My fellow teachers and I are having a discussion about the
best way to approach the teaching of writing to ESL students.

Here is an example piece of writing produced by an ELL:

A. Birthday Robbery
one day there was party a Birthday Party.
It was Mr and Mrs Smiths Sons Birthday he was twelve
They invited all the friends fo their son and their parnets.
By the way the boy who's Birthday was his name was Keith.
two of his best freind were there too named peter and jhon.

Teacher A says the best thing to do is to conference with
the student, and model the correct grammar and syntax for
him with the hopes that he will begin to see the correct way
to write his own ideas and this will be more meaningful and
create a lasting impression because you are using HIS
writing and HIS ideas. Teacher A says that as you make
corrections, you explain why you are making the correcting
such as, "When we want to show that somebody owns something,
we put an apostrophe here, as in 'Son's birthday."

Teacher B says to directly teach the grammar rules outside
of the student's writing and hope that he translates this to
his own writing. Teacher B says that if you do what teacher
A says, then you are "writing the paper for him."

What do you think?
Hermione

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