Blog Post 5 February 21

The article by Tony Silva starts off strong by giving an overview of the content. “I am constantly amazed and humbled by the quality of the efforts of ESL writers in my classes” is something that I want to be able to say after teaching for many years in a high school setting. It seems that the ESL students try to explain what they mean while writing, possibly because they are trying to make sure they can get their point across to their reader. Yeon Hee Choi did some studies regarding NES and ESL subjects where NES individuals preferred a claim-justification-conclusion pattern and the native Korean speakers (ESL individuals) preferred a situation-problem-solution-conclusion. When I read this is seems like a bunch of blabbering on paper to be quite honest. However after reading it over again, I understand that ESL speakers need more steps in order to get their point across to their audience. When I think of a native speaker and the claim-justification-conclusion pattern I think of the five paragraph essay that students learn as early as junior high and throughout high school until graduation. We are told as students to introduce the situation, have three body paragraphs with supporting details for your topic and to conclude by saying “As you can see”, “Overall” or the worst one, “In conclusion..”. This may be the reason why the NES speakers have this three step mindset. While I am reflecting on the five paragraph essay, I wonder how much more this template is going to be used in junior high and high schools as that writing format is thrown out immediately once students enter college.

After taking a rhetoric centered class at Illinois State University, Connor’s article clicked with me while I was reading it. There is rhetoric in each kind of text for each language. However, I have only explored the rhetoric of the English language. Contrastive rhetoric can be hard to wrap someone’s brain around so how many people actually pursue the topic of rhetoric as a graduate student? I like the sample letters that were included within the Connor text because they actually show how different writing can be when the writer’s first language is not English. The letter written by the native speaker is much more detailed and native English speakers really like to explain themselves by writing down their accomplishments and how they are fit for a certain position. Anglo-European essays, Oriental languages and Russian essays all have different types of angles and writing developments. As a future teacher and a lover of correct grammar and using expansive vocabulary in order to write professionally, critically or creatively, I want to be able to teach my ESL students how to write in different formats.

The overall idea that I got from these articles is that as future educators, whether it is for ESL or not, need to realize that not all students will have the same vocabulary level as what is expected for the grade level they are in. It is harder for ESL students to have the extensive vocabulary and grammar knowledge of the English language when compared to NES.