Challenges to implementing Translingual Writing in EFL contexts

English is the target language to learn as a subject in EFL classrooms. It is taught by following norms, rules, conventions and forms. So a few common challenges of implementing Translingual writing in EFL contexts are as follows.
1. If teachers allow students to have "multiple norms" to write, but only "Standard norms" can be accepted by high-stake exams, what can a teacher do? If both the standard norms and other norms are both taught and allowed, but students perceive only the standard norms are effective in taking tests, students are prone to use monolingual strategies to learn English. Thus, translingual approach may fail.
2. When a teacher "really" allowing students to have "multiple norms" to negotiate meanings, most students become more "relaxed" to use "Chinglish" to write. Since writing in their instinct ways is so natural that teachers do not need to teach much, what should a translingual teacher do in teaching "translingual writing"? Would it goes back to monolingual classrooms when any "teaching" takes place?

My response: As long as learners are given "options" and are fully informed with multiple norms, they can choose whatever ways to write, including monolingual strategies.

3.

Change into Translingualism Makes Change in the World

When teaching standard norms of English academic writing, teachers need to use these norms to measure students' learning. Thus, monolingualism can creep over and impose the standard norms upon teachers and learners. Therefore, when teaching standard norms of academic writing, teachers also need to remind learners about their L1 roles, language attitudes, and the ideologies underlying the target language. That is, an English teacher is not just teaching English but also teaching language attitude and language strategies about when to choose how to communicate with whom. Only when learners are fully informed by standard norms, deviation forms as well as different consequences of using them, and are well prepared to know how to position themselves as a language user for particular communication purposes, can learners gain language agency.

Not only the classrooms need to be changed but also the mainstream community, especially journals for scholarly publications. If the mainstream doesn't change, all the classroom changes are lies and irresponsible practices because students who believe in translingualism will have hard time to get jobs or publish in journals. When both the classrooms and the core of mainstream can both change, the world's attitude toward monolingualism can be shaped.

I believe that a part of L2 writing research will not be affected by translingualism, which is the cognitive related research. However, most of the research relating to social turns will be influenced by translingualism in all aspects including teaching pedagogies, teaching/learning attitudes, assessments, language policies, and research approaches. 

My translingual writing curriculum design

	Essay 1 Literacy Autobiography	Essay 2 Reaction essay	Essay 3 Bilingual education in Taiwan
Teaching foci Instruction	Rhetorical strategies: sensory descriptions, descriptive details. Vivid wordings, similes, metaphors, sentence varieties, conversations, repetitions, episodic examples. Forms/organization Chronological organization showing important English learning landmarks.	Rhetorical strategies: Reporting verbs to show writer’s stance, transitions, tagging the author, learning what thesis statement and topic sentence are in order to summarize a reading. Paraphrasing strategies by changing key words and sentence structures, Forms/organization *Teaching the forms of thesis statement and topic sentence; *Teaching the CARS four moves of an introduction.	Rhetorical strategies:
Teaching materials	Reading materials: Canagarajah	Reading materials: Students are allowed to pick whatever reading they like to respond.	Yourube films: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bdYKSc8s0DY https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=H_FC5VrTm9w Online articles: https://flipedu.parenting.com.tw/ article/5171 https://tw.appledaily.com/new/ realtime/20181011/1445281/
In-class Activities	*Group discussion about the rhetorical strategies used by Canagarajah; *Rhetorical practices in voice; *Peer review *Displaying Good writings	*Group discussion about and practices in rhetorical strategies of writing thesis statements and topic sentences *peer review	Discussing five questions: 1. Can bilingual education enhance Taiwan's international competitiveness? 2. Would bilingual education marginalize indigenous languages? 3. What kind of bilingual programs can work in Taiwan? 4. Can bilingual education increase social stratification? 5. Would bilingual education affect Taiwanese students' language identity and attitude?
Thinking practice	Recalling one’s past memories and making retrospection and reflection upon their language learning experience	*Critical thinking on a reading article, a movie, or an issue. *The writer is required to choose his/her position and explain why.	*Critical thinking on the upcoming language policy in Taiwan. *Designing survey questions to investigate the issues that they are interested in. Students need to learn how to break down an issue into questions that are researchable. *Team writing demands interpersonal skills, metacognitive strategies, and pragmatic negotiations
Requirement	*At least 1000 words	*At least 2000 words *Adopting at least 3 references to support their arguments	*At least 3000 words *Adopting at least 3 references to support their arguments *Collaborative writing *Survey

