Tompkins, Ch. 4-2: Self-Assessment

As Tompkins aptly notes, it can be laborious and time-consuming for teachers to evaluate students’ wirings within a given instructional time. Self-assessment can be an effective alternative to traditional writing evaluation that can lessen teacher’s burden for assessing students’ writings by teaching them to use a process approach to their own writing. “In self-assessment, children assume responsibility for assessing their own writing …This ability to reflect on one’s own writing promotes organizational skills, self-reliance, independence, and creativity” (Tomkins, 2008, p. 84). Through the self-evaluation and self-reflection that occurs in self-assessment, students can increase their awareness of their own writing process and decisions and thereby develop into a better writer. In this way, self-assessment affords the students an active role in their own learning to be more independent and autonomous learner. Kenny & Hall (1986) asserts that self-assessment is an offshoot of the recent emphasis on the development of learner autonomy as a crucial force in education.

Response to Jaeun Kim

Jaen also mentioned self-assessment as an effective form of alternative testing, citing Curtz as saying that "Self-assessment encourages students to reflect on their learning and results in their consciously improving how they learn. As the students need to keep track of their own progress in their learning, they can be more aware and responsive to their own learning behaviors. Through self-reflections that occur after self-assessment, students will better learn how to learn. In this regard, this metacognivistic function of self-assessment can effectively guide the students throughout the writing process from planning, drafting, revising, to editing phase.

   

Sources

Kenny, B. and D. Hall (1986). Self-assessment as an alternative to testing. 
           Bangkok: CULI.

Tompkins, Gail E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and
           product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Tompkins, Ch. 4 -1: Assessing Children’s Writing

“Assessing writing involves more than just looking at pieces of writing; instead, teachers should focus on the writers themselves (Anderson, 2005, as cited in Tomkins, 2008, p. 76). I take that the writing assessment includes both an ongoing process and a product, not limited to assigning a score to a finalized product. As a formative assessment, “Process assessment is designed to probe how children write, the decisions they make as writers, and the strategies they use, rather than the quality of their finished products” (Tomkins, 2008, p. 81). To present a more complete picture of the multiple dimensions of writing and the growth of a student as a writer, meaningful evaluation should involve both a teacher and a student as well. Among a range of process and product measures, I highly value assessment conferences, self-assessment, and portfolios as excellent tools for alternative and authentic evaluation of writing. “Shared responsibility for evaluation is, in effect, also conductive to the democratic development of language teaching” (Oskarsson, 1998, p. 21). Most importantly, to facilitate the positive effect of authentic forms of evaluation, we, educators, should make endeavor to skillfully weave course designing, instructional lesson planning, developing writing tasks and assignment into feedback process and evaluation.

Response to Miyoung Noh

Miyoung rightly emphasized the importance of balance in assessments in writing instructions. I agree that focusing only one or two aspects of wring will fail to gauge the full potential of the students as a writer. "Teachers should use a variety of assessments: formal and informal, snapshot and whole-piece, process and product, and timed and untimed’. Writing can be cognitively demanding and emotionally excruciating as well. If the students get to equate the quality of writing with the scores or grade they get on their writing, they might develop a habit of safe writing, not taking risks to be more creative. As such obsessions with grades are likely to produce a potentially crippling writing phobia. Thus, employing a range of assessments at various phases of writing process is crucial. After all, we want our students to have confidence to translate their thoughts and feeling into language freely and creatively.      

   

Sources

Oskarsson, M. (1988). Self-assessment of language proficiency: Rationale
         and applications. Paper read at the tenth annual language testing
            research colloquium, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
         March 1998.

