How to Teach Writing

Firoozeh Shojaee, M.A., Kaeroon Azad University firoozeh_shojaee@yahoo.com

چكيده آموزان زبان نوشتار تقويت منظور به فعاليتهايي ارائه مقاله اين هدف

فعاليتهاي. انگليسي كنترل: مي تقسيم دسته چندين به نوشتاري است شودآزاد. و شده راهنمايي شده، نوشتاري فعاليتهاي مورد در را مفيد راهكارهاي برخي همچنين مقاله اين در. مي ارائه آزاد زبان هاي نوشته موردتصحيح در پيشنهادهايي آخر نمايد

است. شده آورده آموزان

Abstract The aim of this article is to present writing activities. Writing activities can be divided into three classes: controlled, guided, and free writing activities. There are also some guidelines on free writing which are quoted from invaluable sources. Finally, some suggestions regarding correction of written work are presented. Key words: writing, writing activities

Introduction As you know writing is a productive skill and this is because students have to actively produce language in order to write. Writing involves all aspects of language: grammar, vocabulary, word order, spelling and logical arrangement of ideas. Students often make mistakes when they start to write in sentences. This means that the teacher has a lot of marking to do, and all the corrections in red pen do not make the students very happy. They do not help the students very much.

Writing activities Teachers need to plan lessons in a step-by-step way. They need to build up students’ confidence by starting from controlled and

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guided activities and move towards less-guided and more student-centered and creative activities. The activities must start with very teacher-controlled activities, and move to less teacher-controlled ones. Guided activities, which are easy and short, will help all students to write with few mistakes in a controlled situation. As their confidence and interest grow, less guided activities will encourage them to write more confidently.

A: Controlled Writing Activities At elementary level students should be given exercises which require them to think and add something of their own; but exercises at this level should still be controlled, so that students do not make too many mistakes. According to Baker (2003), they may be as the followings:

1. Copying correct sentences: Copying sentences help students to practice new language and is also a good way to practice writing skill. However, copying can become repetitive and students do not have to think, so it should not be used too often.

2. Matching beginning and ending sentences: Select a number of sentences. You can use sentences from your course book, or make them up yourself. Write one half of each sentence on the left of the blackboard and the other half of the sentence on the right of the blackboard. The students then decide which two sentence halves go together to form a complete sentence.1. I went to the shop … a. to ask for a favor2. I washed my clothes… b. to buy some bread3. I walked to my friend… c. to go to the party

3. Substitution drills: This activity gives the students a basic correct sentence to learn from, but they have to make some choices in order to make complete and correct sentences.Example: show students a picture of cinema students should copy the following sentence, choosing and writing the correct word from the list.[The other day/last night] Mum took us to the [theatre/cinema] to see a [film/play].

4. Sequencing jumbled words: In this activity, jumbled words

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means that the correct words are provided, but in the wrong order. Students have to put the words in the right order.Example: like- afternoon-the-going-I-in-swimming.

B: Guided practice

1. Gap-fill sentences: This is a more challenging activity, where students have to think of and write some of the words in sentences themselves.Example: I ------- two sisters and-------- like going-----------school.

2. Changing sentences: This activity gives the basic correct sentences, but the students have to change a grammatical structure, for example, from singular to plural, or to a different tense. .Example: I like bananas, but I don’t like oranges. My friend----------- bananas, but she--------- oranges.

3. .Completing sentences: You give the beginning of sentences and the students have to complete them.Example: I am-------------------------------------------- I like------------------------------------------

4. Parallel sentences: You write correct model sentences on the blackboard, and the students re-write the sentences, making it true for themselves.Example: My name is Ali and I am nine. I have three brothers and we live in a small house. My name is …

C. Free writing As soon as the students have mastered basic skills of sentence writing, they need to progress beyond very controlled writing exercises to freer paragraph and essay writing. Teachers can give instructions regarding the organization of essays and paragraphs and so improve students’ writing. Cheron

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Verster (2002) suggests the following guidelines: Explain the overall organization of an essay to students. Explain paragraph organization. Find ideas or information for a composition. Put these ideas or information in logical paragraphs. Make sure the meaning is clear within these paragraphs. Make sure the paragraphs are linked together well. Make sure the language is accurate. Make sure the language is appropriate to the purpose of the writing

Give students a list of connectives that they could use in their essays. Make sure that they understand the relationships that are implied by these connectives.