Teaching translingual writing to EFL students- challenges

         When teaching translingual writing in EFL contexts for academic purposes, the first and most challenge is about teaching academic rules and conventions. Given that translingual writing foregrounds writers' agency engaging in meaning negotiation and resistance to unequal power imposed by dominant language. However, considering the politics of academic writing and publications, translingual writing with code-meshing should be rhetorically justified by taking academic conventions and readers' expectations into account (Canagarajah, 2013).
          Given that my students are novice EFL writers who have never learned English academic writing conventions, I have to teach writing rules, forms, conventions and therefore provide norms to scaffold their learning. Following Horner, Lu et al (2011), I provided explicit and descriptive instruction in English academic rules and conventions, and also compared and contrasted them with Chinese writing. I also inductively guided students to outline a reading sample in order to help students elicit the frame and form of academic writing. Drawing parallels to inductive instruction, I deductively highlighted the notions of topic sentence, thesis statement, and supporting points. Although I addressed differences between English and Chinese writings, which is suggested to be beneficial to development of critical awareness of translingual practices (Gevers, 2018), students' attention without doubt was on English writing norms and conventions. To a certain extent, monolingual pedagogy focusing on forms and rules is integrated into my translingual classroom. I am wondering, what is the line that I should not cross when conducting monolingual instruction in teaching translingual writing? How can I, on the one hand, asking students to practice their writing by following the rules, but, on the other hand, reminding them that it's just a convention of academic communities, and it should be critically negotiated.
          Not surprisingly, when receiving students' writing, I noticed that few of them paid attention to strategies of resistance to the dominant discourse. Instead, they took my idea of "negotiation" as an excuse for their low quality work that might be competed at the last minute, and I also noticed that what were followed are the conventions and rules.
          Following and learning rules and conventions are much easier than negotiating rules and conventions. And following and learning rules and conventions have long been taken as what good students do. They love learning conventions and rules because they can soon gain a sense of achievement as a writer who can write in English. If this is their learning context and expectation from the society, how can translingual approach fit in the context?
They don't have desire to negotiate meaning to argue against unequal power relations or speak to justify their peripheral identity. They believe that they are the "learners" who do not have equal language competence as the native speakers, and who need to learn English by being scaffolded by giving rules and standard models.

REFERENCES
Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global englishes and cosmopolitan relations. New York: Routledge.
Horner, B., Lu, M. Z., Royster, J. J. & Trimbur, J. (2011). Language difference in writing: Toward a translingual approach. College English, 73(3), 303-321.

Code switching & Code meshing

Figure 1. Language proficiency and lexical access

          One particular translanguaging phenomenon of multilingual speakers is code switching and code meshing. It is believed that multilingual speakers have all of their language codes integrated in one repertoire, and when communicating, all the linguistic codes are activated together. Thus, code mixing/translanguaging is considered as naturally inevitable practices. On the other hand, since both languages are potentially active and competing to control output, Applied linguists of bilingualism indicated that language switching takes time because (1) it involves a change in language schema for a given task (schema level inhibition), (2) any change of language involves overcoming the inhibition of the active lemmas with non-target tags (tag inhibition) (Green, 1998, p. 73); (3) cost of switching is asymmetric, and switching into dominant codes costs more than the reverse direction; and (4) the bility to engage in fluent code switching is a hallmark of high proficiency in two languages (Miccio et al. 2009), given that successful and fluent code switching requires a high degree of knowledge of and sensitivity to the grammatical constraints of both languages (kroll et al, 2015).
          If our brain is prone to take the most economic course when
communicating, and if code switching and code meshing cost cognitive capacity, they may not always be the economic selection of multilingual speakers. I hypothesize that some codes may involve more switch cost (e.g. language specific codes, numeral codes, & functional lexical lemmas)  but some may be triggered more spontaneously (e.g. shared content lexical lemmas) (See Figure 2); different language proficiency may result in different cost of language switch (See figure 1); explicit training of code switch may reduce switch cost; contexts that allow more flexible code mixing can reduce unpredictable switching and lead to less lexical suppression (for the more suppressed codes take longer to switch into); and code-switching/meshing from L2 to L1 when composing L2 writing can be ineffective, especially for high proficiency students who have direct access to L2 codes but need to intentionally use L1 during L2 production.

