2. WHY TEACH WRITING TO LEARNERS OF ENGLISH?

2.1 The importance of writing in ESL teaching

Historically in the ESL classroom, writing was seldom seen as something to be
taught for its own sake. Most frequently, the only way writing was taught was as a
way of demonstrating mastery of the structures studied in class or for dictation
purposes.

In the 1970’s, with the development of the Communicative Approach, the rhetoric
on writing changed to a great extent, as this approach maintained that it is
important for students to build proficiency in all of the four language skills (listening,
reading, speaking, and writing). Yet, in practice, the Communicative Approach
often placed more emphasis on oral proficiency at the expense of reading and
writing. Thus, speaking and listening skills were privileged, and writing was
primarily used to support the development of oral proficiency. Foreign language
teachers rarely focused on improving composition skills such as how to structure
discourse, organise ideas, choose appropriate vocabulary and style, or focused on
different discourse modes (narration, argumentation, description, and exposition),
or how to tailor writing for specific audiences.

There are several reasons why second language teachers were, and still are,
reluctant to teach writing. Firstly, the ESL/EFL class has always been dictated to by
the need to make large gains in a small amount of time. Writing instruction in the
classroom was seen as taking up too much time that could be better dedicated to
having students make advances in their oral production. Because writing is seen
as a “solitary” activity, it was felt that writing was better assigned as homework and
class time could be used more productively for engaging students in producing
(spoken) language through group work and pair work. Secondly, many teachers
believed that beginner students of a foreign language have such a limited
vocabulary in the second language that writing is not only a difficult but also an
extremely frustrating experience. Students themselves are frequently reluctant to
write, especially younger students in today’s technology age. Last, but by no
means least, student-writing assignments were (and are) considered burdensome
for the teacher who must eventually correct the work.

Until recently then, writing has been seen as the “poor relation” of the four
modalities within all the major approaches to foreign language acquisition.
However, with more and more second language learners studying abroad at
university level, and as university tutors struggle with the poor level of English
writing of their students, writing has begun to assume far more importance. Many
universities have started to address this insufficiency through specialised writing
workshops and online help for second language students. Research aimed at
understanding the processes involved in writing has become more common.

It is, therefore, necessary to explicitly teach writing, and as we will see below, time
spent dedicated to writing does not necessarily take away from time for oral
practice.