Unit VII How to put it correctly?

Vocabulary

creative writing

process writing

content-based approach

genre

Helping Students Improve Writing Skills: Teaching Writing Skills Learn How To Teach Writing and Help Children Improve Essay Writing Grades

By B. Danesco

Teaching writing skills is not just pencil and paper activities. Beginning the process of how

to help students improve their writing skills means teaching children to be positive.

1. Cultivate positive attitudes. Often, kids who aren't good at writing are painfully aware of this fact. They say things like "I stink at writing" or "I'll never be a good writer" or "I hate writing". Any teacher knows it's nearly impossible to teach a kid with that kind of esteem about his or her ability in a subject. The first thing I suggest to anyone helping to boost a student's writing skills is get rid of all the negative self-evaluation. Remind the student that no one is born able to write, let alone able to write well. Anyone who is a good writer had to work hard to get that way, and the student can do the same.

Writing is a skill to be honed, not something you have or don't "have". I used to start all my English classes off with the reminder that "writing is power." Good writing can do anything from starting a war to getting a guy a job. It's worth putting in the effort to get better - you get power in return! Plus, remind your student that he or she has things worth saying and those ideas deserve to be well expressed on paper. Once they (sort of) got the idea that being a good writer is important, students will be more open minded about trying to improve.

Writing well can impact their lives. Don't connect writing to punishment. I was told once by an older teacher, and I agree, that if you give kids writing assignments as punishment ('Write 100 words on why you should be quiet in class...") you're saying "Writing isn't fun, it's something you have to do when you're bad." Now, that is certainly NOT the attitude you want kids to have. So, ask your kids their first day, even, how they feel about writing. See what's inside their heads, what's holding them back, and then try to whittle away at their negative writing ideas.

2. Promote practice. This goes along with the aforementioned idea that writing is a skill that has to be honed. The single best way to get kids to write better is to have them write... and write, and write... and then write some more: essays, creative writing, journal writing, letters to others, etc. Often, we avoid things we don't like or don't do well. But nobody will ever improve with that attitude! Set up ways for your students to write a little everyday: guided journal questions to reading assignments, quick summaries of the day's lesson, warm-up responses to blackboard questions, recaps of current events. Get them writing. And when they write, have them keep in mind a certain element they may need to work on: pronoun usage, say, or punctuation, or avoiding fragments. That way they're accomplishing two goals: practicing writing in general and practicing a specific area where they need to improve.

What about free writing journals? I'm not a big fan of mandatory free-writing journals for middle school or high school students. I think telling kids to write whatever they want, express themselves, and have fun with it - or else! - sends a contradictory message. And, as a writer myself, I have never found a personal reflection journal to be a consistent part of my writing life. However, if you have a student who likes that kind of thing - go for it!

3. Emphasize useful pre-writing. Most teachers believe one key to gaining good ideas and to improve writing skills is gaining good pre-writing skills: the ability to figure out the pieces before you put the puzzle together on paper. Many kids (and many adults) often believe the opposite. To them, it's easier, faster, and therefore "better" to just write as they go. Because of this, they often produce illogical, disorganized, poorly structured work. With kids at the paper-writing age, disorganization can often be a bigger problem than poor vocabulary or bad grammar. And often, the student writers don't recognize the problem is a lack of preparation; they just think they can't write. Teaching good pre-writing skills is essential if you want to help a child become a better writer. Help the kids see "prewriting just makes it easier!"

One way to get that message across: give them an assignment to write based on a bunch of jumbled information, then have them write another one from a clear and detailed outline. Which is easier? This is a great strategy for providing writing help.

Another way to improve writing is to give them practice in pre-writing is to create assignments which only require a pre-writing step - brainstorming, outlining, writing topic sentences or introductions, etc. No "final draft" needed. But keep them honest, don't let them hand in half-done pre-writing work. And also, make sure pre-writing is a tool that makes things easier - and not an end unto itself. We teachers need to make sure not to emphasize minutiae and rules (what roman numeral to use, don't use an 'a' if you don't have a 'b'...) over teaching kids HOW to use pre-prewriting to fulfill it's mission: helping the writer complete the project! Sure, kids should learn to do formal outlines, but if the assignment becomes more about correct form than creating something that functions, there's room for revision in that assignment.

4. Give students examples and rubricks. Teachers who know how to teach writing know that one way to get kids to improve is to hold them to high standards. If a kid is a "bad" writer, the chances are, he or she may not even know what "good" writing is. That's where, of course, reading comes in.

A good sample of a genre of writing the student is about to tackle can be an enormous help. It says "Here's what to do." Also give students a list of traits they should try to include in each piece they write. The list could be accumulated as the year goes on and start with basics like "Use only complete sentences" and move up to specifics like "Don't end phrases with prepositions." If students know what to do and not do before they write, it gives them the power to self edit as they go. And keeping yourself in check is a great way to retain information.

5. Encourage Revision and Show Its Payoff. Learning how to improve writing skills means understanding that writing is re-writing! Kids may dislike having to write something over again, but revision is a great tool for helping kids learn from mistakes. Polishing a second draft can also be very rewarding for a student who gets to see how far he or she came over the progress of just one assignment.