The Modified Hierarchical Model. A. Pavlenko (2009), Conceptual representation in the bilingual lexicon and second language vocabulary learning. In A. Pavlenko (ed.), The bilingual mental lexicon: Interdisciplinary approaches , p. 147. Multilingual Matters, Buffalo, NY. 

          I also would like to propose a broader definition of code-meshing that it refers to meshing two or more codes as a whole at not only the level of lexicon, but phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. For example, Chinglish, under this definition, can be seen as a kind of code-mashing of Chinese and English, which has Chinese syntax and semantics as the base or matrix and bring in English lexemes as the "guest" (e.g.  " I loved a girl at my first sight" ). Given this definition, all the multilingual speakers' language productions are translingual and code-mashed.

Teaching Implications:
1. Since L2 may affect L1, EFL students when writing in L2 dominant contexts may experience reduced access to their L1. I have students complained that code-switching during L2 writing sometimes was not effective. However, most students reported that using L1 to plan before writing is effective. This finding suggests that before the target L2 task schema is activated, L1 can be of great help in idea generation, logic reasoning, and detail elaborations. However, once the L2 task schema is activated, and L1 is inhibited during L2 writing, L1 code-switching may be less effective or even lead to more errors. Therefore, (1) Pre-writing contexts (L1 dominant): teachers can create an L1 contexts triggering L1 writing schema to help students take good use of their L1 resources. (2) Writing contexts (L1 and L2): Do not require students to use certain language when writing. Instead, allowing students to use whatever languages during their processes of drafting. This can allow students to spontaneously use the more strongly activated codes through competing. (3) Post-writing (L2 only): When making final revision/editing, students can then encouraged to use the target language only.
2. EFL writers should not only learn to regulate and control cross-language competition but also learn to shuttle between all the language resources in their repertoires in order to creatively negotiate or mash languages for writing agendas.
3. EFL students with different English proficiency levels can be benefited from L1 differently. Low proficiency writers may be benefited from L1 in lexical search, idea generation, logical reasoning, translating, and monitoring. However, high proficiency writers may prefer to use L1 in idea generation and monitoring. Other usages of L1 during L2 writing may lead to interference for high proficiency writers unless L1 can compensate their situational writing needs.

Week 6 Peer review and reflection paper

          On Week 6, I had my students to do peer review of the draft they composed. Collaborating with professor Canagarajah, I came up with a peer review sheet in which 10 questions were asked. The purposes of the questions, one the one hand, is to elicit information about students' writing processes in relation to their traslingual and rhetorical strategies; on the other hand, the questions can serve as a guideline helping the writers and the reviewers to keep track of their own or the reviewed writings. The ten questions were formulated based on Canagarajah's five formulation questions and four translingual strategies (see my blog article -Week 4).
          Moreover, I designed 5 reflection questions in order to understand students' rhetorical decision, negotiation between L1 and L2, construction of identity, and challenges they encountered.
          I explained the purposes and concerns of peer review since all of my students have never done peer review before. I explained each question of the peer review and the reflection to make sure that they could grasp it. Besides, I demonstrated how I made rhetorical negotiation to compose my idea. I guess my demonstration was quite good for it provided a substantial example accounting for rhetorical negotiation and voice construction.
          I left about 1.5 hours for students to do peer review in class. It is hoped that they could discuss with the writer when reviewing the draft and collaboratively constructed texts from both the writer and reader's perspectives.
          Ten students have turned in their drafts. I was quite anxious about their outcome. And, sigh... I was quite disappointed after reading them. Most of the drafts are too short to carry in-depth reflection and to demonstrate their translingual literacy.  I just wrote an email to my students to encourage them to revise their drafts by next Wednesday, which is the deadline of the final draft.
          Let's see how the final results will turn out to be.

Week 4 writing of autobiography- content & strategies

         On week 4,  I used Canagarajah's autobiography as writing sample to explain content organization and strategies when writing autobiography on one's language learning experience.
          Adopted from Canagarajah (2019), five guide questions were provided for helping students' idea formulation:
1) What are the challenges you faced when learning a new language? 
2) What challenges do writers face for their identity when they develop as multilinguals? 
3)  What strategies do they adopt to negotiate these challenges?  
4) What are the motivations that explain their approaches?  
5) What lessons do writers learn from this experience?

