How to Teach Writing
Abstract
The aim of this article is to present writing activities. Writing
activities can be divided into three classes: controlled, guided, and free
writing activities.
There are also some guidelines on free writing which are quoted
from invaluable sources. Finally, some suggestions regarding correction of
written work are presented.
Key words: writing, writing activities
Introduction
As you know writing is a productive skill and this is because
students have to actively produce language in order to write.
Writing involves all aspects of language: grammar, vocabulary,
word order, spelling and logical arrangement of ideas. Students often make
mistakes when they start to write in sentences. This means that the teacher
has a lot of marking to do, and all the corrections in red pen do not make
the students very happy. They do not help the students very much.
Writing activities
Teachers need to plan lessons in a step-by-step way. They need to
build up students' confidence by starting from controlled and guided
activities and move towards less-guided and more student-centered and
creative activities. The activities must start with very teacher-controlled
activities, and move to less teacher-controlled ones. Guided activities,
which are easy and short, will help all students to write with few mistakes
in a controlled situation. As their confidence and interest grow, less
guided activities will encourage them to write more confidently.
A: Controlled Writing Activities
At elementary level students should be given exercises which
require them to think and add something of their own; but exercises at this
level should still be controlled, so that students do not make too many
mistakes. According to Baker (2003), they may be as the followings:
Copying correct sentences: Copying sentences help students to practice new
language and is also a good way to practice writing skill. However, copying
can become repetitive and students do not have to think, so it should not
be used too often.
Matching beginning and ending sentences: Select a number of sentences. You
can use sentences from your course book, or make them up yourself. Write
one half of each sentence on the left of the blackboard and the other half
of the sentence on the right of the blackboard. The students then decide
which two sentence halves go together to form a complete sentence.
1. I went to the shop … a. to ask for a favor
2. I washed my clothes… b. to buy some bread
3. I walked to my friend… c. to go to the party
Substitution drills: This activity gives the students a basic correct
sentence to learn from, but they have to make some choices in order to make
complete and correct sentences.
Example: show students a picture of cinema students should copy the
following sentence, choosing and writing the correct word from the list.
[The other day/last night] Mum took us to the [theatre/cinema] to see a
[film/play].
Sequencing jumbled words: In this activity, jumbled words means that the
correct words are provided, but in the wrong order. Students have to put
the words in the right order.
Example: like- afternoon-the-going-I-in-swimming.
B: Guided practice
Gap-fill sentences: This is a more challenging activity, where students
have to think of and write some of the words in sentences themselves.
Example: I ------- two sisters and-------- like going-----------school.
Changing sentences: This activity gives the basic correct sentences, but
the students have to change a grammatical structure, for example, from
singular to plural, or to a different tense.
.Example: I like bananas, but I don't like oranges.
My friend----------- bananas, but she--------- oranges.
.Completing sentences: You give the beginning of sentences and the students
have to complete them.
Example: I am--------------------------------------------
I like------------------------------------------
Parallel sentences: You write correct model sentences on the blackboard,
and the students re-write the sentences, making it true for themselves.
Example: My name is Ali and I am nine. I have three brothers and we live in
a small house.
My name is …
C. Free writing
As soon as the students have mastered basic skills of sentence
writing, they need to progress beyond very controlled writing exercises to
freer paragraph and essay writing.
Teachers can give instructions regarding the organization of
essays and paragraphs and so improve students' writing. Cheron Verster
(2002) suggests the following guidelines:
Explain the overall organization of an essay to students.
Explain paragraph organization.
Find ideas or information for a composition.
Put these ideas or information in logical paragraphs.
Make sure the meaning is clear within these paragraphs.
Make sure the paragraphs are linked together well.
Make sure the language is accurate.
Make sure the language is appropriate to the purpose of the writing
Give students a list of connectives that they could use in their essays.
Make sure that they understand the relationships that are implied by these
connectives.
Give students a model essay. Once they have read it, ask them to write an
outline of the essay in the following way:
Firstly, identify the thesis. Write it in a circle in the middle of a blank
piece of paper.
Next, identify the claims or statements that are made to support this
thesis. Write these around the thesis.
Then identify and list the details and examples that are given to support
each claim/statement.
Finally, write relevant connectors between the thesis and the
claims/statements and between the claims/statements themselves.
Ask students to use their outline to write their essay.
Give students a topic. As the objective of any writing class is to have
students work on their writing, the topics students write about must be
carefully designed, sequenced, and structured. In this way the teacher
knows exactly what the learning goal of each paper is and the students gain
some thing by working on the assignment.
Based on Ur (1996) teachers should encourage learners to progress
through a number of untidy drafts before reaching a final version. Students
should accept messy drafts as a positive stage in writing. Good writers
think about content first and form later. Teachers should advise learners
to write down their ideas first, and then correct spelling and grammar.
