Using Classroom Journals to Improve ESL Writing Skills Research Paper

Using Classroom Journals to Improve ESL Writing Skills - Research Paper Example The emergence of ESL programs as a school requirement, as Giridharan & Robson (n.d.) stated, has been influenced by the lack of competence of most foreign students in academic writing, which usually affects their academic performance. This is especially true for tertiary education in which students are expected to â€Å"advance their own ideas within a framework of domain or discipline knowledge and engage the reader in academic discourse† (Giridharan & Robson, n.d., p. 1). Therefore, ESL has been created to help U.S. students attain educational proficiency standards. Celic (2009), furthermore, stressed that the key to establishing effective teaching skills lies in combining proper teaching tools with strategic and results-driven teaching styles. Through ESL programs, therefore, students are not only able to enhance their academic performance, they also gain confidence to better understand, relate, and interact in their specific social environments (Smith, Vellenga et. al., 2006). Thus, it is the feeling of authentic belongingness that ESL hopes to give to its students for them to get fully immersed in the country’s culture, values, and society. The difficulty in teaching ESL writing, as most researchers today claim, lies not on the stark differences among the students’ learning abilities but on the choice of the proper approach through which writing must be taught. In this regard, ESL practitioners have recognized the two primary schools of thought for teaching ESL writing. The first one teaches writing through a systemized and process-driven approach. Proponents of this school of thought believe that by exposing the students to specific writing steps (from researching of the topic to revising the written material in accordance to grammar and syntax), they are able to develop a proper and more  disciplined manner of writing.