Catedra de Limba şi Literatura engleză

EFL Methodology year II English majors

DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS

The traditional ordering of the four skills – speaking, listening, reading, writing –
reflects both a general belief about the natural order of skill acquisition and one about
instructional priorities. Of the four skills, writing seems to be the odd one out. All children
learn to understand and speak their mother tongue, and school ensures that most people
grow up able to read. If we think only of the pupils’ long-term needs, writing is probably the
least important of the four skills. Only a few might be expected to need any extensive writing
in either Romanian or English.
There is no doubt that writing is the most difficult skill for L2 learners and that only a
few succeed in mastering it. The difficulty lies not only in generating and organizing ideas, but
also in translating these ideas into readable text. However, through the mastery of writing, an
individual comes to be fully effective in intellectual organization and in the expression of ideas
and arguments. Actually, the pupils’ need for writing is most likely to be for study purposes
and also as an examination skill. At the purely practical level, good, clear writing leads to
school success.
The skills involved in writing are highly complex. Learners need to pay attention to
higher level skills of planning and organizing as well as lower level skills of spelling,
punctuation, word choice, and so on. The difficulty becomes even more pronounced if their
language proficiency is weak. Teaching writing involves guiding in analysing and developing
thinking, in shaping and organising it into central and subordinate ideas, in developing a line
of thought and carrying it to the reader. At elementary and intermediate level, writing helps
pupils to think and to learn. Writing new words and structures helps pupils to remember them,
as writing is done more slowly and carefully than speaking. That is why written practice helps
the pupils to focus their attention on what they are learning.
Many English teachers feel that the development of writing skills represents an
unrealistic goal for their pupils as most of them are still struggling to acquire this skill in
Romanian. Writing, in general, is a difficult skill to master, requiring long practice. Writing in
English will create even bigger problems. And yet, in the English classroom, a writing
exercise may help to reinforce oral work, to confirm understanding of a reading text, to
demonstrate awareness of English, as well as to provide a welcome change of pace in a
lesson.
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
• set up, apply and monitor a variety of interactive classroom writing tasks
• offer a theoretical justification for each of these tasks
• integrate writing activities with the development of one or more of other skills
• identify the various sub-skills involved in the writing process
• select and apply appropriate classroom activities to develop these sub-skills
• assess the learning outcomes of specific writing activities.

Key Concepts: genre, writing sub-skills, cohesion, coherence, text-based

approach, process approach, communicative approach, audience, form and content, peer
correction, self-correction

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 1 Developing Writing Competence: Writing Sub-Skills
Writing refers to several sub-skills: putting words on paper, making sentences and
linking them in paragraphs, writing a poem, developing an essay, and many others. Nunan
(1989) notes that writing involves:
• mastering the mechanics of letter formation
• mastering and obeying conventions of spelling and punctuation
• using the grammatical system to convey one’s intended meaning
• organising content at the level of the paragraph and the complete text to reflect
new/given information and topic/comment structures
• polishing and revising one’s initial efforts
• selecting an appropriate style for one’s audience.
The first three of these are sentence-level skills; spelling, punctuation and
grammatical accuracy all receive regular attention from teachers. However, sometimes it
appears that these are the only things considered worthy of attention. The pupils’ failure to
produce good creative writing suggests that paying attention to just these three aspects of
the writing process is not enough.
The last three items are text and discourse-level skills and usually do not receive
much attention. When they do, it is often in the form of red-pen comments on returned
essays, such as “badly organised” or “essay lacks shape”. Section 7.4 considers the effects
of this kind of feedback.
Sometimes pupils lose their meaning in the process of writing because they have a
simplistic view of their task, or they see their writing as definitive from the beginning, except
for minor alterations of form. The ideas themselves should be seen as the most important
aspect of the writing. On the other hand, pupils need to pay attention to formal aspects:
handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary, etc.
Writing is difficult as it involves the development and co-ordination of cognitive and
conceptual sub-skills, including:
Knowledge of the language system
Pupils should have knowledge of those aspects of the language system (vocabulary,
grammar) necessary for the completion of the task. They should also be able to organize
texts appropriately in order to do particular jobs.
Knowledge of the genre
Teaching writing means teaching pupils to recognize the genre in which they are
writing, and the grammatical and lexical choices that need to be made in order to match the
text to the writing purpose. This includes knowledge of:
a) content: knowledge of the concepts involved in the subject area;
b) context: knowledge of the context in which the text will be read, including the
reader’s expectations.
For instance, learners need to realize the importance of framing the beginning of a
text rather than jump in and so become increasingly aware of the reader’s needs. They also
have to learn that for both descriptive and persuasive texts, it is necessary to view the task
from a perspective other than their own. In the descriptive task, they have to consider and
recognize features that would help someone visualize an object without seeing it. In the
persuasive text, they have to realize the need to anticipate an argument and generalize
reasons that support their stand.
Knowledge of the writing process
Pupils also need knowledge of the effective way of preparing for a writing task:
planning, drafting, reviewing, editing, etc.

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 Writing requires more correctness of expression and higher standards of language
than speech. Luckily, the slow and reflective nature of the process of writing enables the
writer to devote more time and attention to formal aspects during the process of writing.

2 Writing to Learn and Learning to Write

Writing to learn
Writing is widely used in the English classes as a means of engaging the pupils with
other language skills. The pupils note down new vocabulary, copy out grammar rules, write
out answers to reading or listening comprehension questions, do written tests. In these
activities, writing is mainly a means of getting the pupils to practise a particular language
point, or as a convenient method of testing it.

Which of the following kinds of text do you think your pupils would
need in Romanian and which in English?
advertisement, essay, filling in a form, letter to the manager, letter to
a newspaper, letter to mother/father, note about a telephone message,
newspaper article, poem, pop song lyric, postcard, report, shopping list,
story, Ph.D. thesis.
Learning to write
Other activities have as main objective writing itself. These practise written forms
either at the level of word or sentence or at the level of content and organization. The pupils
have to express themselves using their own words. They have to state a purpose for writing,
and often to specify a readership. Examples of such activities include narrating a story,
writing a letter or a report.
Some activities combine purposeful and original writing with the learning or practice of
some other skill or content. For example, a written response to the reading of a text will
combine writing with reading. A task which provides little or no practice for the pupils to
extend their knowledge of appropriate content or context or to raise their awareness about
the writing process is not really a writing task but a general learning task using writing.
Writing in Romanian and Writing in English
You may have already noticed thst pupils progress in language complexity much
faster in English than in Romanian. They understand easily that some of the structural
differences observed between speech and writing in Romanian are similar in English, and
consequently attempt the same kind of language adjustments when they write in English.
They realise quickly that the manner in which sentences grow in complexity is similar in
Romanian and English: simple sentences are joined first through coordination, then
subordination, and finally clause reduction.
However, there are some features of written language that may cause major
problems to your pupils as they may differ from those of Romanian. These operate above the
level of the sentence: layout and physical organization on the page, text organization
determined by the social function the text fulfils, relationships between clauses and clause
complexes. That is why your pupils may benefit from an explicit understanding of how these
work.
For the Romanian student of English, many writing conventions will remain a mystery
unless teachers are able to bring the forms and patterns of language use to conscious
awareness. However, many English tests will evaluate their control of text organisation,
sentence structure, etc. By providing learners with the language to talk about texts, they can
better understand how to make a piece of writing more effective and appropriate to the

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communicative purpose. This also helps them increase their writing skills and become more
efective during peer editing and revision.

