ABSTRACT
I am observing an adult ESL class for immigrants and refugees in Australia. The students are beginners and have a variety of language backgrounds: Burmese, Farsi, Singhalese, Dinka, and Sudanese Arabic. The previous day, the class had taken a fi eld trip to a nearby wildlife park, where they had been able to observe many different Australian animals, pat kangaroos, hold koalas, and learn about native animal habitats, diets, and life cycles. As well as touring the exhibits, the park’s Education Offi cer had conducted a lesson about the animals, adjusted to the students’ language level. The day I am observing, the teacher is helping the class write recounts about their experiences at the wildlife park. The teacher uses the whiteboard to present a grid for scaffolding the structure and grammar of the recount, including simple metalanguage such as “recount,” “spoken,” “written,” and “paragraphs.” The teacher elicits key vocabulary such as names of animals and descriptive adjectives. She does this through “wh” question prompts such as “where,” “when,” and “who with.” In this way, they develop a skeleton oral recount together. She then asks them to write their own individual recounts. As the students work on them, she walks around, supporting students as needed. The students are very engaged in the activity and happy to relate what they did at the park. [Murray, research notes]
Task: Refl ect
1. What are the aspects of instruction that helped learners achieve success in writing their own recounts?
