The development of ESL composition methodology 1945-1979

The teaching of composition in English as a second language (ESL) classrooms from 1945 to the middle 1970's was an area that received little attention in the teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TEsoL) profession. The inattention was, in many ways, the result of the great influence of the orally focused pedagogy based on structural linguistic theory and behavioral psychology that served as the foundation, first, for the language teaching programs of the United States Armed Forces during World War II, and, subsequently, for the language teaching pedagogy, commonly termed "audio-lingual," that generally dominated ESL methodology and materials into the early l97o's. This study attempts to trace the development of ESL composition methodology from 1945-1979.

During the initial years covered by this study, l945-l960, composition as an end in itself, or rhetoric, was neglected because it was considered the domain of native speaker methodologists. Few, if any, materials appeared. A s ESL methodologists began discussing composition, or rhetoric, in the l96o's, they turned to techniques that controlled student production in order to teach the habits of writing. The aim of the instruction was primarily to aid language acquisition, not to develop composition skills. Proponents iii

iv of one technique, however, which this study terms "mainstream controlled composition," made both implicit and explicit claims for the efficacy of the technique for developing the composition skills. Materials using this technique appeared into the late l970's.

By l972, proponents of controlled composition in general weakened the claims made for the ability of the techniques to develop composition skills because of the undermining of the audio-lingual methodology by transformational-generative linguistic theory and mentalistic psychological theories, and because of the complaint by ESL composition methodologists that controlled composition failed to teach rhetorical skills. Although techniques were developed that taught rhetoric as governed at least partially by habit, the TEsol profession's general shift in the late l960's and l970's toward an emphasis on communication was echoed in the composition methodology by a shift in instructional focus--from the final written product to the writing process itself. In the early l97o's and on, materials were produced that taught composition through attention to the thinking process involved in composing.

This shift from product to process, which reflected the identical shift in native speaker composition methodology ten years earlier, led ESL methodologists to investigate in

the middle l97o's the parallel but different aspects of ESL and native speaker composition classrooms, ignoring, however, the earlier argument that the classrooms were not related, made in the only substantial work to date on ESL composition theory and practice--Robert Kaplan, The Anatomy of Rhetoric: Prolegomena to a Funcational Theory of Rhetoric (1972). Materials began to appear at the end of the l97o's that were directed toward this dual audience of ESL and, at least, basic, or remedial, native speaker students.

The state of the art of ESL composition methodology at the close of the l97o's indicated a coming of age. Although some methodologists continued to discuss composition only as reinforcement to language acquisition, others recognized that composition teaching, for at least EsL students studying in colleges and universities in the United States, was a valid concern of the TEsOL profession that needed more attention. But there was a recognition that little work had been done in either clarifying the methodology or carrying out research on the effectiveness of teaching methods. The elevation of ESL composition to its rightful place in classes in which it was appropriate, however, prepared for future development of ESL composition methodology and materials.