TEACHING WRITING

I. INTRODUCTION

1. What is writing?

Like speaking, writing is a productive skill. That means they involve producing language rather than
receiving it. Very simply, we can say that writing involves communicating a message (something to
say) by making signs on a page. To write, we need a message and someone to communicate it to. We
also need to be able to form letter and words, and to join these together to make words, sentences
or series of sentences that link together to communicate that message.

2. Key concepts about writing

 All writing texts have two things in common. Firstly, they are written to communicate a
particular message, and secondly, they are written to communicate to somebody. Our message and
who we are writing to influence what we write and how we write. For example, if you write a note
to yourself to remind yourself to do something, you may write in terrible handwriting, use symbols
or single words that other people would not understand. If you write a note to your friend to
remind him/her of something, your note will probably be clearer and a bit more polite
 Writing involves several sub-skills. Some of these are related to accuracy, e.g: using the correct
forms of language. Writing accuracy involves spelling correctly, forming letters correctly, writing
legibly, punctuating correctly, using correct layouts, choosing the right vocabulary, using grammar
correctly, joining sentences correctly and using paragraphs.
 writing isn’t just about accuracy. It is also having a message and communicating it successfully to
other people. To do this, we need to have enough ideas, organize them well and express them in an
appropriate styles.

3. Why do students write in class?

 if we think only of the long-term needs, writing is probably the least important of the four skills
for many students; they are more likely to need to listen to, read and speak English than to write it.
Their need for writing is most likely to be for study purposes and also as an examination skill.
 the main importance of writing in the classroom is to help students to learn. Writing new words
and structures helps students to remember them; and as writing is done more slowly and carefully
than speaking, written practice helps to focus students’ attention on what they are learning.

II. WRITING ACTIVITIES

There are 3 main types of writing activities: controlled, guided, and free writing

1. CONTROLLED WRITING

There are 2 types of controlled writing activities: mechanical and meaningul writing activities.

a. Mechanical writing – teaching handwriting:

If the students’ L1 is different from English, the first task will be to master English handwriting. So
the earliest activitites will be copying letters, letter combinations, words, and simple sentences.
b. Meaningful writing
 Gap filling
Listen to the teacher, and then write out the complete sentences:
Paper.................wood. It................. the Chinese in ..................

 Reordering words
Write the sentences correctly
We/six o’clock/and/tea/drink/get up/at.
Then/the/patients/wake/go/and/the/wards/we/round.
Sometimes/medicines/injections/them/we/or/give.

 Substitution
Write a true sentence like this about yourself
Samir enjoys playing football and reading adventure stories.

 Correcting the facts

Rewrite the sentences so that they match the picture.
At the market, I saw an old woman sitting in a chair.
She was selling eggs. It was raining.

i) Ask students to write the sentences, correcting the facts.

ii) Ask students to read out the correct sentences, and write them on the board.

 Sentence completion
Complete these sentences using the present continuous tense
1. At the moment, my brother ....................
2. The teacher ......................
3. Mr and Mrs Brown ........................

 Sentence building
Write complete sentences using these prompts
1. John/write/letter/moment.
2. You/waiting/somebody?
3. Present/I/prepare/new project.

 Write a summary based on prompts

Write the summary of the text using these cues.
Yesterday – Tom – home from school – way – saw – old man – lying – side – street – ill –
took – hospital.
  Sentence transformation

Rewrite the following sentences keeping the meaning unchanged.

1. This cafe belongs to Mr Smith.
Mr Smith ....................................
1. They built this house a long time ago.
This house ..................................
2. ‘Don’t go out late’, her Mum said.
Her mum ....................................

2. GUIDED WRITING

 Problems of free writing

Discussion: imagine giving this writing task to a class of intermediate level

students. Discuss what problems might be involved in giving a completely free
writing task such as this:
Write a paragraph, describing your town or village.

