Multilingual Learners Teaching Writing

Narrative Writing and the Common Core State Standards, from Helping English Learners to Write

 

Excerpt

All students, and particularly ELs, have much more difficulty learning to write informational and argumentative texts when they have not first learned to write narrative texts. They have, in the past, had limited exposure to informational and argumentative texts and limited opportunities to discuss and compose them. Also, they often do not identify with the topics of informational and argumentative texts and lack the personal experiences and background knowledge to relate to these topics to the same extent as they identify with the topics of narrative writing. Hence, we discuss informational and argumentative writing last, given the challenges these two types of texts present to both teachers and students.