Category: Paragraph Writing - Bayon English Academy

Bayon English Academy

Highlights from 2013-14: Teacher Sarith's Writing Workshops

20/8/2014

One of our most challenging parts of our English language program is our three-week intensive writing workshops. For our Basic and Pre-Intermediate students, it is the first time for most of them to write a paragraph in English, but this instruction prepares them for the most difficult tasks in the Intermediate and Advanced courses, which include cover letter and resume writing. We made some great achievements in our writing program this year. Nicole was able to finish up ALL of the teacher-training lessons for all of BEA's language courses and prepare a teacher's manual and student workbook for each course. Another milestone was implementing our Cambodian-led writing workshop teacher-training sessions. Shally, BEA's head teacher, took over all writing workshop training this year for Sarith, our newest teacher who was teaching the writing workshop for the first time. Finally, Sarith, with only two-years of teaching experience, was able to run and teach her own writing lessons for both of her Basic and Pre-Intermediate courses after her training sessions with Shally. Since writing is the toughest skill to teach, especially to beginner learners, it is often challenging for even experience writing teachers. However, Sarith was able to guide her students through the writing process with ease to have them produce some very polished pieces of writing!

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an accredited NGO school that provides English language education, leadership, and job skills programs to underprivileged youth from well-trained teachers in a safe, clean and professional environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Writing Workshops 2012

13/2/2012

Hi everyone,

Sorry it’s been such a long time since our last BEA blog posting. I’ve been back in Siem Reap since mid-January, and it’s been non-stop for both Shally and I. The end of the semester is always the hardest mainly because we don’t have enough staff to over part of our workload. What I wouldn’t do to hire a full-time test-marker and a website manager! Anyways, we’ve been making regular updates on our Facebook page, so that’s another way you can keep up with everything that’s been going on at BEA.

Writing Workshops: Teacher & Student Challenges
I wasn’t able to blog daily about the writing classes this year because most of my time was spent revising our workshops from last year, and marking first and final drafts. However, I think we’ll be able to produce our own writing textbook for next year’s writing workshop for the Basic and Pre-Intermediate courses.

Rather than having two writing tasks this year, we decided to have just one, but spent more time on classroom instruction. One of the biggest challenges students had last year, as well as this year, was logically connecting their ideas and details in their paragraphs. Although we spent four lessons on paragraph structure, this still wasn’t enough time for the students to fully understand the structure of writing in English. For next year’s lessons, students definitely need more classroom practice on differentiating between supporting ideas and details, as well as choosing appropriate details for ideas. This was a challenge for students in all of our courses. One of the reasons for this is that most of the students are not taught writing in their own language in public school. Most writing classes end at the end of primary school. As a result, this becomes quite challenging for the kids since they have to use critical thinking skills for the first time, and in a second language!

Regardless, the majority of the students were able to produce a well-written paragraph. Some of their writings will be uploaded to the Journals and Writing Workshops on the website in the next few weeks. I’m also hoping to make the lessons and materials from the Basic and Pre-Intermediate courses available on the site for other Cambodian teachers. The Intermediate lessons won’t be available until next year since they need to be revised and re-tested in the classroom so that all the kinks can be worked out.

Writing Workshops: Teacher Training
During last year’s writing workshops, I taught almost all the classes. However, for this year’s workshops, Shally taught the majority of the lessons. This is part of Shally’s on-going teacher training program as part of his professional development. We have set up a system in which I plan his writing lessons, as well as the lessons in the Intermediate course, and he teaches them using my plans. We have found this to be an effective training technique because these model lessons help him with his own lesson planning. Since writing is the most challenging to teach out of the four skills, this was a challenge for him. Although it was his first time teaching writing, he did an amazing job, especially in his explanations of paragraph structure. One of his strengths is that he’s able to give concise examples to get the point across to the students – all in English. Even the students in our Basic course, who were complete beginners at the start of the school year, were able to follow in English-only instruction. In the end, most of students did indeed use correct paragraph structure and wrote on topic for their tasks.

End of the Semester:
The end of the first semester is coming to an end this week for the BEA kids and staff. We’ll be holding student conferences, as well as having semester wrap-up activities in class. Since lesson planning won’t be as demanding this week, I’ll be able to blog a bit more about what we’re up to before our break.

