Developing Core English Language Learner’s Fluency and Proficiency: Building Reading & Writing Skills: Fourth Estate, #33

DEDICATION

It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations—something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own.

- Katherine Patterson

MISSION

The Fourth Estate supports TexTESOL IV mission by promote scholarship; sharing information through publication and research, and promote high standards in the field of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL).

VISION

The Fourth Estate seeks to facilitate this purpose in each publication by providing timely and relevant articles, information, and communication for each of following Interest Areas.  These contributions serve as a means of communication between leaders and members, provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, experiences, questions, and insights, feature dialogue around issues of importance to the specific interest area, and nurture the professional growth of those working within those interest areas.

Publication Information

ISSN (Print) 2379-5379  –  ISSN (Online) 2378-4822

CALL FOR PAPERS

Spring 2017 Vol 33 (1): Building Reading Fluency & Writing Proficiency

Submissions Due March 5th, 2017

This edition of the Fourth Estate seeks articles and resources in the following themes:

-  Reading & Writing skills development

-  Developing a Reading Culture

-  Developing a Writing Culture

-  Discussion on current research and gaps in the research involving reading and writing instruction for ELLS

-  Formative and Summative Assessment of Reading & Writing skills

-  Increasing oral fluency when reading

-  Mitigating comprehension problems in ELLS

-  Suggestions for grounded research for the ELL classroom

-  Teaching Reading and Literacy Skills

-  Teaching Writing Skills

-  Where are the important resources that practitioners and researchers need?

Action based research summaries, book reviews, reading suggestions, and literature reviews are accepted as well as lesson plans, teaching strategies, and  or teaching tips.

Submission should follow APA format, contain no more than 10 references, be under 10 pages including resources, tables, graphs, and appendices.

Authors should submit profession photos and bios with each article.

Make a Submission Online

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Contents

Dedication

Mission

Vision

Call For Papers

Acknowledgments

A Musical Approach To Personal Narrative Writing

English Reading Strategy InstructionIn Honors Program At A Tertiary Institution

Reading As A Pedagogical Tool For Teaching English As A Foreign Language

A Book Review: Great Writing 3: From Great Paragraphs To Great Essays

A Lesson Plan: Read, Create, And Speed Mingle!

A Lesson Plan: Reading And Writing Instruction For The Very Lowest Level

Preparing Students For Academic Writing By Using Stem Topics And Tasks

I No Longer Feel Like I Am Not Well Prepared: What We Can Learn From Three L2 Undergraduate Students

Welcome New Textesol IV Board Member

Teaching English Reading To Arabic-Speaking Students

Writing Academically: Accomplishing An Authentic Task By Ecuadorian Teachers In An Efl Setting

Close Reading: The Historical Trends And Application To English Learners

Students Write Their Way To Learning English

Tesol Advocacy & Policy Summit

TexTESOL 2017 State Conference

About The Fourth Estate

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TexTESOL IV Publications

Building Global Bridges Between Educators, Researchers, and Classrooms

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to the TexTESOL VI Board for their vision and support and the Fourth Estate Editorial Review team for their dedication and service to ESOL in Texas.

Your time and expertise to ESOL in Texas and beyond is appreciated.

TexTESOL IV 2016-2017 Board

Karen Lewis, James Moore, Irma Rohatgi, Rosemary Anthony, Rachel Kraut, Yuliya Summers, Rosemary Anthony, Alex Monceaux, Farideh Nekoobahr, Bianca Arriazola, Julissa  Alcantar-Martinez, Rezvan Khoshlessan, Troi Ferguson, Bonnie Duhart, Marie Moreno, Trudy Freer,

The Fourth  Estate  Editorial Team

Alex Monceaux, Editor

Rita McClelland, Assistant Editor – Website Publications

Carol Williams, Assistant Editor – E-Book Publications

Assistant Editor - Marketing

The Fourth Estate Editorial Review Board

Alan Larson, Carol Williams, Jahnette Wilson, Jennifer Guertin, Miriam King, and Kathryn Jones

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MUSICAL APPROACH TO PERSONAL NARRATIVE WRITING

Seth French, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

Teaser: Grounded in research regarding the positive effects of integrating music and writing narratives in the classroom, in this article I describe a three- to four-week unit in which students at either the secondary or university level compose personal soundtracks alongside personal narratives to strengthen their proficiency in the four skills—reading, writing, speaking, and listening—as well as to promote student engagement and classroom cohesion as students share music and experiences from their native cultures.

Keywords: narrative, music, writing

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Research shows that narrative writing is useful for cultivating students’ identities (Latta Kirby, 2016) and engaging students in a more accessible genre of writing than other, perhaps more research-based and/or academic writing genres (Seyyedi et al., 2013). The personal narrative especially is an integral component of any English curriculum as it engages students in the writing process and can develop a more cohesive classroom community as students share their stories with one another. This accessibility and cohesion is especially important when working with English language learners, for

whom writing in the target language within academic contexts can often seem an insurmountable challenge.

Though there are several effective approaches to narrative writing with students, infusing music into the process is perhaps one of the best methods for engaging students and enhancing their narratives in ways that highlight each student’s creativity, personality, and native culture. Music has been successfully integrated into ESL classrooms over the past several decades for various purposes, such as promoting language acquisition (Lake, 2003) and student engagement (Van Cleve, 1984; Rosenthal, 1998).

The personal narrative writing unit I have constructed asks students to compile a personal soundtrack of songs in conjunction with their personal narratives to demonstrate how significant moments in their lives are depicted through music; this model is based on Goering’s (2004) Soundtrack of Your Life assignment, which has been effectively implemented in many non-ESL classrooms. We begin the unit with an introduction to narrative writing so students can become more familiar with the genre by studying components that comprise narratives as well as exemplar student-written narratives for students to utilize as points of reference.

After discussing the purpose of narratives, we explore the following characteristics of narratives that set this genre apart from others: 1) the focus on telling a story rather than exploring a topic, 2) the necessity of personal pronouns, 3) the use of sensory language for descriptive purposes, 4) the practice of inserting dialogue effectively, 5) the use of historical present and past tenses, and 6) the most appropriate methods of organization. Before progressing to the musical aspects of the unit, we take time to discuss considerations related to thesis statements within narratives, such as whether they are necessary and, if so, whether they would be most appropriate near the beginning or near the end of the narrative.

We then examine the essay prompt and an exemplar personal soundtrack so students can begin conceptualizing the project to gain a better understanding of what they will produce. The essay prompt is as follows:

ESL Journal is looking for student writers to contribute personal narratives to include in their magazine to demonstrate the importance of narrative writing for English language learners. While they are gladly receiving all submissions, they will only include a handful of essays in their magazine due to space restrictions. The more creative and well written the essay, the more likely it is that your essay will be showcased to the readers of ESL Journal. To construct this narrative, compose a personal soundtrack of songs that uniquely characterize your life story. Then, connect your soundtrack to your personal narrative by explaining how the songs