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.
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.
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