It discusses how ecocomposition is implemented in the first-year college composition classroom by a number of compositionists and writing teachers such as Derek Owens with the aim of providing EFL writing teachers with examples that would help them design writing courses to raise students’ place and environmental awareness.

1. Implementing
Ecocomposition into EFL
Writing Classroom to Raise
Awareness
Entisar Elsherif
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
The 6th Purdue University Graduate Student
Symposium on Second Language Studies & ESL
April 05, 2014

2. o What is ecocomposition?
o Why ecocomposition?
o How can ecocomposition be
implemented in the EFL
writing classroom?

3. What is ecocomposition?
• The term was formed by combining
ecology with composition.
• Some use the terms „ecoliteracy,‟
„place-based writing,‟ or „environment-
based writing.‟
• The focus is mostly on „writing about
place‟ and „writing in place‟.

4. What is ecocomposition?
• Ecocomposition is “the study of the
relationships between environments and
discourse.” The meaning of environment
here not only covers natural places but
also “constructed and even imagined
places”
(Dobrin & Weisser, 2002a, p.6).

5. Why Integrate Ecocomposition in the EFL
writing classroom?
• Raise environmental awareness.
• Broadening the writing courses‟
requirements to include not only
advancing students‟ written fluency but
also their relationships with place and
environmental issues.
• Engage students in global and local
matters.

6. Why Integrate Ecocomposition in the EFL
writing classroom?
• Relate foreign languages to students‟
places
• Prepare students for IELTS and TOEFL
topics.
• Relate local issues to global issues.

7. How can ecocomposition be implemented in the
EFL writing classroom?
• Derek Owens (2001a, 2001b):
significance of sustainability
• Long (2001): locations appreciaiton
and interaction
• Ingram (2001): service learning
• Monsma (2001): campus ecology and
webbed environment
• Hothem (2009): suburban studies

8. Discuss the significance of sustainability
with students
• Environmental issues are as important
as race, class, and gender because
“such sites of cultural conflict are so
often matters of environmental
injustice as well” (Owens, 2001b, p. 4).
• Sustainability is “meeting the needs of
the present without jeopardizing the
needs of the future generations”
(Owens, 2001a, p. 27).

9. Discuss the significance of sustainability
with students
• Recognize the institutions‟ levels of
awareness of sustainability.
• Investigate other scholars‟ and
organizations‟ results about
sustainability-minded education.
• Examine what has been collected and
design a curriculum that promotes
sustainability and offers
collaboration.

10. Discuss the significance of sustainability
with students
Owens divided the course into four
phases:
• 1st phase: students write about places.
• 2nd & 3rd phases: choose one theme
from a list of themes in each phase
• 4th phase: write about the future

11. Discuss the significance of sustainability
with students
The seven themes were:
• Place portraits
• Designing Eutopia
• Neighborhood histories
• Oral history preservations
• Tribal testimonies
• Work stories
• Future scenarios

12. Help students appreciate and interact with
their locations
• Long (2001) emphasized the
importance of locations in teaching
to improve the teaching of writing
and environmental literacy
• He designed a course that aimed to
increase students‟ proficiencies in
thinking and writing creatively
about their world (p. 139).

13. Help students appreciate and interact with
their locations
• Familiraized students with the
language use conventions and the
“process of inquiry.”
• Aimed to increase students‟
proficiencies in thinking and writing
creatively about their world (Long, 2001, p.
139).
• Taught students “careful observation,
reflective thinking, disciplined
research, and purposive writing.”

14. Help students appreciate and interact with
their locations
Students discussed and reflected on their
personal, academic, and environmental
transitions:
• their experiences on the way they „got‟ to
college,
• the knowledge they got in their everyday
interactions with the new environment,
• and about the motivations and plans they
had for the future.

15. Help students appreciate and interact with
their locations
• Offered his students the chance to
discuss the “rewards” and
“difficulties” of having efficient
interactions with their environs.
• Engaged the students in readings about
everyday life problems, adjusting to
the environment, and awareness and
embracement of the environment.

16. Engage students in service learning
• Ingram (2001) integrated service learning
into the environmental writing class which
broadened the limits of the classroom.
• By working together outside their classes
and in their communities, students improve
their confidence and communicating skills
and “succeed in composition activities
such as peer review and substantive
revision” (Ingram, 2001, p. 210).

17. Engage students in service learning
• Introducing the students to common topics
related to place by asking them to write,
“personal essay[s] about place[s] they
know well” (Ingram, 2001, p. 217).
• Students read and wrote about different
topics that comprise their experiences with
wilderness, “environmental ethics, other
species, and environmental activism” (Ingram,
2001, p. 217).

18. Engage students in service learning
• The arrangement of the assignments started
from being “personal, local and familiar”
and moved to being “more abstract, global
and unfamiliar” (Ingram, 2001, p. 217).
• Engaged her students in „short research
papers‟ to improve their library skills and
their ability in using sources and facilitate
their work on „research paper project‟.

19. Engage students in service learning
By working together outside their
classes and in their communities,
students improve their confidence
and communicating skills and
“succeed in composition activities
such as peer review and substantive
revision” (Ingram, 2001, p. 210).

20. Involve students in campus ecology and
webbed environment
• Monsma (2001) explored the
relationships between the composition
course, the campus, and the World Wide.
• Since students tended not to pay attention
to the surrounding environment, he
sought to raise their awareness towards
their local environments with the
possibility of helping in raising the
university‟s attention to such matters.

