Teaching ESL Writing (Final Paper) -- Education Learning Essays

Teaching ESL Writing At times the plethora of professional journals and the myriad subjects treated therein seems like little more than a dizzying exercise in redundancy and a forum for education professionals to justify their worth in a competitive job market; however, I would like to think that there is a hidden value for those of us whose brains seem to operate in what some might call a â€Å"spiral† rhetorical pattern, that as we work our way around and around certain issues related to composition instruction, we are moving gradually upward toward broader understanding and better practice. Some studies seem to do little more than show the need for more studies, their authors falling back on such standard phrases as, â€Å"clearly more research is needed,† but that at least is evidence that we’re moving toward something – we’re trying to pinpoint the exact gap between educational practice as we know it and as we sense it might exist in an improved state. So, it is with this hope in mind that I’ve undertaken yet another literature review, consuming the writings of others in order to find a specific gap in (at least my own) understanding of educational practice as it relates to college-level ESL composition students in general, and to college-level ESL students with learning disabilities (LD) specifically. For the purposes of this paper I shall borrow Skinner and Gilespie’s definition of learning disabilities as follows: [Learning disabled persons are those] of average or above average intelligence who have difficulty mastering skills in reading and spelling (often in the form of dis- lexia), and /or writing, or math. ... ...es. March/April 2001, 34, 2. 136-152. Munro, Murray J. and Tracey M. Derwing. â€Å"Foreign Accent, Comprehensibility, and Inteligibility.† Language Learning. June 1999, 49, 2. 285-111. Poon-McBrayer, Kim Feng and Shernaz B. Garcia. â€Å"Profiles of Asian American Students with Learning Disabilities at Initial Referral, Assessment, and Place- ment in Special Education.† Journal of Learning Disabilities. Jan/Feb 2001, 33, 1. 61-71. Skinner, Louise and Phyllis Gillespie. â€Å"The Challenge of Adult Literacy: Students with Learning Disabilities in the ABE Classroom.† Adult Basic Education. Fall 2000, 10, 3. Spack, Ruth. â€Å"Student Meets Text, Text Meets Student: Finding a Way into Academic Discourse.† Reading in the Composition Classroom: Second Language Perspectives. Ed. Joan G. Carson and Ilona Leki. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers, 1993. 183-196.