Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Graduate School
Summer, 2021
Written Report
Considerations for
Teaching an
ESL/EFL Writing
Course
(Barbara Kroll)
This chapter discusses the considerations for teaching an ESL or EFL writing course. Plenty
of approaches, techniques, and activities were discussed. Writing is a difficult topic to teach, and
yet it is one of the most essential skills that every student must hone. Students produce written
texts that are expected to exhibit increasingly advanced levels of proficiency as the student
writer’s progress through a curriculum, and teachers must make choices about how various
learning experiences will promote this goal. The following are the two most central components
of writing: the first are the writing assignments that students are asked to do and the second is the
method or methods of feedback provided to learners on their evolving writing skills. Writers
need to write in order to hone their skills in the classroom. Without feedback opportunities in a
writing course, there is no reason for students to attend the class in the first place. Thus, the
The chapter also discussed a short historical background of how teaching writing techniques
evolved over time. However, in our reporting, we only briefly touched on this area as most of it
is anchored in the West. We only took some concepts that may be relevant to teachers in the
class. The first approach is the traditional paradigm or the product approach. Teachers who
follow this model usually focus on evaluating student essays. Before the mid-1960s, teaching
writing to native English speakers at the high school and college levels mostly focused on
responding in writing to literary texts. The teaching model during this time used the following
steps. First, instructing the students in principles of rhetoric and organization, presented as
“rules” for writing. Then, providing a text for classroom discussion, analysis, and interpretation.
Afterwards, requiring a writing assignment based on the text. Finally, reading, commenting on,
When teaching an ESL or EFL writing course, plenty of factors are considered, which will be
elaborated in our report outline. It is important for teachers to be knowledgeable about what
approaches to teach in class and what the writing level of the students are. As I previously
mentioned, the writing class is one of the most vital courses in education because it is a skill that
is needed by students in their every subject. Their writing skill will constantly be put to the test
no matter where they are and even if they graduate and get a job. Therefore, as a teacher, it is our
duty to create a solid foundation for student writers in order to help them in writing in English.
REPORT OUTLINE
INTRODUCTION
1. Teacher-planned lessons
3. Student-written texts
4. Feedback on writing
1. Instruct the students in principles of rhetoric and organization, presented as “rules” for
writing
4. Read, comment on, and criticize student papers prior to beginning the next assignment
“Controlled” Composition:
-Writing task was tightly controlled in order to reduce the possibility for error
-The ways in which student writers produce text do not necessarily match the model that had
-Serve in present time as an umbrella term for many types of writing courses
-Students are not expected to produce and submit complete and polished responses to their
writing assignments without going through the stages of drafting and receiving feedback on their
models constructed for teaching purposes, preparation of short texts using material supplied to
the student writer, and practice in self-expression for its own sake help students acquire
familiarity with the nature of English-language texts and in laying the groundwork for more
Their writing activity should involve working on the creation of self-generated complete
texts.
1. How much writing students are expected to complete during the term, divided into less
2. What the timelines and deadlines are for working on and completing papers
3. How many of the formal writing assignments will be done in class as “timed” pieces
5. What aspects of English grammar and syntax, if any, will be directly addressed in class
6. What will be seen to constitute “progress” in acquiring improved writing skills as the
academic essays through mastering techniques for getting started and generating ideas, drafting
papers which they will anticipate revising, and learning to utilize feedback provided by the
teacher and other students in the class to improve the writing assignment at hand.
Goal of the total curriculum: Student writers learn to become informed and independent
readers of their own texts with the ability to create, revise, and reshape papers to meet the need
1. Brainstorming: a group exercise in which all students in the class are encouraged to
2. Listing: can be a quiet and essentially individual activity; the student is encouraged to
produce as lengthy a list as possible of all the main ideas and subcategories that come to
3. Clustering: begins without a key word or central idea placed in the center of a page
around which the student quickly jots down all of the free-associations triggered by the
speakers break through the difficulty of getting started; students write for a specified
-Readings serve some very practical purposes in the writing class, particularly for English
-Readings provide models of what English language texts look like and provide input that help
-The ESL writing class can incorporate lessons which assist students in preparing academic
-ESL/EFL writing teachers are strongly advised to include a reading component in their classes.
- They provide input that helps student develop awareness of English language prose style.
- Writing tasks assigned by many professors require students to do a great deal of reading in
order to synthesize and analyze academic material in particular content areas (Hale et al. 1996).
-From another perspective, however, readings can be problematic if a teacher uses the topic or
content area of the readings to turn a generic writing course into a class in the subject matter area
of the readings.
WRITING ASSIGNEMENTS
The objective of any writing class is to have students work on their writing. All assignments and
the topics they contain must be carefully designed, sequenced, and structured.
2. Topics which are deemed appropriate by the teacher on the basis of a felt inner sense.
3. What the teacher values as good writing, and the way in which writers learn.
-Assignments along these lines ask students to create or plug in content according to a specified
manner of presentation.
1. Clear Context
2.Accessible Content
4. Focused task
1. RESPONDING
Key questions:
2. GOAL-SETTING
- Responding to student writing has the general goal of fostering student improvement.
3. SHAPING FEEDBACK
- Students must also be trained to use the feedback in ways that will improve their writing.
FORMS OF FEEDBACK
- ELLs in a writing class need to have individual conferences with their teacher even more
2. PEER RESPONSE
- When the use of peer response became an early key component of teaching writing as
process in the L1 environment, many ESL/EFL teachers embraced the idea of having
students read and/or listen to each other's papers for the purpose of providing feedback.
3. ERROR CORRECTION
- Regardless of which agenda the writing teacher sets and the number of drafts that
students produce, the papers that ELLs write are likely to exhibit problems in language
control. The role of editing, when seen as distinct from rewriting, is essentially working
1. Point out specific errors by using a mark in the margin or an arrow or other symbolic
system.
4. To indicate the presence of error but not the precise location. e.g, noting that there are
5. Use a combination of two or more of these methods, depending on what they perceive to
CONCLUSION
Producing a successful written text is a complex task which requires simultaneous control over a
number of language systems as well as an ability to factor in considerations of the ways the
discourse must be shaped for a particular audience and a particular purpose. Teaching ESL/EFL
students to become successful writers, able to weigh and factor in all of these issues, is an