The Presentational Mode 203

the role that writing plays in learning, impacts learners' development as writers (Heath, . 1993; Sperling & Woodlief, 1997). If the instructional focus, for example, is on accuracy and correctness of surface-level features, then students come to understand and use writing as a basic transcription tool. Conversely, if they are led to use writing as a means for de­veloping and connecting ideas, they develop the requisite skills and abilities for using writ­ing as an activity for both making and discovering meaning.

The kinds of writing that students do in their classrooms, in tum, have been shown to in­fluence the kinds of writers they become outside the classroom. Cazden (1993), for example, revealed how the role of academic writing in the life of one university student was trans­formed through the student's participation in her classroom writing activities. In discovering what she termed the generative power of language the student found "that through writing one can continually bring new selves into being, each with new responsibilities and difficulties, but also with new possibilities .... I write to continually give birth to myself' (pp. 209-210).

A similar transformative role has been claimed for learning to read and write in two languages. In a review of research on biliteracy, Moll (2000) noted that such learning "me­diates the intellect not only by providing access to the real world of the community and by offering the expanded possibilities of broader or different experiences of the literate world, but also by creating new worlds that have not existed before" (p. 266).

In an attempt to capture the multiple cognitive and social dimensions of writing, Ap­plebee (in press) has proposed a model that defines writing as a process of participating in social action. In this view, writing is understood as a form of apprenticeship into different contexts. As participants in a particular context, developing writers come to understand what are considered appropriate and accurate uses of language, including structural and rhetorical forms, and strategic processes. They also develop a sense of the underlying issues that make writing in that context interesting and effective. In other words, in developing writing skills, writers develop a repertoire of strategies for composing in particular contexts in addition to a sense of the many different uses that writing can serve. Judging writing development in­volves evaluating writers' abilities to participate with increasing appropriateness, accuracy, and effectiveness in an ever-expanding range of culturally significant contexts.

This perspective on writing helps us understand the larger, but oftentimes invisible, forces that help shape students' development as writers in foreign language classrooms. These additional forces include the experiences they have with writing both in English and the target language outside the classroom. In addition to what they bring with them to the classroom, our learners' development is shaped by the curricular goals for composing, de­fined in terms of the presentational activities made available to them, and by the contexts for learning to write that we create for them in our foreign language classroom communities.

GUIDELINES FOR DESIGNING INSTRUCTION AROUND PRESENTATIONAL

COMMUNICATIVE ACTIVITIES Instruction is comprised of "all of the teacher's purposeful activities aimed at producing, stimulating, or facilitating learning by students" (Posner & Rudnitsky, 2001). The primary goal of instruction designed for the presentational mode is to help students, both as individ­uals and members of social groups, to develop an understanding of the power of language to

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both convey and create meaning. At the same time, it is to help students leam to use this knowledge to share what they know with others, and, at the same time, to explore new ways of understanding.

Thus, in the instructional environments we create in our classrooms we need to pro­vide multiple opportunities for students to compose oral, written, and visual texts on a va­riety of topics for a variety of intellectual and practical purposes, and for a variety of audi­ences. Vygotsky (1978) made this quite clear when he stated that any writing that students engage in "should be meaningful" and "incorporated into a task that is necessary and rele­vant for life" (p. 118). Also, in creating effective instructional environments, teachers must remember that the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for composing in the target lan­guage develop slowly, over time, and require extensive practice. Because the process can sometimes be frustrating and difficult, teachers need to provide enough regular positive feedback to sustain learners' interest and motivation (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996).

Choosing Communicative Activities The first step in designing instruction around the presentational communication mode is to choose the activities for which students will be expected to develop competence. These ac­tivities, along with the selected interpersonal and interpretive communicative activities, comprise the core of the foreign language curriculum. Figure 8-2 lays out some typical pre­sentational communicative activities that can be relevant to middle and high school stu­dents. As has been done for the other two communication modes, the activities here are arranged according to the primary purpose for engaging in the activity and the community to which the activities are most appropriately linked.

Quadrants I and II contain expressive activities. As stated earlier, in these activities learners compose texts that convey their opinions, feelings, and other kinds of personal meaning through which they and others can come to understand themselves, their own cul­tures, and those of the target language groups. Quadrant 1 contains expressive activities that are typically associated with communities outside the classroom for whom the target lan­guage is the primary code of communication. Quadrant II is comprised of expressive ac­tivities realized through the target language that are considered essential to classroom communities of foreign language learners. Located in both quadrants are expressive activ­ities that are typical of both communities.

Quadrants III and IV include transactional activities. The purpose of these activities is to conveyor share information or knowledge with others, or to explore new ideas and meaning. The transactional activities in Quadrant III are those in which learners are likely to engage with members of target language communities outside the classroom. Quadrant IV contains transactional activities in which learners are likely to engage in their own class­room communities of learners. Similar to activities with an expressive purpose, many trans­actional activities can be pertinent to both target language and classroom communities and thus they are located in both quadrants.

