Page 45 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

STUDENT WRITING TASKS AND WRITTEN ACADEMIC GENRES 31
1.
2.
Suppose that you were to set up an organization—for example, a club, a church, a school, or a small community. What would you do to try to ensure that social order would successfully be established? (Sociology) (Charon,
1999, p. 147)
Whatisthebusinessvaluechain?Usefrozenpizzasoldinsupermarkets toex- plain your answer. (Business) (Zikmund, Middlemist, & Middlemist,
1995, p. 17)
Exemplification and illustration largely deals with expanding on theo- ries/concepts/ ideas and providing reasonable amounts of detail to explain a type, class, or group of objects or events by presenting examples. These as- signments largely rely on general-to-specific discourse organization flow. For example,
1. Give at least two examples of what children can learn from playing peek-a-boo. (Psychology) (Epstein, 1999, p. 258)
2. What is a simple idea, according to Locke? Give examples. (Philosophy) (Adapted from Schoedinger, 2000, p. 351)
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What are the key writing tasks with which NNS writers need to be competent based on research and interviews with undergraduate and graduate faculty? What kinds of instruction can help NNS writers improve these skills?
2. What are the most common forms of academic writing assign- ments? How can a teacher in an ESL or EAPwriting course help stu- dents prepare for these kinds of assignments?
3. What can be possible reasons that the common types of es- says/writing tasks required of students in ESL/EAP writing courses are distinct from those in courses in the disciplines? If you were in charge of the curriculum in preparatory ESL writing courses, would you change the types of writing tasks required of students? If yes, in what
way? If no, why not?
FURTHER READINGS ABOUT WRITING TASKS AND WRITTEN ACADEMICGENRES
Writing Tasks
Johnson, D. (1989a). Enriching task contexts for second language writing: Power through interpersonal roles. In D.Johnson & D. Roen (Eds.), Richness in writing (pp. 39-54). NewYork: Longman.
Leki, I., & Carson, J. (1997). "Completely Different Worlds": EAP and the writing experiences of ESL students in university courses. TESOL Quarterly, 31(1), 39-70.
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