21. Involve students in campus ecology and
webbed environment
Four elements cemented Monsma‟s course
design:
• the university campus,
• his interest in ecology-based course
content,
• computers and internet,
• and the presentation of “the knowledge
gleaned through the research project”
(Monsma, 2001, p. 282).

22. Involve students in campus ecology and
webbed environment
Since students tended not to pay
attention to the surrounding
environment, he sought to raise their
awareness towards their local
environments with the possibility of
helping in raising the university‟s
attention to such matters.

23. Familiarize students with suburban studies
• Hothem (2009) focused on the
suburban environment and discussed
connections between ecocomposition
and suburban studies.
• Designed theme-based curricula.
• Aimed to encourage “ practical
application of ecoliteracy”.
• Create “writing curricula on students’
experiences”.

24. Familiarize students with suburban studies
• Aimed to encourage “ practical
application of ecoliteracy”.
• Create “writing curricula on
students’ experiences”.
(Hothem, 2009, p. 38)
• Improve students’ “sense of place”.
(Hothem, 2009, p. 37)

25. Familiarize students with suburban studies
• Chose readings that provide the
necessary knowledge.
• Students write suburban histories.
• Connect students’ “personal
backgrounds” to their “educational
pathways” (Hothem, 2009, p. 39).
• Students develop writing drafts through
“brainstorm hypothesis discussions and
workshops”. (Hothem, 2009, p. 39)

26. Familiarize students with suburban studies
• Paying attention to suburban
studies in an ecocomposition
course makes students‟ daily
existence “a subject of serious
inquiry” and raises their
environmental consciousness in
their writing (Hothem, 2009, p. 37)

27. Decide what to adopt as relevant readings
EFL writing teachers have the choice to
either:
• adopt certain readers as textbooks,
• choose readings from different sources
that would be related to their students‟
environs or places as well as their
interests,or

28. Decide what to adopt as relevant readings
• design a course that would include
readings from readers such as the ones
used by Owens and the others and
readers related to the learners'
environment and place.

29. Decide what to adopt as relevant readings
Choose from available readers such
as:
• Being in the World (Slovic & Dixon, 1993).
• The Rough Guide to Climate
Change (Henson, 2011).
• Saving Place: An Ecocomposition
Reader (Dobrin, 2005).

30. Conclusion
• Discussing composition teachers‟
experiences in implementing
ecocomposition does not mean that the
EFL writing teachers have to follow
them exactly. These experiences are
discussed as examples to show how
applicable is applying ecocomposition
into the language classroom.

31. Conclusion
• As said by Hurlbert (2006 454), “It is
writing inspired by place that teaches
others about love of place.” EFL
writing teachers should be encouraged
to integrate ecocomposition into their
writing classrooms not only to raise
awareness to significant issues but also
to help students relate their foreign
language to places they love.

32. References
• Dobrin. S. I. (2005). Saving place: An ecocomposition reader.
Boston: McGraw Hill.
• Dobrin, S. I. &Weisser, C. R. (2002a). Natural Discourse:
Toward ecocomposition. Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
• Dobrin, S. I. &Weisser, C. R. (2002b). Breaking ground in
ecocomposition: Exploring relationships between discourse
and environment. College English,64(5), 566 – 589.
• Henson, R. (2011). The rough guide to climate change (3rd
ed.). London: Rough Guides.
• Hothem, T. (2009).Suburban studies and college
writing.Pedagogy: Critical Approach to Teaching Literature,
Language, Composition, and Culture,9(1), 35 – 59.

33. References
• Hurlbert, C. M. (2006).A place in which we stand.In P. Vandenberg,
S. Hum, & J. Clary- Lemon (eds.).Relations, locations, positions:
Composition theory for writing teachers(pp. 353 -356). Urbana,
Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English.
• Ingram, A. M. (2001). Service learning and ecocomposition:
Developing sustainable practices through inter- and
extradisciplinarity.In C. Weisser& S. Dobrin (eds.).Ecocomposition:
Theoretical and pedagogical approaches(pp. 209 - 233). Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
• Long, M. C. (2001). Education and environmental literacy:
Reflections on teaching ecocomposition in Keene State College‟s
Environmental House. In C. Weisser& S. Dobrin
(eds.).Ecocomposition: Theoretical and pedagogical
approaches(pp. 131 - 145). Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press.

34. References
• Monsma, B. J. (2001). Writing home: Composition, campus
ecology, and webbed environments. in C. Weisser& S. Dobrin
(Eds.).Weisser, C. R. &Dobrin, S. I. (eds.). (2001).
Ecocomposition: Theoretical and pedagogical
approaches(pp. 281 - 290). Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
• Owens, D. (2001a). Sustainable composition in C. Weisser&
S. Dobrin (Eds.). Ecocomposition: Theoretical and
pedagogical approaches(pp. 27 - 37). Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press.
• Owens, D. (2001b). Composition and Sustainability. Urbana,
Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English.

35. References
• Slovic, S. H. & Dixon, T. F. (1993).Being in the world: An
environmental reader for writers. New York: Macmillan
Publishing Company.
• Weisser, C. R. &Dobrin, S. I. (2001).Breaking new ground in
ecocomposition: An introduction in C. Weisser& S. Dobrin
(Eds.).Ecocomposition: Theoretical and pedagogical
approaches(pp. 1 - 9). Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press.
•

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