Teaching and Learning Argumentative Writing in "Sheltered" ESL High School English Language Arts Classrooms

• In Event: Writing and Literacies Across Disciplinary Contexts: Implications for Students Learning English as an Additional Language

Abstract

This two-year longitudinal study of an English as a Second Language (ESL) high school teacher and two of her “sheltered” high school ESL classes explores the teacher’s developing expertise as well as institutional forces that challenged and often thwarted her progress. By focusing on the teacher’s argumentative epistemology (Newell, VanDerHeide & Wynhoff Olsen, 2014) we examined how, over time, and as a result of collaboration, her conceptual understanding and practical approaches shifted away from teaching pre-set discourse structures toward more concern with ELLs’ argumentative writing practices. We focus on argumentative writing because of its important role in the teaching and learning of academic literacy in U.S. high schools.

To better understand how the teacher’s argumentative epistemologies shifted over time as a result of practical reasoning (Richardson, 1994) during collaborative discussions (teacher, doctoral student and professor), we studied her classroom across two academic years (Autumn 2013 to Spring 2015) using an ethnographic stance (Dixon & Green, 2005). We used methods of interactional ethnography (Dixon & Green, 2005), a combination of interviews, discourse analysis, and ethnographic observation/participation in a cultural context. Ms. Patrick, a white female with eight years of ESL teaching experience in a suburban high school, taught ELLs placed in classrooms representing the highest levels (Transitional) of a 5-level ESL program. The major goal of our design experiment (Cobb et al., 2003) was to develop “local theories” for teaching argumentation by examining the teacher’s previous theories in a real situation (phase one), understanding how to introduce change into complex contextual variations (phase two) and examining the effects of the intervention (phase three).

Phase One: Autumn 2013: Focus on Essay Structure
In Ms. Patrick’s classroom, “transitional” was meant “for students who are very close to moving to a regular English language arts classroom.” Ms. Patrick’s approach to literary argumentation was structural (how to place the elements of argument into a pre-set format). Instruction on argumentative writing about a novel was quite uneven with some series of worksheets intended to ensure students’ understanding of a novel.

Phase Two: Autumn 2014: The Intervention
We met with Ms. Patrick on five separate occasions to develop a structured-process approach to both narrative and argumentative writing. During these sessions we worked both on conceptual notions of task-specific knowledge (Hillocks, 1995) and on practical instructional activities to teach relevant procedural and declarative knowledge.

Phase Three: Spring 2015: Shifting from Structure to Ideas
Although Ms. Patrick’s eclectic shifts from structural to ideational epistemologies were fostered by activities (e.g., test preparation) that were sometimes inimical to the complex rhetoric she was trying to teach, she made two instructional moves that provided her ELLs with positive support. First, rather than depending on whole class discussions as she had the year before, Ms. Patrick employed teacher-student conferencing to ensure “that our claims are arguable.” Second, she used writing samples to teach ELLs the features “good” arguments and then engaged them in instructional activities to produce claims that were supported and warranted by appropriate evidence.

Authors

• George E. Newell, The Ohio State University

• Hyun Jung Joo, The Ohio State University - Columbus

• Alan Hirvela, The Ohio State University