Developing Writing Skills

1. Developing Writing Skills

2. Comments • All of these comments were made by practising teachers. Which ones do you agree with? Hassan: Writing should be done individually or else weaker ones will rely on stronger. Korali: I mainly use writing to practise grammar and vocabulary: learners are more accurate when they write than when they speak. Tracy: Writing in class is a waste of time. They may as well do it at home. Paula: Learners see writing as a chore. You should make it fun and encourage them to express themselves. David: I don’t think you should correct every mistake when learners write something. I only pick out main points and say what I liked about what they actually said.

3. Comments on Comments • Tracy: Some stages of writing can be done usefully in class – thinking of ideas, discussing and organising ideas, group writing, working on editing skills. • Korali: Learners need lots of varied practice of grammar and vocabulary and because not under time pressure when they write it’s useful for focussing on accuracy. However, to use this exclusively for language practice ignores the fact that writing is a skill sin its own right and needs to be developed through practice. • David: It’s right to pick out some errors. If learner gets a piece of writing back covered in corrections it can be demotivating. It is also good to respond not just to the form of the message (the errors) but also the content. Writing is a means of communication not just a way of practising grammar and spelling. • Paula: Yes it’s right to make it fun. However, you can’t ignore the fact that many learners, e.g., those who need English for professional or academic reasons, need to master text types where a high premium is placed on accuracy. • Hassan: Reasonable point, but overlooks the fact that weaker learners may be getting support from stronger and hence learning from them.

4. Writing activities • Complete the table for the activities.

5. Writing activities • Now redesign this writing task, in order to: • A. make it more communicative • B. make it more integrated, i.e., the students are producing whole texts, not simply a list of sentences • C. make it more authentic • D. provide a readership.

6. Writing activities

7. Writing activities • Look at this sequence of activities from a coursebook. • What’s the purpose of each stage?

8. Marking written work • Look at the text from an intermediate (E3) learner. There are 3 different methods of marking on here. Which do you think is the most effective? Think about learner involvement. • Then, decide what the symbols mean. Two have been done for you.