1
INTRODUCTION
Why are teachers and parents so anxious for their children to beliterate?Why should they learn to write?How can writing help us? What differencescan writing make to our lives?At a series of PSP Intermediate PhaseLanguage workshops, we focused on planningwriting experiences for learners. Writingexperiences that can help learners to developconfidence and a desire to communicate and writedown their thoughts, feelings and ideas.
Writing for a purpose
What kind of writing tasks do you give your learners to carry out?
When do you ask them to write?
Who reads their writing?
How does their writing fit into their lives?
How will it help them in the future?Writing needs to be
meaningful
. Children need opportunities to writefor a ‘
real
’ purpose. Of course, they have to write as part of thecurriculum. But sometimes the writing tasks we give our learners,have very little to do with their lives and experiences. All toooften, we ask the children to write about things that aren’t veryimportant to them. When this happens, learners seldom enjoywriting. But in classrooms where teachers create writingactivities – using topics and issues that learners areinterested in – learners have a very different attitudeto writing. There also need to be times when theycan write whatever they think or want to say.
What happens when learners leave school?When will they need to be able to write?What kinds of writing will they need to be able to do?