The Underachieving Students’ Attempt to Cope with the Writing Tasks

Grażyna Kiliańska-Przybyło, Poland

Grażyna Kiliańska-Przybyło, PhD, is a senior lecturer at Institute of English (University of Silesia, Poland), a teacher of English and a teacher trainer. Her academic interests include the following issues: languae awareness and intercultural awareness, foreign language teacher education and teacher professional development, reflective teaching, the impact of context on teaching/ learning process, namely: coping with students of diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. E-mail: grazynakp@tlen.pl

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Abstract
Background: characteristics of underachieving students
Study
Analysis
Conclusions
References

Abstract

Writing cannot really be taught, but it can be learnt. However, it is the teachers’ job to initiate that learning by raising students’ awareness of text structure they are writing. This would enable students to create rather than imitate their own pieces of discourse.

The paper reports on a small-scale investigation into the results of written tasks carried out among upper-intermediate underachieving students of English. The assumption is that despite the varied instructional training offered at writing classes, underachieving students still find a composition process difficult to cope with at the exam-type situation. The yearly instructional curriculum of the course included a variety of model texts such as: narratives, letters, reports, articles and discursive essays. This allowed the students to analyze the structure of the text type and develop skills necessary for effective writing. Besides, they were provided with extensive practice in writing techniques, including recombination, approximation and discourse transfer. The findings are supposed to shed some light on the problems learners have with writing activities and suggestions for remedial teaching.

Background: characteristics of underachieving students

“Poor” language learners or underachievers have received relatively scant attention in the ELT literature (Millrood 2001; Porte 1995). What must be emphasized at the beginning of the article is that unsuccessful learners are not inactive as it might have been supposed. Besides, they do possess learning strategies, but these are often inefficient (Oxford 2002; Porte 1995), undeveloped or misdirected towards a particular task (Vann & Abraham 1989 in Oxford 2002). Some researchers (cf. Millrood 2001: 425) state that these are the unsuccessful learners who really need us to turn our efforts on to them, as they need to be shown how to nurture and develop their current strategies. If we, as teachers, ignore this possibility, underachievers may resign themselves to making the same mistakes or errors throughout their learning lives. This, in turn, may lead to the feeling of dissatisfaction and an awareness of one’s own inadequacy (Stern 1983).

Arndt, Harvey, Nuttall (2000: 54) stress the fact that language teaching classrooms are places where teachers and learners try to get to grips with an enormously complex entity: how people in a certain cultural community communicate with each other through the language of that culture. According to them, formal approaches focused on the formal aspects of learner language and overlooked important discourse functions. Hatch (1978 in Arndt, Harvey, Nuttall 2000) claims that in L2 learning the basic assumption has been that one first learns how to manipulate structures that one gradually builds up a repertoire of structures and then, somehow learns how to put the structures to use in discourse. Nunan (1999: 109) calls it ‘linear approach to instruction”. Contemporary approaches to language teaching (i.e. communicative approach focusing on getting students to use a language and understand various types of discourse as well as meaningful learning) prove something opposite. Language structures are developed as a result of verbal interaction. Language learners are engaged in active construction and transformation of knowledge. Crystal (1997: 116) states that there is “the need to see language as a dynamic, social, interactive phenomenon where meaning is conveyed not by single sentences but by more complex exchanges”. Nunan (1999: 113) refers to this phenomenon as “the adoption of an organic, discourse-driven perspective to the teaching of language”. Arndt, Harvey, Nuttall (2000: 57) define discourse as “language- mediated process of interaction between people in specific social, cultural and situational contexts or “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive”. This, in turn, justifies the need for contextualized language practice, awareness- raising tasks and contrastive analysis of types of discourse present in L1 and L2. Discourse competence in L1 is acquired simultaneously with the acquisition of the code, by mere exposure to the exchanges of various kinds. But we also gain discourse competence by exposure to written and spoken genres through formal education if certain definable elements of written discourse are included in any ELT syllabus. Writing cannot really be taught, but it can be learnt. Many authors (i.e. Cohen and Cavalcanti 1990; Hedge 1988; Lally 2000; Lopez 2005; Penington et al. 1996; Porte 1996) suggest several way on how to improve writing skills, especially, those of underachieving students. The authors agree that it is usually the teachers’ job to initiate that learning by raising students’ awareness of text structure they are writing. This would enable students to create rather than imitate their own pieces of discourse.

