Familiarity Breeds Content -- Part 4: Complications

 Week 4 – Canceled Lab.

If I've learned anything from this experience, it's that while the classroom is the only place to put new teaching ideas to the test, it is far more successful in demonstrating Murphy's Law. I was approached shortly before class by an English Department supervisor who explained to me that he needed to use my writing lab period for the student to complete an online survey and evaluation of the class. While he explained that this procedure would only take approximately 10-15 minutes of a 45-minute lab, his decision to do so in the middle of the period (to accommodate students arriving late) meant that I was not going to get any lab work from the students that week. This was going to put a dent in my quantitative data, which is, sadly, already sketchy due to students whose work was late or missing, but as it was unavoidable, I decided that it was easy enough to overcome, and resigned myself to the inconvenience.

I left the lab and proceeded to the classroom so that I could prepare for the week's activities. Almost immediately, students began filing in. The Department Supervisor appeared, and explained that the web site for the online survey was down, and that he was going to have to reschedule the survey for next week. This meant that I was losing not one, but two weeks of in-class work (three, counting the week off from spring break), which means it is no longer usable as quantitative data – without a steady stream of work, it is impossible to spot patterns of improvement or decline.

It is fortunate that I had previously realized that reliable quantitative data was going to be difficult to secure, and had already shown more of an interest in the students' in-class activities and participation, meaning that a qualitative study of the effects of Jacobs' cubing strategies was still salvageable.

I began the lesson with a review from two weeks ago, classification and division strategies, using mythology as an example. I picked up by leading the class in an exercise in the third classification of myth, the oldest kind, known as “Divine Myths.” Using the recent Japanese earthquake as an example, I asked them if they knew what caused earthquakes to happen. One of the native English students was able to explain it well enough: “It's like the Earth is made of these big plates of rock under the ground, and sometimes they bump into each other, and that makes an earthquake.” I mentioned that while that may be the answer we all know today, people living in ancient times would have no way of knowing any of that – so how would people living hundreds, even thousands of years ago, explain it when the ground they stood on suddenly started to shake?

I explained that ancient peoples often made up stories, usually involving gods or monsters, to explain natural phenomena that they didn't understand. I gave an example of the Greek myth of Hades and Demeter to show how the Greeks explained the changing seasons. Persephone, daughter of Demeter, Goddess of nature, was kidnapped by Hades and forced to be his bride. Zeus, leader of the gods, eventually decided that Persephone would spend six months of the year with Hades (during which time Demeter would express her anger by refusing to allow plants to grow, thus explaining fall and winter), and the other six months, Persephone would be home with her mother (during which time, the world was green and happy, ergo, spring and summer).

I then divided the students into small groups, and asked them to imagine themselves as members of their own ancient civilization. Their first task as a group was to decide on a name for themselves. I have done this exercise in the past, and I've found that naming the group not only encourages them to participate with each other, but also gets them to put more effort into the assignment – it becomes more fun when a teacher is referring to you as “the Rama-Lamas” instead of “Group Number 3” – and, as I jokingly told then, “If you don't have a name, then how can the history books write about you?”

I then explained that each “civilization” has just experienced a natural disaster and that the people were turning to them (as the oldest and wisest among them) for answers: there were five groups, so I chose five disasters off the top of my head for them to explain: Earthquake, Flood, Blizzard, Tornado, and Tsunami.

Once again, this exercise has been an old favorite of mine for years. I had begun to realize that so long as the students were enthusiastically involved in an activity – any activity – it would be easy for an equally enthusiastic instructor to guide the class towards teachable moments.

Sarah and Paula were part of the “earthquake” group, who called themselves “The Ancients.” They had come up with an amusing story about how a giant lived under the ground, and how the Earth shook because it was hungry, and it's stomach was growling. I noticed that it was one of the other members of the group who actually related this story to the class, but Sarah and Paula were nodding their heads in agreement and smiling. I had observed that they had participated in the invention of the story, even if they had both declined to share it with the class.

Carlos was in the “blizzard” group, and he, speaking on behalf of “The Summits,” told a story about a summer city and a winter city at war with each other – The Summits were presumably the summer city, and the winter city was attacking them with snow.

Even though not all the study participants had performed in front of the class, I did notice they were all actively involved within their own groups. It was towards the end of the class that one of the students had a question about FE6, which was due in two weeks – would I be changing the topic for that one as I had for the previous two, or would we be returning to the syllabus? Even though I had originally intended to end the study after next week's PT2, I was curious to see how much of the cubing technique would stay with the students, both in and out of my group of study participants. Therefore, I answered that the final Formal Essay of the class would be from the book, but (without specifically listing the steps on the board) I encouraged the students to use the cubing technique if at all possible.

Week 5 – Practice Test #2 (PT2) Administered

The lab work for this week consisted only of completely the evaluation that had not been done the previous week. The practice test was administered afterward.

Week 6 – Argumentation and a few more games.

The syllabus' theme for this week was argumentation, and I decided that the best way to make the lesson relevant for the students was to open by making a game out of it. I gave them a starting definition for two terms – argument, which is the use of reasoning in order to persuade, and reasoning, which is our ability to think, solve problems, and form conclusions.

I told the students that since reasoning was an important part of this week's lesson, we'd warm up our reasoning skills with a few brainteasers. I began with an old one: there were two sisters, both born on the same day from the same parents, who both looked exactly alike, and yet, they were not twins. How was this possible?

