TEACHING WRITING

ENGLISH METHODOLOGY I PROFESSOR: Mg. R.Correa

II SEMESTER 2010

How can I know what I think until I see what I say (Auden,1962)
Writing is not simply speaking on paper (Dvorak 1987)

Functional types of writing

Transactional: for communicating information Poetic: for creating beautiful objects Expressive: for exploring and reflecting upon ideas. (Britton,et al. 1975)

Transcription-oriented writing vs. Composing

TOW: graphic representation of spoken language. Ex: copy

hwk from the whiteboard,fill out application forms,play word games, write shopping lists,etc.
TOW activities limit the scope of the students espressions.

Composing: as the result of thinking, drafting and revising procedures. Composition entails a more complicated process. It envolves the combination of words and phrases to express ideas to convince, to muse, to investigate, to inform, to delight.

Transcription-oriented writing vs. Composing

Careful control of learners output reduce the likehood of structural errors. TOW are good activities for beginner levels of foreign language learning. The issue of the audience, context and purpose influences the written outcome. Somo composition activities coul be:
Keeping journals Information gap activities. Guided-composition

Write a five sentence-paragraph in which you describe Do not confuse guided your plans for a summer vacation. Say whenwriting you will with grammar practice or leave, where you will go, how you will get there,and what you will do when yo translation arrive .Beactivities. sure to use Simple Future

 Paulson (1993) found that students produced more thoughtful, more effective and more accurate compositions when:
the task was stated in terms of a problem to be solved and, the audience for the writing was clearly indicated.

Writing-Communicative Approach
A communicative approach to foreign lg instruction will avoid assigning tasks for the sole purpose of practising language structures. Writing activities will integrate cultural, personal perspectives along with the information derived from lectures, readings and discussions.

Changes in the Approaches towards Writing

Behaviourism
Learning to write Teacher centered Ts Role:pre-write tasks and evaluate.

Socio-Cognitive A.
Writing to Learn Student oriented. Ts Role: motivate & help sts to develop their writing skills.

Changes in the Approaches towards Writing

Behaviourism The Teacher is the only audience. Teacher responds to the final product. 1 linear and final draft. Socio-Cognitive A. Write to different audiences Feedback from Ts and peers during the process. Many drafts are checked.

The ballance between Process and Product

Help Sts writers to : Understand their composing proces Build repertoire of strategies Revise Discover what they want to say

The balance between Process and Product

Teachers role Provide time for writing. Provide feedback through the process. Encourage feedback from peers Include one to one lessons

Writing as a learning process/ Writing as product

Process Approaches focus on the steps involved in drafting and redrafting a piece of work. It is accepted that thatn there will never be the perfect text, but perfection may be achieved through reflection , discussing and reworking succesive drafts of a text.
Product oriented approaches focus on the final product. The coherent free error is seeked.

Writing as a learning process/

Writing as product
Writing involves a variety of subprocesses rather than a linear sequence. Witers differ in their uses of the processes. The processes vary depending on the nature of the writing task. Based on tasks where the learner imitates, copies or transforms models provided by the teacher and/or textbook. ( Reproductive Lg Work) This approach (RLW) was consistent with sentence level-structuralist linguistics and bottom-up processing.

(Applebee,1984& Nunan 1999 )

The balance between Process and Product Process is not the end;it is the means to the end
(Brown 2001, p. 337)

Responding to students writing: Feedback and Evaluation

The developmental nature of second language acquisition does no support the belief that correcting the sts errors will result in the elimination of them. Research has shown that beginning levels of FLL are not good at correcting their own or each others grammatical errors.

 Can nothing be done to improve the accuracy of students writing?

 Semke (1984) Rob,Ross and Shortreed (1986) found that the single best predictor of improvement in sts writing was the amount of second language writing that they produced.

 Research has shown that correcting every grammatical error , especially in composition oriented writing, it is not an effective way to improve students performance.

 But if not by grammar correction, how might teachers respond to students writing?

Procedures involved in producing a witten text.

( 6 recursive procedures)

Drafting

Structuring

Reviewing

Focusing

Generating ideas

Evaluation

Principles for designing writing techniques

Promote good writers practices. Balance Process and Product. Account for cultural/literary backgrounds. Connect reading and writing. Provide as much authentic writing as possible. Respect and frame your techniques to the process of writing

SYNTAX sentence stmcture Sentence boundaries stylistic choices, etc GRAMMAR d e s for verbs agreement, articles, pronouns, etc

CONTENT relevante, clarity Originality logic, etc. WRITER'S PROCESS getiing ideas getting started writing drafts revising

Clear, fluent and effective communication of ideas

AUDIENCE the readerls

MECHANICS handwriting spelling punctuation, etc

ORGANIZATION Paragraphs topic & support cohesion & unity

PURPOSE the reason for writing

WORD CHOICE vocabulary idiom, tone

The Role of the Writing Teacher

From Teaching ESL Composition: Principles and Techniques by J.B. Hughey

They keep the writing task clear, simple and straightforward. They teach writing process. They analyze and diagnose a writing product. They establish short-term and long-term goals for each student. They balance classroom activities, providing some for individuals and some for groups. They develop meaningful assignments. They provide a real audience: an audience other than the teacher. They make student papers available to students: they allow students to see their own body of work develop. They move from the known to the unknown and utilize the students previous knowledge.

 They provide writing activities that reinforce reading, listening and talking skills. They outline clearly the goals for each writing assignment. They teach the conventions of spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. They teach the principles rules, conventions, and guidelines of writing as a means to develop thoughts, order ideas, and communicate these ideas in a significant way.

 Kinds of Instructional Activities for Writing

Activities relating to the rehearsing stage:

Journals students explore ideas and record thoughts in a journal Brainstorming students rapidly exchange information about a topic or about something they have selected to read Free association put the topic on the board. Students quickly say whatever ideas first come to mind Values clarification students compare attitudes toward a variety of specific problems and situations Clustering or word-mapping writer organizes related words and concepts in clusters around a central word/idea Ranking activities students rank a set of features according to priorities Quickwriting students write as much as they can in a set time Information-gathering activities students are given assignments related to a theme or topic and resources where related information can be found. These may include surveys, interviews, field trips and experiments or demonstrations

Activities relates to the drafting/writing phase:

Strategic questioning students examine a set of questions to help them focus, prioritize and select ideas for writing Time-focused writing students write very quickly within a specified time on a selected topic Elaboration exercise students are given a sentence and they collectively elaborate and develop it Reduction exercise students are given a wordy and complex paragraph and break it down into simpler sentences Jumbled paragraph students are given a jumbled paragraph to reorder Writing thesis and topic sentences students are given a statement from which to write a thesis statement and topic sentence Group drafting students work jointly on drafting different sections of a composition

Activities related to the revising phase:

Peer feedback students work in groups and read, criticize, and proofread their own writing Group-correction feedback students are given essays containing certain focused deletions (e.g. topic sentences, thesis statements, cohesive markers, etc.) and must supply missing elements Rewriting exercises awkward sentences or confusing paragraphs from student essays are distributed and rewritten by students Teacher feedback this may take place at several stages during the writing process as opposed to just the end. The teacher may comment on quick writes, rough drafts, and peer feedback, for example. Checklists students may have short checklists, drawing their attention to specific features of sentence, paragraph or text organization that they should attend to in revising.