              I also introduced the translingual strategies suggested by Canagarajah (2013)-- 

        1) envoicing: semantic resources used to voice identity

       2) recontextualization: textual strategies that appropriate negotiation of the texts and help 

            readers better understand them.

       3)  interactional: Outputs adopted by writers to facilitate the co-construction of meaning

       4) entextualization: textual strategies that facilitate voice and meaning.

                   Honestly, it was not easy to help these freshmen understand these abstract and complex concepts, such as "identity", "voice", negotiation", "interaction" etc. So, when lecturing, I shifted languages between Mandarin and English in order to make my points clear to them. I also used the writing samples to demonstrate how the formulation questions can lead the story going and how the writers incorporated the four translingual strategies into their texts.
              Concepts of "identity" and "voice" are very foreign to the students because their English writing practices were designed and taught mainly to satisfy the demands of entrance examinations. They rarely had chances to explore how to position themselves in different genres for different purposes. This is also my first time to teach these concepts which used to be the topics only for research purposes. I didn't like my teaching performance. I should have spent more time on discussing "identity" and "voice" and left some time for students to practice how to construct their identity through audience concerns and rhetorically creating a specific voice corresponding to the identity. 

Generative Linguistics and Translingualism

It seems to me that there are a few misconceptions of generative linguistics held by some second language studies or translingualist scholars. These misconceptions are the ones that I personally know of through conversations with friends who work in those fields. They are most likely NOT representative of the fields, but to the extent that these views exist, it might still be worthwhile to point them out. My personal belief is that generative linguistics, second language studies, and translingualism are fundamentally compatible. Most "conflicting views" are in fact due to different understandings of certain terms, different aspects of language they aim to study, and different ultimate goals for their research agendas.

The first misconception is that generative linguistics is normative and prescriptive in nature. This can't be farther from the truth. If one interprets "normative" as having to do with obligation, they will be hard pressed to find any claims of such nature in the linguistic literature. When a linguist says, for example, that it should be ungrammatical to extract a wh-word out of one of two conjuncts in Limonese Creole, the word should only means that, based on what we already know about how language works, there's a high probability that native speakers of Limonese Creole will never form a wh-question sentence in that way. It is essentially a statement of prediction, common in all sciences. That kind of linguistic statement is similar to saying, in physics for instance, that if the temperature of water reaches 100 degrees at one atmosphere of pressure, it should boil.

Compare that with disciplines that do deal with normative issues, such as legal or political philosophy. Here, a statement such as "no citizen of a democratic community should be denied voting rights" is plainly a moral statement, not a prediction, as there have been multiple cases throughout history where certain groups of people were--and still are--in fact denied such rights.

Also, notice that whether a discipline is normative or descriptive doesn't depend on how many factors are typically considered in a research study in that field. Instead, it depends on whether the goal of the study is to describe what really happens / exists (even at an abstract level) or to argue what is morally desirable. Many theories in generative syntax, for example, can sometimes be quite abstract in the sense that many social, cultural, or even processing factors are not taken into account, but that does not mean the goal of this field is not to discover what rules exist in the human mind. This is the same with many laws in physics that, in their formulations, don't take into account certain factors, such as friction. Yet, no one would claim that physics is a normative discipline.

Related to the first misconception, a second one is that everything linguists call "ungrammatical" is a mere violation of some socially-constructed norm or convention of the language. This type of thinking may lead to the conclusion that there is nothing in a language, from spelling to syntactic structure, that can't be negotiated. That said, my impression is that scholars with this view do tend to focus their research only on linguistic patterns that are, for the most part, social conventions. It just so happens that those non-negotiable (presumably biologically-based) linguistic phenomena (e.g., syntactic operations based on hierarchical relations) tend to fall outside those scholars' radar, and the reason for that is probably because no L2 students ever produce the kind of linguistic output that will bring those scholars' attention to such phenomena (e.g., using an entirely linearly-based rule to form a wh-question in English). Therefore, I have little to say on this point.