Teachers must decide where the writing is to be produced: in class
or at home. According to Kroll as cited by Celce-Marcia (2001) one way is
to consider some assignments as timed writing, written in a given time
framework, submitted, and responded to as final products in class. Other
writing assignments can be prepared over a span of several class periods
(either in class or at home) and feedback provided to assist in the
revision process.
Regardless of the type of free writing activity, a good place to
begin class work is to explore the prewriting stage, the stage prior to
actual production of a working text. At this phase the goal of the teacher
should be to expose the students with a variety of strategies for getting
started with a writing task and to encourage each student to try to
discover which strategies work best for him or her. Students feel that they
have a variety of ways to begin an assigned writing task and they do not
always have to begin at the beginning and work through an evolving draft
sequentially until they reach the end.
Free writing activities
There are some activities, which are helpful for students to start
writing assignment. According to Kroll as cited by Celce-Marcia (2001) they
are as the followings:
Writing based on a text: We can teach students how to write by giving a
short text as a model, for example students read a short text, and study
particular features of it. They then write a paragraph that is similar, but
involves some changes. For example, students read a paragraph about a
student's day, then they write about their own day; students read a
description of a room, and then write a description of another room shown
in a picture.
Brainstorming: This is often a group exercise in which all of the students
in the class are encouraged to participate by sharing their collective
knowledge about a particular subject. One way to structure this is for the
teacher to suggest a broad topic, such as reasons for choosing a particular
academic major, and have students call out as many associations as
possible, which the teacher can write on the board. The result would be far
more material generated than any one student is likely to think of on
his/her own, and then all students can utilize any or all of the
information when turning to the preparation of their first drafts.
Listing: Unlike brainstorming, as described above, listing can be a quite
and essentially individual activity. Again, as a first step in finding an
approach to a particular subject area, the students are encouraged to
produce as lengthy a list as possible of all the subcategories that come to
mind as they think about the topic at hand. This is an especially useful
activity for students, who might be constrained by undue concern for
expressing their thoughts in grammatically correct sentences, because lists
do not require complete sentences.
Free writing: Freed from the necessity of worrying about grammar and
format, students can often generate a great deal of prose which provide
useful raw material to use in addressing the writing assignment at hand.
This technique often works best if the teacher provides an opening clause
or sentence for the students to start with. For example, if the students
are supposed to write a paper about one's personal philosophy of life, they
can begin with the words like "life is difficult but it is also
worthwhile". The students copy this sentence and continue to write down
whatever comes into their heads.
Note writing is a writing activity that is suggested by Nik
Peachey (2002). It is an activity that is really useful for helping
learners to write more fluently and can also help you to diagnose problems
with your students' written work and ability to formulate questions. You
can use it at the beginning or end of a class as fun filler, or as an
integral part of your lesson.
Give out a sheet of A4 paper (219mm x 297mm) to each student and
ask them to watch and follow your instructions:
Hold up your paper and fold it in half. Then fold it in half again and then
again. Press hard on the paper and then open it out. The folds should have
divided the paper into eight rectangles. Use the fold lines to tear the
page into eight rectangular pieces of paper.
Once they all have their eight pieces of paper, ask the students to write
their names in the bottom right-hand corner of each piece.
Next ask them to think of another person in the class and to think of a
question they would like to ask them.
Tell them to write the name of the person on the top left-hand corner and
then to write the question on the piece of paper.
Once they have done this, tell them to pass the paper to the person the
question was intended for.
Students then read any questions they got and start to write replies.
Students who didn't get a question can start writing another question for
someone else.
Get the students to keep writing and answering questions until all their
pieces of paper are used up.
You may in the early stages need to prompt the students to keep writing and
also to make sure they are using English, but try not to interrupt ones
that are busy writing or to correct anything at this stage. You may
actually like to get involved yourself and start writing a few notes to
your students.
Creating a framework for writing: Jeff Fowler (2002) who is a teacher and
trainer suggested an activity that creates a framework for writing. This is
a creative writing exercise in which the teacher molds the story but allows
plenty of scope for the students' creative expression.
The students work in pairs or groups of three. The teacher dictates a part
of a story and then gives instructions on how the students should continue
the next part of the story in their pairs. (This usually involves adding
description or dialogue).
Once the students have added a part to the story, the teacher once again
dictates the next part and asks them once again to add more.
This process can continue for 5 or 6 paragraphs or until the students lose
concentration.
You can use this procedure with any short story, but it works best when you
dictate the movement of events and your students add description or
dialogue. Students do generally like to decide on the end of the story
themselves, so if you sense they are getting tired, just tell them to
finish the story.