I encouraged the class to call out answers and possible solutions, noticing that the English learners were tentatively joining in, although perhaps not as enthusiastically as the native speakers. With every wrong answer, I made sure to compliment the student on their creativity, and point out how they were demonstrating their own reasoning abilities. As I reminded the students why their answers were incorrect, I explained to them another important term for argumentation – refutation. I would remind them of one of the facts I had previously mentioned, and explained how that fact refuted their explanation. For example, when one student suggested two different mothers, I reminded her that I had specifically said that they had the same parents.

The key to an exercise such as this is timing – knowing when to stop the exercise and give the answer before the students stop having fun and get frustrated. When the answers started to trickle off, I explained that the only way all of my statements could be true is if the girls were not twins, but, in fact, triplets; there was a third sister which I hadn't mentioned.

I moved on to a second brainteaser, a “locked room” mystery which I had heard when I was young In an empty room, a man was able to reach up and grab a bag of money hanging from a ceiling, despite the fact that the bag was far too high for him to reach or jump for. I informed the students that the only remarkable thing about the room was that there was about 3 inches of water on the floor, and that nothing had been brought into or taken out of the room. So how was the man able to reach the bag?

It took about five minutes, again with creative responses such as throwing his shoe at the bag, or weakening the bag by throwing water on it, but one student, Sarah, one of my long term learners, hit on the correct answer – the water in the room was originally a block of ice, which the man stood on top of to reach for the money. It became clear during this exercise that students were willing to participate in exercises even when they were unsure of the correct answer, and no longer concerned about the social consequences of giving a wrong answer, as they freely giggled at each other's wrong guesses.

These exercises were personal favorites of mine, although this marks the first time I had ever used either of them as part of a lesson. I had made the connection a few days before the class began and decided that these riddles would be an ideal introduction to the subject matter of reasoning skills. Once again, I was able to keep the students engaged by keeping myself on familiar and relevant ground.

After these warm-up exercises, I proceeded with an exercise to explain the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, summarizing both by pointing out that reasoning is nothing more than taking what you already know and applying it to what you don't know yet. I was tempted to make a reference to Sherlock Holmes at this point, bringing the class back to those discussions, but decided against it – too much time had passed.

The textbook contained in it a series of argumentative essays divided by topic. Rather than choose a particular topic and divide the class, I assigned one particular essay for the class to read, either individually or in groups, and observe how the author had used a variation of the “cubing” process to establish his thesis. That is to say, the author used, in a single essay, almost all of the writing patterns discussed in the textbook, dividing them neatly among paragraphs.

The essay itself was “Why Americans Hate This 'Immigration' Debate,” by Herbert Meyer. While I had only chosen the essay because of the author's use of a cubing-like style, I had expected the topic (the author speaks out against immigration reform, particularly Hispanic immigration) to be of interest in a class composed mostly of Hispanic students. I was not disappointed, but I was, to a certain extent, surprised at the main participants.

Vicky related a personal story about some friend she knew who had been put out of business because of illegal labor, and Carlos immediately jumped in and added his own story of a friend of his who had been out of work for some time with a similar predicament. The two of them began a back-and forth dialogue, discussing the author's ideas about dealing with illegal immigrants, the author's distinction between immigrants and “guest workers,” and even going beyond the article itself to discuss ideas for what the government should do, and the consequences.

It was interesting to observe, although I did notice that while they were speaking, none of the other students were participating, although they were listening as intently as I was. As much as I didn't want these two students to monopolize the class time, I couldn't help but notice the change in Carlos' demeanor from previous classes. No longer trying to be the “class clown,” he was clear and serious about his point of view, listened to Vicky's ideas, conceded some of her points, and still was able to explain himself, not completely fluently but still understandably, and his position. It is at this point that I am truly starting to see the real value of Jacobs' work – the cubing itself is incidental; what she had really hit on was the importance of making the classroom work, both oral and written work, interesting and relevant to the students.

I had originally thought that her suggestion of having the students write about their own lives was just a novel idea, but I now see it as a vital component of this or any other educational endeavor. We take for granted that students should be interested in subject matter, but nothing compares to seeing students speaking openly and earnestly about topics close to their own experiences.

On a less encouraging note, only a handful of essays for FE6 were handed in on time. I was greatly disappointed in the sharp class-wide drop in participation, and realized that this would make it impossible to include FE6 in the study as originally planned.

Week 7 – Bringing Things to a Close.

As this was to be the final lab session of the school year, I decided to throw the students an easy question, and asked them to simply write a short in-class essay asking them what advice they would give students taking the course next year. I consider this assignment a sort of self-evaluation, and figured that it would give me some insight into what the students got out of the class, and how better to structure it in the future.

One thing that this week's session has clearly shown me is that the cubing process Is best maintained throughout the school year. This week's class was scheduled as a review session, as it is the final class before the required WPT Exit Test. The subject for this week was to be “Combining the Patterns,” where the students discuss how to use the various writing patterns together in single essays, and observe how they work together. As I had already decided that I had gathered as many data and observations during the study as I was going to, I had, at this point, chosen to discontinue it, and spent this session engaged in more traditional (pre-study) techniques. The effect was immediately obvious.