A third misconception is that the terms native and non-native (and by extension, L1 and L2) used by linguists are now outdated and should be discarded by all researchers of language. These terms, as holders of this view would claim, are hard to define and therefore extremely problematic. Here, one should be careful and ask: "For what purposes are these terms problematic?" In my own field, the notions of native and non-native are commonly accepted criteria for sources of linguistic data. In general, one would not ask someone who, say, started to learn Russian in her late 50's to judge the grammaticality of some Russian sentence, unless the goal of the study is to see whether L2 learners have the same grammaticality judgement as L1 speakers in certain areas of grammar. But even in the latter case, a distinction between L1 and L2 is explicitly assumed.

Some scholars may deny that such a distinction really exists and believe that, given enough time and exposure, all late learners of a language will achieve native proficiency. (And if they don't, it's simply because there hasn't been enough exposure.) I would say that such a denial should be subjected to empirical investigations (or rigorous logical reasoning if no tools for empirical investigations are available) just like all claims in all scientific fields should be. The empirical basis for assuming there is a distinction between L1 and L2 can be easily found in SLA literature, and as far as methodology is concerned, I see no reason to abandon such an assumption, at least in my own field. Of course, it may turn out in the future that all differences observed thus far between so-called L1 and L2 speakers are actually reducible to some environmental effect (e.g., lack of exposure), and that there's nothing qualitatively different between the two groups. Before that day comes (if it ever does), the terms native and non-native will remain useful in generative linguistics, if for no other reason than to make sure the data we gather truly reflect what we aim to discover.

(Incidentally, it is sometimes claimed that the terms are problematic and should be discarded because there exist fuzzy cases where a person achieves native-like proficiency in a language that is not their L1 according to the traditional definition, whatever it may be. To that, I'd say most disciplines have fuzzy cases to which a certain term may not be entirely applicable, but people keep using the term because it is useful in some other cases. It seems obvious to me that this is true of linguistics as well.)

Now, it should be emphasized that just because these terms are useful in one field does not mean it is also useful in other fields, such as language education. One can certainly argue that for educational purposes, imposing labels such as L1 and L2 on students may actually do more harm than good. I will leave this matter to the experts on this site.

Like I said at the beginning, this post is intended to clarify some of the misconceptions I have seen, and they may not be representative of the general views of those in the second language studies and translingualism communities. Hopefully it will provide some food for thought nonetheless.

Week 3 (II) Some thoughts about distinctions between Native and nonnative; ESL and EFL

          In the first two weeks, my graduate course covered the debates in relation to the distinctions between NS, NNS, ESL, EFL. We read the following papers: Edwards (2014), Edwards & Laporte (2015), Canagarajah (2006, 2007), Higgins (2003), Nayar Bhaskaran (1997). Despite Nayar Bhaskaran (1997), all the others were prone to take the position that distinctions between NS/NNES, NS/ESL, and ESL/EFL are problematic. However, conflating the distinctions may also be problematic too.
          Edwards (2014), according to a corpus-based study, found no clear divides of progressive usages between ESL (i.e. Indian English & Singapore English) and EFL (Dutch English). In the follow-up research, Edwards and Laporte (2015) found that the most institutionalized English varieties (i.e. Singapore English, India English) had more similar usage of preposition "into" to that of native speakers than the least institutionalized varieties (i.e. Hong Kong English and Dutch English). The finding reveals that some outer circle varieties (Hong Kong English) are less prototypical ESL, and some expanding circle varieties (Dutch English) are less prototypical EFL, suggesting that NES, ESL, and EFL should be treated as a continuum rather than a strict divide. Higgins (2003) investigated NS-NNS dichotomy according to speakers' sense of "ownership." She found both groups of speakers showed variation in degrees of ownership, though NS speakers showed more sense of ownership of English, it was not significant.
          I agree that if taking the macro perspective, countries in the same outer or expanding circle can be exonormative or endonormative. Moreover, it's even possible to have NES, ESL, and EFL speakers living in the same country or discourse community, e.g. Zimbabwe, South Africa or Taiwan (some rich family send their kids to bilingual schools where afford abundant exposure of the target language for complete English acquisition; some may have resources remaining English exposure similar to ESL contexts, but some may have little exposure of English and can only learn it from schools like EFL learners.) Thus, macro divisions based on geographical and historical factors are definitely problematic. If taking the perspective of SLA, I think micro perspective based on individuals' language acquisition completeness and linguistic competence may be more valid to distinguish NS from NNS, and in that sense, NS and NNS are different due to distinct language acquisition processes, but ESL and EFL  are not distinct from each other because English are not the L1 for both group of people.

