BACHELOR OF EDUCATION

(TEACHING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE)

WITH HONOUR

JANUARY/2022

HBET2403

TEACHING OF WRITING IN ESL

MATRICULATION NO : 970901126039001
IDENTITY CARD NO. : 970901126039
TELEPHONE NO. : 014-850 1575
E-MAIL : jamlevisyon@oum.edu.my
LEARNING CENTRE : Kota Marudu Learning Centre
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENTS PAGES
PART 1
TASK 1 1–7
The Lesson plan
REFERENCES 8
TASK 2
1.0 INTRODUCTION 9
2.0 APPLICATION OF THE FOUR PRINCIPLES IN MALAYSIAN ESL
CLASSROOM
2.1 Focusing on the Process Approach
2.2 Engaging Student’s Mind 10 – 13

2.3 Focusing Student’s Positive Feeling

2.4 Expanding Student’s Language and Ideas
3.0 CONCLUSION 14
REFERENCES 15
PART 2 16 – 17
 PART 1

TASK 1

The Lesson Plan

Class: Form 3 Jubilee

Time: 7.30 a.m. – 9.30 a.m.

Subject: English

Level: Form 3

Topic: Writing a fictional narrative

Specific objectives:

At the end of the lesson, students will

 explore narratives in fiction and journalism.

 use introspection, visioning, creativity and collaboration during the writing process.

 learn and apply best practices for writing fictional narratives

Thinking skill: The engagement of creativity skills in writing fictional narrative.

Previous knowledge: Students have done fictional narrative in the previous writing class
(Form 2).

Moral Value: Students should learn to be independent, be able to think critically and
creatively.

Teaching aids: Writing utensils, Notebooks, Internet access, Method of projecting videos for
all-class viewing, and Method of electronic collaborative writing.

STAGE/TIME ACTIVITY/CONTENT PRESENTATION/

AVA
PRE- 1. Teacher use these two videos from TED-Ed to Whole class a class
WRITING inspire students. activity
(10 minutes)  How Fiction Can Change Reality - Aids

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Rationale: To Jessica Wise (run time 4:29) Two links of video from
enhance YouTube.
engaging (Appendix 2)
 Capturing Authentic Narratives -
process for the
Michele Weldon (run time 3:18)
lesson
2. Ask students to summarize the main ideas from
the video (e.g., how fiction influences cultural
Rationale:
ideas and attitudes; how journalists capture
Teacher
authentic and compelling narratives that
conducts this
advance human understanding and
activity to
relationships).
connect
3. Discuss some of the fictional narratives you
students' prior
have read as a class. Also ask students about
learning.
interesting narratives that have become news
or have been popular on social media. Ask
students to share how they were inspired by the
stories told by all of these sources. Are they
inspired because works of fiction or journalism
touch on personal truths or experiences (or
truths/experiences that have meaning for many
people)? What other qualities of the narrative
(story arc, details, dialogue, etc.) help them
inspire?
WHILE 1. Ask students to think of some of their own Individual Activity
WRITING personal stories. (Offer this idea as a prompt: a
STAGE 1 childhood event, succeeding or failing at a Teacher displays an
(15 minute) goal, or a significant life change.) example of a narrative
2. Then, ask them to consider how they, in a writing on the OHP.
Rationale: fictional context, share their story. Check out (Appendix 3)
Teacher what each video teaches them about building
stressing compelling fictional narratives.
ownership of 3. Guide students in generating a list of best
students' practices for constructing fictional narratives.
writing These resources can help:

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 a. Tips on Writing a Narrative Essay
Rationale: To (https://www.time4writing.com/writing
guide students -resources/narrative-essays/)
generate idea b. How to Write a Personal Narrative
on constructing (https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-
fictional write-a-personal-narrative-1856809)
narratives. 4. After the discussion, tell students that they will
be writing a work of fiction together. Specify
Whole class activity
as a class the form to be taken (essay, story,
etc.) and specify the length and format.
STAGE 2 1. Explain that students will do creative
(20 minutes) brainstorming exercises that involve
introspection (looking into oneself) and vision
Rationale: (using one’s imagination to perfect details).
Students are Whole class activity
2. Have students sit in a loose circle, leaving
going to do a space cushions around each one. If possible,
creative rearrange seating to encourage student
brainstorming interaction. Another option is to use an open
area outside the house.
3. Students will be asked by teacher to sit
comfortably and close their eyes. Offer the
following prompt:
a. Think empty space.
b. Think of one colour.
c. Fill in your blanks with that colour
shape.
d. Build something out of that shape.
e. Grow one thing you have built into
something more. This can be anything,
be it a place, person or thing (living or
non -living). (Encourage students not to
put limits on their imaginations.) What
happens next with “something more”?

