Vanessa Mari, Nevada State College, Henderson, Nevada, USA

My interest in providing writing development for ESL/EFL teachers stemmed during my time as an English Language Fellow in Perú. This is a fellowship from the U.S Department of State that places ESL/EFL professionals in countries around the world in order to support their English programs and provide professional development. During this time I had the opportunity to visit public and private schools all over the country where I worked closely with English teachers. Because of this, I was able to observe multiple classes and assess what were some areas that needed improvement. I quickly noticed that writing was an area that needed further development, and thus, I created a workshop to help teachers develop their students’ writing skills.

Introducing Writing: A 2-Hour Workshop for Multiple Level Teachers

When it came to developing the workshop the following were the factors that I took into consideration. The first being the time I had to work with the teachers. I had 2 hours to deliver the training session to a set of different teachers . The second point I took into consideration was that the workshop would be delivered to teachers from multiple grade levels and it needed to be suited for teachers in primary and secondary. The third and last point was the level of English proficiency of the teachers. I made sure to develop a workshop that gave opportunities to teachers to collaborate and share ideas in English and Spanish. As a bilingual Spanish/English speaker myself, I knew that providing opportunities to use both languages would help the teachers make meaning of the content in multiple ways. Throughout the workshop, I took the role of a moderator and teachers actively participated.

Structure of the Workshop: Topics Discussed

As mentioned previously, this workshop was designed to be 2 hours long. Due to the limited time allotted, I made a list of the topics based on the needs I had previously observed. The list detailed these five topics: 1) sentence structure; 2) thesis statement; 3) different types of essays; 4) structure of an essay; 5) the writing process. For each of these topics I had an activity that gave the opportunity for all teachers to collaborate with their counterparts.

For the first topic, sentence structure, I asked the teachers what made up a sentence. They talked amongst themselves and made a list of what characteristics sentences had. After this, we discussed their answers and I made a list of their responses. Following this, I showed them examples of sentences written by students with different proficiencies. The teachers were able to distinguish these and provided examples of how to elevate the writing of each student. The teachers developed sentence frames to accompany each proficiency level and discussed amongst themselves what were other ways to assist the students.

For the second topic, thesis statement, I provided teachers with a definition and showed examples of a good and bad thesis statement. I asked them to work together and figure out which one was the good and bad example. They also needed to be able to explain why they thought the examples were good or bad and how they would ask their students to fix them. I again, made sure to give sufficient time to the teachers to complete this task and share their findings with the class. This was one of the sections the teachers enjoyed the most because they had an opportunity to analyze student writing and discuss how to provide feedback. I want to note though, that while I was presenting the concept of “good” and “bad” thesis statements, I made sure to address the “bad” thesis statement as a “work in progress”. This way, they would also use this term with their students and understand that all writing is constantly evolving and progressing.

For the third topic, different types of essays, I highlighted four common types of essays: narrative essay, descriptive essay, expository essay and persuasive essay. In this section, I gave the teacher the topic of global warming and the effect that it has had on the Pastoruri glacier (this is a glacier found in a mountain in the Ancash region of Peru) and asked them to develop a thesis statement for each style of essay. In this section it is important to provide a brief overview of the characteristics of each type of essay. After this, they worked in groups and developed a thesis statement. They also shared their thesis statement with the class and I provided feedback to their writing.

For the fourth topic, structure of an essay, I gave the teachers multiple handouts that help students follow a structure for each essay. The handouts provided were for students in diverse levels and it included simple to more developed ones. The purpose of this topic was to show teachers the multiple ways they could teach the structure of writing. Many of them had previously mentioned that the main reason they did not tackle writing in their classroom was because it took too much time. By providing them with these handouts, they got ideas as to how they could assign part of the writing process for students to complete during their own time. This is an important element to discuss with the teachers given that in Peru, English teachers only teach twice a week for 2 hours.

The final topic, the writing process, was one that all of the teachers regardless of their level benefited greatly from. During this section, I discussed the writing process and simplified it to six stages: planning, first draft, peer review, second draft, teacher’s feedback and publishing. After discussing each stage and what they entailed, I had the teachers follow the writing process and gave them a writing prompt to follow. I asked them to choose one style of essay and to complete one of the structure handouts I shared with them. Throughout this portion of the workshop I moderated and timed how much time they would spend on each stage of the writing process. The purpose of this was for them to experience a truncated version of each stage and understand what to expect from their students during the process.

Reflection: What I Learned and What I Wish I Had Done

When I designed this workshop I knew it was ambitious. Just like many other teacher trainers, we need to do our best in a short amount of time. I can easily argue that each topic I chose to discuss during the 2 hours could have been a workshop on their own, but at the same time I knew I at least needed to address them. One thing I made sure to do, was share with them multiple resources they could use to look for more information. I made sure that my presentation had the links to all of my resources and additional ones so that when I shared the presentation with them they had the access to additional information.

One topic that I would have liked to emphasize more on is “flipped learning”. This is defined as “a pedagogical approach in which direct instruction moves from the group learning spaces to the individual learning space, and the resulting group space is transformed into a dynamic, interactive learning environment where the educator guides students as they apply concepts and engage creatively in the subject matter” (Flipped Learning Network 2014). As previously explained, just like many other EFL contexts, most schools in Peru offer 4 hours of English instructions per week. Having teachers trained in this model, could help them make better use of their classroom instructional time and students have more time to collaborate with others.

Conclusion

Creating professional development opportunities for teachers around the subject of writing is important to do. Equipping teaching on how they can teach this skill in short amount of time and provide them with tools were they can “flip” the writing lessons is paramount. If you want to create a workshop on writing, I suggest you evaluate what are the areas that your ESL/EFL teachers need reinforcement and create a workshop designed for them. I personally think that the five topics I chose can be of great benefit for many ESL/EFL teachers and I strongly recommend you find ways to adapt them to your own context.

References

Network, F. L. (2014). What is flipped learning? Retrieved from https://flippedlearning.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/FLIP_handout_FNL_Web.pdf