Speaking of writing: Some functions of talk in the ESL composition class

JOURNAL

OF SECOND

LANGUAGE

WRITING,

3 (2), 121-139

(1994)

Speaking of Writing: Some Functions of Talk in the ESL Composition Class BOB WEISSBERG New Mexico State University

The social interoctionist view of emergent literacy holds that a learner’s early attempts at writing are grounded in speech ond, therefore, that the development of written language is best fostered within o supportive conversational environment. Many second longuage (L2) teachers recognize that an interactive classroom also benefits L2 writers by providing them with an enhanced oral language environment in which to develop literacy skills. However, the specific roles that oral discourse plays in the L2 writing classroom are not well understood. This article explores the functions of oral language in university English as a Second Language (ESL) composition classes. A case study is reported describing instructional discourse in five ESL writing classes. A set of discourse categories is employed that analyzes classroom conversation specifically as it relates to writing. Findings indicate relatively little classroom talk devoted to topic invention and development or to oral reheorsal of potential written text. The majority of teachers’ speech moves functioned either to give direct instruction or to onolyze already written texts. Results also point to the critical role that transmission-style instruction and textbook use play in determining the oral discourse characteristics of composition classes. Finally, techniques are suggested through which ESL writing teachers can better manage the role that talk plays in their composition classes and allow for a greater range of classroom discourse styles to best fit their instructional goals.

THE SPEAKING/WRITING

CONNECTION

The link between oracy and literacy is one that has interested linguists, psychologists, and language educators for the better part of this century. !n the late 1920s and early 193Os, Vygotsky investigated the role of reading and writing in the changing cognitive structure of the individual child. He used the term inner speech to describe the self-directed dialogue that he believed to be the basis of a child’s thought. He proposed that a child’s early writing was in fact This article is a revised version of a presentation made at the conference of Rocky Mountain Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages held in Albuquerque, NM, November 1, 1991. I am most grateful to the five teachers and their students who allowed me to collect the data on which this article is based, two anonymous reviewers, Suzanne Buker, and the journal editors, all of whom provided valuable comments on the original manuscript. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Bob Weissberg, Department of Communication Studies, Box 3W, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003.

121

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B. Weissberg

inner speech written down (Vygotsky, 1978). Since Vygotsky’s work, researchers from many disciplines have examined the interaction of oral and written language in social life and in formal education. Throughout this large body of work runs the Vygotskian notion of social interaction as the basis of writing. Literacy theorists such as Olson (1977), Ong (1982), and Goody (1987) have examined oracy and literacy in the abstract, or as they impact whole societies, while linguists (Biber, 1988; Chafe & Danielewicz, 1987; Halliday, 1989; Tarmen, 1982) have systematically compared lexical, syntactic, and discourse features of written and spoken language. In the literature on first language (Ll) writers, psycholinguists have examined the oral and written language of children (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1982) and college students (de Beaugrande, 1982) and have attempted to model the production factors that account for learners’ ability to produce written texts at various levels of expertness. It is claimed that qualitative differences in novice writers’ texts reflect the varying degree to which they are able to move from a dialogue mode (dependence on a conversational partner to generate extended discourse) to a monologue mode (the ability to produce extended written text autonomously). Language educators (Britton, 1982; Dyson, 1983; Graves, 1983; Moffett, 1968; Teale, 1982) have also taken up the interactionist approach. They have stressed the need for Ll composition teachers to promote a social atmosphere in the classroom that will allow students’ writing to develop out of their knowledge of and facility with the oral language. They espouse a naturalistic, conversationbased approach to teaching literacy through the use of dialogue journals and expressive writing assignments. Meanwhile, research on the language of Ll student editing groups (Gere & Stevens, 1985; Nystrand, 1986) and writing conferences between teachers and first (Freedman & Katz, 1987; Sperling, 1990) and second language students (Goldstein & Conrad, 1990) has begun to uncover the salient features of small-group and one-to-one discourse in helping students learn to plan, write, and review their texts. However, the instructional discourse of traditional teacher-fronted writing instruction has received little attention. To the author’s knowledge, only Stock and Robinson (1990) and Cumming (1992) have investigated the functions of classroom talk during whole-class composition instruction at the university level. Stock and Robinson (1990) examined the ways in which Ll composition teachers make use of classroom talk to develop a community of critical writers and peer readers among students. They use the term textbuilding to describe classroom discussions that carry over what students know about writing and writing topics into the act of writing itself. They analyze textbuilding talk as consisting of six different speech functions, the most interesting of which from the point of view of this discussion is exploration. In orally exploring a topic, teacher and students collaboratively bring to the foreground, develop, critique, and organize knowledge that will subsequently be used in a writing task. Stock