In the meantime, it’s back to the books…

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Writing Workshop Lesson 2-5

11/2/2011

Hi everyone,

I'm somewhat relieved that today is the last day of our two week writing program. The teaching, of course, was an incredible learning experience. I now know the names of all our students, which makes it much easier to put a face to a name when I have skype meetings with Shally once I'm back in Japan. In addition, I have a much better direction in revising our school's curriculum for next year, as well as tweeking the one for the second semester, which will start mid-March.

The most frustrating part of this program was that there were absolutely no materials whatsoever available here in Siem Reap nor in all the other resource books I brought from Japan. Although I've been teaching academic writing at the university level in Japan for many years now, I've never had to completely design an entire program from scratch. Usually, I am able to pull different ideas from a number of sources to plan a lesson. What I had to do for this program was to use a writing concept, such as brainstorming, and then design all the materials around that concept so that it would be appropriate for a Cambodian classroom. I'm hoping to organize all these materials into a workbook for our program next year. In addition, I'll also make it available through our website with step-by-step lesson plans for Cambodian teachers. I can truly understand their frustrations when they have to teach writing in public school. How do they do it?

Anyways, we had our editing classes for all our courses today for our second writing task. The basic courses had to write about their partner while the pre-intermediate course had to write a cover letter a CV. Once again, most students in the basic courses did not have any trouble with grammar correction. They were able to identify simple grammar errors in their partner's draft. Most of the errors they identified had to do with spelling, capital letters, punctuation, dropping the 3rd person "s", the past tense and plural forms. One student was even able to identify missing subjects in her parnter's draft. Students still had trouble with identifying irrelevant sentences in their partner's draft. This is not surprising since they are still at the basic level, and this type of "critical thinking" activity is usually a challenge for basic level students. In next year's program, I will definitely have to have an entire lesson on identifying coherent and incoherent paragraphs.

While I was editing their drafts the night before, I came across some interesting sentence structure forms, which I would like to further investigate. These are two sentences that caught my eye:

(1) "When he studies already, he cames back home."
(2) After he finished dinner already.

These sentences were from two different students, and what surprises me is the use of "already". It is usually used with the present perfect (e.g. I've already studied), so I'm interested in where this error comes from. As I said, it's something I'll have to look into later on.

In the pre-intermediate course, most students have shown a lot of progress in giving feedback to their partner's on their drafts. Similar to the basic students, they were able to give corrections on errors, such as tense, spelling and punctuation. However, they could identify the incorrect use of word forms and prepositions, as well as point out missing words. Some students were even able to show their partner where they needed to add extra details to support their ideas.

During the editing lessons, Shally was helping me with individual feedback. I noticed in the pre-intermediate class that students didn't seem to favor me over Shally when it came to giving feedback.

For homework, all classes had to review their partner's comments on their drafts, as well as my comments, and write their final draft for Monday's class.

Back to the books,
Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Writing Workshop Lesson 2-2

9/2/2011

Hi everyone,

Our lessons just flew by yesterday! In the Basic A course, especially, I was busier than usual. A group of students missed Monday's brainstorming session, so I basically have to teach two lessons at the same time. Now I know how public school teachers feel in Canada with split grades!

In our Basic courses, we completed a cluster diagram (=a type of graphic organizer used to organize ideas). Students had to use the information they collected about their partners in their interviews and organize their information into supporting ideas and supporting details. The students basically ran this activity themselves with very little support from me. They were extremely interactive with their partners when it came to adding additional information for each of their supporting ideas.

We then moved on to a review of paragraph structure. I elicited the different parts and their functions, and most of the students were able to recall the information from last week's lessons. I've noticed in my own teaching practices that I make much more use of "elicitation techniques" in Cambodia than I do in Japan because the students seem to love volunteering in class. It's not just one student volunteering, but several at the same time. It often seems like they compete with each other to answers. I absolutely love this type of atmosphere.

Students then got a model paragraph, which was used to reinforce paragraph structure. As usual, we had a vocabulary check after the reading activity. I've been getting better at predicting problem vocabulary areas, and am more prepared for vocabulary explanations in our lessons. However, I've noticed that we definitely need to include more on word forms in our speaking and listening program. For example, in yesterday's class, many students asked for the meaning of "helpful" as in "My teacher is helpful." When I elicited the verb form "help" as in "My teacher helps me", student knew the verb form, but were not aware of the adjective form. This has not been an isolated incident, but such questions come up in almost every lesson. This is especially useful to help me revise next year's curriculum.

In the Pre-intermediate course, we focused on the structure of cover letters. In the first part of our lesson, students had to read a model cover letter. As in the basic classes, students had difficulty in identifying different words forms. For example, they were aware of the verb form of "prepare", but not the noun form "preparation". I was also asked the meaning of "thorough" and was caught off guard. However, I think the students got the general meaning of the word with my spur of the moment explanation.

Student were then given a kinesthetic activity (=a learning activity where students use physical activity). Each group had to arrange cards with the different parts of a cover letter into a coherent structure. They then had to use these cards to identify the different parts on their model cover letter. Afterwards, we had some time to go through some of the expressions used for writing cover letters, but we'll spend today's class on those expressions.

For homework, all classes had to complete their outlines.

Back to the books,
Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Writing Workshop Lesson 2-1

8/2/2011

Hi everyone,

Well, we're into the second week of our writing program, which means we've started a new task for both the Basic (A), Basic (B) and Pre‐intermediate courses.

Last week was an incredibly learning experience, and I have a really good sense of direction on how to develop future writing programs at the school, and in the future, our own textbook.

For the two Basic courses, I decided to make the writing task a little easier this week. Last week's task was a bit too challenging because I decided to introduce the use of the simple past so that the students could write about an important event in their lives. Regardless, most of the students were able to complete the task well beyond my expectations.

For this week's task, students are going to write a "descriptive paragraph" about their partner's life. In our lesson yesterday, we completed a brainstorming activity. Students had to work together and make a list of interview questions, and then they had to interview their partner and note down the information. A few pairs came up with some interesting questions, such as "Who do you like best in your family?" and "Why do you like Cambodia?" Almost all of the student had no problem with making questions forms in the simple present tense. In yesterday's class, there were two noticeable observations. First, stronger students seem to automatically help those who are much weaker. They are very generous with their help. We have a few students with very little knowledge of their own native language (Khmer) and no previous English language experience. The stronger students will often play the role of "note‐taker" for them because their ability to write Roman letters is still very weak. Second, I have yet to tell the class to "stop speaking Khmer". I am somewhat shocked that for a Basic level course, I never hear the students use their native language.

For the Pre‐intermediate course, we're learning how to write a cover letter for a CV. I'm actually basing my upcoming conference presentation (CamTESOL) in Phnom Penh at the end of February on this workshop. I'm hoping that the lesson plans and materials I develop this week will help Cambodian teachers in their classrooms.

Similar to the Basic course, we spent the lesson brainstorming ideas, but there was a much greater focus on vocabulary acquisition. Although many of the students have quite a fluent level of speaking, I often forget that Cambodian classes need to have a larger vocabulary component than in my Japanese classes. This is mainly because almost all students do not have access to dictionaries, so it is not possible to give them "vocabulary homework" to prepare for the next day.

Similar to last week's brainstorming session, we used a "cluster" diagram. Students had to choose a job they would like to have in the future, and note down the different types of qualifications necessary for that job. Before the activity, we went through the vocabulary needed to write about qualifications. There was a bit of confusion about the differences between diploma, degree, certificate and license, so I'll have to make sure to review these terms again in today's lesson. Once again, I was very impressed by the high hopes the students have for their lives. Most of the students are between the ages of fifteen and twenty, and they aspire to be managers, doctors, journalists, teachers, and lawyers.

The students in all the classes were quite relieved when I didn't assign homework for last night. However, they'll be plenty of homework tonight. I also have quite a bit of homework myself, especially after collecting the final drafts for the students' first writing task.

Back to the books,
Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Writing Workshops Lesson 1-3

3/2/2011

Hi everyone,

I can't believe how quickly this week has passed. It's already Thursday and we'll be collecting students' first drafts in today's lesson.

We continued learning about paragraph structure in both the basic and pre‐intermediate courses. In our basic course, I was quite surprised at how quickly the students grasped the concept of paraphrasing to help them write their concluding sentences. Especially in our Basic (B) course, some of the students not only wrote a summary for their concluding sentence, but also added their own opinion of their important day to leave the reader with a strong impression.

I also introduced simple past verb forms through a grammar game - sentence auction. In this game, students have to find the mistakes in a list of sentences. Students then participate in a group auction to buy the correct sentences from the list. Everyone show a lot of enthusiasm, especially since the winning team got chocolate.

The pre‐intermediate course also did very well at understanding the concepts of paraphrasing and summarizing in order to write their concluding sentences. This class, however, was also required to summarize the supporting ideas from their paragraph in their concluding sentences.

The sentence auction was also a hit with them. Shally got a chance to run this activity, which is part of his teacher training, and really got the students into the game. However, I noticed that the students do need more activities related to the use of transitions in their paragraphs. There was some confusion over the use of "Finally" (=used to introduce the last point in a list) and "In short" (=a summary word used to introduce a concluding sentence).

On a lighter note, there was a slight communication breakdown between myself and one of our students due to word stress. One of the difficulties some Cambodian learners of English have is the use of correct word stress. This is mainly due to no access to dictionaries for their studies because they are too expensive for most students. Anyways, one of the students told me that he wanted to be a "sexy fool" teacher. Of course, I was quite shocked and tried to explain the implications of using such an expression linked to the teaching profession. After much frustration on both our parts, I then looked at his outline and saw the word "successful" - not "sexy fool". We then had a short pronunciation session so that such misunderstandings could be avoided in the future.

For all classes, students have to write their first drafts and submit them in today's class. I'm looking quite forward to their drafts since they've showed such great work already in our lessons.

Back to the books,
Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Writing Workshops Lesson 1-4

3/2/2011

Hi everyone,

In our lessons today, I collected the students' first drafts of their paragraphs. The basic courses wrote about an important day for them while the pre‐intermediate course wrote about the characteristics of a chosen job.

To prepare them for today's revising and editing class, I introduced them to the concepts of revising (=checking content and structure) and editing (=checking for grammar and style). I was quite surprised with the Basic (A) students grasp of grammar terminology. They had no problem using corrections symbols to edit their partner's work. Basic (B) students, however, struggled a bit with some of the activities. In next week's workshop, we'll definitely have to spend more time on these types of activities.

In both levels, students were better at identifying grammar mistakes than structural mistakes. It was especially difficult for students to identify irrelevant sentences in the model paragraphs. In Cambodian discourse, topics and controlling ideas (=main ideas) are not directly stated at the beginning of a passage. The writer will often start a piece of writing by telling a story, which has some connection to the topic and writer's . The reader often doesn't come to the topic and controlling ideas until the middle of the passage. I suspect this style of discourse has some effect on students' ability to identify irrelevant sentences in English language discourse.

As I read through the students' first draft last night, the majority of students did a fantastic job with their paragraphs. One of the main difficulties was establishing a logical connection between supporting ideas and supporting details in the body of their paragraphs. We'll definitely be focusing on this point in today's editing and revising lesson, as well as in our second writing workshop next week.

I was particularly moved by some of the drafts in the Basic course about an important day in the lives. One student wrote about the day his family moved to Siem Reap to have a chance at a better life. Another student wrote about her first day in elementary school and the effect bullying has had on her life. There was so many stories, and definitely not enough space here to recount them all.

Back to the books,
Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Writing Workshops Lesson 1-1

1/2/2011

Hi everyone,

We started our two‐week writing workshops for both our basic and pre‐intermediate classes yesterday. It was quite a busy day!

For our basic courses, students are learning how to write a paragraph about an important day in their lives. In this paragraph, they have to use "listing" structure, which means they have to explain the events of their important day in chronological order. Students brainstormed ideas to write about, such as their grade 12 graduation, a surprise birthday party, and even their first day at BEA.

For our pre‐intermediate course, students are writing a paragraph about the characteristics and abilities they need for a job. They also have to use "listing" structure, but will focus more on the use of transitions, such as "first", "second", "in addition", and "finally" to explain the features of their chosen professions. Students have chosen their topics, such as "doctor", "journalist", and "electrician". They all have such high hopes for their future.

In today's lessons, we'll be learning how to organize ideas using paragraph structure.

Back to the books,
Nicole

The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.