One of my goals for this semester is to look into the teacher and graduate preparation for ESL instructors from the 1980s on. The purpose of this is to see in what ways it might differ from the preparation for composition instructors, which, I believe, might tell me something about the divide in these fields. While I’ve found a few promising histories, I first wanted to think about one important way in which the fields might overlap – teaching for transfer (TFT). The concept of TFT started becoming a “buzzword” in the 2000s as far as I can tell, though authors have written about this issue previous to that decade. TFT is the concept of teaching students to apply what they have learned and read outside of the classroom, often in other classes. For example, most teachers hope that the research skills students learn in a writing class could be transferred and used in other college courses. Because this is often easier said than done, the concept of TFT emphasizes a retraining in thinking to help students apply these concepts more effectively in other places. I wanted to see overlaps n this concept specifically because TFT in itself is about overlap. If each of these disciplines disregards the need for TFT, this might tell me something about what each of these disciplines finds to be important to teach and why.

Ironically, although I undertook a fairly rigorous search of College English for keywords such as “transfer” “TFT” and other similar “buzzwords,” I could not find anything in the journal that talked about this concept specifically. In the ELT Journal I was able to find several articles related to transferability, and so I have chosen two of those articles this week.

First, I read “Training Learners to Prepare Short Written Answers” by Desmond Allison from 1986. Here, he argues that it is the job of the ESL teacher to prepare students for the communication tasks they will encounter in other classes, because they will otherwise face great difficulties in meeting these writing challenges (27). While he does acknowledge that reading assignments based on practicing the work students will face in other classes is important, he advocates for written assignments which set a “different kind of ‘comprehension’ task” (28). For example, students have to decide things such as whether or not they will have to find outside research to complete the task, and they will have to set up the answer in a way that makes sense to the reader (29).

Allison notes how important it is for cross-departmental communication to be in place to facilitate the best preparation for students. He suggests setting aside ample time to talk to colleagues about texts they use and the communication they expect in their classrooms (27). He then provides a possible framework for creating a lesson that would work with these other teachers to help students learn to succeed in other tasks. First, there is the “presentation stage” in which students talk about what makes for a “good” short answer. This should include comments from colleagues so the teacher can understand what is desired in other disciplines. Then, in the practice stage, the teacher provides handouts of previous student work for the current students to analyze and discuss, deciding what the writing is doing well and what it isn’t (30). Finally, in the production stage, the students write based on a prompt from another subject, and the teacher grades them according to information from the teacher of that given subject. Allison mentions that this is crucial – the teacher “will need detailed guidance from the subject teacher” for this to be successful (31). Ultimately, the goal of this three-step process is for students to learn and to see how important writing across disciplines is, and how they can apply what they do in the ESL classroom to other college work (31).

Although this article does not talk about the cross-communication between ESL and composition, nor does it use the concept of TFT specifically, this seems to be a good early example of thinking about writing as a concept that needs to be used across a variety of fields. In fact, as this article highlights, even fields such as science use a lot of writing and require certain stylistic choices that are important to understand before even entering these courses. By seeking to foster good working relationships between departments and asking for input from other teachers, clearly Allison encourages a relationship that is not about us vs. them, but about working together for the common goal of education. It is clear that in many ways, the ESL field both did and does attempt to find ground upon which to help students develop beyond their own subject matter and in ways that suggest success is important for their continuing education, rather than suggesting English is simply a basic life skill. This seems like an important development.

Next, I read “Teaching for Transfer in ELT” by Mark A. James, from 2006. In this piece, he provides a bit more of the pedagogical and educational psychology background on TFT and highlights why it is necessary for good ELT teaching. He states that if students are unable to perform tasks that are different from what is learned in class, “then education is deemed to have failed” (151). He articulates two forms of TFT which are low-road transfer, an “unconscious process that is triggered when a situation that one is perceived as similar to a previous situation in which learning occurred,” such as moving from playing a six string guitar to a twelve string guitar, and high-road transfer, “a conscious process that can occur between two situations that lack obvious similarities” such as moving from playing a guitar to playing a piano (152).

He then highlights good ways to achieve both low- and high-road transfer. For low-road, he suggests setting expectations that knowledge in one class will be used in another; matching, which is using authentic materials that students might encounter outside of the classroom, in particular using things that students will encounter in college rather just basic academic studies of English; simulating and role-playing; modeling, which involves bringing in target language and work from other courses, such as business courses; and problem-based learning such as asking students to create something or identify differences in lists so they can get exposure to target language and learn how to use it to solve the given problem (153-155). For high-road transfer, he suggests asking students to anticipate and predict; asking students to look at examples of target language and “deriving language rules themselves;” using analogies such as asking students to identify how writing in English is similar to writing a technical report; parallel problem solving, which is solving problems that are “in different areas but have similar structure” and metacognitive reflection, including setting goals and evaluating outcomes (155-157). Though James notes that many teachers are already including such practices in the ESL classroom, transfer cannot be “assumed” and “needs to be addressed explicitly and consistently” so students have the best possible outcomes (158).

This article seems to encompass and expand on the article from 1986. While James, too, advocates for working with the materials from other disciplines, he also includes well-documented reasons for including other explicit transfer strategies in the ESL classroom. One thing this article does fail to acknowledge is in what ways, if any, this might differ from the work that students would or could do in a regular composition course (an answer I’ve been seeking all semester), but perhaps it is not the job of this author to do so. Because he is writing about writing, however, it would be a nice addition. Though he does not explicitly make these disciplinary connections, he does suggest strategies that seem like ones that could be used across both the ESL and composition discipline.

When comparing these readings to previous weeks, one of the most interesting things of note is how different they are than the other work that has been done so far. For example, neither of these articles dealt either explicitly with teaching of specific grammar or writing forms, nor deal with the “social” aspects of empowering students as members of the academy or analyzing power structures. Instead, these both dealt more specifically with being sure that the writing students do ends up being applicable to their “real” lives and continuing studies. This seems so important but so far has been mostly overlooked. If we fail to teach students real-world applications for what we are teaching them, as James points out, we’ve failed as teachers completely. I will be curious to see in what ways each of these disciplines seems to value real-world applications and how that relates to teacher training and the ethos of the discipline.

Ultimately, I am again disappointed that I didn’t find anything in College English about what I believe to be an important concept in the field. This is particularly disappointing because clearly the ESL/TOEFL field is talking about these issues and making them at least a small priority. I am not yet sure how this will be reflected in the work over the next couple of weeks in thinking about teacher preparation, but the findings would suggest that while ESL courses see themselves as a stepping-stone to other coursework or “lifework,” composition may see itself as somewhat removed from other departments and areas of study – a true disservice to our students. While my initial hypothesis at the start of this semester was that ESL courses and the ESL field were more insular and may not be preparing students for the work of composition and other coursework, it actually might be the other way around. I will try to make more sense of this as I start my look at field histories next.

Works Cited

Allison, Desmond. “Training Learners to Prepare Short Written Answers.” ELT Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 1986, pp. 27-32.

James, Mark A. “Teaching for Transfer in ELT.” ELT Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, 2006, pp. 151-159.