Give students a model essay. Once they have read it, ask them to write an outline of the essay in the following way:

Firstly, identify the thesis. Write it in a circle in the middle of a blank piece of paper.

Next, identify the claims or statements that are made to support this thesis. Write these around the thesis.

Then identify and list the details and examples that are given to support each claim/statement.

Finally, write relevant connectors between the thesis and the claims/statements and between the claims/statements themselves.

Ask students to use their outline to write their essay. Give students a topic. As the objective of any writing class is to have students work on their writing, the topics students write about must be carefully designed, sequenced, and structured. In this way the teacher knows exactly what the learning goal of each paper is and the students gain some thing by working on the assignment.

Based on Ur (1996) teachers should encourage learners to progress through a number of untidy drafts before reaching a final version. Students should accept messy drafts as a positive stage in writing. Good writers think about content first and form later. Teachers should advise learners to write down their ideas first, and then correct spelling and grammar.

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Teachers must decide where the writing is to be produced: in class or at home. According to Kroll as cited by Celce-Marcia (2001) one way is to consider some assignments as timed writing, written in a given time framework, submitted, and responded to as final products in class. Other writing assignments can be prepared over a span of several class periods (either in class or at home) and feedback provided to assist in the revision process.

Regardless of the type of free writing activity, a good place to begin class work is to explore the prewriting stage, the stage prior to actual production of a working text. At this phase the goal of the teacher should be to expose the students with a variety of strategies for getting started with a writing task and to encourage each student to try to discover which strategies work best for him or her. Students feel that they have a variety of ways to begin an assigned writing task and they do not always have to begin at the beginning and work through an evolving draft sequentially until they reach the end.

Free writing activities There are some activities, which are helpful for students to start writing assignment. According to Kroll as cited by Celce-Marcia (2001) they are as the followings:

1. Writing based on a text: We can teach students how to write by giving a short text as a model, for example students read a short text, and study particular features of it. They then write a paragraph that is similar, but involves some changes. For example, students read a paragraph about a student’s day, then they write about their own day; students read a description of a room, and then write a description of another room shown in a picture.

2. Brainstorming: This is often a group exercise in which all of the students in the class are encouraged to participate by sharing their collective knowledge about a particular subject. One way to structure this is for the teacher to suggest a broad topic, such as reasons for choosing a particular academic major, and have students call out as many associations as possible, which the teacher can write on the board. The result would be far more material generated than any one student is likely to think of on

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his/her own, and then all students can utilize any or all of the information when turning to the preparation of their first drafts.

3. Listing: Unlike brainstorming, as described above, listing can be a quite and essentially individual activity. Again, as a first step in finding an approach to a particular subject area, the students are encouraged to produce as lengthy a list as possible of all the subcategories that come to mind as they think about the topic at hand. This is an especially useful activity for students, who might be constrained by undue concern for expressing their thoughts in grammatically correct sentences, because lists do not require complete sentences.

4. Free writing: Freed from the necessity of worrying about grammar and format, students can often generate a great deal of prose which provide useful raw material to use in addressing the writing assignment at hand. This technique often works best if the teacher provides an opening clause or sentence for the students to start with. For example, if the students are supposed to write a paper about one’s personal philosophy of life, they can begin with the words like “life is difficult but it is also worthwhile”. The students copy this sentence and continue to write down whatever comes into their heads.

