Page 48 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

34 CHAPTER 3
nouns, verb tenses, verb lexical classes, and rhetorical features of text such as cohesion and hedging.
The curriculum design outlined in this chapter centers on current re- search findings about what it takes to attain viable academic L2 writing skills and presents dozens of techniques for teaching them. The teacher's work- load and the student's "learning burden" (Nation, 2001, p. 23)—that is, the amount of effort required to learn L2 grammar and vocabulary—areex- pected to be realistic, but certainly not very light. Although activities to de- velop learners' conversational fluency or invention techniques are typically less work and more fun for both teachers and students, they have not de- monstrably equipped students for success in university-level academic courses (Hinkel, 2002a; Hyland, 1996, 2002a).
ACCURACY, ACADEMIC TEXT, AND PRACTICAL GOALS
As the teaching of English became increasingly important during and after World War II, Charles Fries developed one of the first U.S. textbooks for training ESL teachers. In 1945, his definition of syntactic and lexical accu- racy in L2 use was flexible and pragmatic:
The "accuracy" which is advocated here does not mean the so-called "cor- rectness" of the common handbooks.... The accuracy here stressed refers to an accuracy based upon a realistic description of the actual language as used by native speakers in carrying on their affairs.... It is fruitless to argue in the abstract concerningthe relative merits of the various types of English.... In learning English as a foreign language it is necessary to decide upon a particu- lar type to be mastered,for there is no single kind that is used throughout all the English speaking world. The practical approach is to decide for the kind of English that will be used by the particular group with which one wishes to associate...." (Fries, 1945 pp. 3-4)
The important point made by Fries more than half a century ago is that L2 learners need to identify their goals for learning L2 and the types of the NS population with which they wish to associate. In the case of academically bound NNS learners, these populations consist of the university faculty in mainstream courses who evaluate the assignment quality of the NS and NNS students enrolled in the same classes.
If NNS college and university students are to succeed in competi- tion for grades and attain their educational objectives, the level of ac- curacy in their L2 writing needs to at least attempt to approximate that of NS students of similar academic standing.
Without a doubt, this is an ambitious goal. It goes without saying that NS students have been socialized in, schooled in, and exposed to their L1
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