Tompkins, Gail E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and
           product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

    

Tompkins, Ch. 11: Poetry Writing

“Children are natural poets. They have a natural affinity for songs, verses, and rhymes. (Tomkins, 2008, p. 243). Whereas many EFL teachers have shown keen interests in using poetry as a type of creative writing in writing classes, the excessive focus on poetic formulas and rhymed verse virtually prevented them from introducing poetry writing to the class. However, Tomkins asserts that rhyme should not be a sole criterion for evaluating acceptable poems. Rather, children should be provided with freedom to seeking their own voices in their writing. The focus should be on creativity, spontaneity and playfulness with language. Thus, introducing children to poetry can be two-folded: first, by providing scaffolding poetry, that is a temporary writing framework for a poetry pattern and poetic formulas, and next using materials that can evoke children’s emotions and rich sensory responses. Above all, “The private world of dreams and desires is an inspiring source of those who wish to write poetry with English learners” (Diaz-Rico, 2008, p. 232).

Response to Sohee Kim

I agree with Sohee’s position that “Poems can serve as excellent material in language teaching as long as the teacher knows how to make the utmost of it”. It might be burden teachers feel about poems that actually hinders introducing them to the writing class. Thus, the teachers as well as the students need to re-evaluate the attitudes toward poetry. Most importantly, we need to let the students appreciate the free-flow of poems. By giving more freedom for expression, the teachers can help their students utilize their imaginative sources. The freer they feel, the better and more creative they will be on their writing.

Sources

Diaz-Rico, L. (2008). Strategies for Teaching English Learners. Boston:

        Allyn &Bacon

Tompkins, Gail E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and

        product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Tompkins, Ch. 10: Descriptive Writing

As Tompkins noted, descriptive wring is especially difficult for EFL learners as they are not equipped with a rich variety of vocabulary. “Descriptive writing is painting pictures with words” elaborated with vivid details, sensory images, and figurative language such as simile, metaphor, and symbolism (Tomkins, 2008, p. 221). The students are advised to show, not tell, as they write” (Macrorie, 1985, as cited in Tomkins, 2008, p. 221). King, a famous author emphasizes the importance of visualization and imagination in descriptive writing by maintaining that “Description begins with visualization of what it is you want the reader to experience. It ends with your translating what you see in your mind into words on the page. It’s far from easy” (King, 2000, p. 173-174). This chapter suggests the teachers help their students become better descriptive writers through minilessons. Developing and using descriptive writing checklists to assess students’ use of descriptive techniques is also highly recommended. It should be noted that descriptive techniques play a role in almost every type of sophisticated writing; thus, students need to have concrete skills to describe and create a picture in writing so as to help readers see details.

Response to Minjung Kim

“A descriptive writing enables readers to draw pictures of the writing from the whole to the specific aspects. Readers use their five senses -seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting and touching- and visualize what they read, and get involved in feeling of the author’s perspectives or experience portrayed in the writing”. Reflecting on my own writing experiences, writing more specifically in detail using five senses was one of the hardest tasks. Personally, I emphasize the importance of vast reading to improve this type of writing. Seeing how novelists adeptly describe the world and people in their stories will provide good basis on which they can develop their writing skills. In that sense, writing is definitely a learned skill.

Sources

King, S. (2000). On writing: A memoir of the craft. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Tompkins, Gail E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and

         product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Tompkins, Ch. 9: Narrative Writing

Narrative writing goes hand in hand with reading skills. In order to create narrative writing, the students as readers first learn to examine “the elements of story structure-plot, setting, character, theme, and point of view” and then as writers they get to “apply these elements in writing stories” (Tomkins, 2008, p. 211). With narrative writing, “children can gradually increase their capacity to write descriptive and complex stories with coherent structure and plots” (Graham, MacArthur, Fitzgerald, 2007, p. 71). As children make progress, they will write a more complex story plot that includes a conflict between characters describing their mental states, increase story cohesion using conjunctions, and present more vivid pictures of a story by skillfully using a literary device such as metaphors, similes, and symbols, etc. Thus, in teaching teachers need to provide developmentally appropriate scaffolding strategies to meet different levels and needs of the students. Otherwise, students might be stuck in a rather simple story plot that is literally a series of actions between characters without depth.  

