before and after - ELL student using text reconstruction

from Why Johnny Can't Write: How to Improve Writing Skills by Myra J. Linden and Arthur Whimbey:

Student C: Paragraph Written Before TRC

The best movie I’ve seen recently is “The Killing field.” Why I said this movie is good. Because it was a true story of Cambodia. This movie showed how miserable all the Cambodian people during Communist took over, and talking about Cambodian translater was a good honest man with his American reporter friend, stucked with communist for 5 years and finally try to escape the country and got succeeded, how he lived in United States.

Twelve Weeks Later: From Opinion Paper

The United States is an enjoyable place to live. Having been born and raised in Cambodia and also having traveled through Europe I know the United States is the best place to live….Secondly opportunity most people in this country live in the middle class of society. If you work hard you can have just about anything you want. You can study and improve your way of life and your job; therefore, increasing your income. You don’t need to be a doctor or engineer to own your own home or car because with good credit you can get a loan. In Cambodia, my dad worked hard seven days a week with no time off to afford one home, two cars, and send my brother to college. There were no such thing as loans.


Instead of the scrambled constructions marred with verb errors of the first sample, in the second this student, learning English as a second language, uses sophisticated sentences with participial phrases and prepositional phrase openers. She also uses complex sentences opening and closing with adverbial clauses and demonstrates the use of cohesion devices such as “Secondly.”

[This student] continued to have proofreading problems and …mechanical errors (although less frequently), requiring additional work. But [she] learned to organize coherent paragraphs and furnish specific details to support general statements.

In describing weak writers—estimated to be roughly 70% of America’s 11th graders—The Writing Report Card observes that the understood “what is required in” an analytical writing assignment, but their evidence is “disorganized or unelaborated. Rather than using coherent arguments or explanations, far too many students resorted to simple lists…”

Myra Linden on text reconstruction (excellent)
Analyze, Organize, Write by Arthur Whimbey and Elizabeth Lynn Jenkins (terrific text reconstruction textbook)
text reconstruction posts

The Writing Report Card: Writing Achievement in American Schools by Arthur N. Applebee, Judith A. Langer, Ina V.S. Mullis
Princeton, N.J. : Educational Testing Service, [1986]
ISBN 088685055X (pbk.)