The sample essay studied was an article by Lars Eighner entitled “On Dumpster Diving,” and chronicled his experiences living as a homeless man for three years, depending on dumpsters for food and other necessities. This article was chosen by the text as it contained examples of every writing pattern discussed in the text, and was annotated for the students' ease. Nevertheless, I quickly noticed that the students, possibly because this article was outside their own experience, showed far less interest or participation than in previous articles. There was no special attempt to connect the literature to students' own experience, presumably because none of them had ever been homeless. However, I did notice that Vicky did share some of her opinions about drug use and addiction, prompted by a mention in the essay of the value of discarded pill bottles. Expecting a repeat of last week, I expected Carlos to add in, but he remained silent.

Another thing I noticed was that the final formal essays (which I had not specifically instructed to be written with the cubing technique) were mostly missing. I had received only two essays on time the week before, another four this week, and several promises form students, including Carlos, that the essays would be either handed in next week or emailed in the interim. This, however, cannot be shown to correlate to the stoppage of the cubing technique, as students are notoriously lax in their study habits towards the end of the year. Still, it was a disappointing blow to an already emaciated quantitative study – even if the students do eventually hand in the final papers, they will not be received in time to be included in this study.

In all, this final class was uneventful. After briefly reviewing the roles of the various writing styles, and reminding the students of the procedure and protocol of the WPT Exit Test, I returned old essays to them (previously unreturned due to absences), fielded any questions the students may have had (they had none), and, as a kind gesture, dismissed the class about 45 minutes ahead of schedule.

Carlos approached me after class, wishing to talk to me about his missing work. After a brief discussion, of what he was missing (nearly everything assigned over the semester), he expressed concern over his grade and promised to deliver the missing work for the next class (the absolute deadline I had set to accept late papers). While I am skeptical that he will succeed in this herculean task, or that any work he does manage to hand in will be of sufficient quality to offset his lagging grade, I must admit that I am somewhat impressed by his change in attitude. This is the first time that he expressed any interest in his grades, and the first time he has approached me on his own to discuss his work. While I suspect it may simply be (justified) end-of-semester anxiety, I am hopeful that this may also be a sign of growing confidence in himself and the beginnings of a serious academic mindset.

Familiarity Breeds Content -- Part 3: Smooth Sailing So Far...

In previous installments, I've given details about an action research project I designed a few years ago. The first three weeks of the project went as planned, and I now include my notes from my observations of the class.

Week 1 of the study – The Study Begins

At the beginning of the workshop period for what was to be the beginning of the study, I instructed the students that this week's lab was going to be different from previous sessions – they would not be writing an essay, and they would not be handing in their work to me. Without revealing the source, I copied the first step of Jacobs' cubing technique and instructed the students to write a timeline of their lives, listing ten events which were important or significant to them. When asked what the purpose was, I explained that this list was going to be used in future assignments.

I began the lecture period by returning the first practice test and Formal Essay #3 to the students, and leading a discussion on some of the various grammar and vocabulary issues I had noticed were becoming common. The first lesson involved commonly substituted homophones – the difference between “to” and “too” has long been the bane of many a composition teacher, as well as confusion by writers regarding “your” and “you're.” “There,” “their,” and “they're” are also commonly misused at every level of composition. Difficulties in choosing between these words is not limited to ESL students; many native English speakers often use the wrong word.The class discussed possible reasons; the consensus seemed to be that most people make these mistakes because spellcheck programs do not spot them as errors.

I led the class in an impromptu exercise by first writing a sentence on the board which deliberately misused each of the words in question. I then asked volunteers from the class to identify mistakes and correct them. Upon finding an error, I would write every form of the word on the board, and ask the student to give a definition and a sentence it would be used in. I noticed at this point that none of the study participants spoke up; the discussion was led primarily by my native English speaking students. I also noticed that after this exercise, this error, at least involving these particular words, dropped sharply from all future essays.

It was at this point that I announced a change in the syllabus – rather than take a question from this week's chapter (the lesson was cause and effect), I wanted them to write an essay based on one of the experiences from the list they had just written up in the lab. I explained that at this point in the class, they had learned enough writing patterns and techniques to be able to use them in combination, and that I wanted to see them do just that. It was at this point that I listed the six elements of the “cubing” technique on the board, and explained to the students what each one meant.

The assignment, I explained to them, would be simple: I indicated that I wanted them to “cube” their paper – that is, use each of the six patterns listed (preferably in the order presented) to discuss the experience they were writing about. I asked if there were any questions; a few students requested clarification about specific parts of the cubing technique. On the whole, the students seemed puzzled by the sudden change, but happily anticipated what they perceived as a new, more interesting assignment. At the time, I noticed nothing distinctive about the study participants' reactions.

I then led the students through a discussion of the assigned readings from the text, although between the grammar discussion and the introduction to cubing, we only had time to discuss one of them in any sort of detail: Norman Cousins' “Who Killed Benny Paret?” The examination of cause and effect in the essay quickly led to a discussion of violence in sports (Benny Paret was a boxer who died in 1963, nine days after being knocked out in the ring), where I asked the students to consider whether sports have grown more or less violent in modern times. Except for Sarah, who talked about how the ancient Romans used to have people fight to the death, the study participants were largely silent, although towards the end of the class period, Carlos did mention being a fan of MMA (mixed martial arts), and asked if I was one as well. I said I was not.

Week 2 of the study – Went off-topic today; must remember to do that more often.