Response to Jaeun Kim

Jaeun suggested one insightful way to teach narrative writing in class, citing Chavis who introduced art as an effective prompt for this type writing. I take using art such as paintings and posters as a prompt of writing really fascinating. “They can understand feelings and motives of other people and implement these feelings in their written narratives” This method can effectively tap into students’ imagination; thus, students can learn narrative writing in a creative and entertaining way. The students will try to read and understand the motives and stories of paintings and express them in their own words.

Sources

Graham, S., MacArthur, Charles A, and Fitzgerald, J. (2007).  Best

          Practices in Writing Instruction. New-York, NY: The Guilford Press.

Tompkins, Gail E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and

          product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Tompkins, Ch. 8: Expository Writing

This chapter shed light on the effective use of expository writing for lower graders, which was enlightening. The main purpose of expository writing is to explain, interpret, or make a detailed statement based on process, cause and effect, comparison & contrast, definition, and problem and solution. A general consensus has been that expository writing as one of the difficult types of writing usually should be postponed until the students acquire basic literacy skills in reading and writing. However, “Through early, successful experiences with expository writing, children not only learn how to write reports but also gain knowledge in different subject areas” (Tomkins, 2008, p. 173). In particular, multigenre projects seem plausible for older graders in content based instruction as the students learn to utilize a variety of genres for their projects. The students will learn to use different organizational, factual, structural patterns depending on information they are to present. In this sense, expository writing can serve as a predictor of academic literacy in the long run where students are to discover an “enlarging horizon that every discourse can open to their view” and thus be able to manipulate writing skills at different discourse level (Spellmeyer, 1989, p. 274, as cited in Diaz-Rico, 2008, p. 192).

Response to Minkyu Kim

I like your phrases that expository writing allows children to learn more about what's and how-to's of the world. From your reflection, I can take that expository writing is about facts of life. The main purpose of this type of writing only is to let people know what kind of the world we are in, but does not provide any subjective judgmental opinion to affect readers. The final judgment lies in the reader.  

Sources

Diaz-Rico, L. (2008). Strategies for Teaching English Learners. Boston:

       Allyn &Bacon

Tompkins, Gail E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and

       product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson

Tompkins, Ch. 7: Biographical Writing

Biographical writing provides the students with interesting and engaging moments for creative writing. In writing a personal narrative, students describe a real-life story based on their own experiences and draw conclusion that explains what the experience meant to them. “Young children as well as older students become more active, engaged writers as they write about themselves in personal narratives” (Steinberg, 1991, as cited in Tomkins, 2008, p. 148). Writing biographies of others offers insightful opportunities as well in that they can examine a person’s life- living or dead, accomplished or nominal- from historical, psychological, or sociological perspective. Biography writing not only requires the students to illuminates the social context of person’s life, but also provides room for personal reflections to be told (Griffiths & Macleod, 2008). That way, the students can be more reflective by intertwining their life with accounts of others; thus, leading them to be open to different perspectives on life. Being reflective and having differentiated ideas and perspectives is a key to creative writing.

Response to Julien Sanghyo Park

I like the quote cited, “Biographical writing is highly imaginative writing and always has been. The task of the biographer is to weave a riveting story from the fabric of the subject's life” (Felderman, 1989). This quote seems to me to well express the essence of biographical writing. When engaged in this type of writing, students need to focus on the most impressive or memorable incident in the person’s life that merits serious consideration. Basing on these topics, they are reformulating their stories through their own lenses. That way, biographical writing can provide the students with valuable reflective learning. Being reflective can open more doors in their own leaning process to be more creative.

Sources

Griffiths, M., & Macleod, G. (2008). Personal narratives and policy: Never
         the Twain? Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42 (s1), 121-143.

Tompkins, Gail E. (2008). Teaching writing: Balancing process and
         product. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson