Running Head: CLASSROOM OBSERVATION REPORT

Classroom observation report: signposting in advanced academic reading and writing

Angela Sharpe
Colorado State University

Observation Report

Course Description
The information in this classroom observation report is derived from Advanced Reading and
Writing/Composition. The course was an advanced tier course taught as part of an Academic
English program. The activities and assignments for the class focused on writing expository and
cause/effect essays with cited research. The goal of the class was to improve reading
comprehension and fluency to an upper advanced level so that students are able to write welldeveloped academic essays that are supported by outside research. The objectives centered on
learners being able to:

read multiple thematically-related academic articles in order to distinguish details and

main ideas;
develop the reading skills of prediction, skimming, and scanning;
write academic summaries of readings;
restate main ideas and details from readings;
use contextual and morphological clues to guess meaning on new lexis;
read multiple extensive texts and completing written assignments about them;
write academic essays using accurately paraphrased and cited support from class

readings;
write reference pages following a specific academic style;
make and utilize individualized vocabulary study tools to acquire shared vocabulary from
course readings and individual, learner-chosen Academic Word List vocabulary;
(INTO CSU, 2014)

The course met for one hour and twenty minutes five days a week for a span of seven weeks.
The course was organized around two reading exams, two writing exams, and two essays. One
essay focused on expository writing and the other on cause and/or effect writing. Students were
given opportunities to write drafts in order to improve their writing according to peer and teacher
feedback. Students received homework and quizzes daily. The quizzes focused on vocabulary,
comprehensions skills, or writing skills including identifying main ideas, details, and formulating

Observation Report

restatements of main ideas. The homework assignments included reading homework,

restatement homework, summary homework, vocabulary homework, and writing skills
homework. Academic Encounters: Level 4 Human Behavior served as the main text for the
class and was the basis for all homework, reading/writing assignments, and activities. The
techniques for teaching included content-based and task-based activities which required the
students to work independently and in groups. All supplemental materials developed for the
class were adapted from or expanded upon the respective text.
The course was organized around a set of outcomes which were measured by exams and
practiced or targeted by the course objectives. The expected outcomes upon completion of the
course included learners being able to:

identify and comprehend main ideas in higher-level academic reading materials;

use vocabulary strategies to infer meaning and use new words correctly;
demonstrate increasing ability to write academic summaries of class reading

materials;
demonstrate increasing ability to summarize and paraphrase information from in-

class and out-of-class readings to give support in essays;

demonstrate increasing ability to recognize and write all parts of expository and

cause and/or effect essays;

demonstrate an understanding of how and when to cite sources;
(INTO CSU, 2014)
Student Population and Instructional Setting

The class was comprised of 28 students from three ethnolinguistic backgrounds

including: Chinese, Arabic, and Persian. Nine students, all male, were first language Arabic
speakers from the countries of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait. The four L1 Chinese
speakers were all from China, one is female and three are male. There was one female student

Observation Report

from Iran, whose first language was Persian. All of the students were studying academic English
with the intention of attending a university in the United States.
The majority of the class participants were Arabic speakers; they were warned numerous
times during the class about speaking in Arabic. They grouped themselves together in the back
of the room and often talked with or translated for one another. Although this may be a strategy
for comprehension it was disruptive at times. There also appeared to be a cellphone
overuse/overdependence problem in the class. Students were encouraged to infer the meaning of
unknown words from context but often resorted to their cellphones for direct translation and then
shared with each other the Arabic translation. This cluster of students sharing the same first
language was problematic for group formation that enforced speaking in English only. The
instructor of this class, however, was very good (probably the best I have observed at INTO) at
managing this group of students and her classroom, but it was a constant feat on her part.
The class was held at midday and many students left the classroom for long periods of
time. Often a student would leave and return 10-15 minutes later with a coffee or snack. The
classroom itself also housed the laptop cart for the entire program. At least once during each
class another instructor came to take or return the laptop cart which was always a noticeable
interruption. The classroom displayed various word wall vocabulary words from other classes
and there was also writing work from other classes on display. The classroom windows were
very close to the railroad tracks and a train passed at least once during each class meeting
making it very difficult at that time to hear the instructor.
Oral participation in class was not required as the skills foci were reading and writing.
Upon reading drafts of essays, it seemed clear that the class was comprised of multi-level
writers. Syntax and the appropriate use of vocabulary words in context seemed to be the biggest

Observation Report

errors. Transitions, summarizing, and appropriate language to cite research, appeared to be

difficult for most writers. Proper citation and academic honesty also appeared to be a
dichotomous problem in the class much to the frustration of the instructor.
Instructional Procedures
The instructional approach utilized in the classroom emphasized communicative
language teaching. The methods utilized in the class were task-based learning with some
content-based instruction. Specifically, the content and subsequent tasks, which were covered
during the week I observed, pertained to summarizing and synthesizing information on wellness
in order to develop research which supported a cause and effect essay that outlined each
students perspective of their own health. Therefore, the content objectives set forth for the five
classes had a theme of wellness and a language objective of the metalanguage for citing and
applying research in writing.
This teacher sequences each class in the same way each day. As a warm-up, the class
starts with a review of important culturally relevant events or celebrations for the day. She
would start class everyday with what day is it?, to which the students guessed but waited in
anticipation to see what kind of thing was being celebrated in America that day. For example,
the students were really interested in Arbor Day and Bring your Kid to Work Day, two things that
none celebrated in their respective countries. I thought this was a really great way to
unobtrusively integrate an element of culture into the classroom.
The second phase of the warm-up that occurred everyday was write to learn-WTL
activity. Each student was given their journal that they had been writing in all term. Each day
there was different question or topic projected about which students had to write for 10 minutes.

Observation Report

This activity gave me a perspective into which students liked to write and which students
struggled with writing.
After the WTL, there was always a review of the objectives for the day and for the week.
An explicit explanation was given for tasks of the day. Students were put into groups, which the
teacher tried to make as heterogenous as possible. The group activities ranged from formulating
yes/no and Wh-questions using what seemed to adhere to Blooms Taxonomy of verbs for
forming questions. The students formulated questions based on their respective article for other
groups to answer. A similar activity had groups come up with context for vocabulary words,
formulate comprehension questions on those vocabulary words, and form restatements of the
source context for the vocabulary words. In another activity, the groups had to analyze a cause
and effect essay according to the components of each paragraph, such as connection sentences,
thesis statement, restatements of the thesis, cause statements, and effect statements. On the last
day students spend most of the lesson editing the first draft of the essay. I had the opportunity to
read some of the drafts and it was clear from their writing that the class was comprised on multilevel writers.
Each day ended with a pop quiz, that wasnt really pop because the students expected a
quiz. Each day students were assigned at least one vocabulary word to include on a wikispaces
word wall and an individual vocab word. The students were very accustomed to homework
and the syllabus clearly stated that each week the following assignments might also be included
for homework:

reading homework
restatement homework
summary homework
vocabulary homework
vocab quiz/word wall word/individual vocab
writing skills homework

Observation Report

Students learned about the theme of wellness through at least 6 different 3-4 page
research papers based upon a specific facet of wellness (e.g., sleep, nutrition, heart disease,
personality types, smoking risks, exercise). Each article included, as a header, a citation of the
article in APA format which the teacher demonstrated on a number of occasions the difference
between in-text citation and reference list citation. Within each article, quotation marks were put
around research from prominent organizations such as the World Health Organization and the
Centers for Disease Control so that students could learn how to synthesize and cite the
information they obtained from the articles into their essays. The content from which the
students developed their skills was authentic. Therefore, the emphasis was equally placed on
learning academic language, general American culture-centered information on wellness, essay
style and structure, and learning the academic metalanguage of integrating research and citation
while thinking critically about cause and effect organization. The cause and effect essay
organization provided students with an organization pattern for writing in a particular subject. In
this way, students were able to better understand the texts and evaluate how a cause and effect
essay combines cited research with their own thoughts on the subject. All of the respective skills
play into the content-based instruction framework so that the role of the students was to
simultaneously engage with both the content and the language required for an informed cause
and effect essay outcome. Vocabulary, both for citation and academic vocabulary was taught in
context. According to Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2000), vocabulary is easier to acquire if
students have contextual clues to convey meaning. Authentic language, learning academic
language and academic metalanguage simultaneously, discourse organization within particular
subject, critical thinking skills in order to understand and summarize in a cause and effect
pattern.

Observation Report

A few of the techniques used in the class that adhered both content-based learning and
task-based learning were journaling, process writing, draft editing, project work, information-gap
tasks, and output prompting tasks.
My Involvement
I observed five sequential classes, spanning from Monday to Friday. The class met from
11:00 to 12:20 every day in Alder hall. I was a passive observer in the class. The focus of the
classes during the week was on writing. There was not really an opportunity for me to be
involved in a class of this nature, therefore, I did not participate in any mini-teaching or student
grading. I did have the opportunity to read some of the students first drafts for the essays that
they were working on, however, the teacher had already given them feedback and so my
participation was not necessary.

Observation Task #1
Overview
This sequencing of this class was regimented. The phases of each lesson were clearly
and consistently signaled through the use of the transition language: Ok and Alright. The
teacher also raised her voice slightly and used consistent body language which signaled that a
new phase was about to begin. She often got a marker ready to write on the board or lowered the
projection screen. I think that here signals were clear and consistent and the students reacted to
them. They would stop what they were doing and pay attention.
Classroom Procedures
Every class started with a what day is it introduction where students were introduced to
a holiday or unique celebration that took place on that specific day in America. It was a unique

Observation Report

way to bring an element of culture into the classroom and students enjoyed it very much.
Students were given the opportunity to share their opinions about the day or share a unique
holiday/celebration from their country. After students were done sharing the teacher always
projected and reviewed a slide which contained the objectives for the day and the objectives for
the week. There was always an opportunity to ask questions after the review of the objectives.
The next phase of each lesson was a writing warm-up called a WTL (write to learn).
The teacher would project a prompt for writing and students were given their journals. They had
to write for ten minutes. This teacher often used background music in the classroom as students
were writing. This was something that I found very enlightening and I think the students really
liked it. At the very least, it signaled quiet writing time to the students.
The third phase of each lesson consisted of a mini-presentation on the element of writing
that was going to be covered for the day. For example, one presentation reviewed essay planning
and writing through the structures of the paragraphs that go into an essay and the importance of a
clear and concise thesis statement. The teacher routinely posed the question of what is a thesis
statement before she explained it. This gave students the opportunity to transfer what they
knew in order to make connections to new information.
After the presentation phase, there was always a writing activity that spanned for at least
30 minutes. Students worked in groups for some of the activities or worked alone editing their
drafts. The teacher, again played soft music in the background to signal writing time. She
walked around the room and gave assistance and feedback when necessary.
After the writing activity, and during the last 15-20 minutes of class, the teacher would
put up a slide and discuss the homework assignment. Each student was assigned a vocabulary

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10

word to post on a wiki spaces page every day. They needed to define the word, give its part of
speech, and formulate an original sentence with the correct use of the word in context.
The last ten minutes of each class was devoted to formative assessment. There was a pop
quiz four of the five days. The quizzes were all vocabulary based and were 5 questions. The
first three questions were usually T/F and the final two questions were sentence formation where
the students needed to give a definition or use a vocabulary word in a sentence. One quiz asked
questions over the articles required for class. In the class that did not have a quiz, the last phase
was an extensive review of the homework and assignments due before the end of the term. This
was the second to the last week of the term.
Results
Observation Task 1: Lesson Phases
Data:
Day 1: 4/21/14
#
What did the teacher say?
1

Does anyone know what the Boston

Marathon is? It is today.

So running is something that can

contribute to our wellness right? Lets
do a WTL-write to learn for 10 minutes
about wellness.

What did the teacher

do?
Showed a ppt slide
with a picture of the
Boston Marathon and
called on the students
who raised their
hands
Put a ppt slide with
question prompts for
WTL activity.
Prompts:
How well do you
think you are?
What things could
you do or not do to
make you more well?
Is wellness an
important quality in
your home
country/culture?
Teacher handed each

When/lesson phase
Greeting

Warm-up

Observation Report

student their blue

book which I gather
is a routine journaling
(writing) activity,
while going over the
questions and briefly
modeling some
personal answers.
Ok, times up. Open your books to page Teacher put students
27 and get into groups and discuss the
into groups and
questions.
encouraged them
then told them to
work as a group
You guys will need to move so you can Walked around and
work togetherso, ok, wiggle your
made sure everyone
desks around so you can work with one was in the group, also
another, you have to be able to talk
pointed out to
with one another to work as a group
students that the
assignment was
projected for them
Look at the different sentences and
Walked around an
explain what the words mean. There
used the socratic
are small differences in the meanings.
method with students
These are important words to
if they had a question
understand for research.
about a word. The
book had sentences
which included the
words: show, reveal,
indicate, confirm,
suggest, seek from
which the students
needed to infer from
context the subtle
meaning differences.
Lets come together as a class and
Projected the page in
discuss these together because I dont
the book and asked
think everyone understands.
for volunteers to
discuss the questions
You will need these words for your
Showed slide giving
essay which I am going to assign right
instructions for essay
now (made connection between words- on wellness due on
what students know- and something
Thursday. Spent
new-their essay on wellness which is
about 2-3 minutes
due on Thursday)
explicitly going over
instructions and
answered any

11

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Phase 4/ Activity 1

Transition

Observation Report

8
9

10

11

What can I use to

show/suggest/confirm that I am well?
So you will need to do research on to
support your statements. Any further
questions? I want you guys to be
aware that this is due on Thursday so
you have three nights to work on itOk?
Do you guys in the back who are
talking have a questions, please ask it
because I am sure someone else
probably has the same questions.
Lets move into the packet that you had
to read 8 pages of

12
13

What do you guys think of the packet?

Any thoughts, was it interesting or not
interesting? (No one answered) Ok I
thought this might happen.

14

15 seconds, 10 seconds, 5 seconds, ok

youre done.
Alright all together lets talk about
these questions, they are the same ones
as the quiz.

15

16
17
18

12

questions. Reiterated
what a cause and
effect statement is
and how they need
support an how to
support these kinds of
statements
Waited for answers
Phase 5
from students
Answered questions
Phase 6

Waited for a question

Put slid with title of

packet is laughter
the best medicine
Waited for answers
Passed out a pop quiz
on the reading but
allowed students to
use the packet for the
quiz.
Collected quizzes

Projected the quiz

questions and
discussed answers as
a class
So how would you use cause and effect Wrote cause on
in this article?
board and effect
below it
What are the effects of laughter?
Wrote students
answers on the board
So these are the things you need to look Put ramCT on
at when you write your essays
projector and showed
students which file
included a
worksheet/guide to
help them outline for
their essays.

Technique for calling

out disruptive
behaviorclassroom
management
Activity 2

Phase 2/assessment

Transition from
activity 2-3
Transition from
activity 2-3
Activity 3/ phase 1
Activity 3
Transition to Activity
4

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19

20
21
22

This worksheet is a guide for you guys,

Im not going to collect it. It is to help
you guys outline causes and effects for
your essay.
So heart disease is the topic of the next
article we are going to read
So real quick go through and answer
the questions on page 29
Alright if look at the bottom it gives
you 6 questions on the readingskim
the article to see if you can find the
paragraph that the answer is in.

23

So your homework for tonight is to

read this article and do the T/F
questions on page 33

24

Alright lets look at the new word

wall words, find your word and put it
on the word wall wiki tonight.
Alright we have 9 minutes leftlets
do a vocab quiz?

25

Referred to
worksheet projected

Transition to activity
4

Put up a slide with

page number in the
book
Put students back into
groups
Walked around and
directed students to
the six questions if
they seemed lost/
after 4-5 minutes
asked for volunteers
to answer the
questions
Put up a slide
detailing the
homework and the
weeks objectives
Put a slide up with
words assigned to
each student
Passed out quiz and
put up slide with two
words assigned to
each student (I
assume these were
their last word wall
words) Each student
had two write
sentences using the
words

Activity 5/ phase 1
Activity 5/ task
1/phase 2
Activity 5/ task 2/
phase 3

Transition to Activity
6/ closure to activity
5/ phase 4
Phase 5
Closure/ assessment

Day 3: 4/23/14
What did the teacher say?
Ok, so today..
Today we are going
Questions or concerns
What day is today? (students
said hump day which was
really funny)
Alright so lets look at

13

What did the teacher do?

put up a slide with objectives
Reviewed objectives on the
slide.
Put up a slide detailing world
book day
Put up slide with example

#
Opening/ greeting
Phase 2
Phase 3
Warm-up/phase 1
Transition/ presentation

Observation Report

another example body

paragraph
Ok so what do you think
about the connection
sentence?
Ok what do you think about
cause and effect?
What about the restatement?
Ok is there anything from the
article in this paragraph to
support what is being said?
Alright ask yourselves when
you are writing how is the
effect connected to the cause
and how can you show
support for that?
Alright anything else
Ok get into different groups
than yesterday
Alright lets go over answers
Alright to clarify this for you
guys.
Ok so you have to articles
that we discussed in class and
4 not discussed and you need
4 body paragraphs. Its your
choice which articles you cite
Alright you guys are going to
do great, I look forward to
reading your first drafts
Alright homework.
Remember your draft is due
at 11:00 am tomorrowI do
not accept late drafts
Any last minute questions

body paragraph and had

student read the paragraph
aloud
Pointed out connection
sentence

14

Phase 2

Waited for answers

Phase 2

Waited for answers

Waited for answers

Phase 2
Phase 2

Students asked questions and

teacher answered referencing
the paragraph

Phase 2

Passed back a review sheet

that students worked on
yesterday
Walked around the room
helping students answer the
questions in groups
Taped answers next to
questions and reviewed with
the class
Put up a slide giving
instructions on essays and
which articles to use
Put up a slide with articles
and answer 5-6 questions on
the essay

Transition to practice/ activity

1
Phase 1
Phase 2
Transition to review
Phase 1

Phase 2
Put up a slide reminding what
word wall word was assigned
to whom

Transition
Phase 1
closure

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15

Reflection
Before this observation, I had not put a lot of thought into transitioning in a lesson.
However, through lesson-writing I have discovered that transitions are an integral part in the
flow of a lesson. As far as verbal and body language sign-posting between lesson phases, I
initially thought, before doing any of the observations, that it would be good to have a mixture of
transitional language so students would not get de-sensitized to the teacher-talk that goes into
transitions, however, I now realize that students are very receptive and dependent on
homogenous transition language. This teacher maintained and reserved the same body language,
voice tone, and wording for transition which I think students automatized. The sameness of
transitions enabled them to ready themselves for a transition. This helped with classroom
management and kept the flow of class on track. They knew when new learning
content/language or a new phase of the lesson was going to happen. There were no unexpected
parts of the lesson. I think the consistent signaling maximized the learning opportunities and
outcomes.

Pedagogical Contribution
The pedagogical information is available at:
http://eslcorpusactivities.wikispaces.com/eslcorpusactivities

Statement of Problem
The vocabulary introduced in this class was relevant to academic writing. Some of it was
new and some was not. However, the purpose of the language was very new to the students. For
example, the semantics of the reporting verbs show, reveal, indicate, confirm, suggest, and seek

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16

were new to students, as well as their use in citations. Although, students had automatized the
skill of inferring meaning from context but they had not been taught the formal uses of this
language in academic writing until this class. This language was introduced to them as a means
to cite research to support main ideas in an essay. On the nature of citations, this coursework in
this class introduced students to the concept of distinguishing their own ideas from those of
published authors. The conventions associated with citation were also new concepts for students.
Therefore, my pedagogical contribution details how a teacher could use the language in a corpus
to exemplify reporting verbs as they are used in authentic language. I also propose using a
concordancer program with the research articles used as materials in class to highlight and
exemplify the language this language for students so that they can induce patterns and meaning
in contextualized examples.
During the week of my observation, students were learning the techniques for proper
citation and the appropriate language which introduces research support from another source into
an essay. It seemed as though students were very confused about the subtleties that go into
supportive language as well as the importance to support ideas through other sources using this
language. Over the previous several weeks, the students were required to read articles on a
content theme which included this type of language. However, it seemed that they had a hard
time making a connection between what was exemplified in the articles to what was required of
them in their papers. In this respect, I feel that using a tool like a concordancer or a corpus may
shed some light on the techniques for students. My pedagogical contribution reviews how a
teacher could pull concordance lines from the articles using the respective terms: show, reveal,
indicate, confirm, suggest, and seek in order to model authentic language for students as a
technique in the classroom. The concordance lines could also serve as a gap filling activity. The

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17

wikispaces page I created I hope will enable teachers to consider the benefits that authentic
language technology can offer academic English learners.
Theoretical or Methodological Foundation
The language used for reference in an essay must be cohesive with the whole essay. As
part of intensive reading, learners attention can focused on the language that occurs in order to
cite other research through a number of language focused activities. Using concordance lines
from the texts themselves, which include this language, can help a learner guess the words
meaning from context, raise consciousness to grammar features of these words, and to specific
genre features. The concordance lines could serve as a source of meaning-focused input that
provides learners with experience in encountering this type of language and may help learners to
build fluency in this type of language. These types of language-focused activities might also
allow learners to transfer the knowledge from the activities to their own writing (Nation, 2009).
As an extensive reading activity, concordance lines which are language focused can help
a learner develop proficiency through vocabulary growth. Nation (2009) suggests that language
focused activities in an extensive reading program can help a learner with vocabulary by making
the learning deliberate and less incidental. An ancillary activity to the concordance lines could
have learners skim and scan the articles for the words in context in order to further raise
consciousness on the use of reference language in context, including the surrounding words and
the clauses in which this type of language frequently occurs.
Goals

Learners will be able to focus on the linguistic and co-occurrence patterns of reference

language.
Learners will have a better understanding of genre and text type features of academic
essay writing.