In writing English, which appears to create more

difficulties to you, cohesion or coherence?

3 Approaches to Writing
There are two main ways of approaching writing: focusing on the product or on the
writer. These perspectives have determined major approaches on the teaching of writing.
The focus on the product gave birth to the traditional text-based approach. The
teachers using this perspective often present model texts, usually given in textbooks, for the
pupils to imitate or adapt. They believe their role is to cultivate conformity to models, and
accuracy rather than fluency. They see mistakes as something they have to correct and
eliminate. In this approach, the pupils write variations first on sentences, then on paragraphs,
then on very controlled compositions, and finally, at an advanced level, they work on free
composition.
Examine one of the textbooks in use.
a) What writing activities suggested in these textbooks give the
pupils the opportunity to be creative and original?
b) Find examples of activities which begin with an example text
or samples of language that the pupils have to imitate or incorporate into
their own writing.

3.1 The Process Approach

Traditionally, the teacher has been more concerned with the finished product than
with the way it has been created. The text-based approach is based on the notion that pupils
need to produce accurate pieces of writing. Over the past few years, however, interest has
swung from the product of writing to the actual writing process itself. It has become apparent
that if the teacher’s first concern is that an essay or story should be grammatically correct,
then this will be reflected in pupil attitude and behaviour. Firstly, pupils will regard essay
writing not as opportunity to express their views on a variety of topics, but as a long
grammatical exercise. What they actually write about will be a minor consideration. Secondly,
pupils will play safe. They will choose simple things to say to avoid the risk of error. The
result will be reasonably correct essays that say nothing.
However, the whole purpose of creative writing is to say something worth paying
attention to. While not totally rejecting this earlier system, the current trend is to place
emphasis on the process of writing and the writer. This approach lays stress on the activities
which move the pupil from the generation of ideas and collection of data to the production
and ‘publication’ of the text. It emphasises the writing process over the product, with
recognition of the recursiveness of the process and the encouragement of exploration of
topics through writing.
The writing process may be broadly seen as comprising four main stages: planning,
drafting, revising and editing. The stages are neither sequential nor orderly, as many writers
employ a recursive, non-linear approach, as writing a draft may be interrupted by more
planning, and revision may lead to reformulation, with a great deal of recycling to earlier
stages.

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 PROCESS ACTIVATED
Planning Drafting

Editing Revising
PROCESS TERMINATED

Fig. 1 The Writing Process (Seow A, p. 315

Process writing as a classroom activity incorporates the four basic writing stages –
planning, drafting (writing), revising (redrafting) and editing – and three other stages
externally imposed on students by the teacher: responding (sharing), evaluating and post-
writing. Process writing is highly structured as it necessitates the orderly teaching of process
skills.
It is now recognised that pupils not only need help throughout the writing process, but
that creative writing in the classroom is a shared activity. This kind of thinking has resulted in
much more attention being paid to the pre-writing stage.
Planning
Planning (pre-writing) encourages students to write. It stimulates thoughts for getting
started. It moves students toward generating tentative ideas and gathering information for
writing. The following activities provide the learning experiences for students at this stage:
• Group brainstorming.
• Clustering. Students form words related to a stimulus supplied by the teacher. The
words are circled and then linked by lines to show clusters. The visual character of
the activity stimulates the flow of associations.
• Rapid free writing. Within a limited time of 1 or 2 minutes, individual students freely
and quickly write down single words and phrases about a topic. Rapid freewriting
is done when group brainstorming is not possible or because of the personal
nature of a certain topic.
• Wh-questions. Students generate who, why, what, where, when and how
questions about a topic. or such questions can be asked of answers to the first
string of wh-questions, and so on. This can go on indefinitely.
Drafting
Once sufficient ideas are gathered at the planning stage, the first attempt at writing –
drafting – may proceed quickly. At this stage, the writers are focused on the fluency of writing
and are not preoccupied with grammatical accuracy or the neatness of the draft. One
dimension of good writing is the writer’s ability to visualise an audience. Although writing in
the classroom is almost always for the teacher, the students may also be encouraged to write
for different audiences (their peers, other classmates, pen-friends, or family members). A
sense of audience will dictate a certain style to be used.
Students should also have in mind a central idea that they want to communicate to
the audience in order to give direction to their writing.
Depending on the genre of writing (narrative, expository or argumentative), an
introduction to the subject of writing may be a startling statement to arrest the reader’s
attention, a short summary of the rest of the writing, and apt quotation, a provocative
question, a general statement, an analogy, a statement of purpose, and so on. Such a
strategy may provide the lead at the drafting stage.

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 Responding
Responding to student writing by the teacher (or by peers) has a central role to play in
the successful implementation of process writing. Responding intervenes between drafting
and revising. It is the teacher’s quick initial reaction to students’ drafts. Response can be oral
or in writing, after the students have produced the first draft and just before they proceed to
revise.
The failure of many writing activities in schools may be ascribed to the fact that
responding is done in the final stage when the teacher simultaneously responds and
evaluates, and even edits students’ finished texts, thus giving students the impression that
nothing more needs to be done.
Text-specific responses in the form of helpful suggestions and questions will hale
students rediscover meanings and facilitate the revision of initial drafts. Such responses can
be provided in the margin, between sentence lines or at the end of students’ texts. Peer
responding can be effectively carried out by having students respond to each other’s texts in
small groups or in pairs, with the aid of a checklist.

Responding checklist

• What is the greatest strength of this composition/essay, etc?

• What is its greatest weakness?
• What is the central idea?
• Which are the ideas that need more elaboration?
• Where should more details or examples be added? Why?
• What are some of the questions that the writer has not answered?
• At which point does this composition fail to hold the reader’s interest? Why?
• Where is the organisation confusing?
• Where is the writing unclear or vague?

(after Seow A., 318)

Revising
Comments and discussion may follow after a second draft is attempted, and so on.
The pupils need to be assured that the final product is not the only thing to be judged. Praise
for the first draft, and praise, advice and suggestions throughout the writing process are very
important.
If you accept that for teaching purposes at least, the process of writing is more
significant than the final product, then it follows that pupils need to be given enough time to
produce their essay. If it is a race against time, then few of the above procedures can be
applied.
Much of the teaching of writing comes at the first draft stage. Very little can be taught
after the final version has been submitted. That is why you need to sit with your pupils and
discuss the first drafts, be appreciative of good ideas, and make suggestions for general
improvements in structure.
When students revise, they review their texts on the basis of the feedback given in
the responding stage. They re-examine what was written to see how effectively they have
communicated their meaning to the reader. Revising is not merely checking for language
errors (i.e. editing). It is done to improve global content and the organisation of ideas so that
the writer’s intent is made clearer to the reader.
Revising can be done in pairs, with the students reading aloud each other’s drafts
before they revise. As students listen intently to their own writing, they are brought to a more
conscious level of rethinking and re-seeing what they have written.

