Strategy: Guiding question: What did you find interesting/important/surprising?

What I found to be the most interesting in this study analysis of scaffolding for second language writers is the actual breakdown of the process that the author makes. I had never realized, so far, how complex the process of guiding students through completing their first essay can be. To me, it seemed natural to approach the process with a “decontextualizing” type of approach, that is to say analysing a short essay in term of content, than in term of structure and identifying the important elements of it before “recontextualizing” the content into a meaningful writing task. Now I understand better the importance of scaffolding for academic essay production. I realized the importance, as I read Cotteral & Cohen (2003), of providing students with topics that are concurrent with study themes because it facilitates recycling of arguments seen previously for certain topics. Since argumentation is more easily structured, one can focus on modelling an essay structure with his student without worrying too much about the “basic” argumentative elements that they’ll be using inside the paragraphs. In my opinion, though, the author should have done a group brainstorm before structuring and modelling the essay and ask his students, later as they come to the point of writing the paragraphs, to take out their brainstorm note-sheets to add content to what they’re saying.

Strategy: Make connections with your own experience. What does the reading make you think of? Does it remind you of anything or anyone?

Reading about guiding students into producing their first academic essay had me think back to my early high school days; when I was in my secondary III ESL classroom to be more specific. When I was in high school, my motivation towards learning English with a regular ESL group was quite low to be honest. I had been speaking proficiently English since my childhood days and being in a High School where advanced or enriched classrooms were not even an available option was truly depressing. Chantal, my teacher, must have quickly seen that I was under stimulated because she took me apart after one class and proposed me a challenge.  I was to play a video game that I loved a lot during one week, and then write a short text that would explain why that game was “the best game in the world” according to me. She sat down and showed me a text called “the best sport” that she had written to present to my class mates when she would introduce them to that type of writing in the following weeks. As she knew that the next classes might be less interesting for me, she offered me some free time to write on my topic at the library and she would look over at the structure of what I had written after every class. She guided me 1 on 1 through writing my very first academic essay and I really enjoyed the process. I don’t know how I would’ve felt though, if it had been a classroom project in which I would have taken part.

Story Quilt

Body Biography