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18

Learners will have the opportunity to transfer reference language into their own writing.
Learners can analyze the language in authentic language.
Concordance lines can lead to additional activities such as: finding related word forms,
discover language chunks, analyze register features, and analyze discourse organization.
Resources and Procedures
The pedagogical contribution is based upon the knowledge gained in a Corpus

Linguistics class and upon a research project I conducted last semester focused on learners
knowledge of lexical bundles in spoken and written English. This project extends from the
previous project ways in which corpora and concordance programs may be utilized in order to
help learners gain linguistic knowledge through meaningful exposure to authentic language and
language patterns. For this contribution I suggest that the teacher uses a concordance program to
analyze the articles for specific reference language such as confirm, suggest, seek, indicate,
show, reveal so that students can meet the words in authentic context. These types of conscious
raising activities can lead to transfer where the student is familiar with how these words function
in an essay. Concordance lines from a specific source and well vetted KWIC lines from a
corpora are examples of meaning-focused input which can easily be transformed into a number
of activities or tasks that can lead to fluency development and meaning-focused output.
Reppens (2010) is the author of a thin book: Using corpora in the language classroom, which is
written specifically for teachers and details many activities that may be adapted
The advantages of using corpora in the classroom are numerous, however, they do take a
little initial effort from the teacher. The purpose then of my contribution is to introduce some of
the resources available for creating these types of activities as well as corpus-informed material
which has already been developed so that teachers may adapt them to their needs.
Reflection on Observation Experience

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19

I have observed this teacher previously and have volunteered as a conversation partner in
her class. I have to say that she is one of the more dynamic and engaging teachers at INTO. She
is very confident and is great at managing her classroom which I have found to be problematic
for other teachers at INTO. She also checks for comprehension consistently and models
outcomes for students. I could tell that her students really respected her and made an effort to
participate.
This teacher taught in chunks. She did not overwhelm her students with too much
information at one time. Each chunk scaffolded a part of the last chunk of information with
an introduction to the next part. I think this enabled her students to connect the chunks to the
whole. The repetition and modeling that she did for students was helpful for them to visualize
and contextualize how the chunks fit together. There were always reflections on prior
knowledge or prior activities so students could also relate previous skills and strategies to the
new information/assignment being giving.
The students in this class were very accustomed to being pushed. Almost lesson
presented them with a formal assessment. I think students felt good about the challenge or they
knew that there was no way around it. The assessments were relevant to the learning that took
place in class. The vocabulary words linked and reinforced the academic language necessary for
academic essay writing. I think the students did have a rather large workload but all of it was
applicable and appropriate for students wishing to be in an English-medium university.
I think this teacher accomplishes goals through making the goals be the students. She
has a way of putting the goals into their hands and making them feel responsible for their own
success or failure. I say this as I have seen many other teachers at INTO not capable of

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20

managing this kind of boundary. I think this is a reason that her students respect her as a teacher,
they know the boundaries and what is expected of them.
I take with me from this experience many thoughts on teaching higher level academic
writing to learners. I think this instructor was wonderful but I can see how difficult it is to try to
operationalize something that is somewhat subjective. In other words, while there is some
science to writing organization, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where something should go in a
paragraph or in an overall essay. Therefore, teaching learners how to write is an effort in
teaching them to have an intuition about discourse organization in English. It is difficult and I
think the more practice they can have the better. I also think as my pedagogical contribution
shows, the more focus they have on the elements or the pieces that go into writing the easier it
will be for them to induce the structure and patterns involved with different genre and text types.

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21

References
INTO CSU (2014a). Syllabus for AEAD 8302 Advanced one academic reading/composition.
(Available from INTO Colorado State University, Spruce Hall, 150 Old Main Drive, Fort
Collins, CO 80523).
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