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 Editing
At this stage, students are engaged in tidying up their texts as they prepare the final
draft foe evaluation by the teacher. They edit their own or their peer’s work for grammar,
spelling, punctuation, diction, sentence structure and accuracy of supportive textual material
such as quotations, examples and the like. Formal editing is deferred till this phase in order
that its application not disrupt the free flow of ideas during the drafting and revising stages. A
simple checklist might be issued to student to alert them to some of the common surface
errors found in students’ writing. For instance:

• Have you used your verbs in the correct tense?

• Are the verb forms correct?
• Have you checked for subject – verb agreement?
• Have you used the correct prepositions?
• Have you left out the articles where they are required?
• Have you used all your pronouns correctly?
• Is your choice of adjectives and adverbs appropriate?
• Have you written in complete sentences?

(After Seow, A., p. 318 – 319)

The students are, however, not always expected to know where and how to correct
every error, but editing to the best of their ability should be done as a matter of course, prior
to submitting their work for evaluation each time. Editing within process writing is meaningful
because students can see the connection between such an exercise and their own writing in
that correction is not done for its own sake but as part of the process of making
communication as clear and unambiguous as possible to an audience.
Evaluating
Very often teachers compress responding, editing and evaluating into one. This
deprives students of the vital link between drafting and revision (that is, responding) which
often makes a big difference.
In evaluating student writing, the scoring may be analytical (i.e., based on specific
aspects of writing ability) or holistic (i.e., based on a global interpretation of the effectiveness
of that piece of writing). In order to be effective, the criteria for evaluation should be made
known to students in advance. They should include the overall interpretation of the task,
sense of audience, relevance, development and organisation of ideas, format or layout,
grammar and structure, spelling and punctuation, range and appropriateness of vocabulary,
and clarity of communication. Depending on the purpose of evaluation, a numerical score or
grade may be assigned. Students may be encouraged to evaluate their own and each other’s
texts once they have been properly taught how to do it. In this way, they are made more
responsible for their own writing.
Post-writing
Post –writing constitutes any classroom activity that the teacher and students can do
with the completed pieces of writing. This includes publishing, sharing, reading aloud,
transforming texts for stage performances, or merely displaying texts on notice-boards. The
post-writing stage is a platform for recognising students’ work as important and worthwhile.
Scrivener (1994) proposes at least nine stages of preparation before the final draft of
a piece of creative writing is produced:
• Introduction of topic. Group discussion. Clarification of main writing task.
Consideration of audience for the final text. Consideration of specific requirements – style,
information, layout, etc. Consideration of likely difficulties and problems.
• Initial individual or group brainstorming,
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 • Selection and rejection of ideas,
• Sorting and ordering of ideas – note-making,
• Focus on useful language models,
• Small group or class construct of a preliminary skeleton or example text,
• Individual or group preparation of draft text,
• Discussion with others and with teacher,
• Individual or group preparation of final draft.

3.2 Implementing Process Writing

Teacher modelling
Teachers should model the writing process at every stage and teach specific writing
strategies to students through meaningful classroom activities.
Relating process to product
It is vital that as students go through various stages of writing and elaborate various
drafts, they understand what kind of product is expected at each stage. Thus students need
to be guided to set and achieve specific writing goals at every stage.
Working within institutional constraints
It is possible to teach some process skills appropriate to a writing stage within a two-
period composition lesson. The teaching of the same process skill could be repeated in
subsequent composition lessons. Process skills can be systematically taught each time until
the entire series of such skills is developed over a period of time.
Catering to diverse student needs
The teacher will need to know what the individual student knows and work from there,
implementing a flexible programme to cater to different student needs. The teacher may also
decide to have students enter into different writing groups as planners, drafters, responders,
revisers or editors during a writing session.
Exploiting the use of computers in process writing
Many word-processing programmes are user-friendly enough for students to handle.
Their direct application to process writing, especially for the purposes of drafting, revising and
editing, is rewarding for both the teacher and the students. The teacher can teach responding
or editing skills via the computer hooked on to an overhead projector. The students can freely
make any number of changes to their texts by deleting words or moving them around without
having to retype large chunks of text all over again. Any work can be saved on the computer
for revision later.

3.3 The Text-Based Approach

This approach is also called the controlled-to-free approach, as depending on the
degree of freedom the pupils are allowed, the writing activities used are characterized as
controlled, guided and free.
There has been much argument about whether pupils should be allowed to engage in
free writing from the start, or whether they should be led gradually into it. Some argue that, if
writing is about expressing one’s views, then pupils should be allowed a free rein. Others feel
that strict control should be maintained until the pupils can produce error-free sentences.
There is little doubt that, unless the pupils can produce syntactically acceptable
sentences, their creative writing will not be very coherent. It seems fair to assume that some
kind of sentence-level guidance will be necessary for many pupils at some stage. However,
you cannot suume that sentence-level skills will be automatically transferred to creative

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writing. Further guidance, in the form of models, may be needed. You may therefore wish to
consider several stages in preparing pupils for free writing. Raimes (1989) proposes five
types of controlled writing: controlled composition, question and answer, guided composition,
parallel writing and sentence combining.
Controlled writing
Controlled writing activities provide both content and form. The pupils are not asked
to create anything. You give them a passage and ask them to make alterations to it. These
alterations are normally grammatical. For example, you may ask them to re-write a passage
about a single child so that it becomes a passage about several children, to re-write a direct
speech text in reported speech, or to re-write a present tense passage in the past simple.
Other activities include copying, gap-filling, re-ordering words, substitution (e.g. If he
stayed/left/spoke they would disagree with him), correct the facts (e.g. re-write the sentences
so that they match a picture), and dictation. They are typically used with beginners and the
objective of this kind of activities is that pupils make as few mistakes as possible. This
explains why in all these activities the pupils have to add little if anything of their own.
These activities can be made more meaningful and interesting, still remaining very
controlled, if the pupils are given a chance to think what they are writing. For instance,
copying is completely mechanical when they are asked to copy a string of words: a sentence
that they do not understand. In this case, their attention is focused only on spelling. But
copying may become more meaningful if the pupils can contribute something to the text.
Part(s) of the sentence can be left out for the pupils to write themselves. The teacher may
write the sentence outline on the board, (e.g. they – home – afternoon), say the whole
sentence and ask the pupils to write what they heard. You can also show or draw a picture to
replace part(s) of the sentence. Alternatively, you may write the sentence on the board, and
ask your pupils to write a similar true sentence about themselves.
Another extremely restricting activity, gap-filling, can become more involving and
challenging if the pupils are given the opportunity to choose between alternatives given in
brackets.
Without real comprehension, dictation is also a mechanical activity, restricted to
practising spelling. If done traditionally, you read a text once through and then dictate it
phrase by phrase. Then the text is read through once again. Even done this way, dictation
cannot be denied a number of advantages: it is an intensive activity which helps to develop
both listening and writing, requires concentration, and can be done with large classes.
What are, in your opinion, the disadvantages of dictation?