Students who don't think they're good writers also may need some proof that investing in your "system" is going to pay off. A good second draft can serve as this proof that hard work will create better writing. A portfolio written over a period of time can also help a student's confidence grow by providing an example of long term progress: see, you're a better writer. Told you so!

The more often kids can write about things that interest them, the better.

Task 1

Work in pairs. Make a list of what you wrote in your own language in the last 48 hours. For three of your items, state the following:

• the aim

• the audience

• the genre

Do we always have an aim, audience and genre when we write in real life?

Task 2

There are endless opportunities to teach and pratise writing skills in the classroom. Complete the list of activities with your own ideas:

• describing someone the student knows well

• writing a letter to a friend

• writing an invitation

• ….

Task 3

What are the three stages of doing a writing activity? Comment on the aims of each of them.

Task 4

Work in pairs. Arrange the following skill-building exercises in the order you would introduce them to your pupils. Comment on their advanteges and disadvantages/possible problems.

• Students fill in the blanks in the sentences with words or larger constructions to form a logical and consistent paragraph

• Students write a paragraph, the first and the final sentences are given

• Students rewrite the model paragraph each time changing something, e.g. gender, tense etc.

• Students write a paragraph, the final sentences is given

• Students read a paragraph and write the second paragraph to finish the story using the cues

• Students compose a paragraph on the given topic using the cues provided

• Students arrange given by the teacher sentences in correct logical order to form a unified paragraph

• Students read a paragraph and write the second paragraph to complete the story

• Students write a paragraph, the first is given

Task 5

Think of the scaffolds for writing a composition in class. How different are they depending on the type of the composition?

Task 6

Comment on the following opinions.

Writing phonetically

I have a question. What can a teacher do with a student who is brilliant at speaking and listening but who writes phonetically? It is then very difficult to understand what he has written. Desperate for some suggestions.

This question is from Sharon, Switzerland

Rick Rogers, Italy

I have some students here in Italy who display the same characteristics and who cause me the same problems. I've tried many different strategies but probably the most useful have been exercises in which they need to:

1) Read and memorize the written form of several pre-selected phrases before trying to re-write them correctly

2) Read and memorize pre-selected phrases or a text before being presented with a copy of the text or phrases containing a certain number of spelling mistakes. The students have to identify the mistakes and correct them.

3) Identify silent letters. Students are presented with a text which they need to pre-read. Then you read the text in a natural manner and students have to identify the silent letters in the text. I always try to include common words such as 'knee', 'know', vegetables' and 'caught'.

I hope that this information, albeit very generic, comes in useful!

Marlene, Mexico

Hi Sharon, I think that writing and reading are two skills that must be related. Somebody who is good at writing is usually somebody who reads a lot. First, if I were you, I would ask the student to read certain texts and then I would make him write a short composition, a summary, an essay, etc. or re-write a story (depending on his English level), using the information (and vocabulary) he read.

There are other learning strategies for basic and intermediate students, like using visuals and matching them with words. Then students can write sentences using those words to make a story which they can tell afterwards.

I think it is important to include the reading part in the learning process, so your student can connect what he says to the way the words are written.

Juliet, Britain

My guess would be this student has a first language with a more predictable association between sound and spelling. In fact English is not as 'random' as people often think. Try using materials designed for primary schools to demonstrate the grapheme/phoneme correspondence, try interactive sites on www.bbc.co.uk/schools/wordsandpictures. Practising pronunciation, spelling, and reading will help your student to notice spellings in context (crucial for homophones). Use graded readers. Parallel writing with gap-fills should help memorization of the visual appearance of words.

Sergio, Mexico

I think that you should practise more with reading and listening. In that way, they will get used to match the word with its sound, and it will be easier for them to remember how to write them. Design exercises that demand the same words used in the previous activities, such as new sentences using the same vocabulary.

Teaching writing

How can I teach composition writing to my students and what activities should I use most? Please help me.

This question is from Samer Al-refai, Kuwait

Akshmi Gopalan, India

I find that giving them a topic of interest and throwing it open for discussion helps. I observed a class today where the teacher had written the topic and written a few points leading to it e.g. the topic for today was "Has the modern school education achieved its goals?" The teacher wrote some of the goals and threw it open for discussion. The students had a lot to say and in the end were ready to write a speech on the topic. Try it in your classes

HAN J Mei, China

For kids, I'd give them pictures, articles, etc. so that they can use words to describe them. Or encourage them to write something after the class that interests them. For this group of students, motivation is very important from them. For adults, beginning from daily life and work will be better as they may be eager to learn how to communicate with others using English. So letters, CV, application for jobs, or life experience that they would like to share with others, etc. will be a good start, I think. I always correct my students' writing after they hand in their work. Then I sum up their common errors and explain why they were wrong and what has caused these and the correct ways of expressing themselves. I have found in my teaching that EFL adult learners like this very much because L2 follows a different route from L1. Adult learners can make use of their experience in L1 to comprehend better a different system so that they can use L2 with ease through practice.

Reflection

Reflect on your own experience. What aspect of writing tasks do you find the most difficult? How could your improve your writing skills?