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and Robinson found that with its relaxed participation structure, exploration created the greatest latitude for classroom interaction of any of the six functions they identified. Cumming (1992) focused on the discourse organization of English as a Second Language (ESL) composition lessons by identifying six instructional routines which three ESL composition teachers used recursively to organize oral discourse in their classes. One routine in particular, “collectively constructing interpretations,” in which teachers led open-ended discussions, proved especially useful in promoting “interactive and responsive” talk among class participants (p. 25). For second language (L2) learners, classroom talk takes on importance from both social interactionist and cognitive perspectives. Like their Ll counterparts, L2 writers may benefit from the use of talk to explore topics for composition, to encode their ideas linguistically, and to bring to conscious awareness aspects of the writing process. But before one can begin to study the effects of oral discourse on students’ writing, one must first identify as precisely as possible the functions of talk in the writing classroom. The study reported here addressed the ways in which five university ESL composition teachers and their students talked about writing during teacher-fronted, whole-class instruction. It attempted to answer the following questions about speaking/writing relationships in such a setting: 1.

2. 3.

What are typical speech moves in university ESL composition classes, and how might they be categorized as they relate specifically to writing tasks and written products? With what relative frequencies do specific speech moves occur, and who (students or teachers) most frequently makes which moves? What do these typologies and frequencies imply for the efficacy of L2 composition instruction at the university level? METHODOLOGY

To address these questions, a naturalistic case study was conducted involving five composition classes in a credit-bearing ESL program at a mid-sized state university. The five classes selected represented a broad range of student writing abilities, Ll backgrounds, and teaching styles. One of the classes was a scientific writing course for graduate students (identified as Lesson 2); another was an advanced composition class for undergraduates (Lesson 3). The students in these two classes represented a variety of backgrounds, principally Asian, MiddleEastern, and Latin American. The remaining three classes were part of the university’s intensive English program; one class (Lesson 4) was at the advanced level, while the remaining two (Lessons 1 and 5) were low-intermediate. Most of these students were native speakers of Spanish. Each of the five classes was

B. Weitrberg

taught by a different instructor, all experienced composition teachers. One 50” minute lesson was recorded from each class, transcribed, and subjected to a discourse analysis. Before collecting and analyzing these data, a pilot study was conducted with another composition class (and a different instructor) in the same writing program. The purpose of the pilot study was to generate a manageable set of speech move categories which would describe the propositional content of any given move with respect to either written products or writing processes. This was accomplished through a qualitative research technique known as analytic induction (Goetz & LeCompte, 1984, pp. 179-182). The pilot class was observed and tape recorded; then the teacher-student talk was transcribed and scanned in order to develop a preliminary, heuristic set of categories. The goal in analytic induction is to develop a typology that will account for all cases; thus, additional lessons with the pilot group were recorded and the resulting transcriptions were again analyzed. On the basis of the conversational data from these new lessons, the initial set of categories was modified to account for subsequent examples that did not fit the original typology. The teacher of the pilot class was interviewed and asked to listen to portions of the transcript in order to help produce a set of descriptive, unambiguous labels for the various speech moves, based on her intent at the time of utterance. The notion of speech move comes from the work of Bellack, Kliebard, Hyman, and Smith (1966) and Coulthard (1985) and is defined as an utterance, or part of an utterance, consisting of one tone group, ending in a completed intonation contour, with a single, clearly identifiable pragmatic intent. In analyzing speech moves in the pilot study, both the pragmatic function of an utterance and its relation to writing were taken into account. Thus, a teacher’s utterance: (a) “I want you all to bring in an outline for your paper next Friday.” has a structuring function and at the same time refers to the planning stage of the writing process. Similarly, a student’s query: (b) “Do I need to put a comma before ‘and’?” functions pragmatically as a solicit and at the same time refers to the editing stage of writing. Both student and teacher moves were considered, though only those which had direct relevance to the planning, production, or analysis of written text were tallied. Pragmatic function labels were eventually dropped to simplify the coding procedure, and a final set of five writing-elated speech categories was settled on which appeared to account for all teacher and student moves in the pilot study data. These categories were then used to code transcripts of the five classes used in this study.

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COMPOSITION LESSON SPEECH MOVE CATEGORIES Lesson Structure The model of lesson structure initially used in the analysis was taken from Mehan (1979), who claimed that most classroom talk is composed of repeated patterns of three speech moves: (a) the teacher’s initiation (I), (b) a student’s response (R), and (c) the teacher’s reactive evaluation (E) of the response. Mehan’s prototypical example of the three-part sequence is: T: S:

What time is it, Denise? (I) It’s 1230. (R)

T:

Good! (E)

Central to the I-R-E sequence is the displuy question (the “I” part of the sequence), in which the teacher asks a student to provide information the teacher already knows. A hypothetical I-R-E sequence in an ESL composition class can easily be imagined: T:

S: T:

Does this paragraph have a topic sentence? No, it doesn’t. You’re right!

In Mehan’s model, I-R-E sequences are organized into a series of longer episodes (topically related sets in his terminology), each of which revolves around a particular topic of instruction (Figure 1). One can imagine a writingclass episode in which the punctuation of a paragraph is discussed for several minutes, followed by another episode devoted to creating cohesion among the sentences. Episodes are in turn organized into an overall lesson scheme consisting of opening, instruction, and closing phases.

Speech Moves ‘Bxt-Instruct Moves These are moves (usually made by the instructor) dealing with the strategies, techniques, conventions or “rules” of writing. They deal with both rhetorical and mechanical aspects of composition and are directive in nature, though not always explicitly so. In the present data, text-instruct moves were sometimes formal rule statements and at other times were couched as suggestions on how best to solve a particular composition problem. Two examples of text-instruct moves from the present corpus are: (c)

T: When we write another sentence based on some connection.. . . In other words the next sentence should have some connection to the previous sentence. That’s what we mean by logical sequencing. [writing strategy]

(d)

T: According to the rules of outlining, you’re not supposed to have only one category. [rule/convention]

sequence;

Key: T =

I

I

1

T-S-T

I-R-E

I

I

1

T-S-T

I-Ntal

Sequential

organization

lnformative

From Learning Lessons: Social Organization in the Classroom by H. Mehan, 1979, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Copyright 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission.

Figure 1. The Structure of Classroom Lessons

teacher; 5 = student; I-R-E = initiation-reply-evaluation ( EQ) = Evaluation optional in informative sequence.

Participants

sequence5

-ki

Instructional

Lesson

1 Directive

Closing

Speaking

127

‘&x&Generate

Moves These are moves in which potential text is spoken aloud before or just as it is being written. They reflect a writer’s attempt to formulate or rehearse text orally at the point of transcription, in a sense, “writing out loud.” In the data, textgenerate moves occurred in lesson episodes given over to group composing or revision or when students gave responses to an exercise. When uttered by the teacher, text-generate moves were often performed as citations, fixed phrases or sentences meant to provide a specific solution to a composing problem. When made by students, the moves were frequently uttered tentatively, with rising intonation, as if the writer were sending up a trial balloon to test the acceptability of a particular phrase. Two examples are: (e)

(f)

T: So you could say, “A graph of the results can be found in Appendix [citation] T: Sl: T: Sl:

A.”

Anyone care to give me something to write on the board? The judicial proc...proc... procedure? (writing on the board) . . . in the United States?. . . I don’t know. [trial balloon]

%x&Analyze

Moves

Text-analyze moves are those that students or teachers make to explain, discuss, or ask about a sample of written text. The source might be the textbook, a teacher handout, a photocopied student paper, or a blackboard example. In these data, text-analyze moves were especially common in class sessions devoted to critiquing student texts or working through textbook exercises. Analysis moves were most frequently (but not always) made by the instructor. Two examples are: (g)

T: Why is answer C better than the others? [doing a textbook exercise]

(h)

T: Do we have the right punctuation here? S: No, the next line after “Mexico” we need a period. text]

%x&Read

[critiquing

a student

Moves

Text-read moves were simply that: teachers or students reading written text aloud. These moves were observed during pair revision activities and in-group composition sessions (where they alternated with text-generate moves); they also occurred in episodes devoted to extended analysis of a text. Text-read moves serve a variety of functions: Students sometimes read portions of their own texts aloud to test them for grammaticality or appropriateness; teachers read aloud passages from the textbook or from a student paper to set up a subsequent instructional move or to illustrate a preceding one. As we shall see later, teachers also used text-read moves to mark off longer segments of discourse from one another.

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128

l&t-Expiore Moves Exploratory moves were made by teachers and students when they were developing or rehearsing ideas related to an assigned composition topic. They directly reflect the planning phase of the writing process: inventing, evaluating, and ordering ideas for subsequent transcription into words and phrases. In these lessons, text-explore moves usually occurred during classroom discussion as part of prewriting activities. When exploratory moves occurred, they were often made by students in response to a teacher’s leading question. The following excerpt from a group composition activity illustrates exploratory moves in Lesson 5: T: What’s some of the info~at~on we could include.. . the disadvantages, ways to collect the solar energy? Sl: Use? T: Use, or uses in this cases. What else could we possibly paragraph if we want to summarize the story? 52: The problems? T: The problems. . . ? S 1: Disadvantages. T: That’s really disadvantages, isn’t it? Let’s say disadvantages, (writes on board), S3: Sources. T: Sources or source? Sl: Source... Next we turn to the frequencies with which these five moves (i)

advantages,

include in a

or problems

occurred, and the larger episodes into which they were organized. In so doing, we will see that it is possible to create an oral discourse profile for each of the five composition classes. The profiles reveal how these teachers operationalized their approaches to composition instruction through their shaping of classroom discourse. RESULTS Lesson Structure Analyzed as speech events, the five lessons conformed in broad outline to Mehan’s (1979) three-phase model of lesson structure. In each case, a brief opening phase dominated by the teacher’s procedural moves introduced the central instructional phase of the lesson, consisting of several lengthy episodes. Episodes were devoted to a variety of topics, depending on the class (e.g., punctuation, placement of tables and graphs in a scientific paper, sentence cohesion, etc.). Mehan’s I-R-E sequences were observed in some episodes but not in others, as will be discussed below. In three of the five lessons (Lessons 2,3, and 4), an extended in-class writing task was set for students toward the end of the instructional phase; in Lessons 1 and 5 (the lower level intensive classes), the entire instructional phase was

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devoted to a group writing project. In each of the five classes, there was a closing phase in which the instructor summarized the activity, commented on the students’ performance, an&or engaged in various “housekeeping tasks” such as collecting papers and setting assignments for the next class. Speech Moves Totals and percentages for all text-related moves made by teachers and students in the five lessons are shown in Table 1. The five speech moves devoted to writing matters per se accounted for virtually all moves recorded during the instructional phases of the lessons; nonwriting procedural moves were restricted to lesson openings and closings and accounted for a little over 5% of total moves made. Of the text-related moves, the most frequent were text-instruct and textanalyze, together accounting for nearly 71% of all moves in the five lessons. For four of the five teachers, these two moves accounted for more than half of their total moves. Only one instructor failed to perform any analysis moves. The least common moves were text-generate and text-explore. Even reading text aloud occurred more frequently than rehearsing text orally or discussing ideas that would eventually lead to text creation. One teacher (in Lesson 5) alone was responsible for 88% of the exploratory moves in the entire corpus, which occurred during the group com~sition exercise referred to earlier in Example (i); three of the five instructors made no text-explore moves at all. As might be expected, teachers accounted for the great majority (almost three quarters) of all moves made during the five lessons. In only one of the lessons (Lesson 4) did students account for more than 30% of the total. Teachers outproduced students on each move except text-generate. The teacher-to-student ratio ranged from a low of approximately 2: 1 for text-analyze moves to as much as 10~1 for text-read. Only in the case of text-generate moves did students contribute as frequently as did teachers. Since teacher turns tended to be longer than students’, the real-time difference between total teacher and student talk is assumed to have been even greater than the frequency data indicate.

TABLE 1 leacher and Student Conversational Moves in Five ESL Composition Lessons.

Text-instruct Text-analyze Text-read Text-generate Text-explore Totals

Teacher

Student

Total

% Teacher Initiated

% Student initiated

Combined % of Ail Moves

457 338 156 77 81 1109

112 166 16 80 31 405

563 504 172 157 112 1514

80.3 67.1 90.7 49.0 72.3 73.2

19.7 32.3 3.3 51.0 27.7 26.8

37.6 33.3 11.4 10.4 7.4 100.0

130

Percentages Move

8.

of Speech Instruct

Weissberg

TABLE 2 Moves by Lesson (Student Analyze

Read

+ Teacher Moves Combined) Generate

Explore

Lesson 1 Lesson 2 Lesson 3 Lesson 4

28.7 95.1 25.7 14.6

30.1 0.0 45.5 74.0

16.1 2.4 12.2 10.2

25.1 2.4 9.9 1.2

0.0 0.0 6.8 0.0

Lesson 5

10.5

33.9

16.7

13.4

25.5

Lesson Profiles What is obscured in the general results shown in Table 1 is the extent to which the five classes differed in their individual discourse styles. Three of the lessons were dominated by a particular move which gave the class a clearly defined discourse profile (‘lbble 2). For example, in Lesson 2 (the graduate writing class), the teacher’s moves were almost wholly text-instruct. The lesson in fact consisted of an extended series of rules given by the teacher for the placement and construction of tables and diagrams in a scientific article, with intermittent student requests for clarification. Lessons 3 and 4, on the other hand, were dominated by analysis moves. In Lesson 3 (the advanced ~derg~duate class), most of the class discussion was spent identifying strengths and weakness of written examples in a series of textbook exercises. In Lesson 4 (the advanced level intensive class), the teacher led her students through a review of a recently completed test on punctuation and then worked through a related exercise from the textbook. Data for Lessons 1 and 5 (the low-level intensive classes) revealed more balanced dist~butions of moves than the other classes. In these teacher-led group writing lessons there was more variety in the types of speech moves made and greater student participation in general. What distinguished Lesson 1 from Lesson 2 was the absence of exploratory moves in the former; the students in this class did not discuss the information content of the paragraph while they orally composed (as was the case in Lesson 5), but simply suggested and manipulated possible text. Episodes An analysis of the sequential patterns of speech moves in each lesson revealed that they were organized into episodes, extended stretches of connected talk created spontaneously by teachers and students as they strung together topically related sequences of moves. The typical episode in these lessons was not only topically coherent but was also dominated by a particular type of speech move. Three episode types were identified: those primarily given over to instructing, analyzing, or exploring/generating moves.

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Instruct episodes consisted of a series of rules or tips given by the teacher, with students participating in a quasi-discussion through teacher-initiated display questions. Instructing episodes were typically closed, in that they contained a limited number of repeated, predictably sequenced moves following the I-R-E pattern. An example from Lesson 2, the scientific writing class (see Appendix A), illustrates this kind of episode. Here the teacher follows a recursive pattern of setting out a rule in a major text-instruct move, then explicating the rule by eliciting student response through a series of display questions. The structure of this episode may be depicted formally as [INSTRUCT] + IRE + IRE

(etc.) + [INSTRUCT]; [INSTRUCT] + IRE + IRE...

This pattern was repeated throughout Lesson 2, interspersed with episodes of more spontaneous discussion (student-initiated questions and teacher replies). The string of episodes came to an end when the teacher set a written exercise. Analysis episodes were characterized by teacher and students engaging in extended discussion of textbook examples and exercises or in critiquing pieces of student writing. Also highly patterned in their discourse profile, analysis episodes typically featured a series of I-R-E sequences bounded by a major textanalysis move from the teacher. An example from Lesson 3, the advanced undergraduate composition course, illustrates an analysis episode in which a textbook exercise on logical sequencing was being discussed (Appendix B). Since the lesson is primarily a discussion of a printed text, the I-R-E sequences are further marked off by the teacher’s text-read moves, which serve to foreground topics for analysis. A formal description of this closed episode may be written as [READ] + [ANALYZE] + IRE + IRE, etc.

; [READ] + [ANALYZE] + IRE...

The third episode type, explore/generate, was observed in Lessons 1 and 5, the teacher-led collaborative composition sessions. Although dominated by textexplore and text-generate moves, these episodes were structurally open in that they allowed for a greater variety of speech moves by both teacher and students in less predictable sequences. Repeated I-R-E sequences were not a feature of these episodes. In one example from Lesson 5 (Appendix C), all possible moves except text-instruct occurred in no particular order, making it difficult to reduce the episode to a formal description. Thus, in moving from a microanalysis of speech moves to a wider view of episode structure, it becomes apparent that the discourse profiles of these lessons were determined not simply by the frequencies of individual moves, but also by the patterned sequences into which teachers organized their own moves and those of their students into longer episodes.

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B. Weissberg

DISCUSSION Viewed superficially, these five classes did not differ greatly from Mehan’s (1979) prototypical model of the lesson as speech event. The teachers organized their class time around the three-phase format with emphasis on the central instructional phase. They maintained a consistent focus on the instructional topic at hand, and they used whole-class instruction to control the flow of discourse, while at the same time allowing for student participation (some to a greater degree than others). Where they departed from the model most significantly was in their inclusion of extended in-class writing activities toward the end of the instructional phase. Thus, the lessons fell somewhere between traditional transmission-style teaching and the “workshop” classes observed by Cumming (1992). A closer look at the lesson episodes reveals two features of importance to ESL writing instruction. First, occurrence of initiate-respond-evaluate sequences were context-specific; they were initiated by teachers mainly during instruct and analyze episodes. Of the three episode types described earlier, these are the two which most closely resemble traditional, transmission-style instruction. By setting up these kinds of episodes, the teachers organized the discourse of their classrooms into conventionalized, repetitive patterns. In these episodes, class discussion was in fact a managed set piece covering a predetermined chunk of lesson material. In contrast, the absence of I-R-E sequences produced a less controlled, more open style of talk in the explore/generate episodes of Lessons 1 and 5, a characteristic also noted by Cumming (1992) in routines which he termed “collaborative construction. ” Perhaps lesson episodes devoted to rule giving and text analysis by their very nature lend themselves to a mom conventionalized style of classroom discourse. Secondly, repeated I-R-E patterns frequently co-occurred with the teacher’s use of a textbook during the lesson. In both the instruct and analyze episodes illustrated here (Appendices A and B), the textbook served not only as the lesson organizer but as a discourse determiner as well. While hewing to the linear presentation of material as dictated by their books, teachers and students produced more predictable and repetitive sequences of speech moves. In contrast, in Lessons 1 and 5, where textbooks were not in use, the style of talk was more conversational. In these lessons the absence of I-R-E sequences, and of teacher display questions in particular, also resulted in a lower ratio of teacher to student moves. Although still led by the teacher, the discussions were less directive. Thus, it appears that the controlled, asymmetrical participant structure typical of teacher-fronted instruction (Cazden, 1988) may be altered to some degree by the absence of a textbook. To what extent the tight control by the teacher over classroom discourse seen in Lessons 2 and 3 is desirable in ESL composition instruction is a question that deserves further study. On the one hand, closed patterns are more time-efficient in conveying information to the student. If the teacher’s goal is to devote class

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time to establishing criteria (Cumming, 1992) for student writing, most of which will be done out of class, more controlled discourse may be desirable. On the other hand, opportunities for collaborative textbuilding talk are reduced. It is interesting to note that Lessons 2, 3, and 4, which were dominated by instruct and analyze episodes, were taught to higher level students than were Lessons 1 and 5. The discourse patterns in these classes may reflect the teachers’ sense that direct instruction, rather than oral development of writing topics and generating text, was the best use of their limited instructional time. In contrast, the teachers of Lessons 1 and 5 may have viewed the writing class as an opportunity to develop their students’ oral as well as literacy skills, and thus deliberately created a more conversational atmosphere. As Cumming (1992) suggests, one mark of experienced composition teachers may be their ability to shift from one discourse pattern to another depending on their instructional goals at given moments during a lesson. Using talk to support and enhance students’ written language may have value beyond the lower level classroom. Bowden (1989) reviews an extensive literature in Ll composition teaching that favors the dialogic “talk/write” method (Zoellner, 1969) as a means to help native speaker students develop fluency in both modalities, to find an authentic written voice, and to develop a sense of their readers’ information needs. Hunter (1989) and Scardamalia and Bereiter (1985) see prewriting and conference talk as a “scaffold” to help orally fluent native speaker writers move from dependency on interpersonal dialogue to sustained, internally cued text production. For ESL writers with advanced oral ability, these techniques may produce similar benefits. Rubin, Goodrum, and Hall (1990) acknowledge that combining speaking and writing practice in class may promote “oral interference” (p. 57), that is, the negative transfer of conversational forms inappropriate to written Iangauge. This may be particularly true in technical and scientific writing classes. On the other hand, helping students import elements from their speech may give their informative and persuasive writing more character and a more mature, less stilted style. Rubin et al. suggest that ESL students from “oral-based” cultures (p. 66) may be encouraged to carry over their heightened sense of oral rhetoric into their writing. For ESL writing instructors, regardless of their students’ proficiency level, another important value of class conversation may be to raise students’ awareness of the cognitive processes involved in producing written text. What I have identified as explore/generate episodes have much in common with what Cumming (1992) terms colfecriveconstructionand Stock and Robinson (1990) call textbuilding.They all refer to types of discourse that orally replicate the mental tasks involved in composing: generating ideas, selecting and organizing propositional content, encoding propositions into text, and evaluating whether the resulting text “says” what the writer intends. By verbally shifting among these tasks with their classes in explore/generate episodes, teachers may help students gain more conscious control over their own writing processes, strength-

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erring the executive “monitor” that Flower and Hayes (1981) posit as central to the composing process. As Manglesdorf (1989) points out, oral interaction in the classroom helps students use writing for cognitive growth, not simply as a means of producing more accurate texts (p. 140). Analysis of classroom talk in a wide variety of composition lessons with many other teachers is needed to verify the scheme employed here and to learn how talk about writing varies with class level, lesson content, and teacher expertise. The corpus used in this study is a small one and is limited to one lesson for each instructor. Thus, it is impossible to know whether the moves and episodes are indicative of these teachers’ typical classroom speaking styles, let alone whether they reflect the discourse features of ESL composition classes in general. However what is clear from these lessons is that teachers’ moment-tomoment speech move decisions can result in vastly different kinds of classroom environments. Cazden (1988) has made the point that in the most effective lessons, classroom discourse fits the learning tasks posed by the subject matter; nowhere is this fit more critical than in skill-based courses such as L2 composition. Although traditional teacher-fronted composition instruction may be appropriate for some students at some points in the syllabus, the discourse restrictions it imposes underline the need for teachers to closely examine the characteristics of their whole-class talk and to experiment with alternatives to teacher-fronted instruction. Collaborative writing projects, peer editing groups, and conferencing, among other formats, have been suggested as ways of injecting oral interaction into the writing class (Manglesdorf, 1989). Preservice and in-service training programs in instructional discourse can help teachers gain awareness of their verbal behaviors and give them techniques to achieve a closer match between their classroom talk and the learning objectives they set for their students. Teachers can record and analyze the speech moves they and their students make during whole-class instruction and examine the effects of their own moves, especially display questions, on the discourse profiles of their lessons. For example, an analysis episode that begins with the teacher’s move, “What do you think about the first sentence in this paragraph?” can result in a far different profile from one beginning with “What’s wrong with the topic sentence?“. Teachers can also experiment with speech moves that stimulate students to engage in explore/generate episodes. One way to begin such episodes is with authentic, open-ended questions like “What are some good ideas we could use here?” Episodes can be extended with prompts like “Go on, what else?” “Can you think of an example?” or “What could be a reason for that?” Revision can be prompted with moves like “I’m not sure peopie will understand what you mean here” (Scardamalia Br Bereiter, 1985). Teachers’ turning student questions back to the class (“I don’t know, what do the rest of you think about that?*‘), rather than answering themselves, is another device for keeping episodes open.

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As Heath (1983) and Cazden (1988) have convincingly argued, classroom talk is a critical component in the efficacy of instruction. The power of ESL composition teachers’ speech moves to shape classroom discourse as shown in this study leads logically to the examination of whether classroom talk about writing actually influences how students’ write.

REFERENCES Bellack, A., Kliebard, H., Hyman, R., & Smith, I? (1966). The language of zhe classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1982). From conversation to composition: The role of instruction in a developmental process. In R. Glaser (Ed.), Advances in instructionalpsychology(pp. l-64). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bowden, D. (1989). Spoken and written voices in the composition classroom. The Writing Instructor, B, lOO-104.

Britton, J. (1982). Spectator role and the beginning of writing. In M. Nystrand (Ed.), What writers know: The language, process and structure of written discourse (pp. 149-169). Orlando, FL: Academic. Cazden, C. (1988). Classroom discourse: The language ofteaching and learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Chafe, W.. & Danielewicz, J. (1987). Properties of oral and written language. In R. Horowitz & S. Samuels (Eds.), Comprehending spoken and wrizzen language (pp. 83-113). New York: Academic. Cot&hard, M. (1985). An introduction to discourse analysis (2nd ed.). London: Longman. Cumming, A. (1992). Instructional routines in ESL composition teaching: A case study of three teachers. Journal of Second Language Wrifing, I, 17-35. de Beaugrande, R. (1982). Psychology and composition: Past, present and future. In M. Nystrand (Ed.), What writers know: The language, process and structure of written discourse (pp. 211-267). Orlando, FL: Academic. Dyson, A. (1983). The role of oral language in early writing processes. Research in the Teaching of English, 17, l-30.

Flower, L., & Hayes, J. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College Composition Communication,

and

32, 361-387.

Freedman, S., & Katz, A. (1987). Pedagogical interaction during the composing process: The writing conference. In A. Matsuhashi (Ed.), Writing in real time: Uoa’elling production processes (pp. 58-80). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Gerc, A., & Stevens, R. (1985). The language of writing groups: How oral response shapes revision. In S. Freedman (Ed.), The acquisifion of wriften language (pp. 8slO.5). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Goetz, J., & LeCompte, M. (1984). Ethnogmphic and qualitative design in educational research. Orlando, FL: Academic. Goldstein, L.. & Conrad, S. (1990). Student input and negotiation of meaning in ESL writing conferences. TESOL Quarterly, 24, 443-460. Goody, J. (1987). The interface between the written and the oral. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Teachers and chiMren at work. Exeter: NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Halliday, M. (1989). Spoken and written language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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S. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunter, S. (1989). Oral negotiations in a textual community: A case for pedagogy and theory. The Writing Instructor, 8, 105-110. Manglesdorf, K. (1989). Parallels between speaking and writing in second language acquisition. In D. Johnson & D. Roen (Eds.), Richness in writing: Empowering ESL students (pp. 134-145). London: Longman. Mehan, H. (1979). Learning lessons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moffett, J. (1968). Teaching the universe of discourse. New York Houghton Mifflin. Nystrand, M. (1986). Reciprocity as a principle of discourse. In M. Nystrand (Ed.), The structure of written communicarion (pp. 39-58). Orlando, FL: Academic. Olson, D. (1977). From utterance to text: The bias of language in speech and writing. Harvard Educational Review, 47, 257-281. Ong, W.J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen. Rubin, D., Goodrum, R., & Hall, B. (1990). Orality, oral-based culture, and the academic writing of ESL students. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 1, 56-76. Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1985). Development of dialectical processes in composition. In D. Olson, N. Torrance, & A. Hildyard @is.), Literacy, language and learning: The nature and consequences ofreading and writing (pp. 307-329). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sperling, M. (1990). I want to talk to each of you: Collaboration and the teacher-student writing conference. Research in the Teaching of English, 24, 279-321. Stock, P., & Robinson, J. (1990). Literacy as conversation: Classroom talk as text building. In J. Robinson (Ed.), Conversations on the written word: Essays on language and literacy (pp. 163-238). Portsmouth, NH: BoyntonXook. Tannen, D. (Ed.). (1982). Spoken and written language: Exploring orality and literacy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Teale, W. (1982). Toward a theory of how children learn to read and write naturally. Language Arts, 59, 555-570. Vygotaky, L. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Zoellner, R. (1969). Tall-write: A behavioral pedagogy for composition. College English, 30, 276-320. Heath,