Can I not be labeled? 

          Interestingly, Canagarajah broke the shackles of SLA and regarded Lingua Franca Englishes as "a kind of language" which has negotiable fluid norms, and is socio-contextual oriented. Canagarajah (2006, 2007) argued that Lingua Franca English (LFE) should not be compared with Metropolitan Englishes or English from SLA perspective. Lingua Franca English is consisted of varieties of Englishes with multiple norms. The dominant English variety has been shaped and is continually being shaped  by lingua franca Englishes used in the multilingual contexts. Therefore, instead of pursuing the "sanitized" linguistic competence, multilingual speakers should be equipped with "multilingual competence," such as language awareness making instantaneous inferences about the norms and conventions , strategic competence to negotiate meaning, and pragmatic competence to adopt communicative conventions. Standard English is treated as one of the varieties of English. No one is LFE native speakers, but everyone has equal terms to use it to negotiate meanings. Thus, every speaker can claim ownership of LFE and manifest agency in his/her own right. Taking this translingual perspective, there is no need to distinguish NS/NNS, ESL/EFL and NS/ESL/EFL. I have to say WOOOOW! this is a brilliant view of language.
          However, I do have one concern. LFE is a contact language for communication purposes, but English in Taiwan is a subject matter taught in classrooms for learning purposes. Most Taiwanese EFL learners do not acquire English competence before critical period, therefore, make different errors from native speakers. That means, in learning contexts (not communication contexts), EFL learners need different instruction, assessment, and practice from NES. If the distinctions between NS and NNS are conflated treating NS and NNS the same, wouldn't it be problematic????

REFERENCES:
Canagarajah, S. (2006). The place of world Englishes in composition: Pluralization 
          continued. College Composition and Communication, 57 (4), 586-619
Canagarajah, S.. (2007). Lingua Franca English, Multilingual communities, and 
          language acquisition. The Modern Language Journal, 91, Focus Issue: Second
          Language Acquisition Reconceptualized? The Impact of Firth and Wagner (1997)
          (2007), 923-939.
Edwards, A. (2014). The progressive aspects in the Netherlands and ESL/EFL
          continuum. World Englishes, 33 (2), 173-194.
Edwards, A. & Laporte, S. (2015). Outer and expanding circle Englishes. English
          World-Wide 36 (2), 135-169.
Higgins, C. (2003). "Ownership" of English in the outer circle: An alternative to the 
         NS-NNS dichotomy. TESOL Quarterly, 37 (4), 615-644.
Nayar Bhaskaran, P. (1997). ESL/EFL dichotomy today: Language politics or
         pragmatics? TESOL Quarterly, 31 (1) 9-37.

Week 3 (I) Descriptive details -- cognitive processes in L1 and L2

          In this week, my teaching foci were teaching "descriptive details". Since autobiography writing is a kind of narrative or descriptive writing, descriptive details allows readers to create mental images to "see," "feel," "experience" what the writers undergone.
          To create descriptive details in writing, I taught students to use: 1) modifiers, including adjectives and adverbs, 2) vivid words, including vivid verbs and nouns, 3) sensory details, including words relating to smell, taste, sight, feeling, and sound, 4) similes and metaphors,  5) conversations, and 6) the five journalistic "W"s.
          After my lecture, I asked my students to do some exercise by giving them some sentence skeletons as follows:
1. When she buys clothes, she is like ___________________
2. Kobe Bryant is as tall as _____________
3. My best friend sings like _______________
4. She is as quiet as _____________
I encouraged the students to apply the above 5 strategies and use their L1 to revise and complete the sentences by providing my answer of sentence 1 as an example:

"When she buys clothes, she is like______" => "End of season sales have successfully launched shopping insanity, and crazy shoppers stormed into shops clambering over each other to snap up deals. My sister armed with coupons to buy clothes, and she got into the frantic crowds like a starving wolf searching for prey."
          I also asked students to discuss their completed sentences with their peers in whatever language they felt comfortable with in order to brainstorm more ideas for revision. Afterwords, I asked two students to share their revised sentences. The two students' sentences are as follow:
          Student A: My best friend sings like a chirping golden oriole.
          Student B: When my mom was in an ecstasy of shopping, she is like an eager hunter.

