Teaching Classification and Organization Skills in ESOL Composition?

Abstract

In organizing ESOL expository writing, students typically have difficulty with: 1) identifying and distinguishing the classifying criteria, sometimes mixing several categories at once; 2) identifying hierarchical categories in a superordinate/subordinate relation to each other; and 3) reclassifying the same content in different ways using different criteria or different hierarchies of categories. This paper relies on research in several areas-paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses in reading comprehension, formal schemata and reading comprehension, and Brunerian learning theory-to explore some classroom approaches to these difficulties. A set of guidelines for the practice of classification skills is proposed. In the following sections, several detailed examples are given of specific classroom pre-writing lessons, and how they may be analyzed in terms of these guidelines.