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 Who or what is involved or affected?
What might happen next? How did the
experience/story happen? Why is it
important?
STAGE 3 1. Now ask each student to write details about Individual activity
(20 minute) their evolving story. How do you feel about it
and what are some of the events in the story Teacher displays the
Rationale: arc? Ask students to write at least 10-15 examples of mind map
Each student minutes in bullet or mind map style (complete style on OHP.
should write sentences are not required). Move around the (Appendix 4)
down details room to make sure students understand the
about his/her activity and continue to carry out the task.
evolving story. Then ask students to share what they wrote in
their notebooks and reflect on the
brainstorming experience
POST 1. Ask students to think of ways to weave a Individual activity
WRITING narrative based on their individual
STAGE 1 brainstorming. Use polls to narrow down ideas
(20 minute) so that the story has a manageable scope.
Define as a class: what is the
Rationale: meaning/importance of the experience that the
Students think class will write about? Recall previous
of ways to discussions of how works of fiction or
weave together journalism touch on personal truths or
a narrative experiences. Can anyone else relate to the Whole class activity
based on their experience? Will they find it inspiring?
individual 2. Spend time together perfecting the narrative
brainstorms. with clear setting, characters, details and
descriptions, story arcs or sequences of events
Rationale: To and dialogue. Teacher inspire students to
encourage utilize technology to write collaboratively.
students to
modern
technology

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 such as
computer to
write
collaboratively
.
CLOSURE With teacher guidance, ask students to edit, review Whole class activity
(5 minutes) and finalize their work. Afterwards, teacher will
ask students to share the final class narrative with
others. Publish student work online, but also create
physical prints for your class and others. A great
follow -up to this lesson is to ask students to write
a review of the final narrative. They should also
include their thoughts on the experience of
introspection, vision and working with classmates.
EXTENDED Teacher instructs students to surf the internet for Aids
ACTIVITY more information on “Tips on writing narrative Computer and Internet
story”. access

APPENDIX 2

1. How Fiction Can Change Reality - Jessica Wise (https://youtu.be/ctaPAm14L10)

2. Capturing Authentic Narratives - Michele Weldon (https://youtu.be/4mQN1hcFJwU)

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APPENDIX 3

6
APPENDIX 4

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 REFERENCES

Nor, M. M., & Ibrahim, H. A. (2004). HBET2403 TEACHING OF WRITING IN ESL (1st
ed.). Centre for Instructional Design and Tecnology. Open University Malaysia.

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TASK 2

1.0 INTRODUCTION.
Feedback in writing can be defined as considerable comments on students’ texts to
provide a reader response to their efforts as well as to guide students to improve and learn
as writers (Hyland, 2003). In this case, the teacher provides feedback to enable students to
read and comprehend the issues and apply it to refine future writing. Written feedback is
adopted to teach some skills that can assist them improve their writing. L2 students
expect to receive teacher written feedback because it is the most vital feedback and is
easy to find the interpretation gap between the teacher and the students. Writing is a very
personal endeavour. Students or children are often reluctant to hear criticism or feedback
about their writing skills from their teachers or parents. When words come out of your
heart and someone, even our parents, finds fault in those words, it is impossible not to
feel disappointed. According to the survey, when feedback comes with a valid objective
and is given by an experienced teacher, students will continue not to take criticism
personally. Feedback plays a very important role in learning and development, even in
formal education settings (Hounsell, 2003) as well as to provide effective feedback on
students’ work to represent the key characteristics of quality teaching (Ramsden, 2003).
The benefit of written feedback in l2 writing is written feedback helps students improve
writing quality and skills, encourages critical reasoning, and promotes learner autonomy.
Furthermore, social interactions during feedback activities also helped students extend
their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Fithriani, 2019). There are varieties of
principles to feedback writing, namely focusing on a process approach, engaging
student’s mind, ensuring student’s positive feeling, and expanding student’s language and
idea.