Note writing is a writing activity that is suggested by Nik Peachey (2002). It is an activity that is really useful for helping learners to write more fluently and can also help you to diagnose problems with your students' written work and ability to formulate questions. You can use it at the beginning or end of a class as fun filler, or as an integral part of your lesson. Give out a sheet of A4 paper (219mm x 297mm) to each student and ask them to watch and follow your instructions:

Hold up your paper and fold it in half. Then fold it in half again and then again. Press hard on the paper and then open it out. The folds should have divided the paper into eight rectangles. Use the fold lines to tear the page into eight rectangular pieces of paper.

Once they all have their eight pieces of paper, ask the students to write their names in the bottom right-hand corner of each piece.

Next ask them to think of another person in the class and to

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think of a question they would like to ask them. Tell them to write the name of the person on the top left-hand corner and then to write the question on the piece of paper.

Once they have done this, tell them to pass the paper to the person the question was intended for.

Students then read any questions they got and start to write replies. Students who didn't get a question can start writing another question for someone else.

Get the students to keep writing and answering questions until all their pieces of paper are used up.

You may in the early stages need to prompt the students to keep writing and also to make sure they are using English, but try not to interrupt ones that are busy writing or to correct anything at this stage. You may actually like to get involved yourself and start writing a few notes to your students.

Creating a framework for writing: Jeff Fowler (2002) who is a teacher and trainer suggested an activity that creates a framework for writing. This is a creative writing exercise in which the teacher moulds the story but allows plenty of scope for the students' creative expression.

The students work in pairs or groups of three. The teacher dictates a part of a story and then gives instructions on how the students should continue the next part of the story in their pairs. (This usually involves adding description or dialogue).

Once the students have added a part to the story, the teacher once again dictates the next part and asks them once again to add more.

This process can continue for 5 or 6 paragraphs or until the students lose concentration.

You can use this procedure with any short story, but it works best when you dictate the movement of events and your students add description or dialogue. Students do generally like to decide on the end of the story themselves, so if you sense they are getting tired, just tell them to finish the story.

Eliciting vocabulary before writing narratives: Brian Fowlis (2002) suggests this activity. This is an idea to help students with their

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writing of narratives. It gives all the students some essential (and some superfluous) vocabulary. Before giving the students the title (or first line) of the story, play a game of word association.

The teacher gives one word and the student on the left must say the first word s/he can think of which is associated with it.

Then the student on her/his left says the first word that s/he can think of which is associated with the previous word.

This can be repeated around the class a few times. The teacher writes all the words on the board as they

appear. Eventually you should have 20 or 30 words on the board, the

latter ones bearing no relation to the original. Here is a typical collection: tree, forest, countryside, city,

buildings, offices, work, leisure, holidays, beach, sun, moon, night, dark, black, reggae, music, piano, jazz, etc.

The teacher then gives the students the first line of the story using some of the vocabulary on the board (e.g., I'll never forget the night I went to my first reggae club while I was on holiday in a strange city.

The students (individually or in pairs) continue the story, drawing on the vocabulary on the board for ideas.

Responding to Students’ Writing

Responding to students writing has the goal of fostering student improvement. The result of all studies strongly suggests that teacher’ comment has little impact on student writing. Therefore, in setting goals, teachers should focus on implementing a variety of response types and on training students to maximize the insights of prior feedback on future writing occasions. Students must also be trained to use the feedback in ways that will improve their writing. Kroll as cited by Celce-Marcia (2001) suggested the following guidelines:

1st. Students routinely produce more than one draft of an essay; therefore, feedback on a first draft should most appropriately provide guidelines and suggestions for how to produce a second

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draft that would show improvement at the level of content and organization. Rewriting is an integral part of the writing process, and reinforces learning. Teachers should give evaluation only on the basis of the rewritten, polished version.

2nd. The papers that students write are likely to exhibit problems in language control. However, it is very important for the teacher not to be swayed by the presence or numbers of these problems into turning a writing course into a grammar course.