For this weeks lab work, I had the students go back to the list of important life events that they had written up in last weeks lab, and, in a review of last week's “Cause and Effect” theme, asked them to write a short essay explaining how one of those events affected them today. I gave them a brief reminder of the cubing technique which I wanted them to use for their upcoming essay (due next week), and suggested they use an abbreviated version for the lab work – choose only two of the six patterns specified in cubing, and apply them to the lab assignment.

During the lecture portion of the class, the writing theme of the week was “Comparison and Contrast,” and the text's example was a sample outline and essay comparing and contrasting Herman Melville's Moby-Dick to Jack London's The Sea-Wolf. Realizing that my students probably wouldn't be familiar enough with either of those stories for such a lesson to be effective, I prepared an alternate example in class – comparing the television show House to the literary character of Sherlock Holmes. House, is, of course, a popular television series, and a quick survey of the class indicated that the majority of the students were familiar with it, if not faithful watchers themselves. Although none of my students had ever read any of Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories, the character himself is ubiquitous enough in popular culture to be instantly recognizable – thanks in no small part to the recent Sherlock Holmes movie, where the titular character was played (surprisingly faithfully to the original, in my own opinion) by Robert Downey Jr. I was not disappointed; a show of hands indicated that many of the students had seen the movie, or at least were familiar with the character.

After explaining that the character of House was directly based on Sherlock Holmes, I used the two characters to demonstrate, in outline form, the differences between a subject by subject and a point by point comparison of the two characters – the whole time, prompting the students to answer questions about a hypothetical essay on such a topic: “What would your thesis be in such an essay?” “Which character should be discussed first in the essay?” “Would you want to start with their similarities, or their differences?”

I noticed that the study participants were more engaged and more eager to participate in the discussion than usual, asking questions and engaging both their fellow students and me in the discussion. Carlos had remarked that he had enjoyed the Robert Downey Jr. movie, and Paula admitted to being a fan of House. But what completely turned the class around was an offhand remark by Andrew, one of my native English speaking students: “I always thought Sherlock Holmes was a real person.” The remark drew some chuckles and comments from some classmates, nods of agreement from others. I then related a story I remembered reading a few years back: a poll of British students indicated that about 20% of them has also believed that Sherlock Holmes was a historic figure. More interesting, however, was that fact that the poll had shown that the same percentage – approximately 20% – of students believed that Winston Churchill was not a historical figure, but instead a fictional character created by the British government to keep people's spirits up during WWII. (A quick show of hands indicated that the majority of the class knew who Winston Churchill was; a quick explanation took care of the others). This led the class in a discussion, comparing and contrasting history with popular culture.

In my literature classes of previous years, I have often called on what I refer to as “Shamburg's Second Law of Literature: history, literature, and mythology are always connected and often confused.” To teach that lesson, I've taught students about various historical figures such as Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Paul Revere, and Betsy Ross, explaining that a lot of what we think of as history are actually literary creations – for example, Nobody in Christopher Columbus' time actually believed that the world was flat – that myth had long since been dispelled by the Ancient Greeks. However, because the American novelist Washington Irving wrote it into a biography of Columbus, it has long since been erroneously assumed to be history, and taught as such.

The “Laws of Literature” had been a fixture of my previous literature classes of years gone by, and I had not expected to use them in the College Composition course. On a personal note, I believe that it was this sudden venture into familiar territory, for myself as much as for the students, which prompted me to continue this discussion.

The examples mentioned led to a discussion comparing and contrasting the heroic tales of historic figures, and the actual history. More models were put on the board, and students – including my study participants – were more engaged than I had seen them since the beginning of the semester. Jacobs stresses the importance of making writing relevant to the students, and nowhere is that more relevant that in the fact that at no point in the class did we even mention the assigned readings that the text uses as examples of “Compare and Contrast” essays. Once I saw how engaged the class was, I chose to ignore the assigned readings for that week and keep on the topic that they had become interested in, while at the same time, occasionally alluding to them during slow points in the discussion with comments such as “you know, we probably should say something about that essay by Tannen that you read...” which would prompt the class into a whole new discussion on popular culture vs. history.

The reason is simple: although I had already decided to use this, and not the text, as an example of the “Compare and Contrast” format, the students believed this to be a distraction, and, as a group, were willing to work extra hard in order to keep me “distracted” and the class “off-topic.” Even from preschool, educators have taught their students through play, disguising lessons as games. This method is effective at every level of education. It's been one of my maxims of teaching experience that students will go to more effort to get around an assignment than to actually do it. The students were still playing a game, although many of them no doubt believed that they were “playing” me.

Week 3 – Mythology 101

In the lab tonight, I had the students review and apply the reading due that week, “Classification and Division,” by choosing from a list of topics, such as music, food, or movies, and naming their favorite types of each, while comparing and contrasting their choices. This was not only in line with Jacobs' strategy of keeping the writing relevant and personal to the students, but also useful as comparison and contrast was the topic of a previous lesson. It has been my goal for the course to avoid teaching the various writing strategies separately (as the text does), but to integrate them as much as possible.

Although some students (particularly those who came to the lab late, and required me to restate my directions) misunderstood my instructions and instead mentioned specific items instead of categories (discussing a particular movie instead of a genre such as “action movies,” for example), I accepted the assignments as they still fit the spirit, if not the letter, of the lab work.

I also took the time to collect their homework essays, which was their first assignment using the “cubing” technique discusses in class. I was quite disappointed in the low turnover rate (only eight essays were handed in on time), but was assured by students that more essays would be forthcoming – either by hand or by email. This has been an ongoing issue with all my classes, and is an unfortunate trend among students at this particular community college. I shall have to stress the importance of handing in future work so that I have enough data for my study.