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2.0 APPLICATION OF THE FOUR PRINCIPLES IN MALAYSIAN ESL
CLASSROOM.
2.1 Focusing on the Process Approach.
There are two options for teachers to teach writing, namely product approach
and process approach. Briefly, product approach refers to a controlled and guided
composition that focuses students’ attention on some specific features of written
language. Nevertheless, our main focus is on the process approach in the ESL
classroom. Process approach to writing can be defined as a process comprising of
several stages, namely prewriting or invention activities (such as brainstorming,
group discussion, and assessing idea), drafting, getting feedback from peers or the
teachers, reviewing the whole-text level followed by revising at the paragraph,
proofreading, and publishing the final text. In short, it is to focus on the writing
process rather than the final product (Sun, 2009). As far as rhetorical composition,
learning successful writing techniques still requires a process approach. It
emphasizes paragraph elements (topic sentences, supporting sentences, closing
sentences, and transitions), and various ways for paragraph development
(illustrations, examples, comparisons, contrasts, classifications, definitions, etc.)
(Wen Y. , 2013). The process approach is student-centred where student writing is
as central to the course material and does not require rigor and a predetermined
syllabus but problems are solved when they arise. As writing teachers in ESL
classroom, we should know what should be done in the student writing process
such as giving corrections to what should have been corrected and should not give
corrections to the whole composition. This is because students should have
freedom in writing so that they can revise their drafts from the teacher's instant
feedback through the whole writing process as it is the most important thing.
In our ESL classroom, focus on a process approach to writing is not suitable to
be applied due to the time constraint in the duration of teaching hours given to
teachers. In Malaysian primary school ESL classroom, in particular, teachers are
given 30 minutes to 1 hour to teach a single topic. Furthermore, the teaching of
ESL in the classroom is based on the classroom schedule and it is not taught daily
but is taught periodically. For instance, on Monday there is ESL teaching and
learning, yet on Tuesday, there is no ESL teaching and learning because ESL
teachers not only teach one classroom but also another classroom. ESL teachers
are also required to complete the prescribed teaching syllabus within a month and

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 within a prescribed time frame. Hence, at the end of the topic, students need to
produce their own essay from what they have learned. Teachers unable to focus on
the process alone since the teaching and learning of a certain topic is only one
week. They should achieve teaching objectives and ensure that students are able to
produce good writing. Therefore, this principle is quite difficult to apply because
ESL teachers do not have enough time to teach some writing process.
2.2 Engaging Student’s Mind.
Some researchers such as Ferris, Frantzen, and Lalande discovered that
feedback in an indirect error can assist or benefit students more than direct
feedback in their writing in the long run (Wen, 2013). Overt error correction by
teachers is less effective and results in students not making progress as well as not
helping students at all to independently correct their mistakes in writing. It is also
time consuming and tedious for the teacher and at the same time, students will feel
frustrated because they have tried to answer correctly but their writing paper or
book is full of corrections that should not be written that much but written by the
teacher. Therefore, a widely used way to achieve correction is to use abbreviations
to correct code that is located above the error or within a margin without
indicating where the error is in the line; and to make a cross in the margin next to
the line where the error occurred, either indicating how many errors there are or
not (Wen, 2013). Using symbols to mark students' mistakes in writing is the best
way because in this way, the teacher's time will not be wasted just like that.
However, students should also engage their minds in solving their own problems
especially in writing. What it means to engage the student’s mind is students
should be motivated to correct and analyse their own mistakes.
In addition, self-monitoring techniques are also required by students in the
cognitive performance of students in responding to problems in English writing
because they need to present the problem before sending it to the teacher (Charles,
1990). Overall, this principle is suitable to be employed in Malaysian ESL
classrooms because based on my experience as a primary and secondary student in
the past, the ESL teacher did not simply mark my writing with overt error
correction because he wanted me to analyse and identify the error that I made in
the writing by myself with his help. This is how my former teacher engage my
mind on how to write a correct composition with less errors in term of words,
syllable, or grammatical. The involvement of students' minds is very important

