by Sandra Mcgury

While almost all undergraduate students take composition courses during their first year in college, native speakers (L1ers) enter WIP classes with a more valuable advantage than just these classes: they have been practicing writing ever since they entered elementary school. However, in order to produce a great writing, even native speakers need to learn how to carefully plan, structure and, finally, write down their projects. I think that we can all agree that developing academic writing skills can be quite challenging in one’s native language.

Turning to the English as a second (or even third!) language learners, the L2ers, we realize that they are faced with various additional hurdles to cross before their set of writing skills grows into that of a native speaker’s. Let’s first consider the most basic foundation of writing: the physical writing performance.

For an L1er, this is an almost natural, rather automatic act, whereas for the L2er, it becomes a mindful and conscious step to master, especially when the orthography differs from the L2er’s native language, e.g. when a Ukrainian, Indian, or Thai L1er is writing in English. This also applies to the different styles/media of writing assignments: the L2er is constantly trying to master particular rhetoric styles and different writing conventions specific to the educational and cultural environment.

The L2er’s mind is preoccupied with everything mentioned above in addition to the pressure of choosing the right terminology, paying attention to punctuation, spelling, and syntax. But what happens to the actual content of their writing assignments? What happens to a structured/convincing argument, well-organized thoughts, and well-communicated ideas? L2ers are more likely to spend less time on the latter than their L1er counterpart does.

If we don’t want our L2ers to fall by the wayside as their writing assignments become more challenging, it is most important to offer them additional assistance, not only in preparation for a project, but also throughout the writing process and afterwards.

Being an L2er myself and having taught German, English, and French as second languages for quite a while now, I would like to take this opportunity to share a few ideas on how to support the L2er in a non-L2 classroom, i.e. in a course setting that does not focus on teaching language.

Group work

Collaborative work can greatly enhance student learning. Especially with regard to writing projects, students can learn a lot from their peers. Group work can be implemented as an in-class activity, but it can also be assigned as homework. The instructor or TA should select the students who work together, or at least provide guidance with regard to group formation. The instructor/TA best knows the different students’ abilities and can thus ensure that each member of a group can contribute to the group’s overall result. The instructor/TA should also assign specific roles to each student in order to make sure that nobody is left out and to avoid having stronger students do all the work themselves. These roles should emphasize students’ individual strengths that their peers can learn from. In a classroom with only a handful of L2ers, for example, I would make sure that each group has not more than one L2er. That L2er’s role might involve outlining arguments or taking notes during the initial brainstorming session. Editorial duties, such as reviewing punctuation or grammar, should be assigned to an L1er.

Creative tasks

I think that creativity can improve every student’s learning development, and I am convinced that a creative task can be implemented in all kinds of classrooms (lectures, seminars, foreign language classrooms, and labs). Anything that is a little different from everyday instruction is often perceived as engaging and motivating for students if it is carried out in the right way. Creative tasks help both L1ers and L2ers and can be manipulated to function as communicative tools, focusing on meaning or language.

What is a creative task, you ask? One of my favorite ones is poetry, or more specifically writing poems. Of course, this kind of poem writing differs greatly from the work of William Shakespeare and Robert Frost, but it is highly inspiring, stimulating, and encouraging. In an acrostic poem, the first letter of a line spells out a word or phrase. The word or phrase can be a term/topic that is being discussed in the course (see FOSSIL example, source). Depending on your specific task, you can ask students to come up with related terms, definitions, and associations. You can even ask them to collect adjectives that describe their personal feelings towards a topic.

How does the L2er, in particular, benefit from this exercise? The L2er gets linguistic practice while focusing on the content of the class. Through an exchange of poems, the L2er sees L1ers’ ideas and how they use field-specific terminology.

Another personal favorite (and really appreciated by most of my former students) is the Haiku. Most students are familiar with this form of poetry. A Haiku consist of 3 lines. The first and last lines have 5 syllables and the middle line has 7 syllables. The lines rarely rhyme. Ask students to write a Haiku about their research, the course’s topic, a specific term, or their feelings.

The last creative task I would like to mention is Pamphlet and Screenplay for Children. Ask students to either create a pamphlet or a short screenplay that is targeting elementary school children. Their goal is to explain to children their specific research or specific concepts and terminology, whatever you as a teacher want them to work with. This can be a challenging activity which requires a lot of imagination/creativity from your students. Some L1ers may be able to benefit from the L2ers’ knowledge of English because they are often more likely to use simplified sentence structure and vocabulary. The ability to explain to a child what one’s research or field of study is about will enhance the L2er’s writing skills especially with regard to argument structure and with regard to supporting and exemplifying one’s arguments.

Incorporating creative tasks and collaborative writing projects in the classroom will greatly improve the L2er’s writing experience. L2ers learn through working with others, and collaborative writing assignments allow L2ers to work closely with their L1 peers. The creative tasks not only allow the L2er to work with L1ers, but they allow students to think about their respective fields through playful use of the linguistic component of their fields.