Eliciting vocabulary before writing narratives: Brian Fowlis (2002)
suggests this activity. This is an idea to help students with their writing
of narratives. It gives all the students some essential (and some
superfluous) vocabulary.
Before giving the students the title (or first line) of the story, play a
game of word association.
The teacher gives one word and the student on the left must say the first
word s/he can think of which is associated with it.
Then the student on her/his left says the first word that s/he can think of
which is associated with the previous word.
This can be repeated around the class a few times.
The teacher writes all the words on the board as they appear.
Eventually you should have 20 or 30 words on the board, the latter ones
bearing no relation to the original.
Here is a typical collection: tree, forest, countryside, city, buildings,
offices, work, leisure, holidays, beach, sun, moon, night, dark, black,
reggae, music, piano, jazz, etc.
The teacher then gives the students the first line of the story using some
of the vocabulary on the board (e.g., I'll never forget the night I went to
my first reggae club while I was on holiday in a strange city.
The students (individually or in pairs) continue the story, drawing on the
vocabulary on the board for ideas.
Responding to Students' Writing
Responding to students writing has the goal of fostering student
improvement. The result of all studies strongly suggests that teacher'
comment has little impact on student writing. Therefore, in setting goals,
teachers should focus on implementing a variety of response types and on
training students to maximize the insights of prior feedback on future
writing occasions. Students must also be trained to use the feedback in
ways that will improve their writing. Kroll as cited by Celce-Marcia (2001)
suggested the following guidelines:
Students routinely produce more than one draft of an essay; therefore,
feedback on a first draft should most appropriately provide guidelines and
suggestions for how to produce a second draft that would show improvement
at the level of content and organization. Rewriting is an integral part of
the writing process, and reinforces learning. Teachers should give
evaluation only on the basis of the rewritten, polished version.
The papers that students write are likely to exhibit problems in language
control. However, it is very important for the teacher not to be swayed by
the presence or numbers of these problems into turning a writing course
into a grammar course.
In addition to deciding when to correct errors, teacher must also decide
which errors to correct, and how to correct errors. The decision whether
to address all or selected errors is a complex one and probably depends a
great deal on the level of writing the student is capable of producing.
However, correcting all of a student's errors is probably rarely called
for, unless there are very few errors present in the text. Rather, the
teacher should probably concentrate on calling the student' s attention to
those errors that are considered more serious and/or represent a pattern of
errors in that particular student' s writing.
How to call students' attention to the errors they have committed is also a
complex issue. Teachers can choose to:
Point out specific errors using a mark in the margin or an arrow or other
symbolic system.
Correct or model specific errors by writing in the corrected form
Label specific errors according to the feature they violate, using either
the complete term or a symbol system.
Indicate the presence of errors but not the precise location. (e.g., noting
that there are problems with word forms)
A combination of two or more of the methods mentioned above, depending on
what they perceive to be the needs of the student
Finally, teachers should decide who would correct the errors.
Teachers should bear in mind that feedback can be oral as well as written,
and they should consider the value of individual conferences on student
papers. Students in a writing class need to have individual conferences
with their teacher. It can provide an opportunity for the teacher to ask
the student about intended messages that are often difficult to understand
by simply reading a working draft. Conference allow the teacher to uncover
potential misunderstandings the student might have about prior written
feedback or issues in writing that have been discussed in class, and they
can usually learn more in one to one exchange.
From another point of view, most writing teachers realize that they have
many students in one class and they have a very limited amount of time to
provide feedback to any one student. Teachers can turn to the other
students in the class to assist in the feedback process, but peer
responding in the writing class must be modeled, taught, and controlled in
order for it to be a valuable activity. One way to control peer response is
for teachers to provide a short list of directed questions which students
address as they read their own or other students' papers, such as to check
for a particular grammatical feature or to check to assure that no
irrelevancies have been included. Another way is for students to be trained
to read and respond to other students' papers by reviewing an essay written
by a student in a previous class. A peer-editing sheet asks a few specific
questions that would elicit both general reactions to the paper and
suggestions for improvement.
Doff (1990) suggested some valuable guidelines based on the level of
the students. With large classes and at lower levels, teachers can give
students controlled writing activities that can be easily corrected. A
basic procedure for correcting simple written work is:
The correct answer can be written on the board.
Students correct their own work and the teacher moves around the class to
supervise.
Teacher can draw attention to some common mistakes for the benefit of the
whole class.
He believed that for more advanced students the teacher should
correct students work individually and positively.
Teachers should correct most important errors or certain errors.
Teachers should write corrections on the margin.
Teachers can indicate where the students have made important errors and
encourage them to correct them.
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