3rd. In addition to deciding when to correct errors, teacher must also decide which errors to correct, and how to correct errors. The decision whether to address all or selected errors is a complex one and probably depends a great deal on the level of writing the student is capable of producing. However, correcting all of a student’s errors is probably rarely called for, unless there are very few errors present in the text. Rather, the teacher should probably concentrate on calling the student’ s attention to those errors that are considered more serious and/or represent a pattern of errors in that particular student’ s writing.

4th. How to call students’ attention to the errors they have committed is also a complex issue. Teachers can choose to:

1. Point out specific errors using a mark in the margin or an arrow or other symbolic system.

2. Correct or model specific errors by writing in the corrected form

3. Label specific errors according to the feature they violate, using either the complete term or a symbol system.

4. Indicate the presence of errors but not the precise location. (e.g., noting that there are problems with word forms)

5. A combination of two or more of the methods mentioned above, depending on what they perceive to be the needs of the student

5th. Finally, teachers should decide who would correct the errors. 1. Teachers should bear in mind that feedback can be

oral as well as written, and they should consider the value of individual conferences on student papers. Students in a writing class need to have individual conferences with their teacher. It can provide an opportunity for the teacher to ask the student about intended messages that are often difficult

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to understand by simply reading a working draft. Conference allow the teacher to uncover potential misunderstandings the student might have about prior written feedback or issues in writing that have been discussed in class, and they can usually learn more in one to one exchange.

2. From another point of view, most writing teachers realize that they have many students in one class and they have a very limited amount of time to provide feedback to any one student. Teachers can turn to the other students in the class to assist in the feedback process, but peer responding in the writing class must be modeled, taught, and controlled in order for it to be a valuable activity. One way to control peer response is for teachers to provide a short list of directed questions which students address as they read their own or other students’ papers, such as to check for a particular grammatical feature or to check to assure that no irrelevancies have been included. Another way is for students to be trained to read and respond to other students’ papers by reviewing an essay written by a student in a previous class. A peer-editing sheet asks a few specific questions that would elicit both general reactions to the paper and suggestions for improvement.

Doff (1990) suggested some valuable guidelines based on the level of the students. With large classes and at lower levels, teachers can give students controlled writing activities that can be easily corrected. A basic procedure for correcting simple written work is:

1. The correct answer can be written on the board.

2. Students correct their own work and the teacher moves around the class to supervise.

3. Teacher can draw attention to some common mistakes for the benefit of the whole class. He believed that for more advanced students the teacher should correct students work individually and positively.

1. Teachers should correct most important errors or certain errors.

2. Teachers should write corrections on the margin.

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3. Teachers can indicate where the students have made important errors and encourage them to correct them.

REFERENCESBaker, J. and Westrup, H. (2003). The English Language Teacher’s Handbook. London: Continuum.

Celce-Marcia, M. (2001). Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Boston, Massachosetts: Heinel & Heinel Publishers, a Division of Wadsworth, Inc.

Celce-Marcia, M and Hills, SH. (1988). Techniques and Resources in Teaching Grammar. Oxford University Press.

Chastain, K. (1988). Developing Second Language Skills: Theory to Practice (3rd ed.). San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich

Cook, V. (1991). Second Language Learning and Language Teaching. London: Edward Arnold, a Division of Hodder & Stoughton.

Doff, A. (1990). Teach English. A training course for teachers. Cambridge University Press in association with The British Council.

Ellis, R (1997) Becoming Grammatical. Pearson Education. Available in http://www.impactseries.com/grammar/becoming.html

Fowler, J (2002) Teach English: Writing activities. British Council. BBc World Service, Bush House, Strand, London Wc 28 4PH, UK. Available in http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try

Fowlis, B (2002) teach English: Writing Activities. British Council. BBc World Service, Bush House, Strand, London Wc 28 4PH, UK. Available in http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try

Larsen-Freeman, D. (1986). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Peachy, N (2002) Teach English: Writing Activities. British Council. BBc World Service, Bush House, Strand, London Wc 28 4PH, UK. Available in http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/try

Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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