An alternative to traditional dictation is the dictocomp (a combination of dictation and

composition), which develops both listening and writing skills and focuses on meaning. The
dictocomp is not exclusively controlled writing, as it requires not only careful listening and
accurate spelling but also thinking. The pupils listen to a text, jot down notes and then try to
reconstruct the original from notes or from given prompts. They need to understand the text,
think about its content and how to reproduce it, and how to construct the sentences. The
dictocomp can be used with pupils at all levels, provided the original text chosen is
challenging enough.
Questions and answers
A question and answer procedure continues your control over what is produced but
allows the pupils a little more freedom. The text emerges from the answers produced by the

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pupils to questions asked by you. The questions may be based on a set of notes or a picture.
A picture sequence can be used to make the task a little more interesting.
picture 1: Classroom. Children studying. One boy with thought cloud
above his head to show he is dreaming of playing football with his friends.
picture 2: Same boy at teacher’s desk, holding head and looking sick.
example picture 3: Same boy playing football with his friends on playing field
picture 4: Footballers point at restaurant, suggesting cold drink
picture 5: Boy with friends in restaurant having cold drinks
picture 6: Teacher walks into restaurant.
You begin by asking what is happening in each picture in turn. Individual pupils
suggest answers, such as “The boy is asking the teacher if he can go home because he is
sick”. You write the best answer for each picture on the board. When all the questions are
complete, you ask the pupils to use the six answers as the basis for their text, reminding
them that the story must be told in the past tense. Before settling down to produce their texts
in pairs or small groups, the class may decide together what the wording of the first sentence
will be.
As confidence and skill grow, you can ask the pupils to create a story directly from a
sequence of pictures, without the question - answer stage. In this activity, writing can be
integrated with oral work. Class discussion establishes what is happening in each of the
pictures, then pupils decide in pairs or small groups how they are going to put the story
together. Each pair writes a first draft of the story then passes it to the next pair for comment
and correction. Second drafts are then written, and so on. In this way, all the class are
involved in the writing process.
In another version of this activity the whole class share in the writing of the same
story (e.g. a fairy tale type in which the characters and plot are fairly predictable). After class
discussion of standard forms and sequences of events in fairy tales, one pupil is asked to
write the first sentence of a story on a piece of paper. The paper is then passed on to the
next pupil who writes the second sentence, and so on. Once the class is accustomed to this
kind of combined writing, several stories can be circulating at the same time. The completed
stories are read out to the class by individual pupils for comments and suggestions. As a
follow-up task, the pupils may be given copies of the story to check for grammatical accuracy
and punctuation.
Guided writing
In guided writing, you still retain a certain amount of control over the form and content
of the pupils’ writing. The pupils are given information that they must include in their writing.
Sometimes you also give the first and last sentences. The information may come in the form
of a picture. For example, you give a picture of a lake on a summer day with people doing
various things (e.g. swimming, diving, having picnics and sunbathing). In the distance a
farmer is seen with his sheep dog. The task is to write three paragraphs about the scene.
You tell the pupils to begin by saying that the picture shows a scene in the
countryside. Then you ask them to say something about the weather, the colour of the sky,
the sun and the shade given by the trees round the lake. They must describe the lake: is it
big, small, deep, shallow, clear or dark? In the second paragraph the pupils are asked to
describe the people and say what each group is doing. What does the farmer use his dog
for? Finally, you tell them to end the paragraph with the words “Other people can enjoy
themselves in the summer sun, but the farmer has to work.”
Parallel writing
Such activities are typically used with pre-intermediate and intermediate pupils. In this
type of writing activities, content is free but form is given. You first give the pupils a piece of
writing to see and then they use it as a basis for their own work. The original piece sets a
model and guides them in expressing themselves. This type of activity is central to the
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teaching of connected discourse since it sets models from which the pupils can work. It
generally addresses the paragraph level.
Parallel writing tasks come in various forms to allow for varying degrees of control by
the teacher.

example John is an English boy who lives in Shipton, in the north of England.
Shipton is a small village on the edge of the Irish Sea, near Lanchester.
The village has a church, a small shop, and a post office. There is no
school in Shipton, so Peter goes to school in Lanchester. To get into
Lanchester he has to catch a bus outside the post office. The bus leaves
the post office each morning at eight o’clock.
Your task is to:
1. Write a similar paragraph about Rita, using these notes:
Rita – Scottish girl – Heston – small town – River Benlow –
Edinburgh – supermarket –cinema – football club – small railway station –
no library – train – library in Edinburgh – railway station – every two hours.
2. Write about your own village or town.

Sentence combining
Sentence combining tasks are rather more mechanical than parallel writing tasks.
They provide the pupils with the materials and ask them to manipulate them. You give sets of
simple sentences and ask the pupils to combine them in grammatically acceptable ways to
produce complex sentences. This helps to develop their style.
example Combine each of the following pairs of sentences into one complex
sentence:
She overslept. She was late for school. ………………………
He was injured. He played football. …………………
They were having a picnic. It started to rain. …………………
The singer arrived. Everyone was seated. ……………………
At a higher level of organisation, pupils need practice in combining sentences to form
cohesive and coherent paragraphs.
The main difficulty encountered by pupils working at paragraph level is cohesion.
Cohesion is difficult in writing because often we do not get direct feedback on our writing from
our readers and we are not in a position to clarify points which have not been understood.
Cohesion involves not only the ordering of sentences, but also the use of cohesive devices.
Typical activities practising cohesion are sentence combining, sentence reordering, sentence
insertion and noun and sentence substitution. Unfortunately, it seems that pupil performance
in improving the syntactic complexity of writings tends to erode once sentence-combining
practice is discontinued.
Paragraph writing has to be practised as soon as the pupils have mastered basic
skills of sentence writing and need to progress beyond very controlled writing exercises to
sentence combining. This transition is more easily done by offering a short text as a model or
by doing oral preparation for the writing. The main problem is finding a suitable model as it is
not always possible to use a text from the textbook. The model text might be limiting or
misleading, especially if the pupils’ topic is somewhat different and they are in the habit of
following models closely.
During oral preparation you can build an outline on the board to which the pupils
contribute suggestions, and you key expressions. Later on, the pupils use this material as a
basis for their writing. This technique is flexible and involving and reveals the interests and

Anca Cehan 11
abilities of the class. Also, it requires no specially prepared materials. The ideas about what
to write are generated by the pupils themselves.

Before asking your pupils to write an example of a particular text type,

you might want to go with them through some stages. Put the stages
suggested below into an appropriate order and justify your decision:
a) practising guided writing which follows prompts (e.g. pictures or
sentences that summarise paragraphs)
b) doing exercises that practise characteristic features of text type
(e.g. passive voice)
c) reading examples of the text type
d) analysing a sample text to isolate typical features.