Arndt, Harvey and Nuttall (2000: 57) state that “a self-evident goal for language teachers is to help people acquire and hone the basic tools (sounds, structures and words) they need to communicate in the language they are learning. Another goal, which might not necessarily be so evident, is to help learners develop L2 discourse competence”. Arndt, Harvey, Nuttall (2000: 58) distinguish three features determining discourse competence:

• Sequence (the systematic ways in which utterances – stretches or chunks of language, occurring in actual language use – are created, structured and ordered)
• Coherence (how sequences of language “hang together” and how users of the language create, interpret and ‘make sense’ of these utterances)
• Force (the effects utterances, or sequences of utterances have, i.e. how they are interpreted and reacted to).

There are voices, however, that claim that this goal is not evident as there are discourse fundamentals, said to be universal. On the other hand, Cook (2001) concentrates on the reasons and consequences of the inappropriate selection of discourse strategies. He says that “Language learners are social outsiders of a different kind, standing outside one community by virtue of belonging to another. They may fail to understand or to make themselves understood because they lack the social knowledge which enables them to make text into discourse in the language they are learning. They may come out with oddities, and again we may judge this negatively or positively. The discourse strategies of a foreign speaker may seem refreshing exactly because they do not conform to conventions of the culture whose language they are learning; on the other hand they may cause serious misunderstanding and breakdown of communication” (Cook, 2001: 75).

This paper reports on a small-scale investigation into the results of written tasks carried out among upper-intermediate underachieving students of English. The findings are supposed to shed some light on the problems learners have with writing activities and suggestions for remedial teaching.

Study

People under study are 19 students: 14 – females and 5 males, aged 21- 22. They have been studying English Philology for a year with specialization of Business English in one of the colleges in Katowice (Upper Silesia region, south part of Poland). For a year they have received training in written discourse, linguistics and other subjects related to English Philology Course. Their exposure to composition classes was once a week for one hour and a half. Their training was preceded by a needs analysis. The characteristic features of the training were: the teacher-learner cooperation, corrective feedback offered to individual students, individualization of the tasks. The students were motivated and kept involved by giving them some control over the written assignments. The aim of the training was to prepare the students to cope with their final examination where the emphasis was put on such excessive constraints as: grammar accuracy, high productivity rate, well-developed declarative knowledge and communicative skills as well as prompt and correct reaction. Throughout the year the students were working mainly with:

• Evans, V. 2011. Successful Writing (Upper- Intermediate, Proficiency), Express Publishing, Swansea
• Additional materials introduced by their teacher.

The instructional curriculum of the course included a variety of model texts such as: narratives, letters, reports, articles and discursive essays. This allowed the students to analyze the structure of the text type and develop skills necessary for effective writing. Besides, they were provided with extensive practice in writing techniques, including recombination, approximation and discourse transfer.

The subjects of the study could be described as underachievers, characterized by irregular or poor attendance and resorting to avoidance and compensatory strategies of all kinds (from day-dreaming, neglect of duties, truancy and illness) when facing some problems.

The data were collected when the subjects were asked to produce a piece of written discourse as a part of their written examination. For some of the subjects (7) it was a retake due to different reasons (failing the first attempt or illness), so they gathered relevant information about the previous exam and had some expectations towards the exam requirements.