Realizing that last week's “off topic” discussion was one of the most productive I'd had with the class all semester, and crediting it in no small part with my own familiarity with the topic, I decided to continue it and make mythology the theme of this week's “Classification and Division” class. I began the class with a game I had used back in my high school teaching days: “Fact or Fiction?” I wrote a list of well known figures from popular culture on the board, and challenged the class, by vote, to determine which of the pop culture icons were actual historical people: Betty Crocker (fiction), Chef Boyardee (fact), Jose Cuervo (fact), Aunt Jemima (fiction), Ben and Jerry (fact). I noticed at the mention of Jose Cuervo, Carlos, having gained some measure of confidence, jokingly asked about two other famous alcohol-related names: Captain Morgan and Jack Daniel. I noticed that Carlos was interacting more with other students this week, and rather than dismiss his question as the efforts of a nascent class clown, straightly responded that yes, both characters were in fact real people – and advised the class not to become too familiar with either of them during their upcoming spring break (to their laughter).

The votes were even on most of the characters, although Betty Crocker stumped all but 2 students. I connected this to last week's discussion of characters such as Sherlock Holmes by pointing out how the stories of famous people often overshadow the facts, giving these characters the status of heroes. After leading the class in a group discussion of what a “hero” is, we settled on a definition of a hero as a role model, whose stories and adventures are supposed to serve as an example for others. I used this definition to lead the students into the topic of mythology, explaining that while myths could be classified in a number of different ways, what we had just been discussion was an example of what was called a “Heroic Myth,” defined as a story about a great person and their accomplishments. The class understood how stories about such people could grow over time, and, like the pop culture figures mentioned at the beginning of class, the story quickly overshadowed the fact.

Once again, I was on familiar ground – I had long used heroic tales and myths in world literature classes I had taught in previous years, and even once led a workshop on the topic at one of my previous schools. I had at this point begun to realize that in order to introduce the concepts that the course required to the students, it was necessary to do so within a context which I myself was familiar and comfortable with, perhaps more so than they were. The goal of this class became to teach the students about mythology, and in so doing, teach them how to take such a broad topic, classify and divide it into categories, and organize such categories as would be expected in academic literature.

Continuing with discussing heroes as role models, I broke the class into small groups and had each group come up with famous (real and fictional) heroes. For each name, I challenged each group with the question, “What was it about this person that makes them a role model?” As the groups named names from Greek Gods to comic-book superheroes, I decided it was time to move on to the next category.

Keeping the “Heroic Myth” definition on the board, I wrote in “Folk Myth” underneath it, and asked the students to think about fairy tales. As the named names such as “Cinderella,” or “Beauty and the Beast,” I pointed out that many of these tales (both made famous and ruined by Disney) fit the definition of the next category of myth: Stories about ordinary people which often serve to teach a lesson. After explaining that many fairy tales were originally cautionary (and often bloody) in nature, and have only recently been changed into more child-friendly versions (Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel all get eaten in their original stories), I asked the students (in their same groups) to explain what lessons could be learned from the main characters' (usually bad) examples. They noticed that many of these stories involved children getting punished for breaking some common-sense rule: “Don't talk to strangers,” or “don't go out alone after dark,” at which point they say how myths were useful as teaching tools.

It was at this point, unfortunately, that an announcement was made that the school would be closing early due to inclement weather (the ice storm outside was making travel treacherous). As such, I pointed to the board and demonstrated to them that we had taken a large topic (mythology) and had proceeded to organize it into categories to make it easier to discuss and understand. I let them go with the promise that the third and last category of myths – “Divine myths” would be discussed next week.

Before dismissing the class, I remarked that we had discussed quite a bit about the topic of heroes, and asked them who their own heroes were. Rather than hold the class beyond the closing time, I suggested that that question would be the topic for Formal Essay #5 (FE5), and quickly put the list of categories for “Cubing' on the board. I then quickly explained that I wanted them to “cube” their essay on heroes, just as they had cubed their previous essay on their own experiences. I asked if there were any questions (as usual, there were none), and dismissed an hour early.

Familiarity Breeds Content -- Part 2: The Plan

 The study being presented was a quasi-experimental action research study on the effectiveness of C. Lynn Jacobs' “Cubing” technique to improve the writing skills of recent immigrant ESL and former ESL students.

It should be noted that while many schools have strict guidelines concerning informed consent in experimental procedures, action research projects are a notable exception. Because such studies are conducted while a class is in session, they are not considered true experiments because while a true experiment is performed under controlled conditions with as few variables as possible, a classroom, as ever teacher knows, is practically a three-ring circus of variables. Informed consent is not required because the purpose of any action research project is to find more efficient ways of teaching – and isn't that what every teacher should be doing in class anyway?

The research questions for the study as originally planned were as follows:

1. Will the group of study participants show improvement in writing skills?
2. What modifications, if any, will be necessary to use a methodology on a collegiate level originally designed for high school students?
3. Will the group of study participants show a similar improvement to enrolled students who are native English speakers?
4. Will the group of study participants show improvement similar to enrolled students who are long term English learners?
5. Will the country of origin of the study participants affect their progress towards improving their writing skills?
6. Will the gender of the study participants affect their progress towards improving their writing skills?