3.4 Free Writing

Free writing tasks can be assigned after the study of the respective genre models.
You can ask pupils from intermediate to advanced to write narratives based on a picture or
series of pictures. They may describe an occasion when they felt disappointed or afraid,
surprised, or relieved. They may describe someone they know very well, or write descriptions
of people and places, based on photographs or some information about them. They may
write an answer to a (given) letter of complaint, write application letters, etc.
You can ask more advanced pupils to describe the process represented in a flowchart
or any kind of diagram, write reports of books they read, reviews of books they enjoyed (and
would like to recommend to other people in the class), instruction sheets for something they
know how to do well (e.g. prepare some kind of food) or essays on various topics.
Essay writing
Whatever kind of writing activities pupils practise in the classroom, at some stage you
will probably require them to produce an essay, and this will have to conform to an
acceptable format. A sample format is given below. This format is by no means the only
acceptable format for essays; many others are possible. But it may be useful as an indication
to pupils that each of the parts of an essay must be clearly related to the rest, to form a
coherent whole.
a) Introduction. Here they need to define the terms. If the topic of the essay is,
for instance, “Urban Pollution”, they may need to show that they understand what “urban” and
“pollution” mean. Also here they need to state why the topic is of interest, where their main
focus on the topic will be, how many parts they will break the topic up into. This will give the
number of paragraphs they will have in the body of the essay.
b) Body of essay. The introduction will tell how many paragraphs they are going
to write. Thus: each paragraph refers back to the introduction. For example, “the
first/second/third type of urban pollution is…” Each paragraph discusses a different aspect of
the topic and provides an example to illustrate the point(s).
c) Conclusion. This is a brief final paragraph. There is no need to repeat what
was said in the introduction or summarise the contents of the body paragraphs, except
perhaps in a brief sentence. For example: “Thus there are a number of clear reasons why
urban pollution is a serious problem”. The remainder of the conclusion looks briefly at any
further implications of what has been said in the body of the essay.

3.5 The Communicative Approach

The communicative approach emphasises task-oriented activities that involve the
exchange of information, with focus on fluency. Although the approach practises a good deal

Anca Cehan 12
of modelling and controlled practice, a lot of attention is paid to motivation and to self-
expression. It stresses purpose and audience and encourages interaction among the pupils,
with less emphasis on form and accuracy. Through the activities, many of them based on
information gaps, and done in pairs and groups, the pupils are exposed to a lot of written
language. Listening and reading materials of a factual nature are also frequently used. Here
are some popular ideas of written communicative activities:
Relaying instructions
One pupil or one group of pupils elaborate instructions for the performance of a task.
They have to tell another pupil or group to perform the task by giving them written
instructions.
Writing reports, advertisements, brochures
The pupils write items for a school news broadcast or a school magazine. They can
join together to write a brochure about the place they live in or are studying in. They can write
and design their own advertisements.
Co-operative writing
The pupils may write joint stories, each pupil contributing a sentence. They may start
either at the first or the last sentence (these may be or may not be supplied).
The agony column
The pupils invent some problem, write letters to the ‘columnist’ and then have them
answered by other members of the class.
Letters of complaint
The pupils write letters of complaint about faulty goods they have purchased or bad
service they received. The ‘company representatives’ reply to these letters.
Job applications
The applications can be later on judged and a decision taken about who is
successful.
Letter writing and journal keeping
You can write a letter to the pupils in a (small) class, telling them something about
yourself and inviting them to write letters to you, which you would reply to personally. The
pupils may engage in correspondence about learning, their experiences, how they feel about
school, etc. The pupils use writing for genuinely communicative purposes and get individual
attention from you. The disadvantages of this procedure, as Rinvolucri, the initiator admits,
are firstly that some pupils get ‘too close’ to the teacher and secondly that it takes a lot of
your time.
Alternatively, you can ask the pupils to keep diaries. Here they will write what they
want about what interests them. They will comment on the classes, on their personal
experiences, on politics or they will write stories. You can ask them to write in their journals
for five minutes at the end of every class, but also when they themselves want to. Such an
activity ensures frequent writing practice and all pupils have a chance to use English to
reflect their own thoughts and feelings. You have the advantage of interacting with your
pupils as individuals. These diaries are not primarily to be corrected, but rather to be reacted
to. In this activity, content feedback is far more important than form feedback.
Journal keeping is a private and confidential, as well as highly individualized process.
Consequently, assessing students’ journal entries is also a private matter between the writer
and the teacher. Sometimes the teacher can respond to journal entries through conferencing.
Journal entries can contribute greatly to the humanistic approach to teaching and learning, an
example of which is the integration of values during the sharing sessions.

Anca Cehan 13
 Dialogue journals
Dialogue journals are written conversations between teacher and student over a
period of time, on topics that are of special interest to them. Their goal is to “communicate in
writing, to exchange ideas and information free of the concern for form and correctness so
often imposed on developing writers” (Jones, 1991: 3 in Peyton & Staton, 1991).
Dialogue journals provide guidance to the learner in expressing ideas, thoughts,
feelings, and emotions. Dialogue journal interaction leads to trust between learner and
teacher. Dialogue journals have some ingredients that differentiate them from other forms of
written communication, specifically journal entries (Peňaflorida A., 350):
• Teacher and student write to each other, taking equal turns in writing and
responding. In journal keeping, there is no equal turn taking in responding
• Teacher and student share ideas and information. In journal keeping the
student does not have to share her/his writing with anybody.
• Teacher and student act as equal partners in the interaction between them. In
journal keeping there is a hierarchical relationship between teacher and
student.
• Dialogue journal writing is applicable to some content area courses such as
literature, social studies, or science. Journal keeping is usually practised in
language courses only.
• In dialogue journals, teacher gives students assistance beyond what they
already know how to do. In journal entries, teacher assists students on the
language used on the content of what is written.
Both the dialogue journal and journal keeping provide intensive writing practice,
promote learner autonomy, serve as informal means of assessment, are highly private and
confidential, and are interactive in varying degrees.
Projects
Projects are longer pieces of work that involve the collection of information and
reporting. The quality of the end product is important. The pupils can use tape-recorders and
video cameras to record interviews with native speakers they can find, or they can consult
libraries (including electronic ones) for source material.
Portfolios
Applebee and Langer (1992: 30) define portfolios as a cumulative collection of the
work students have done. Some of the most popular forms are the following:
1. a traditional “writing folder” in which students keep their work
2. a bound notebook with separate sections kept for work in progress and final drafts
3. a loose-leaf notebook in which students keep their drafts and revisions
4. a combination folder and envelope where student’s writings – exercises, tests,
compositions, drafts, and so on – are kept.
5. A notebook divided into two sections: one for drafts and the other for final copies
(once called original and rewritten compositions).
Learning logs
Learning logs help teachers see what their students are learning, particularly in the
writing class, and in the language class as a whole. In a learning log, students write on the
knowledge they have gained from studying in their writing classes, and from their own
thinking. A teacher need not grade learning logs, but can assess how much a student has
gained or benefited from the writing class.

Anca Cehan 14
 4 Purpose and Motivation
The communicative approach has led us to pay more attention to the purpose of
language, to the content of the message the pupils intend to get across. But it is sometimes
difficult for both teachers and pupils to think of writing as a motivating, purposeful activity,
especially if the goal of the activity is grammatical accuracy. In order for the pupils’ writing to
be more effective, and for reading to be more enjoyable, it is important to create other
purposes for writing.
The class should approach their task in terms of two questions: to whom they are
writing, and for what purpose. When the pupils have a better idea of whom their readers are
and of how they can get prepared to negotiate meaning, their writing is more purposeful. For
instance, instead of asking them to write a short autobiography, you could tell them they are
applying for a scholarship to spend a year in Great Britain. The purpose of the pupils’ writing
becomes thus more goal oriented. They will have to select the relevant qualities to speak
about and present the information in such a way as to show that one could benefit from such
experience and merits the scholarship over someone else.
The incorporation of an element of real communication, such as ‘publication’, is
motivating for most pupils. Going public in newsletters or class magazines and/or organizing
the reception of a ‘real’ response (from either a classmate, pupils in another class, pen-
friends or the teacher) may determine the production of more effective writing.

