college, when they are typically taking general education courses that assign little writing, then assuming that successful completion of the course means writing has been taught. Instead, L2 writing courses might be more useful if they were made available when the students had writing assignments in other courses and could put to use the support a writing class can offer to complete that work. In universities, content-based curriculums as well as linked courses use this kind of approach (Benesch, 2001; Kasper, 2000), but the principle would be the same in adult education settings and in high schools: The most beneficial writing course would be one whose goals reach beyond the class as an end in itself toward real writing needs.
Focus of Instruction
If such major curricular adjustments are not possible, aim for the development of academic writing courses where writing is the means to some other end—a crucial tool needed to accomplish another goal. The goal might be gathering, learning, and sharing information on some matter of significance to the gatherers, such as issues related to the school or the community, and attempting to exert an influence through some form of writing. For example, one teacher in my program had her L2 writing students do a service learning project in which they helped a community organization develop press release statements for an information campaign. Writing was unavoidable but not the goal of the project. Emphasizing writing as a means of accomplishing other goals drives home to writing teachers (students already know this) that learning to write academically is not an end in itself but rather is an effort toward beginning to develop a tool for use elsewhere. This tool of writing takes shape best not in the vacuum of freestanding writing courses but when used for the real purposes it is intended to fill.
The Knowledge Base
In creative writing courses, writers necessarily invent the content of their texts. But having to invent content for expository, nonfiction writing is not only a burden for already overcharged L2 writers, it also fails to reflect what occurs in most academic writing contexts, where more typically the writer has a substantial knowledge base developed over a period of time and through a variety of sources, including textual and any combination of oral, visual, and experiential input. The writer’s job is to determine how to manage the information, figuring out what to include and where, not to expend time and energy figuring out what else to say about a topic (Leki & Carson, 1994). Managing information already at hand does not mean that writers discover no new ideas as they are writing, or as they are rereading their writing. Certainly writing is often a discovery process that clarifies our ideas for us on the topics we put our minds to as we write. But it is difficult, painful, and often unproductive to be required to write on subjects we know little about or about which we have nothing particular to say. Instead, writing assignments work better and have more intrinsic usefulness if the writers write from information and knowledge, textual or other. Longer writing projects on a single or limited number of topics not only allow L2 writers to build up some knowledge but may help them develop confidence that they can write longer, more complex texts.
Experience
Over and over in the literature on L2 writing and in interviews with research participants, a theme that comes up as a point of terrible frustration is how long it takes these students to write English texts: hours to produce one page, three times as long as it takes English-dominant students. This time factor is an enormous burden for L2 students, and the only way they can achieve a faster pace of producing text is through more experience. However, experience is not the same as practice. Practice usually means focusing on some isolated feature of a whole enterprise and working on that for the sake of making that one feature better, assuming that this improved feature can then be reinserted into and improve the whole enterprise. The feature might be grammar or topic sentences or any isolatable part of a written text.
Unfortunately, in an attempt to make parts of the whole learnable, writing classes run the risk of focusing excessively on practice instead of experience. Experience is holistic, encompassing the whole enterprise and entailing a purpose beyond practicing writing in the writing class. To become faster or more efficient at accomplishing a task, it is necessary to go through the process of doing it. If the final goal for L2 academic writers is to write fairly lengthy papers on academic or intellectual topics based on knowledge they have accumulated, this is what they should be doing in writing classes, where they have teachers trained to help them.
Cognitive Processes Enmeshed with Social Contexts
Feedback is part of most useful writing experiences. For the L2 students in my study, disciplinary faculty, particularly in the students’ majors, frequently offered to read first drafts of assignments and respond to them. The realization that these faculty were not trying to teach writing but instead were trying to help the students do better on those particular assignments drove home another point, although it is again a point that not all writing professionals would agree with: Writers do not improve directly through a teacher’s intervention; it is texts that can improve directly through intervention. The writers improve only through the writing they are doing, through their intellectual and emotional engagement with it. A teacher’s effect on the writer can only be indirect; the teacher offers the opportunity to improve a text, thereby allowing the student to improve as a writer. In other words, improving writing proficiency is an internal process that only the writer can access directly; teachers cannot. This indirection inevitably means that developing facility in writing or improving writing ability is a long, slow process that demands focused attention and opportunities for experience. This complex process simply cannot be completed in a year of writing courses.
A more subtle feature of this process is that it is necessarily embedded within a context of how the writer’s work is received (accepted or not accepted, for example), how the writer is received as an individual in a particular social setting (with high or low expectations, for example), and how the writer wants to be received within that socioacademic context, including the writer’s self-image, desire for affiliation, and interest in joining that community (Leki, 2001).
Critical pedagogy’s analyses of identity construction, positioning, and differential power relations warn that we cannot view the environment in which these writers are learning writing and language as neutrally giving everyone open and free opportunities to become whatever they desire if only they set their minds to it. The contexts of writing both make possible and constrain linguistic development of all kinds, including writing.
Nevertheless, if writing is taught and used appropriately in academic settings, it becomes a fine tool to help students acquire and deepen their understandings of academic content, the academic language they are learning, the world around them, and even themselves.
