Using Rhetorical Modes to Reinforce Deaf Students’ Writing Skills at Different English Proficiency Levels John Panara NTID English Department

Writing II and Writing IV Course Descriptions WRITING II Students learn how to use personal experience and resource materials to develop and organize their thoughts on various topics. Students organize and develop paragraphs and brief compositions of various discourse forms, with particular emphasis on description and process. WRITING IV Students gather information from various sources, plan, draft, revise, and edit longer essays (of at least 500 words) of various discourse types, with particular emphasis on description and exemplification. They learn how to organize and develop their texts for various topics, purposes, and audiences.

Rhetorical modes typically used in lower- and upper-level NTID writing courses Writing II Narration Description Process Opinion Writing IV Cause and Effect Comparison and Contrast Exemplification Other writing: Summary and peer review At NTID, specific rhetorical modes are emphasized at the lower and higher English proficiency levels in writing courses, and, in my classes, particular emphasis is placed on the value of outlining.

Some of the writing and grammar concepts that correlate to each mode Writing II Level  Traditional paragraph structure  Outlining  Verb tense use and consistency  Adverb clauses in complex sentences  Sentence structure variety – prepositional phrase placement  Point of view (1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd )  Basic transition words

Paragraph as a “Sandwich” Topic sentence (topic + controlling idea) Relevant Details Closing sentence (related to topic sentence) StrategyStrategy: Inferring the topic sentence of a paragraph

The Importance of Outlining Emphasize outlining as a fundamental outlining part of the paragraph writing process Gives students a chance to work on content and organization without worrying about grammar. Students seamlessly segue to the paragraph, and outline markers easily become transition words. StrategyStrategy: Practice creating outlines from paragraphs

Tense Considerations Narrative writing often involves past verb tense while process writing often involves present verb tense. In addition, narrative writing involves adverb clauses with time order words. Remind lower-proficiency students of the need for verb tense consistency within modes. Narrative writing often involves past verb tense while process writing often involves present verb tense. In addition, narrative writing involves adverb clauses with time order words. StrategyStrategy: Practice identifying consistent verb tense use vs. inconsistent verb tense use in narrative writing, along with examples of complex sentences with adverb clauses.

Descriptive Writing is particularly challenging to deaf students whose sentence structure skills are weak. So, part of the emphasis can be on: Recognizing prepositions and prepositional phrases of location Recognizing prepositions and prepositional phrases of location Thinking about sentence structure variety in terms of Thinking about sentence structure variety in terms of placement of prepositional phrases Using the expletive “there” Using the expletive “there” Sentence Structure StrategyStrategy: Find examples of the concepts listed above— used correctly and used incorrectly

Process Writing As teachers, we often imply the subject of our sentences (you) when we write homework directions to students. So, covering “process writing” represents a good time to discuss: imperative sentences modal verbs present tense verbs Time/transition words to show order Point of View in Writing – 2 nd person vs. 1 st and 3 rd Person StrategyStrategy: Arrange a list of sentences in the correct sequence to make a process paragraph.

Rhetorical modes typically used in upper-level writing courses at NTID. Writing IV Comparison and Contrast Cause and Effect Exemplification Other writing: Summary writing Peer review

Some writing and grammar concepts that correlate to the types of writing Writing IV Level  Traditional essay structure  Outlining  Verb use tense shifts within an essay  Coherence Strategies  Parallelism (word form and word order balance) within sentences  Paraphrasing strategies active voice vs. passive voice

Traditional Essay and Outline  Emphasize traditional essay structure with an introduction, body, and conclusion.  Include outlining in the writing process as a way of checking content and organization. Students can transition from outline to essay seamlessly.outlining  Provide students with an outline “template” for the assigned rhetorical mode. StrategyStrategy: Respond to a student’s cause and effect essay outline.

Verb Tense Shifts Discuss situations in which a writer shifts verb tense within his or her writing. Encourage higher-proficiency students to “think outside the one-verb-tense box” and to recognize when shifts are appropriate. StrategyStrategy: Analyze verb tense in a cause and effect essay.

Coherence Strategy Discuss “coherence” with upper-level writing students. Good writers achieve coherence by sometimes including a closing sentence in body paragraphs to remind the reader of the paragraph’s point, especially if the paragraph is lengthy. Encourage students to include a closing sentence in some of their body paragraphs. StrategyStrategy: Examine closing sentences to a cause and effect essay.

Achieving balance (parallelism) Discuss “parallelism” with upper-level writing students. Good writers achieve parallelism by balancing words in a pair or series so that they have the same structure and form, especially in a thesis sentence that includes a “preview” of the essay’s points. Discuss the relationship between parallelism and word forms/word order. StrategyStrategy: Practice parallelism in sentences.

Introduce students to paraphrasing techniques Steps: 1. Understand what you are reading 2. Notice the sentence structure--decide whether the sentence is in active voice or passive voice 3. Rewrite the sentence in your own words and possibly with a different sentence structure. Strategies for Teaching Writing to Higher Proficiency Students StrategyStrategy—revise active vs. passive voice sentences and apply the strategy to writing paraphrases and a summary.

Analyze Structure and Technique in Professional Writing Provide “accessible” reading selections demonstrating that the “pros” use many of the same strategies learned by students Strategies for Teaching Writing to Higher Proficiency Students Strategy—examine an article using the same criteria that studentsarticle use to evaluate each other: content, organization, unity, coherence, and sentence skills.