In a class of 25 students, six were originally identified as recent immigrants for the study. Unfortunately, by the time the study began, two participants had dropped the course – one officially withdrew, while the second stopped coming before the study began. The four remaining study participants have been given the pseudonyms Carlos, Sarah, Caroline, and Paula.

Carlos is a freshman student, approximately 23 years old, from Cuba. He has been in the country for about four years. His primary language is Spanish, although his spoken English is nearly fluent, though accented. His writing, however was disorganized and riddled with a wide variety of spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Sarah is a 20 year old Freshman from Columbia. She has been in the country for about 6 years. Her primary language is Spanish, although she is also nearly fluent in English. Her writing already showed a strong sense of organization, but her grammar, especially when under pressure, was inconsistent.

Caroline is a 25 year old woman from Cuba. She has lived in America for about five years. Her primary language is Spanish, and her spoken English is heavily accented, although understandable in conversation. Her early written work was above average, with only minor organizational and grammatical errors.

Paula is 21 years old, Colombian, and moved to America approximately three years ago. There was little data available about her written work, as her attendance was spotty towards the beginning of the semester, but began to make more of an effort about two weeks before the study began. She was quiet and reserved in class, and remained so throughout the study.

The class was an entry-level composition class, designed to give new students an introduction to academic writing. The class met once a week, on Wednesdays from 6:00 – 9:30 PM. The first hour of class time was set aside as a writing workshop (although in truth, the lab is only available for 45 minutes), where the students would work in a computer lab on an assignment of my choosing, which would be in some way related to the readings and topics of either that week or the previous one. The remainder of the class period (7:00 – 9:30 PM) was spent in a classroom, discussing writing patterns and techniques, and discussing essays which exemplified those patterns. Approximately halfway through the lecture period (about 8:15 PM) the students were given a 10-15 minute break, and return to complete the lecture.

This scheduling, while necessary, proved to be less than ideal for the format of the class, let alone an action research study. Traditionally, the lab period comes at the end of the class, after the lecture period, but cannot be done for evening classes, as it is apparently not possible to have a lab assistant (required for all lab work) remain at such a late hour. This scheduling quirk led to issues which adversely affected the data, which will be discussed later.

As discussed, every class session began with a computer workshop which is to provide the instructor with a sample of the student's writing, in order to ascertain how well the student can write about a given topic within a time limit – as the WPT Exit Exam is timed, the students are to grow accustomed to operating under a time limit. Such assignments are small and simple – There is no length requirement, and no more than 3-5 paragraphs on a given topic was generally expected.

(Here is where the class scheduling first worked against the study – students are notoriously tardy. While I cannot fault them for circumstances beyond their control – most excuses center around work schedules, family obligations, rush hour traffic, or combinations thereof – it means that many students are often entering the workshop late, and are forced to operate under a more restrictive time schedule.

More data was to be collected through the “Formal Essays” assigned throughout the year. A Formal Essay was a larger homework assignment, assigned approximately every 2-3 weeks, for a total of six essays throughout the semester. A typical Formal Essay was expected to be anywhere between 450-700 words. During this study, Formal Essays 4 and 5 fell during the study period, and Formal Essay 6 was scheduled the week after the post-test, and was originally intended to be included in this study.

Unfortunately, students are also notoriously bad at meeting deadlines. Students have been known to hand in essays a week or two late (which skews the research data), or not at all (which eliminates it completely). It was a near class-wide omission of Formal Essay 6 (only three students remembered to hand it in on time, none of which were study participants) that forced FE6 to be removed from this study.

In the classes leading up to the experimental phase, six students were identified who were recent (within the last five years) immigrants. With surveys not a legal option, students had been encouraged to include as much detail about their own lives as possible in their essays. For example, I mentioned that one of the key elements of good writing was making connections – often to their own experiences. From the beginning, I reminded my students (as I always do) that their own life experiences can provide material for in class discussion, computer lab journal entries, formal essays, or even the Exit Exam itself. In this way, I was able to glean information about me students without running afoul of legal issues.

Once my ideal students were identified (and two of the original six had dropped the class), I administered the first of two practice tests to the class. The test consists of a short article, and a question the students must answer based on the article. The students had 90 minutes to write an essay answering the question, being sure to refer to the article at least once. This practice test (PT1) served as a pre-test for the study. A second test, scheduled later (PT2), would serve as the post-test.

The week after the practice test was administered, I began the study by emulating Jacobs' own strategies. Jacobs began her work by having the students write a timeline of their own lives, making a list of ten important events. I instructed my students to do the same thing during their lab period, emphasizing that this weeks lab assignment was not to be handed in; this was being done for their benefit, not mine.

The lecture portion of the first class with a description of the cubing technique – without mentioning Jacobs' research or that any sort of study was being conducted. I reminded the class that Formal Essay #4 was due in two weeks, but that I was departing from the original assignment on the syllabus and changing the topic – I wanted them to choose one of the events from the list they had just made of their lives, and discuss that event, using the cubing technique.

I explained to them what cubing was: rather than use one dominant pattern of writing, which most of the textbook's assignments call for, I wanted them to use six patterns, devoting approximately a paragraph to each one, to discuss or describe the event they chose to write about. The six patterns (which I copied from Jacobs' own study) were as follows:

• Describe – give a brief but detailed account of what happened.
• Connect – is this event like anything else you'd experienced or heard about before?
• Compare and Contrast – For this step, I asked the students to compare their thoughts and feelings about the event as it happened to how they feel about it now, and discuss what has changed.
• Analyze – Why is this event on your top ten list? What about it makes it important to you?
• Apply – what have you learned from this event? How can you apply what you've learned to your life today?
• Conclusion – summarize your final thoughts about the event.