References
Benesch, S. (2001). Critical English for academic purposes: Theory, politics, and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kasper, L. (Ed.). (2000). Content-based college ESL instruction. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Leki, I. (2001). “A narrow thinking system”: Nonnative-English-speaking students in group projects across the curriculum. TESOL Quarterly, 35, 39-67.
Leki, I., & Carson, J. (1994). Students’ perceptions of EAP writing instruction and writing needs across the disciplines. TESOL Quarterly, 28, 81-101.
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This digest was prepared with funding from the U.S. Dept. of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Library of Education, under contract no. ED-99-CO-0008. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of ED, OERI, or NLE.





































Resources
Online Resources: Digests
September 2001
EDO-FL-01-07
Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers
Douglas A. Demo, Center for Applied Linguistics
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What Is Discourse Analysis?
Discourse analysis is the examination of language use by members of a speech community. It involves looking at both language form and language function and includes the study of both spoken interaction and written texts. It identifies linguistic features that characterize different genres as well as social and cultural factors that aid in our interpretation and understanding of different texts and types of talk. A discourse analysis of written texts might include a study of topic development and cohesion across the sentences, while an analysis of spoken language might focus on these aspects plus turn-taking practices, opening and closing sequences of social encounters, or narrative structure.
The study of discourse has developed in a variety of disciplines-sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology. Thus discourse analysis takes different theoretical perspectives and analytic approaches: speech act theory, interactional sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, pragmatics, conversation analysis, and variation analysis (Schiffrin, 1994). Although each approach emphasizes different aspects of language use, they all view language as social interaction.
This digest focuses on the application of discourse analysis to second language teaching and learning. It provides examples of how teachers can improve their teaching practices by investigating actual language use both in and out of the classroom, and how students can learn language through exposure to different types of discourse. Detailed introductions to discourse analysis, with special attention to the needs and experiences of language teachers, can be found in Celce-Murcia and Olshtain (2000), Hatch (1992), McCarthy (1992), McCarthy and Carter (1994), and Riggenbach (1999).
Discourse Analysis and Second Language Teaching
Even with the most communicative approaches, the second language classroom is limited in its ability to develop learners' communicative competence in the target language. This is due to the restricted number of contact hours with the language; minimal opportunities for interacting with native speakers; and limited exposure to the variety of functions, genres, speech events, and discourse types that occur outside the classroom. Given the limited time available for students to practice the target language, teachers should maximize opportunities for student participation. Classroom research is one way for teachers to monitor both the quantity and quality of students' output. By following a four-part process of Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze, second language teachers can use discourse analytic techniques to investigate the interaction patterns in their classrooms and to see how these patterns promote or hinder opportunities for learners to practice the target language. This process allows language teachers to study their own teaching behavior—specifically, the frequency, distribution, and types of questions they use and their effect on students' responses.
Step One: Videotape a complete lesson. Be sure to capture all of your questions and the students' responses. (Opportunities to speak the target language are often created by teachers' questions.)
Step Two: Watch the videotape. As you watch it, think about the types of questions you asked. Look for recurring patterns in your questioning style and the impact it has on the students' responses.
Step Three: Transcribe the lesson. A transcript will make it easier to identify the types of questions in the data and to focus on specific questions and student responses.
Step Four: Analyze the videotape and transcript. Why did you ask each question? What type of question was it—open (e.g., "What points do you think the author was making in the chapter you read yesterday?") or closed (e.g., "Did you like the chapter?")? Was the question effective in terms of your goals for teaching and learning? What effect did your questions have on the students' opportunities to practice the target language? How did the students respond to different types of questions? Were you satisfied with their responses? Which questions elicited the most discussion from the students? Did the students ask any questions? Focusing on actual classroom interaction, teachers can investigate how one aspect of their teaching style affects students' opportunities for speaking the target language. They can then make changes that will allow students more practice with a wider variety of discourse types.
Teachers can also use this process of Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze to study communication patterns in different classroom activities, such as student-to-student interactions during a paired role-play task and during a small-group cooperative learning activity. Communicative activities are expected to promote interaction and to provide opportunities for students to engage in talk. Teachers are likely to discover that students produce different speech patterns in response to different tasks. For example, a map activity is likely to elicit a series of questions and answers among participants, whereas a picture narration task requires a monologue developed around a narrative format. Given that teachers use communicative tasks to evaluate learners' proficiency, a better understanding of the influence of specific activities on learner discourse will likely lead teachers to use a greater variety of tasks in order to gain a more comprehensive picture of students' abilities. By recording, transcribing, and analyzing students' discourse, teachers can gain insight into the effect of specific tasks on students' language production and, over time, on their language development.
A discourse analysis of classroom interactions can also shed light on cross-cultural linguistic patterns that may be leading to communication difficulties. For example, some speakers may engage in overlap, speaking while someone else is taking a turn-at-talk. For some linguistic groups, this discourse behavior can be interpreted as a signal of engagement and involvement; however, other speakers may view it as an interruption and imposition on their speaking rights. Teachers can use the Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze technique to study cross-cultural interactions in their classrooms, helping students identify different communication strategies and their potential for miscommunication.