During the exam, the students were presented with some facts concerning the purpose, and discourse type. Besides, they were asked to include some pieces of information into their work and determine the receiver. Cook (2001: 112) said that “single sentences can be combined in many different ways according to context, receiver and function, and the choice between cohesive devices varies with these parameters’ (…). In recombination, approximation and transfer activities, we should note that there is no one correct way of combining information into a coherent discourse. Arrangement and choice between the various grammatical and cohesive options will be dictated by the way in which the discourse is intended to function and the context in which it to be received.” The students were supposed to write a speech delivered by a scientist, an orphanage social worker and a botanist. The type of the task (i.e. speech) and the mode of delivery (namely: writing) required students to operate on written and spoken discourses, which might have been perceived as a difficulty. Student’s pieces of work were then corrected by the same person so as to account for scorer reliability.

Analysis

Taking into consideration the instances of spoken discourse as presented by Cook (2001), speech seems to be planned, socially structured, rather aided by writing and less reciprocal (i.e. it does not involve turn taking). After a close scrutiny of the pieces of writing it is clear that these principles are not fully realized by the underachieving students.

As far as the sequence, i.e. stretches of language is concerned, only two pieces of discourse (out of 19) followed a structure typical for speeches (i.e. Introduction – Body of speech – Conclusion/ Closing remarks/ Best wishes) with acceptable paragraphing. Other seventeen pieces were inappropriate in terms of paragraphing and structure. They resembled a sequence of sentences with no particular order. The possible interpretation is that underachievers are quite poor at their L1 discourse competence as they seem to be unable to recognize structure and order of speech. Besides, they seem to lack the ability to implement the features characteristic for spoken discourse in writing. It is worth mentioning that two discursive pieces which lack opening and closing sequences typical for speech were structured properly in terms of paragraphs.

Another notion which helps us understand structure and coherence over longer stretches of discourse is speech event. This term is sometimes used to refer to a sequence of utterances recognizable as a stock routine in a given context or setting, where the pattern of exchange is reasonably predictable. What scholars seem to be interested in is how we mark the boundaries of events and subunits of events. Arndt, Harvey and Nuttall (2001: 71) claim that there are some stock expressions which people have recourse to in such situations. This can be reflected in the data collected from the learners.

Examples of spoken speech aided by writing

The examples presented below observe the conventions of spoken discourse, yet they are presented in writing. The rules of written language (.i.e. formality) are not preserved. The samples of students’ writing are not edited, that is why, they may contain inappropriate or erroneous language.

P(5): Mister Chairman, members of the committee.
(…) Thank you for your attention and I hope you will grant the fund that I asked for Mister Chairman, grand committee.

P(11): Good morning/ Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen
(…) Thank you.

P(15): Mr President!

P(8): Hallo Everyone!
(…) Please, you did not see – our nature is screaming for ‘help’ – please do not say ‘no’.

Examples of written speech:

P(13): Dear audience,
(…) Thank you very much.

Mr Witt

P(3): Dear Mr Hanks,
(…) I would like to protect our forests, air and all environment, so I need your financial support. Thanks.

Izuk

No address form (inappropriate layout):

P(6): Nowadays is very difficult to get any financial support, of course everybody can say (…)
(…) I hope that will understand it and will appreciate my sacrifice.

P(2): First of all, I would like to take a closer look on the rain forest itself. (…) Please think about it, and choose the right.

Jan Nowak

P(19): In present sects and cults are very important and dangerous problem. (…) We live in XXI century and something like sects and cults should not be egoist.

As we can see from the examples, underachieving students are familiar with a stock of opening and closing phrases, but they lack the ability to adjust the right type of opening or closing expression to the right context of the discourse. Out of 19 underachieving students, two used opening and closing expressions typical for a letter, not speech, whereas the other two did not apply any of the stock expressions as their speeches resembled argumentative essays rather than speech. Besides, in some of the examples, the students failed to convey specific references correctly.

What also needs to be observed is that the students failed to recognize the receiver correctly. As a result, they did not use the appropriate addressing forms. The instruction was quite clear, they were supposed to write a speech to persuade government authorities, yet only one of them used the correct opening and closing phrases. Others prepared the speeches or rather letters for celebrities, people gathered at some meeting, the president. It clearly indicates that the subjects used the strategy of visualizing the audience they were writing for. Some of them, however, were not accurate enough in recognizing the audience properly or failed to apply any opening phrases.