What factors should you consider when setting a writing task?

Encouraging your pupils to help each other in preparing their written tasks may also
provide motivation and increase their confidence. The pupils can brainstorm ideas on a topic,
organise points for, neutral and against a specified argument, negotiate a line of thought, etc.
Pictures such as cartoons or drawings, may be used to stimulate ideas. Written tasks can
also be the result of other classroom activities such as reading, debates, role play, etc.
Your response on a pupil’s paper can also be an influential text in a writing class.
Some teachers ask their pupils to keep diaries in which they record aspects of their life and
address the teacher directly to ask for help or advice.
In practice most teachers and textbook writers draw on more than one approach and
combine and adapt various elements to suit their classes.

5 Feedback on Writing

In your own experience of learner of English, what kinds of feedback

did you receive from your teachers? How useful did you find their
feedback?

Many teachers feel a terrible temptation to take the pupils’ work, indicate all the
places that need fixing, and return it to the pupils. Undoubtedly, the papers would be better if
the pupils handed them in the second time. The question is whether the pupils care enough
about their papers to want to put them into acceptable form and whether teachers know how
to encourage them to do that.
Responding or giving feedback to student writing can be both oral and written. There
are a variety of response types that an English teacher can utilize in the classroom. C.
Anca Cehan 15
Tribble (1996) identifies four basic roles that teachers may assume when giving feedback:
audience, evaluator, examiner and assistant.
As audience we read the text and say how we find it, and if the author’s point is
clearly formulated. We respond to the pupils’ ideas, feelings, and attitudes and indicate
whether or not we enjoyed reading the text. Unfortunately, we often avoid this role and
assume the other three, identifying problems, commenting and grading.
However, our purpose as evaluators is to give feedback on the present strengths
and weaknesses of a text, with a view to help our pupils to improve their future performance.
The text is assessed on all dimensions: task fulfilment, content, organisation, vocabulary,
language, and mechanics.
Each dimension is normally accompanied by descriptors, adapted to the class level
and purposes and made public. One main advantage of the descriptors is that the pupils
know the basis on which their work is assessed. Another is that the teacher can recognise
excellence in one aspect while indicating weaknesses in others. This will help the pupils to
identify the areas they have to work on. The scores are finally converted into an overall
grade. If they are not too vague (e.g. “Good work”, “Well done”), evaluations can encourage
the pupils and point them in the right direction for future writing. Evaluations may be
accompanied by a short personal response to the message of the text. Thus the pupils get
complete feedback on the impact their texts have had on the teacher.
Evaluating is pointing out strengths and weaknesses, while examining is assigning a
grade. By giving a grade you indicate the degree of excellence that a task has achieved.
Once a task has been graded, the pupils will give it little thought or work. You need to assess
the pupils’ skills on the basis of explicit criteria. The use of analytical assessment criteria
helps the pupils to understand what is expected from them and how a weak paper can be
improved. Giving separate scores, one for each area, you can also help the pupils to
understand their strengths and weaknesses. Weighting content and ideas twice as heavily as
language or structure, for instance, will underline the importance of content.
As assistants, you tell the pupils if you find their text effective in relation to its
purpose, pass advice on language, genre, structure, and subject matter. You devote time to
their command of language, trying to assist them at each stage in the writing process, and
encourage collaboration among them. In this role, the most significant contribution that you
can make in the writing classroom is to create a community of readers. However, your
assistance cannot help the pupils to improve a text if you also grade it.
As audience, evaluators, and examiners you give feedback on the pupils’ text as end
product and your comments come too late to influence the piece of writing. Your feedback is
usually limited to grading, commenting (superficially) and correcting errors. You give the
pupils no indication of what they are to do next or what they have to work on. If their task has
not been clearly specified and if they do not really know what the purpose of the writing has
been, this sort of feedback can be time-consuming and demoralising for both you and the
pupils.

Consider the following comments made by various pupils. Try to identify

what role their English teacher assumed when giving feedback:
1. My teacher wrote at the bottom of the page that my grammar is
acceptable, but I still have some problems with the present perfect, and
the definite article.
2. The teacher criticised: “the conclusion is weak. It introduces new
points.”
3. She told me to change the introduction, making it more interesting
for the reader.
4. The teacher located and indicated the nature of my errors.
5. The teacher made suggestions for changes.

Anca Cehan 16
 6. The teacher re-wrote my text, without changing its content and
arguments and brought both my draft and hers to class. We all discussed
and compared the text organisation, development of ideas, sense of
audience and style, but my classmates were not told whose text the
teacher used.
7. I got an 8 in my last assignment.
8. The teacher asked me questions.
9. The teacher emoted: “What a terrible experience!”
1. ………..
2. ………..
3. ………..
4. ………..
You need strategies to give constructive comments on drafts. If feedback is done
effectively, by the time the text is finished, most of the problems have been solved. Moreover,
the pupils will understand the purpose of your feedback at each stage.
Writing involves content, organization, style, syntax, mechanics, grammar and
spelling. When looking at any piece of writing, you often feel you have to respond to all these.
However, the most important thing to consider, especially at post-beginner level, is content,
followed by organization and presentation. The quality and amount of pupil writing is very
sensitive to constructive teacher feedback on content, and relatively insensitive to teacher
correction of form. Feedback on content, unlike feedback on grammar, can determine the
improvement of writing. If you limit your feedback to pointing out and/or correcting errors,
your pupils will concentrate on producing error-free writing, neglecting the interest or even the
meaning of the content. The equation teaching writing = error elimination is counter-
productive and may result in a waste of time and discouragement. Ideally, your pupils should
be familiar with various types of feedback.
One problem is how to maintain a fair balance between form and content when
assessing and giving feedback. This balance depends, to some extent on your own teaching
situation, experience and opinion.
The correction of written work can be done on much the same basis as the correction
of oral work. You should not always be preoccupied with accuracy. There may be times when
you are concerned with accuracy and other times when your main concern is the content of
the writing. Some of us, although fully aware of the importance of content and organisation,
find ourselves dealing mainly with language accuracy in our feedback, conveying the implicit
message that this is what matters. This happens because language mistakes are difficult to
ignore, they catch the eye; they are more easily and quickly diagnosed and corrected than
the ones of content and organisation. Moreover, many pupils want their language mistakes to
be corrected.
In spite of all this, you should not convey the message that the language mistakes are
your main concern. To avoid this to happen, you may note corrections within the body of the
text, and write comments on content and organisation at the end. Feedback in the form of
comments by the teacher is extremely helpful. The most important contribution you can make
is that of being a careful reader, willing to respond to what pupils write in terms of clarity,
coherence, and effectiveness of content.

We have distinguished between learning to write activities, meant to

help the pupils learn to write and writing to learn activities, meant to help
them write to learn. What essential difference will there be between the
way we respond to texts that have been written with these two different
purposes?

Anca Cehan 17
 5.1 Self-correction, self-response or critical reading
This is a step torward learner autonomy. Studies have revealed that studenta are
capable of analyzing and responding to their own writing given the proper training. By
allowing them to react to their own work and to practice self-feedback, the teacher is
encouraging students to be self-sufficient and independent.
V. Zamel (1991) suggests four self-correction techniques that the pupils can use to
correct their own work in class with a critical eye.
1. The pupils read their papers aloud to other pupils. Reading aloud will help them
spot some of the mistakes. In most cases, they will naturally hesitate when a sentence does
not seem to work.
2. A classmate reads the paper aloud. The new reader may pause when coming
across a mistake or when a sentence is problematic.
3. The pupils take their text, cover up everything on the page except the first
sentence, put their pencil point to one word at a time, and say the sentence aloud, word by
word. They try to pick out the core (subject + verb) of the sentence.
4. The pupils read their last sentences first and so on, backwards through the text,
sentence by sentence. This is a way of focusing attention on sentence-level accuracy and
preventing the eye from leaping ahead for the content.
Another technique is to give students a few sample questions as guidelines, e.g.:]
• What I am writing about?
• Is the main idea of my work clear?
• Do I have details (e.g. examples and illustrations) to support my main idea?
The question of class climate, personal relationships, trust and willingness to accept
criticism and help from one another remains. Because critical reading does not come
naturally for many pupils, you can help them with checklists and/or questions to answer. Thus
the pupils will learn what to look for in a text in order to offer useful and constructive
feedback.
5.2 Peer response
Correcting written work is very time-consuming, particularly if you have large classes.
One possible solution is to let the pupils correct and edit each other’s writing. Peer response
shows that readership does not belong exclusively to the teacher, since in this type of
response, students share their writings with each other. Students may not like this at the
beginning, but with the teacher’s encouragement, they will gradually get used to the idea of
communicating their ideas to each other. Elbow (1992) believes that when students write only
for their teacher (which usually means for a grade), they often treat writing as an empty
school exercise and attempt simply to just “get it right”, or “give teachers what they want”.
When students write for their peers, they become concerned about what they say and how
they say it. Students may not be as skilled as their teachers at responding to each other’s
work, but they can provide an audience. Peer responding must be modelled, taught, and
controlled in order for it to be a valuable activity. Controlling peer response, just like self-
feedback, can be done through the use of a checklist. Here are some typical questions for
peer response (Kroll, 1991: 259):
• What is the main purpose of this paper?
• What have you found particularly effective in this paper?
• Do you think the writer has followed through on what the paper set out to do?
• Find at least three places in the essay where you can think of questions that have
not been answered by the writer. Write those questions on the margin as areas for
the writer to answer in the next draft.
The teacher can train the pupils in giving and asking for specific and constructive
feedback. For instance a statement like “I think that this sentence would be better if you
Anca Cehan 18
added some colour words” is constructive while “Your sentences are problematic” is
destructive. The pupils should be encouraged to ask for feedback on spelling, punctuation,
sentence variety, style, etc. Also, they should constantly check with their group members to
make sure their comments are clear. They can be taught to ask questions like:
• Is there any place in my text that is hard to follow?
• Is there any point that you do not really understand?
• Is there any place in which my examples, reasons, or explanations need
developing?
• Is there any place where I should add more details?
• Is there any place where I seem to wander from my topic?
• Are there any unclear or missing transitions?
Even if they cannot discern all the strengths and weaknesses of an assignment, the
pupils will detect at least some of them. The problem is whether your pupils feel comfortable
correcting, or being corrected by their classmates, and whether they accept criticism (positive
or negative) form each other. Their comfort will depend on the general classroom climate.
The attitudes that make peer correction helpful are mutual trust; a real listening to each other;
a mutual recognition that whatever is said is a subjective opinion and not necessarily the
absolute, objective truth, and a general desire to communicate effectively taking into account
the others’ reactions.
If peer correction works, it can be a substitute for the teacher’s first-draft reading. The
pupils can work together, giving each other feedback on language, organisation and content.
They then rewrite and give in the final version to you.

The following activity is intended to teach pupils how to evaluate the

content clarity and effectiveness of a classmate’s composition. The order
of the steps has been modified. Your task is to try to put the steps in
logical order:
1. Without looking at the text, tell the author what you think s/he is
saying, or, if it is a narrative, tell the story back to the author as precisely
as you can.
2. After each of you has given and received feedback, rewrite your
task.
3. Then your partner(s) should give you the same type of feedback
on your text.
4. Ask your partner(s) about anything which seems unclear or for
constructive suggestions.
5. Read each other’s paper carefully.

5.3 Teacher Response

The last to respond to a written work is the teacher. The teacher’s load is lightened
when students have done both individual and peer feedback.
Conferencing, which is a one-to-one converstaion between teacher and student, is an
effective means of teacher response to student writing. It is a form of oral teacher feedback.
A short conference will enable the teacher to ask the student about certain parts of the
latter’s writing which are problematic. Conferences have the additional advantages that they
make teachers better acquianted with their students, and they allow the teacher to uncover
potential misunderstandings that the students might have about prior written feedback.
Conferencing takes place after the students have finished writing their compositions.
The variations on the writing conference are many, but the basic pattern is simple:
• The student comments on the draft.
Anca Cehan 19
 • The teacher reads and reviews the draft.
• The teacher responds to the student’s comments.
• The student responds to the teacher’s response.
The purpose of this basic pattern is to help students learn to read their own drafts with
increasing effectiveness. It is the responsibility of the student to write and make the first
evaluation of his/her experiment in meaning. It is the responsibility of the teacher to listen to
the student’s response, then to listen to the text, and finally to respond to the writer’s reading
of the text. Then it is the responsibility of the student to respond to the teacher’s reponse.
Below are some responses teachers should try to avoid as there is not much the writer can
do with or learn from such comments (Murray, 1985: 156):
• This is no good
• Wow! You can write!
• Dodn’t you learn anything about writing?
• This is great, just great.
• This is a mess, just a mess.
• I’ve never seen such a bad paper.
• I don’t know what I can teach someone who writes like you (either overpraise
or criticism).
On the other hand, the following comments may stimulate and encourage work (after
Murray, 1985: 156):
• Some of this works, but what do you plan to attack next?
• Where do you think you get off the track?
• I like the way you wove the quotes into the text. Are there other things that
could be woven in the same way?
• Where do you intend to go from here? I need to find out.
• And you said you had no voice. Tell me how you made this draft so different.