For each week once the study began, students were assigned to read select essays from the course's required textbook, Patterns for College Writing (Kirszner &Mandell, 2010), and class discussions would be guided to have students look for cubing-like techniques used by the authors. Because each chapter of the text was based on a particular writing style or pattern, the essays of that week would be themed around a dominant pattern – for example, one week's essays were centered around cause-and-effect, while another week's essays were comparison and contrast. I made sure, whenever possible, to point out to students (or have them search on their own) various places where an author used a different pattern, preferably one that students had previously discussed in a previous week and would be able to recognize. “See here? He's describing a process, step by step. Now, in this paragraph, he's narrating a story,” etc.

Paragraphs, I pointed out, were the key. A good writer uses paragraphs to separate ideas from one another, and thus is able to organize their ideas in a way easy for a reader to follow. Often too, I pointed out to them whenever applicable, a paragraph was a good sign of when a writer would switch from one pattern to another. There had been a tendency among students (both native born and ESL) to forget to divide their essays into paragraphs, and instead write a single, nigh-illegible block of text. If nothing else, it was hoped that cubing would break students of this habit, which usually resulted in an automatic grade of F for an essay.

Graded essays and lab work was usually given back after the break period, where I would briefly speak to students, give a quick explanation for their grade, point out any recurring problems I'd noticed, and offer to stay after class if the student had any questions of problems with their writing – sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, none ever did.

The entire study, from the pre-test to the scheduled FE6, took a total of eight weeks, with one week off for the college's spring break. As the weeks went on, quantitative data were compiled in the form of assigned essays, and notes were kept detailing classroom activities and students' reactions (particularly study participants' involvement) every week.

It all looked simple enough on paper, but I was in for a wild ride.

References
Jacobs, C. L., (2008). Long-term English learners writing their stories. English Journal 97(6), 87-91

Familiarity Breeds Content -- Part 1

(Note: the following is the first of a series of articles which stem from a research project I did in the spring of 2011.)

ESL students have unique needs beyond those of mainstream composition students. However, I thoroughly believe that the techniques and methods used for ESL education are useful enough to be applicable for any teacher. With that in mind, I set out to apply my acquired knowledge of ESL instruction on mainstream students. But first, it seemed appropriate to read up on what was already out there.

The bulk of ESL studies and discussions deal in two areas which were of little use to me in my situation. The first area involves ESL education for young students – the majority of studies found deal with early ESL learners. The field of secondary and post-secondary ESL teaching, while it certainly exists, seems underrepresented by the research. Furthermore, while writing skills are occasionally emphasized in ESL studies, it tends to focus mostly on grammar and vocabulary skills, and not on organizational skills.

Some background: when I began teaching a college composition class at a  New Jersey college, I found myself in the position of teaching post-secondary students and adults, some fresh out of ESL programs, and others still taking ESL courses, a course designed to strengthen just those organizational skills previously mentioned. I was informed early on by a more experienced instructor that this was not intended to be a grammar course; the mechanics of writing were to take a secondary role to the use of writing patterns to organize one's thoughts on paper.

What was sought, therefore, were research studies which focused on advancing writing skills (particularly organizational skills) to secondary and post-secondary students. The results were promising.

Lee and Krashen set out to identify the most likely predictors of writing proficiency among ESL students. The results they found were that “children who participate in free reading programs write better than comparison students” (2002), a finding which had mirrored one of my own maxims which I often shared with students: “The best writers are always the best readers.” Lee and Krashen also observed that “poor writers tend to focus on aspects of form during revision, better writers focus on content and organization” (2002). This was of particular interest as the course in question was designed to focus on organization. If students who revised based on organization became better writers according to Lee and Krashen, what would happen to students who were actively aware of organization from the beginning of the writing process?

A final observation that Lee and Krashen made was that “better writers do more voluntary writing, but increasing writing in classes does not increase writing quality.” (2002) While practice makes perfect, it did not necessarily follow that more writing assignments led to better writers. Voluntary writing was the key. Given that, in a classroom setting, any writing assignment is by definition involuntary, the answer seemed to be that students could be encouraged to write if the topic were to their liking. How, then, to deal with the double problem of encouraging students to write on topics which would interest and motive them, while at the same time, encourage them to make organization a part of their writing process as early as possible? Lee and Krashen, studying only predictive factors, did not offer specific courses of action.

C. Lynn Jacobs tackled these problems with a group of high school students she categorized as “long term English learners,” whom she classified as “typically have been enrolled in US schools for at least seven years, yet still have not reached the criteria for reclassification as fluent in English” (Jacobs, 2008). Through a series of exercises, including one known as “cubing,” Jacobs achieved such a measure of success with her own students that they were eventually able to have their essays, short stories, and poetry published in an anthology entitled Love Ties my Shoes. The cubing process was of interest, and became the basis for the current study: Could the same process which showed success with long term English students have similar results on more recent immigrants? It was Jacobs' study which served as a framework and guide for this project.