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Speaking

APPENDIX

A: INSTRUCT

EPISODE

Lesson 2-Scientific Writing Class We’re gonna go on with illustrations. You know that human beings [INSTR] are capable of an infinite number of ideas. There’s no limit, as far as I know, to what the human brain can think of, but there is a limit to the number of words in a language, so that a given word has to have many uses, and the word illustration can have at least two meanings and probably several more. As we’re using the word illustration here, what does it refer to? (I) Look back at your notes if you need to. @‘t=l What does illustration mean? (I) Sl: Figure? table? (R) T: OK, those are examples. (E) An illustration is in words, what did we say it was? (I) s2: It explains something. (R) T: That’s its purpose. (E) What part of the research report is it? (I) s2: Explains the results (R) T: Well, yeah, that’s its function. (E) OK. Somebody said it. (I) s3: Nonverbal. (R) T: The nonverbal, or the nontextual part of the research report, and that’s what we mean here by illustration. And you’re absolutely right, it’s purpose is to explain. But here one meaning of illustration is the nonverbal part. (E) Another meaning of illustrations you’re gonna come across is example, so sometimes if you give a principle, you give an example. [INSTR] All right, illustration is the nonverbal part and on page 39 the two common forms are tables and figures. [INSTR] How do we identify a table? (I) Sl: . . . expressed in rows and columns. (R) T: Information expressed in rows and columns. (E) And what is a figure? (I) T:

B. Weissberg

138 APPENDIX Lesson S-Advanced T:

Sl: T: S2: T: S2: T: S2: T: Sl: T:

Sl: T: S3: T: S4: T:

B: ANALYSIS EPISODE Undergraduate

Composition

Class

Let’s look at page 53. We have two statements: “a” and “b.” [PR~l a: “In dreams we do things we can’t do in real life. We fly, we change [READ] identities, we even kill people. This fact is emphasized in the account above taken from one woman’s dream diary” b: “This account taken from one woman’s dream diary emphasizes the fact that in dreams we do things we can’t do in real life. We fly, we change identities, we even kill people.” [ANYL] There’s a problem with “a.” What’s the problem? Is it a fact? How do we recognize a fact from a nonfact? (I) It’s true. (R) Oh, it’s true? (E) Both are true. The difference is that in “a” there is more emphasis on the woman’s dream, and “b” the emphasis is in the meaning of the dream. (R) Is that a fact or an interpretation? (I) Interpretation. (R) Are dreams facts? Do we really know what’s going on in dreams? (I) Ah. . . no, no. (R) What are they doing? What are all these articles that we’ve been reading doing? (I) It’s a kind of interpretation. (R) They’re interpreting, they’re speculating. This is what we think, this what some scientists believe. So people are trying to figure this out. But it’s not a fact. A fact is something you can’t dispute. (E) Let’s take a look at “b.” “This account. . . [etc.]. . . we even kill people.” [READ] [ANYL] Well, there’s “fact” again, isn’t there? I think “b” is better. (I) “B” seems to be better written. (E) Why is “b” better than “a”? (I) Because “b” is the best interpretation for this paragraph (R) But why? Because it’s the best doesn’t tell me why (E) I want you to tell me why. (I) Because here the sentence, “The fact that in dreams we do things. . . ” (R) Perhaps we should look at what the old and new information is. The old [ANYL] information is the reference to “this account” in the second paragraph.

139

Speaking APPENDIX

T: Sl: T: Sl: s2: s3: T:

s2: T: s2: T: s2: T: s2: T: s3: T: s4: s2: Sl: s2: T:

s3: T:

s5:

T:

C: EXPLORE/GENERATE

EPISODE

Lesson 5-Low-Intermediate Intensive English Class [EXPL] OK, what are we gorma talk about next? Leticia go ahead. “The sun provides” 0-l ‘6. . . provides” (writes on board) [REmI ‘6. . . heat and light” [Gr-1 “one minute of solar energy is sufficient to supply the daily necessities of...” We can use “for example”? “For example, one minute. . ” Let’s put the sentence on the board and see if we can use “for example.” I don’t know if that’s good or not. (writes) “For example, one minute of solar [READ] energy. . . ” “ ...is sufficient to supply. . . ” @ENI “ _, . is enough” (writes) 6‘. . . to supply the daily necessities. . . ” ‘6. . . the daily needs. . . ” (writes) [ANYL] “Needs”? Yeah, that’s shorter. The summary’s gonna be short, right? 6‘. . . of one country. ” @ENI ‘6. . . the daily needs,” [REmI the daily needs of what? What kind of needs? [ANnI Energy. Energy needs, “the daily energy needs.. . ” (writes) “. . . of one country”? I [EXPL] don’t think that’s true. Is that true? Yes, one country. Let me check. (refers to textbook) Country. The problem is a big amount of this energy is, reflected in the space. 90%. “90% of the energy is reflected back into space, but one minute of @ENI the remaining 10% is sufficient, or enough to supply the energy [-A@ needs of one country” If this was my paragraph, I would find this a [ANnI little bit difficult because I mean think about it. Are all countries [EXPL] the same? Do all countries have the same energy needs? Ah, it depends on how the country is prepared to receive the solar energy. Yeah, and also the requirements of a country, because not all countries have the same energy requirements, so this is really a very simple.. . [AN=1 this is really an overgeneralization. If you were writing this in an essay, I would put in the margin, “Are you sure?” (laughter) The sentence is not applica . . . appli . . . in all the countries of the world. Exactly, that’s right. It doesn’t apply in general. Can we fix it then?