[My observation and reflection]:
          1. Cooped thoughts. When students were doing the exercise, it seemed to be difficult for them to think out of the cliched box from making corny sentences, such as "Kobe Bryant is as tall as a tree" or "My friend sings like a bird." Even though when I asked them to think in Chinese, most of them were still confined by the English skeleton sentences or cooped up in the syntactic stratum of English. The two  students' sentences account for the cognitive constraint. More evidence was observed. I asked one student to complete sentence 4. Because she showed embarrassment and stuttered, I suggested her using Chinese to help her thought mapping. She murmured in Mandarin, "She is as quiet as....." "She is very quiet like a...." Then eventually, she came up with a sentence "She is so quiet like a mute person." She felt a bit frustrated that she was not able to make a satisfied and "splendid" sentence.
         It looks like once the L2 syntax is primed and when L2 outputs are preset as a pursuing goal, even though one is allowed to use his/her L1, L2 still predominates one's working memory and inhibits L1 process. Lack of L2 linguistic resources seems to be one of the major reasons causing thought constraints. Although some vocabulary may emerge automatically from L1 to compensate L2 defects, muse of thoughts doesn't flow in automatically when switching to L1. One student said that her brain was totally blank in English, but when switched to Chinese it was slowly awaken, yet very slowly.

• Maybe next time, I can create a L1 context first by writing sentence skeletons in Chinese and asking students to compose in Chinese. Then ask them to transfer the emerged ideas into English. I hypothesize that they can be more creative and free-thought in their L1. 
• Shuttling between L1 and L2 though sounds like an automatic reaction, L1 doesn't transfer to compensate L2 deficit automatically. It looks to me that L1 and L2 codes, though are integrated in one repertoire, they receive different priming from the contexts. When the context of a task requires L2, L1 is automatically inhibited, which demands extra efforts to be retrieved. That means, shuttling between L1 and L2 doesn't take place easily or automatically but demands time for shuttling, and "certain threshold level of" training and practice. However, why the contextual priming activates L1 L2 differently if they are integrated together? Would it suggest that L1 and L2 are partially separated into different linguistic systems but have some parts overlap?? 

Cook (2012) http://www.viviancook.uk/Writings/Papers/KeyIssues.htm

         

Week 2- Jotting down eventful life episodes and find key points to dig in

1. To encourage my students to generalize their experience into points or opinions, I asked students to recall their English learning experience and jot down the episodes that are most impressive, memorable, or strike them.
2. Sorting out the episodes into categories and provide meaningful themes to these categories.
3. Then, I asked them to break into discussion group of 2 or 3 to share their stories and episodic themes. I allowed them to use English, Mandarin, mixed codes, or whatever languages that they felt comfortable to describe their experience and to share their insights.
4. I asked peers to provide feedback to the shared stories and themes in order to provide outsiders' perspectives which can shape the original themes and points to be made.
5. I intentionally created a multilingual space for students where they could focus more on idea generation and brainstorming rather than focusing on lexical choices for English expression. It is evident that students were empowered and liberated by translanguaging. Even though all the students mainly used English to share and discuss, they seemed to be more relaxed, expressive, creative and reflective in this multilingual "safe space". Moreover, because of the "safe" feeling that they won't be judged by their English, they seemed to be more tolerant of errors made by themselves and their peers and were more willing to negotiate meanings in their Englishes.
6. After discussion, I asked two students to share their stories and insights derived from the episodic stories and peer interactions. I provided feedback to their sharing afterwards. The purpose was to set them as examples to demonstrate how experience can be generalized into opinions.
7. Finally, I asked students to research the episodic themes that they came up with during the above processes in order to obtain more references or professional information, which can help them dig the themes deeper and help them theorize their opinions.

My observation:
The two students shared their stories and the emerged points. Yet, one happened to have similar experience to the the autobiography of Prof. Canagarajah which was used to serve as the writing sample in this class. So, he adopted Prof. Canagarajah's points to account for language power and social unfair stratifications that caused by languages.
The other student shared her personal English writing experience that she adopted Chinese writing style in her English writing, and then how she "realized" that she had to follow English writing conventions. The point that she made was vague. Something was emerging, but she was not able to make it substantial yet.
I still concern about how I can lead students to generalize and elicit insightful points from their experience. I think this is one of the important abilities that autobiography writing can help students to develop.