Finding Jacobs' research proved to be invaluable, as it clearly acknowledged the need for more research to be done on older English learners. Elizabeth Bifuh-Ambe was forced to recognize that “not much information exists about the literacy needs of foreign-born ELLs at postsecondary levels. A literature search showed few manuals with strategies that can help this cohort of learners acquire subject matter in a mainstream university setting” (2009). Bifuh-Ambe countered with her own qualitative case study of a single Korean-born ELL student, “Kim,” at a large Northeastern university. As Jacobs has also discovered, even being a long term Engish learner (Kim had been studying English for almost 14 years at the time of Bifuh-Ambe's study) was no guarantee of fluency, either in oral or written form.

Kim's problems stemmed, in part, from her original English instruction in Korea, which she described as focused mostly on the grammar, vocabulary, and isolated mechanics of the language, and little on actual communication (2009). Bifuh-Ambe's study examined the processes Kim went about learning English for communication and academic purposes, the challenges she faced, and specific strategies which proved effective for her. While the bulk of Kim's struggles were in comprehension, both written and oral, there was some mention of her developing writing skills, mostly due to cooperation with peer coaches (classmates willing to help and edit her work) and academic tutoring.

What is of special interest is Kim's reluctance to participate in class discussions, which was not due to her limited language skills, but because she did not have enough background information to make what she would consider a meaningful contribution. As Bifuh-Ambe explained, “one of the reasons Kim gave for her inability to participate in class discussions was her lack of prior knowledge of topics under discussion” (2009). This is often an issue in many ESL courses, as the rift between content instruction and language instruction must be regularly deal with.

On the other hand, in the College Composition class, as in most language arts classes, the language is the content, and while students may traditionally find themselves discussing topics unfamiliar to them (the textbook contained articles on subjects such as global warming and famous athletes), a writing professor must take extra care to avoid such problems my making sure that students are familiar with the topics they write about, so that language, not content, is the focus. Even when students are writing essays reacting or giving an opinion on a given topic, lack of understanding of the topic can and has led to poor results, as students find themselves forced to “react” to a situation they do not understand, although they know that “I don't know” is not an acceptable answer for an academic paper. Jacobs' cubing exercise begins by having students write about events from their own lives, thus taking the content/language dilemma completely out of the equation. This was another reason that recreating Jacobs' cubing study was an ideal choice for a composition class.

John Biggs, Patrick Lai, Catherine Tang, and Ellen Lavelle had previously collaborated on a similar issue of teaching writing strategies to adult students, and while their strategies were successful, they were overly specialized. They operated a series of 2 1/2 day workshops with Hong Kong graduate students, all in science related disciplines, who were struggling to write their dissertations in English.

Biggs et al summarized the writing process and the difficulties English language learners face with it quite succinctly:

Knowledge is of two kinds: content or topic knowledge (what to say) and rhetorical knowledge (how to say it). Rhetorical knowledge breaks down into several specific forms, such as genre rules, audience, grammar, and so on; this form of knowledge is particularly likely to be lacking in nonnative writers. (1999)

While Biggs et al clearly identified the general problem: “in order to handle this order of complexity, writers need to develop a writing strategy so that they can partition and sequence the components of the writing process to make it more manageable” (1999), and did manage to categorize various writing (and by extension, teaching) strategies based on effectiveness, the solutions offered in their workshops were tailor-made for Chinese students writing scientific dissertations. I found this to be a trend in much of the literature: specific solutions to specific situations, while convenient, did not offer the kind of general all-purpose instruction needed for an introductory course such as the one I was teaching.

Having previously studied, in detail, the strengths and applications of sheltered instruction (the SIOP method), it was of interest to read studies which challenged its effectiveness. When it was claimed that “very little research has examined empirically what constitutes an effective sheltered lesson . . .researchers have increasingly questioned some of the practices of SI,” and “there needs to be a greater focus on the linguistic structures that characterize academic language” (Aguirre-Munoz et al., 2008), it seemed, at first glance, to be a throwback to explicit grammar instruction, which has long since fallen out of favor in the current ESL literature.

However, Aguirre-Munoz et al. had instead classified various features which they referred to as field, tenor, and mode to identify students who had (or needed) sufficient control over academic language in order to support a thesis, and the means to train teachers to recognize these features in order to better educate their students. The specifics of the features Aguirre-Munoz et al are not mentioned as part of this review because they operated mostly on a sentence or paragraph level of writing, whereas both the course and the current study required students to be implementing writing strategies on larger scales, throughout entire essays. Nevertheless, it was an example of the current research to promote more elaborate and organized written work from ESL students.

 References

Aguirre-Munoz, Z., Park, J., Amabisca, A., & Boscardin, C. K. (2008). Developing teacher capacity for serving ELLs' writing instructional needs: A case for systemic functional linguistics. Bilingual Research Journal 31, 295-322.

Bifuh-Ambe, E. (2009). Literacy skills acquisition and use: a study of an English language learner in a U.S. university context. Adult Basic Education and Literacy Journal 3(1), 24-33

Biggs, J., Lai, P., Tang, C., & Lavelle, E. (1999). Teaching writing to ESL graduate students: a model and an illustration. British Journal of Educational Psychology 69, 293-306.

Jacobs, C. L., (2008). Long-term English learners writing their stories. English Journal 97(6), 87-91

Kirszner, L.G., & Mandell, S.R. (2010) Patterns for College Writing (11^th ed.) Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's

Lee, S., & Krashen, S. (2002). Predictors of success in writing in English as a foreign language: reading, revision behavior, apprehension, and writing. College Student Journal 36(4), 532-543