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 now and in the future in Malaysia ESL classrooms because if students already
know to analyse and identify the mistakes they made as well as to make
corrections in English writing, teachers' time will not be wasted so much since
they are not encouraged to not to check or mark students’ work with overt error
correction. However, based on my observation, for primary school students, most
of them do not know English very well and they are not able to identify their
errors in the writing. Hence, this principle is not suitable to be employed in the
primary school but could be applied to older students such as tertiary level or adult
learners.
2.3 Ensuring Student’s Positive Feeling.
Cognitive way and affective way should be considered by teachers to provide
appropriate written feedback. All human beings are created with emotions and
what they take will be filtered by emotional states and affective factors that
controls the entry of input. Strong filters allow fewer inputs to be processed while
weak filters allow more inputs to be processed. Therefore, teachers should provide
scoring feedback or reviews based on students’ personalities, such as self-
confidence and self-esteem. We have all been children and as a child, we tend to
ask for rewards when we are told to do something carefully and diligently and that
is where our brain will think creatively to complete the work. This is so because
any human being tends to repeat an act that has been followed immediately with a
pleasant result (Wen, 2013). Ensuring student's positive feeling here means that
the teacher needs to give a good review of the student's composition in order to
show more constructive results by finding one or two things that have been done
better than the last time (Wen, 2013) quoted from Graham (2012), for which the
comments and marks of the writing does not offend or emotionally the students.
The improvement shown can be a useful tool to boost self-confidence and give a
little hope. Therefore, positive comments should be given as much as possible to
evoke and reinforce students’ positive feelings in the process of improving their
writing.
In my opinion, there is no issue to apply this principle in our ESL classroom
because we are teaching L2 in Malaysian classroom. When we applied this
principle, students will be more motivated to write. We can use positive comments
such as “great job, nice work, I appreciate your hard work, and so on” which can
build their self-confidence in writing. Both primary and secondary, even the

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 university ESL students can employ this principle. Primary students have been
emphasized to creativity and critical thinking whereby they can actually accept
whatever the ESL teacher commented in their compositions that build their self-
esteem and self-confidence as well as to reward them when they are doing good in
writing subsequently motivating them to write better in the future. In most cases,
positive words produce a positive effect on students’ feelings.
2.4 Expanding Student’s Language and Ideas.
Expanding the student’s language and ideas also need to be taken into account
since it is not only the signals of their improvement in writing but also the
ultimate goal of their learning in writing. Writing is a complex, creative and
thinking process and way of discovering meaning since it refines thought and
empowers students by enabling them to affect their readers (Wen, 2013). Ideas are
opened up and thoughts deepen as the language in writing is expanded far beyond
the rectification of form alone which unable to solve all kind of language
problems. Expansion of student’s language and ideas include both correcting form
and expanding one specific word’s meaning. This results in lacking of content
despite the correct use of the word in grammar in most of students’ composition.
Hence, to improve the quality of a writing, it is dependent on helping students
expand the meaning of their words or sentences without straying from the main
idea (Wen, 2013). Providing tools for students to re-evaluate and redrafting their
work is one of the purposes of teacher written feedback. Apart from that, the
teacher ought to induce students to make a reflection subsequent to act on the
feedback by absorbing and carrying out all the teacher’s hints. It is also necessary
to push the students to really act on the feedback but excluding make mental notes
of grades, corrections and reviews.
In my point of view, this principle is applicable especially in upper primary
(standard 4, 5 & 6) and secondary ESL classroom since they are quite mature to
think critically and expand their ideas creatively in English written beyond the
level of their thinking. But it is depending on their reading as well or what they
watch in the television, mobile phone, or computer. The teacher can also slowly
encourage them to expand their language and ideas as well as to tell them how
they can do this. However, this principle is not really suitable to the lower primary
ESL classroom (standard 1, 2 &3) because they are not mature enough to expand
their ideas in the composition. For example, when the teacher mark and grade

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students’ writing with compliment such “well done or great job” and the reason of
commendation, they will not really care of the compliment but only consider the
compliment to be as far as praise for the good work they have done.

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3.0 CONCLUSION.
In conclusion, the teacher provides feedback to enable students to read and comprehend
the issues and apply it to refine future writing. Among the four principles that have been
discussed above, one of the principle, namely focusing on a process approach is not
applicable in Malaysian ESL classroom due to time constraint. However, the three
principles can be employed in the certain Malaysian ESL classroom. Each teacher has
their own style to assess students’ ESL writing and their aim is to enable the students to
monitor their own progress and to rectify themselves.

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 REFERENCES

Charles, M. (1990). Responding to Problems in Written English Using a Student Self-

Monitoring Technique. ELT Journal, 4: 287-293.

Fithriani, R. (2019). ZPD and the Benefits of Written Feedback in L2 Writing: Focusing on.

Hounsell, D. (2003) Student feedback, learning and development. In M. Slowey & D. Watson

(Eds.), Higher education and the lifecourse. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Hyland, K. (2003). Second language writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ramsden, P. (2003). Learning to teach in higher education (2nd ed.). London, UK:

Routledge Falmer.

Sun, C. (2009). Process Approach to Teaching Writing Applied in Different Teaching

Models. English Language Teaching, 2, 1. Retrieved from

www.ccsenet.org/journal.html

Wen, Y. (March, 2013). Teacher Written Feedback on L2 Student Writings. Journal of

Language Teaching and Research, 4, 1 - 5.

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PART 2

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