The style and tone of the writing also need to be commented upon. The students resorted to various functional reduction strategies. It can be observed that the learners tended to use less tentative and less polite forms (e.g. “I want to..’ / ‘Please help me!’ while addressing the speech to the President). Besides, they were likely to use commands or assertions rather than requests and suggestions. The subjects tended to confuse written mode with the spoken mode, which resulted in frequent misspellings, emotionally- loaded words with basic syntactic structures, the range of discourse markers indicating emotions (e.g. exclamations marks), linking words typical for spoken genre (e.g. and, but).

As far as coherence of the discourse is concerned, logical markers are regarded to contribute significantly to the logical organization of what we are saying or writing. Arndt, Harvey and Nuttall (2001: 85) stress the fact that we tend to use a more restricted range of such markers in spoken than in written language. Besides, there is a tendency to limit our choice of connectives expression in speech to ‘core’ words like: so, but, and, because and or. The data seem to prove the preceding quotation. The discourse produced by the underachievers was very limited in terms of discourse markers. The students were supposed to deal with a text of 200 words and on average they included only 14 ‘logical markers’ per text. It must be also pointed out that they resorted to ‘core’ link words only, namely: AND (ranging from 5 to 18 per text; average = 7 per text) and BUT (average = 2 per text). This can be ascribed to the fact that logical markers are more obvious and formalized in certain types of text than others.

It would be difficult to understand the pieces of written discourse without looking at microskills for writing production (cited by Brown 2001: 343)

1. Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English
   Misspellings: average = 3 per text, e.g. *although *important; *pronounce
2. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose
   
   All the underachieving students manage to produce writing at an efficient speed. This is due to the fact that only one of the subjects followed the planning and coping strategies while writing. Other students (i.e. 9) did not plan their pieces of discourse and did not prepare any drafts either, which resulted in a number of deletions and insertions.
   
   Deletion: average= 11 per text
   Insertion: average= 2 per text
3. Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order pattern Inappropriate word order: average= 3 per text, e.g. *We have to keep as far as it possible from it.
4. Use acceptable grammatical systems (e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns and rules.
   
   Unacceptable grammatical system= 5 per text
5. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
   
   Closer scrutiny of the students’ pieces of work revealed that the students’ pieces of writing can be characterized by a reduced number of syntactic patterns. They preferred simple sentence constructions to the complex ones and mostly applied the following sentence constructions:
   
   BE + V = average 11 per text
   BE + ADJ = average 6 per text
   BE + NOUN = average 5 per text.

Conclusions

The analysis of the pieces of work may lead to the following conclusions:

1. Underachieving students still have enormous problems with language forms viewed as tools necessary to carry out basic meanings especially in learner failing situation with heavy demands and constraints put upon the learners (i.e. stress-evoking, exam-type situation). It is clear that underachievers cannot work on the two, i.e. forms and functions of the language simultaneously.
2. If underachievers put more emphasis on the functions of the language, namely, the type of the discourse; the form, i.e. language at the sentence level, is very simplified. That is reflected in the number of errors occurring at the sentence level and feedback provided by the teacher.
3. The expectations towards L2 learners are growing. At a certain stage of L2 proficiency, we expect from the learners the appropriate use of sophisticated techniques for recognizing and interpreting cohesive devices (e.g. reference and ellipsis); discourse markers, rhetorical devices such as: organization and other textual cohesive discourse features (Nuttall, 1996; cited by Brown 2000: 255). Underachieving students are very ineffective in their attempts to construct discourse with its features. Under time pressure or in so called “learner-failing situations” (i.e. exams) such students seem to be unable to cope with all the demands of the discourse type equally well. Thus, if they focus on speech event, they tend to forget about other features, such as: structure, discourse markers, etc.
4. Brown (2001: 300) states that a learner must be equipped with two categories of schemata, namely: content schemata (i.e. knowledge about people, the world, culture) and formal schemata (i.e. knowledge about discourse structure). When dealing with written discourse, underachieving students rely strongly on their L1 discourse competence as their formal and content schemata seem largely underdeveloped. The way they structure L2 discourse reflects their perception of L1 discourse (no clear paragraphing, inappropriate opening and closing sequences, e.g. Dear audience).
5. Graham (1997: 10) claims that at certain stages of student’s language learning career the task may indeed seem a very difficult one, particularly if the expectations towards the learner suddenly shift as he or she ‘progresses’ to a higher level of instruction’. In the small-scale study I conducted writing activities turned out to be quite difficult to my students. Despite a-year training they still seem to lack microskills necessary for writing. This may call for more intensive training, followed by tasks engaging students in reflective and active responses to the writing product and the feedback offered. Peer feedback, collaboration or interaction in peer response sessions may serve as examples of such tasks.
6. Speech, as the writing task which required the knowledge of written and spoken conventions, posed problems for underachievers, who could not decide about its form. Being not well familiar with the type of discourse they were supposed to write, the students resorted to a number of coping strategies: first of all, they visualized the addressee (or the audience). Secondly, since they lacked some knowledge concerning the discourse type of the speech, the students applied the convention of the form of writing they well quite well familiar with, namely: a letter. It is visible in the opening phrases used and the structure of the writing.
7. Formal training based on materials included in the course did not prove useful and effective. Those students who chose speech as a writing task during their examination failed as opposed to those students who selected argumentative or opinion essays, or a newspaper article. This shows the need to include a variety of writing types into the classes and/ or provide more in-depth analysis of the materials, supplemented with some cultural and non-linguistic cues. Additionally, the research showed that there is the need to raise students’ awareness about different registers of English.

Appendix

The writing task.

Imagine that you are (choose one):

• a scientist searching for new medicines
• an orphanage social worker
• a botanist fighting for rain forests

Write a short speech (200 words) given by one of the people above, trying to persuade government authorities to offer you financial support in your cause.

References

Arndt, V.; Harvey, P. & J. Nuttall. (2000). Alive to Language. Perspectives on language awareness for English language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Brown, H.D. (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Pearson Education Company

Cohen, A. and Cavalcanti, M. (1990). Feedback on compositions: Teacher and student verbal reports. In B. Kroll (Ed.) Second Language Writing. Research insights for the classroom (pp.155-177). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cook, V. (2001). Second Language Learning and Teaching. London: Arnold

Crystal, D. (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Evans, V. (2011). Successful Writing Proficiency. Newbury: Express Publishing

Evans, V. (2011). Successful Writing Upper- intermediate. Newbury: Express Publishing

Graham, S. (1997). Effective Language Learning. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters LTD

Hedge, T. (1988). Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hyland, K. and Hyland, F. (2006). Feedback on second language students' writing. Language Teaching 39, 83- 101.

Lally, C. G. (2000). First language influences in second language composition: The effect of pre-writing. Foreign Language Annals, 33 (4), pp. 428- 432.

López , E.M.(2005) Current State of the Teaching of Process Writing in EFL Classes: An Observational Study in the Last Two Years of Secondary School. Development Profile Issues in Teachers Professional Development no.6 Jan./February 2005

Millrood, R. (2001). Unsuccessful learners: in a search of a neglected corner-stone. ELT Journal 2001, 55: pp. 425- 426

Nunan, D. (1999). Second Language Teaching and Learning, Boston: Heinle& Heinle,

Oxford, R. L. (2002). Language Learning Strategies in a Nutshell: Update and ESL Suggestions. In: Richards, J.C & Renandya, W.A.. (Eds.) (2002). Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, pp. 124- 134

Pennington, M., et al. (1996). Explaining Hong Kong students' response to process writing: An exploration of causes and outcomes. Journal of Second Language Writing, 5, pp. 227-252.

Porte, D. (1995). Cooperative writing response groups and self-evaluation. ELT Journal 2001, 55: pp. 38-46

Porte, G. (1996). When writing fails: How academic context and past learning experiences shape revision. System, 24, pp. 107- 116.

Richards, J.C. & Renandya, W.A.. (2002). Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press

Stern, H.H. (1983). Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press

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