Many of the activities listed here can involve a wide range of text types. Figure 8-3 contains a short list of different texts typical of presentational communicative activities that are likely to be relevant to middle school and high school students. Competent participa­tion in a wide range of presentational communicative activities using a variety of texts and representing all four quadrants is necessary to full bilingual development.

205 The Presentational Mode

Target Language Community Activities Classroom Community Activities

. Writing a eulogy Creating a bulletin board " Creating a comic strip Creating or performing in a play Performing an oral reading Singing/recording/composing a song. jingle, or cheer Creating a poem, short story, or narrative Writing thank-you notes Creating a personal Web page Creating greeting cards Completing crossword puzzle or other word games

EXPRESSIVE EXPRESSIVE

III IV Writing a resume and cover Writing a composition, essay, or letter research report Writing a business letter Giving an academic lecture Keeping a diary Creating a TV or radio commercial

Writing an editorial Writing an essay on a current event Keeping a daily journal of activities Creating an information pamphlet or brochure Keeping minutes of a meeting Writing instructions on how to do something Making a formal presentation Conducting a clinic, workshop, or demonstration on how to do something

I'

, TRANSACTIONAL TRANSACTIONAL

I FIGURE 8-2 Presentational Communicative Activities

Technological Media and Resources for Engaging in Presentational Communicative Activities Although not as widely accessible as pen and paper, audio and video recording equipment has often been used by students in foreign language classrooms to compose multimedia pre­sentations in the target language. In addition to these more traditional forms of electronic media, the recent inclusion of the Internet, and more specifically the World Wide Web, as classroom instructional resources has expanded the possibilities for composing.

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The WWW has been called a revolutionary medium (Bicknell, 1999) in that it allows for the use of not just written text, but graphics, video, and sound as well. Moreover, it pro­vides a significant means for students to develop their navigation skills, connect with oth­ers, and establish a real audience to which they can present their electronic creations. In ad­dition to the sources provided on the Web for designing various kinds of presentations, computer-based software programs designed specifically for desktop publishing are avail­able. With the proliferation of such publishing programs, using the computer and other forms of electronic media to create documents should require only a minimum level of

FIGURE 8-3 Abridged List of

Presentational Texts Annotated lists (of readings, films, videos, purchases, preferences, etc.) Bulletin boards Business information letters and reports Comic strips and cartoons Daily activity logs Directions Editorials Expository essays

cause/effect classification comparison/contrast defintion description persuasion problem/solution process

Greeting cards Information brochures or pamphlets Instructions Invitations Memoirs Newsletters Plays, dramas, and skits Poems Recipes Research papers Resumes Reviews Songs, jingles, and cheers Short stories Time lines and schedules

The Presentational Mode 207

computational expertise from middle and high school students. Thus, they should be en­couraged from the beginning levels of language instruction to incorporate a range of elec­tronic media into their authoring tool kits.

Identifying the Communicative Components Once it has been decided which activities form the curricular goals for the presentational mode, the next step is to identify the basic components and features of each communica­tive activity that students need to learn. The components of the various communicative ac­tivities selected for inclusion in the foreign language curriculum will form the core of the learning objectives to which the instructional activities are oriented. Following is an ex­ample of the kinds of skills, abilities, and knowledge that students need to compose a per­suasive essay on an academic topic, using the model of communicative competence pro­posed by CeIce-Murcia et al. (1995) as a framework:

Discourse: Linguistic devices used to make logical connections between phrases, sentences, and paragraphs such as anaphoric reference cues (e.g., use of the pronoun "they" to refer back to the original subject "the farmers" in the following lines: The fanners had left the village earlier. They used carts and horses to carry their goods.); the appropriate structuring and ordering of propositional claims to build one's argument of persuasion; and linguistic devices for managing given and new information.

Linguistic: Knowledge of subject-verb agreement, appropriate word order, use of articles, modals, and prepositions, and appropriate use of mechanics (e.g., punctuation, capitalization, paragraph formation, spelling).

Sociocultural: Knowledge of audience variables (e.g, age, gender, social role) that affect the effectiveness of the essay; the stylistic appropriateness (e.g., levels of formality and politeness) for addressing the audience; knowledge of topic parameters (e.g.; what counts as taboo claims, adequate evidence, well­supported opinions).

Rhetorical: Knowledge of how to form speech acts conventionally associated with persuasive essays (e.g., introducing main idea, expressing opinions, providing warrants or justification, advising, speculating, encouraging, discouraging, summarizing); knowledge of how to appropriately order the speech acts (e.g., expressing opinion followed by justification).

Strategic: Knowledge of linguistic devices for stimulating interest and motivating the reader to engage in reading the essay; knowledge of visual devices for enhancing written text (e.g., appropriate use of font size, page layout, headings and subheadings, bolded and italicized text).

Creating Instructional Activities Once the components of the communicative activities have been identified, the next step is to create a set of instructional activities. As discussed in earlier chapters, the purpose of the multiple and varied learning opportunities provided by instructional activities is to help

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