5.4 Strategies for the Correction of Mistakes

Correction can be seen as an opportunity to make positive responses to a pupil’s
work. This is extremely difficult to do if your concern is to mark every error in red pen. Of
course, ultimately a grade will have to be given to the piece of writing, but if it is based
entirely on grammatical accuracy, then the whole point of the writing will have been lost.
This is not to say that mistakes in syntax or punctuation should be ignored. But it is a
good idea to read a piece of writing twice: once for the content and the second time for the
language. During the first reading, try to ignore grammatical errors and concentrate entirely
on the content. Assign a mental grade to the content, then re-read to assess the mechanical
aspects: syntax, punctuation, spelling, and the way in which the text hangs together. The final
grade should reflect content, shape and grammatical accuracy.
The problem of correction of mistakes is one of potential conflict between two of the
roles of the teachers: language instructors versus assistants. If we accept that language
should be corrected, then the problem arises: should all language mistakes be noted?
Sometimes there are so many mistakes that the page will be covered with corrections and
too much correcting can be discouraging, demoralising and distracting. Over-emphasis on
language mistakes can distract the pupils’ attention from content and organisation. How can
you judge which mistakes to relate to and which not?
Your approach should vary according to context and the pupils’ individual needs. In
any situation, your comments should relate to the task assigned. If the pupils are first asked
to express their ideas in English (free writing, composition) and then to read critically what
they have written in order to make changes, then you should also give a two-stage response,

Anca Cehan 20
by separating your response to content and structure from your response to language
accuracy.
One approach is to ignore the language mistakes that do not hinder reading. You may
correct only those mistakes which are very basic and those which affect meaning, leading to
misunderstanding or confusion, such as sentence derailments or faulty subordination. Other
errors may go uncorrected, but while identifying them you can make a list of error types as
they occur, and thus create an individual grammar syllabus.
To help your pupils to concentrate on particular aspects of language, you can tell
them that their work will be corrected for only one thing, the use of tenses, for instance. By
doing this, you ensure that their work will not be covered by red marks, and you encourage
them to focus on particular aspects of written language. You can individualise language work
by identifying for each pupil a few kinds of errors and assigning tasks that focus on these.
Where a piece of writing contains a number of common errors, you may photocopy
the work (erasing the writer’s name) and show it to the whole class, asking them to identify
problems. In this way the attention of the class can be drawn to common mistakes and the
photocopied document can form the basis for remedial work.
You will learn about your pupils’ errors if you give them the opportunity to make them,
fix them, and discuss them. You can ask your pupils to discuss where they think their
mistakes come from and why they make them. This will help you to realise which mistakes
the pupils can recognise and which ones they cannot. Asking the pupils to discuss their
mistakes will provide you with information about their transfers from Romanian or from
another foreign language they learn. In this way, the mistakes will no longer be everybody’s
enemy, but clear evidence of language learning.
Another strategy is to point out both strengths and weaknesses. Thus, your pupils will
have the chance to perceive a correct model in their own use of language and will be likely to
continue taking risks if they see that their good qualities are noted and encouraged.
Use of correction symbols (all levels)
You can indicate mistakes in written work by putting a mark in the margin to show
what kind of mistake it is (e.g. V for vocabulary, WO for word order, WW for wrong word, / for
missing word, SP for spelling, P for punctuation, GR for grammar, VF for verb form, VT for
verb tense, “?” for unclear meaning or handwriting, etc.) Indication of mistakes is less time
consuming for you than correcting and more effective for the pupils. The latter have to re-
read the text and spend time in identifying and correcting themselves the mistakes signalled
in the margin.
You need symbols for spelling, wrong tense usage, agreement, inappropriate
language, punctuation, missing words, unclear meaning, etc. Whatever symbols you use,
your pupils should understand clearly what they mean. When you first use the symbols,
underline the word in the text and put the symbol in the margin. Later you will only use the
symbol in the margin for the pupils to identify the mistake.
When you bring back to class the pupils’ writing with comments on content and
correction symbols in the margin, you should allow them time to identify their mistakes and
correct them. While they are identifying their problems, you can help where they do not know
what is wrong. If this stage is not gone through, your pupils will not take advantage of the
system of correction symbols.
There is certainly no perfect approach to giving feedback on writing. Yet it is essential
that your pupils understand how you want the feedback system to work. You should clarify
both for them and for yourself what your policy on mistakes correction is, what symbols and
abbreviations you use, and what you want them to do with their drafts and your comments
when they receive them.

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 Use a correction code to signal the language mistakes in the following
piece of writing:
I am studying english because I want to work for a big company when I
will graduate. Perhaps I may to continue my studys. So I must to reach a
good level of english because of when I will go abroad sended by the
company, I’ll need to understand all. My father, who is mecanic engineer,
he says that english is an interesting language for all kinds of reason.
Another reason why I am studying english is that I like myself to listen to
the music. I am learning new expressions and improve my listening, too. I
can mix learning with the pleasure of listening to the music. Something
else is we often have foreigners invited for dinner at home who are invited
by my parents and usualy english is the language of comunication.

Rewriting
When you receive written tasks, you normally correct and comment on them and give
them back. The question is whether you should insist on the pupils’ rewriting their tasks,
incorporating your suggestions. Your pupils do not like doing it, but, on the other hand,
frequent opportunities for writing and rewriting are an important tool for improving language,
content and structure. Irrespective of the feedback the pupils receive from you, they improve
their work when they rewrite their texts. According to A. Raimes, the number of language
mistakes decreases by about 20%, even when the teacher’ response includes no explicit
correction of mistakes (Raimes, 1983).
Pupils’ rewriting should be followed by teacher’s re-reading. You can motivate your
pupils to rewrite by seeing the first version as provisional, and assessing the revised version.
In this way the pupils will carefully read and incorporate your comments and new
assignments in their final version. Another reason to ask for rewriting and not spending a long
time on first draft correction is that you can misread your pupils’ intentions. Successful
communication also means that pupils say in writing what they mean. To make sure that their
ideas are communicated accurately, you have to ask them to rewrite and edit their own texts,
assisting them with questions and comments on the parts of the text that you find obscure.

Summary
Although recent ELT methodology considers the clarity and effectiveness of the
content of a piece of writing to be more important than language correctness, writing is still
regarded by some teachers as transcribed speech. They tend to consider the quality of
writing in relation to the frequency and gravity of linguistic errors. They neglect composition,
assuming that once the language has been mastered, the ability to use the same language
for written communication will follow naturally.
However, writing has a dual purpose: as a means (or a support skill) and as an end
(or a communicative skill). Generally speaking, you will find two types of writing activities in
the English textbooks: those designed to develop the writing skills per se (writing as an
end/communicative skill) and those which provide opportunity of practising English (writing as
a means/support skill).
The kind of feedback that teachers give on writing is largely a matter of experience.
Generally speaking, the red pencil is intimidating and discouraging, when teachers believe
that form (grammar and spelling) is everything. Alternative ways of determining re-writing can
be found, such as peer-correction and self-correction.

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 Further Reading
Harmer, J. 2001. The Practice of English Language Teaching. 3rd ed., Longman
Huerta-Macías, Ana. “Alternative Assessment: Responses to Commonly Asked
Questions” in Richards, Jack C. and Renandya, Willy A., 2002. Methodology in
Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP.
Nunan, D. 1991. Language Teaching Methodology. A textbook for teachers. Prentice Hall
Peňaflorida, Andreea H., Nontraditional Forms of Assessment and Response to Student
Writing in Richards, Jack C. and Renandya, Willy A., 2002. Methodology in
Language Teaching. Cambridge: CUP.
Reppen, Randi. “A Genre-Based Approach to Content Writing Instruction” in Richards, Jack
C. and Renandya, Willy A., 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching. Cambridge:
CUP.
Richards, Jack C. and Renandya, Willy A., 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching.
Cambridge: CUP.
Scrivener, Jim. 2009. Learning Teaching, Macmillan Books for Teachers
Seow, Anthony, “The Writing Process and Process Writing” in Richards, Jack C. and
Renandya, Willy A., 2002. Methodology in Language Teaching. pp. 315 – 320.
Cambridge: CUP.

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