Comments:

o Many students would probably find it quite difficult, and make many mistakes. If so, they
would find the task frustrating and discouraging thus probably not learn very much from it.
o Students would probably approach the task in different ways, and produce a wide variety of
different paragraphs. So the only way to correct their work would be individually, book by book;
this would be very time-consuming for the teacher.
o As soon as they have mastered basic skills of sentence writing, students need to progress
beyond very controlled writing exercises to freer paragraph writing. However, students will
make this transition more easily and learn more if we can guide their writing. There are two
main ways of doing this:
 By giving a short text as a model
 By doing oral preparation for the writing

 Writing based on a text

- Students read the model text and perhaps study particular features of it (e.g: the way sentences
are joined, the use of the verb tenses, the use of the passive). Then they write a paragraph which
is similar, but involves some changes.
- Examples of texts that could be used: students read a paragraph about a students’ day, then
write about their own day; students read a description of a car, then write descriptions of other
cars, students read a description of a room, then write a description of another room shown in a
picture.
Discussion
Read the following text. Demonstrate how you can carry out the activity
Jopley is a small town in the north of England. It is on the River Ouse, not far from Leeds. The town
has a wide main street, with a stone church, the town hall and a cinema. There is a large
 supermarket in the town center, and many smaller shops and cafes. Most peole in Jopley work in the
local factory, which produces farm machinery.
a. Write a similar paragraph about Bexham. Use these notes.
Bexham – small village – south coast.
Harrow street – two shops – church.
Most people – farmers – grow vegetables,wheat.

b. Now write about your own town or village.

Work in groups of 3, write a similar model text about a town in your own country (it can
be either real or imaginary), and a series of notes for writing exercise. When you have
finished, demonstrate how you will carry out this activity? What preparation could you
do to make this easier? What difficulties might your students have in writing the
paragraph?

c. Doing oral preparation for the writing

The teacher asks questions to elicit ideas from students. Students make suggestions and
contribute ideas, the teacher builds up an outline or a list of key expressions on the
board. The students then use this as a basis for their writing. This approach has several
advantages:
 It is flexible: it can be done in different ways according to the interests and ability of
the class.
 Ideas about what to write come from the students themselves, this makes the activity
much more interesting and relevant to students.
 It does not require specially – prepared texts or other materials.

How to do it?
- Brainstorm for language and ideas
- Ask questions to elicit from the students.

Task 1: Imagine your students are going to write a description of Cairo (the capital of Egypt), to
prepare for this, the teacher is asking questions about the city and writing notes on the board.You
want to elicit these facts about Cairo

- The capital of Egypt

- In the north of Egypt
- On the Nile
- Important business center
- International hotels
- Tourism: The Pyramids (2500 BC), many famous mosques, market areas (gold, copper, leather)
- Very crowded traffic problems  new underground railway

What questions could you ask?

 I. STAGES OF A WRITING LESSON (guided writing)

Pre-writing:

- Lead-in
- Topic given with clear instructions
- Presenting input (vocab/structures/ideas)  giving cues/brainstorming for ideas/giving a
model/doing oral preparation etc.)
While-writing:
- Students write in groups or individually
- Teachers monitors and facilitates their writing
Post-writing:
- T marks papers and gives comments (pay attention to errors of competence and performance and
techniques of correction)
- T gives feedback: pointing out good points and common mistakes for whole class to learn from
peers.
II. CORRECTING WRITTEN WORK
A. CONTROLLED WRITING
i) The teacher writes the correct answers on the board, or gets students to come out and write
them. If spelling is not important, he or she can go through the answers orally.
ii) As the teacher gives the answers, students correct their own work and the teacher moves
around the class to supervise what they are doing; or students can exchange books and
correct each other’s work.
iii) When the teacher notices errors made by a number of students, he or she can draw attention
to these for benefit of the whole class.
Advantages and disadvantages of various correction techniques:
- Correct work orally in class: is a good idea for a large class, as it greatly reduces the teacher’s
workload. As he or she corrects, the teacher can move around the class to check that students are
correcting their own work.
- Correct work immediately in class (rather than returning it the next day) means that the teacher
can draw students’ attention to problems while they are still fresh in their minds.
- Get students to correct each other’s work (before the teacher gives the correct answers) : this
takes time in the lesson, but it give students useful practice in reading through what they have
written and noticing mistakes. It’s also a good way of keeping the class involved.
B. GUIDED WRITING

The effect of so many corrections in a piece of written work would probably be discouraging the
students – they make it appear that she/he has written almost nothing correctly.