Although some variables of language learning are beyond the control of second language teachers, discourse analysis can be a useful analytic tool for making informed changes in instructional practices. Mainstream teachers, especially those with second language learners, can also use this technique to study classroom interactions in order to focus on the learning opportunities available to students with limited English proficiency. In fact, discourse analysis can be an integral part of a program of professional development for all teachers that includes classroom-based research, with the overall aim of improving teaching (Johnson, 1995).
Discourse Analysis and Second Language Learning
Language learners face the monumental task of acquiring not only new vocabulary, syntactic patterns, and phonology, but also discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence, and interactional competence. They need opportunities to investigate the systematicity of language at all linguistic levels, especially at the highest level (Riggenbach, 1999; Young and He, 1998). Without knowledge of and experience with the discourse and sociocultural patterns of the target language, second language learners are likely to rely on the strategies and expectations acquired as part of their first language development, which may be inappropriate for the second language setting and may lead to communication difficulties and misunderstandings.
One problem for second language learners is limited experience with a variety of interactive practices in the target language. Therefore, one of the goals of second language teaching is to expose learners to different discourse patterns in different texts and interactions. One way that teachers can include the study of discourse in the second language classroom is to allow the students themselves to study language, that is, to make them discourse analysts (see Celce-Murcia & Olshtain, 2000; McCarthy & Carter, 1994; Riggenbach, 1999). By exploring natural language use in authentic environments, learners gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the discourse patterns associated with a given genre or speech event as well as the sociolinguistic factors that contribute to linguistic variation across settings and contexts. For example, students can study speech acts in a service encounter, turn-taking patterns in a conversation between friends, opening and closings of answering machine messages, or other aspects of speech events. Riggenbach (1999) suggests a wide variety of activities that can easily be adapted to suit a range of second language learning contexts.
One discourse feature that is easy to study is listener response behavior, also known as backchannels. Backchannels are the brief verbal responses that a listener uses while another individual is talking, such as mm-hmm, ok, yeah, and oh wow. Listener response can also be non-verbal, for instance head nods. Research has identified variation among languages in the use of backchannels, which makes it an interesting feature to study. Variation has been found not only in the frequency of backchannels, but also in the type of backchannels, their placement in the ongoing talk, and their interpretation by the participants (Clancy, Thompson, Suzuki, & Tao, 1996). Students can participate in the Record-View-Transcribe-Analyze technique to study the linguistic form and function of backchannels in conversation.
Step One: Ask to video- or audiotape a pair of native speakers engaging in conversation, perhaps over coffee or lunch.
Step Two: Play the tape for students. Have them identify patterns in the recorded linguistic behavior. In this case, pay attention to the backchanneling behavior of the participants. Is the same backchannel token used repeatedly, or is there variation?
Step Three: Transcribe the conversation so that students can count the number and types of backchannel tokens and examine their placement within the discourse.
Step 4: Have students analyze specific discourse features individually, in pairs or in small groups. These are some questions to consider: How often do the participants use a backchannel token? How does backchanneling contribute to the participants' understanding of and involvement in the conversation? How can differences in backchannel frequency be explained? How does backchanneling work in the students' native language?
Students can collect and analyze data themselves. Once collected, this set of authentic language data can be repeatedly examined for other conversational features, then later compared to discourse features found in other speech events. This discourse approach to language learning removes language from the confines of textbooks and makes it tangible, so that students can explore language as interaction rather than as grammatical units. Teachers can also use these activities to raise students' awareness of language variation, dialect differences, and cultural diversity.
Conclusion
In sum, teachers can use discourse analysis not only as a research method for investigating their own teaching practices but also as a tool for studying interactions among language learners. Learners can benefit from using discourse analysis to explore what language is and how it is used to achieve communicative goals in different contexts. Thus discourse analysis can help to create a second language learning environment that more accurately reflects how language is used and encourages learners toward their goal of proficiency in another language.
References
Celce-Murcia, M,. & Olshtain, E. (2000). Discourse and context in language teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Clancy, P., Thompson, S., Suzuki, R., & Tao, H. (1996) The conversational use of reactive tokens in English, Japanese, and Mandarin. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 355-387.
Hatch, E. (1992). Discourse and language education. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, K. (1995). Understanding communication in second language classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press.
McCarthy, M. (1992). Discourse analysis for language teachers. New York: Cambridge University Press.
McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (1994). Language as discourse: Perspectives for language teachers. New York: Longman.
Riggenbach, H. (1999). Discourse analysis in the language classroom: Volume 1. The spoken language. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Schiffrin, D. (1994). Approaches to discourse. Oxford: Blackwell.
Young, R., & He, A. (1998). Talking and testing: Discourse approaches to the assessment of oral proficiency. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
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This digest was prepared with funding from the U.S. Dept. of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Library of Education, under contract no. ED-99-CO-0008. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of ED, OERI, or NLE.
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