Journal Writing in Second Language Education

2. Journal Writing with Low-Proficiency Learners

34 Chapter 2 Journal Writing with Low-Proficiency Learners 34 P R E V I E W Q U E S T I O n S • From experience or speculation, what kinds of journal writing, if any, do you believe low-proficiency multilingual writers might be able to do? • What are your assumptions about processes of writing development: linear (words to sentences to paragraphs, etc.), holistic (different kinds of writing are possible to learn simultaneously), or other? What are your assumptions as well about how these beliefs might affect your decisions about using journal writing with low-proficiency learners? • What are your beliefs about the relative importance of fluency and accuracy in writing for low-proficiency multilingual writers? • Some low-proficiency L2 learners are very young. What kinds of journal writing might you do with L2 children? Rationale There is no better way to get a feel for what journal writing might mean to a low-proficiency multilingual writer than to try to write a journal ourselves in an L2 in Journal Writing in L2 Education 35 which we are not proficient. I periodically did this with some master’s in TESOL students in a writing methods and practicum class, advising them in the previous class to bring dictionaries or whatever resources they needed. Usually about two-thirds of the students were Japanese teachers of English, and the others were mother-tongue English speakers, also teachers. I asked everyone to write in an L2 in which they were not proficient, so this eliminated English for the speakers of Japanese. They had to experiment with another language that they may have studied only briefly decades before. I “wrote” in Japanese. The topics were open, and we allowed ourselves about 20 minutes of in-class time. We then shared the journals, and the experience, with each other. We discovered several things. First, the experience was quite stressful and fatiguing. Second, in 20 minutes, some of us could write only a line or two. We felt quite embarrassed about this, adding to our emotional stress. Most of us were mid-career adults, after all. Nevertheless, we also discovered that we could write something and that what we wrote was comprehensible to others who knew a little something about the languages. In other words, in a rudimentary way, we were actually able to communicate in an L2 we knew little about. We then had to imagine what might happen in a language class (French, German, Spanish, Chinese, etc.) in which we did this journal writing exercise regularly. There was pretty much only one possibility: Our L2 could only improve. Knowing this, and imagining that we would not be corrected or tested, felt quite empowering. This chapter provides examples, arguments, and suggestions for doing journal writing with low-proficiency learners, including with adults, high school and college students, and young children. Some teachers might object, asking how can we “let [. . .] them write when they can’t even talk?” (Sandler, 1987). In that linear view, not supported by any research that I know of since the demise of audiolingual and behaviorist recipes for language learning, L2 students should first learn to speak, one pattern at a time, and then to write. The argu2 : Journal Writing/Low-Proficiency 36 ment continues that when they learn to write, they should first learn words, then sentences, then paragraphs, and then essays. Further, many students and teachers around the world believe that students must learn grammar before they can write (Casanave, 2009). The possibility of learning grammar through writing does not occur to many well-meaning teachers. However , once students can form letters and understand the basics of sound-symbol correspondences in an alphabetic language, they can all write words, sentences, and even paragraphs, if not full-fledged essays. They can do this by hand, with paper and pencil, or they can do this electronically. We would never think of preventing low-proficiency students from sitting at a computer, learning keyboard skills, searching for information, playing games, and writing simple chats to friends until they were fluent speakers of their L2 and knew all the ins and outs of computer literacy. We learn computer skills, including many kinds of literacy, by doing them (Gee, 2004). The linear view of how we acquire spoken and written language in our L2, and even our L1, simply does not hold up to research findings or to many counter examples and anecdotes...