Ways of correcting students’ work more positively and effectively:

- The teacher could correct only the errors that seem most important, or only errors of a certain
kind (e.g: items that were taught recently, or just problems with verbs)
- The teacher could reduce the amount of underlining and write the corrections in the margin; this
would make the page look less heavily corrected.
- The teacher could simply indicate where students have made serious errors, and ask them to try
to correct them themselves. This would encourage the students to look again at what they have
written and be more careful next time.
 III. THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN WRITING
o Motivator: one of our principal roles in writing class will be to motivate students, creating
the right conditions for the generation of ideas, persuading them of the usefulness of the
activity, and encouraging them to make as much effort as possible for maximum benefit. This
may require special and prolonged effort on our part for longer process-writing sequences.
o Resource: especially during more extended writing task, we should be ready to supply
information and language where necessary. We need to tell students that we are available
and be prepared to look at their work as it progresses, offering advice and suggestions in a
constructive and tactful way.
o Feedback provider: giving feedback on wriitng tasks demands special care. Teachers should
positively and encouragingly to the content of what students have written. When offering
correction teachers should choose what and how much to focus on based on what students
need at this stage of their studies, and on the tasks they have undertaken.

Task 2: compare the following writing tasks and tell whether they are writing for learning or writing for
communication?

A. Join the paris of sentences, using when/where

1. This book is about the time. Lincoln was the president then.
2. This is the house. Lincoln was born there.
3. The school is still standing. Lincoln learnt to read and write there.
4. There were many poor people in the town. Lincoln grew up there.
B. Letter writing
A friend is coming to visit your hometown/village. Unfortunately, you will be away. Write a short
letter to your friend and make some suggestions about sightseeing and other activities in your
area.
C. Letter writing
Do you think of the courses (maths, physics, English, history, etc.) you are taking now can be
improved in some ways. If yes, write a short letter to your teacher and present your suggestions.
Task 3: For questions 1-6, match the coursebook instructions with the sub-writing skills listed A-G.
There is one extra option which you do not need to use.
Writing sub-skills
A. Punctuating correctly
B. Planning
C. Forming letters
D. Linking
E. Using the appropriate layout
F. Paraphrasing
G. Proofreading
Coursebook instructions
1. Put your hand in the air and write d-o-g with your finger.
2. Tick the correct place in this letter for the address of the receiver and put a cross (X) in the correct
place for the date.
3. This letter has no commas or full stops. Put them in the correct places.
4. Join these pairs of sentences by using the best conjunction from the following: because, after, while.
5. Look at this list of ideas for a composition. Number them in the order you would like to write about
them in your composition.
6. Check your work for language mistakes after you have finished writing.

Task 4: Read the paragraph below and then discuss with your partner:

o What difficulty might your students have in writing another paragraph of the same topic?
o What preparation could you do to make the activity easier?
A. Describing a person
Of all my relatives, I like my aunt Emily the best. She’s my mother’s youngest sister. She has
never married and lives alone in a small village near Bath. She’s in her late fifties, but she’s
quite young in spirit. She has a fair complexion, thich fair hair which she wears in a bun, and
dark blue eyes. She has a kind face, and when you meet her, the first thing you notice is her
smile. Her face is a little wrinkled now, but I think she is still rather attractive. She is the sort of
person you can always go to if you have a problem.
She likes reading and gardening, and she still goes for long walks over the hills. She’s making
something, or mending something, or doing something to entertain herself. She’s extremely
generous, but not very tolerant with peopel who don’t agree with her. I hope I’m as contented
as she is when I am her age.