How to teach writing

How to teach writing

1. TEACHING WRITING PENNY U

   • 2. TEACHING PROCEDURES
     • Writing as:
       • As a means
         • Writing is used in order to get ss attention in a FL
       • As an end
         • Writing itself
           • Micro: practise specific written forms: typing, spelling, punctuation
             • Macro: emphasis on content: tasks invite Ss to express using their own words
       • As both means and end
         • It combines purposeful and original writing with learning/practice of some skill/content
     • Wrting for content and/or form
       • Maintain a balance between content and form depends on your own teaching situation and opinion
   • 4. THE PROCESS OF COMPOSITION
     • The writing process
       • Summary and implications for teaching
         • 1. Individuals vary
           • There isn't one right system of writing
         • 2. Writing is a messy business
           • Encourage learners to work through revisions accepting messy drafts as a positive stage
         • 3. Writing is a potentially satisfaying
           • giving topics and task that motivate Ss to write
         • 4. You learn to write through writing
           • To get our Ss to write a lot and learning from their own experience
       • Stage 1-writing: Choose a problem and compose a written answer, try to be aware of how you are thinking and what you are doing
         • Stage 2-reflection: compare results with other participants
           • Stage 3-conclusion: draw teaching conclusions from the results
   • 5. GIVING FEEDBACK ON WRITING
     • 1. Mainly on: language/content/organization?
       • The problem, whether ....
         • The ideas or events are significant and interesting
         • The ideas a re arranged in a way easy to follow
         • The grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation is of an acceptable standard
       • Advice
         • Correct language mistakes and make sugggestions as to content and organization
         • Give the evaliuation only on the basis (rewritten, polishedversion)
     • 2.Should all mistakes be corrected?
       • The problem: Should all language mistakes be noted?
       • Advice: correct mistakes that affect beggining or are from a basic course
     • 3.Should learners rewrite, incorporating corrections?
       • The problem: insist on Ss rewriting and oncorporing our suggestions
       • Advice: rewriting reinforces learning, and it's part of the writing process. Value the Ss rewriting in order to motivate them
     • 4. Shoul we let students correct or give feedback?
       • The problem: Students feel uncomfortable correcting or being corrected by others
       • Advice: it is a useful technique, and a value exercise in itself, but it depends on the classroom climate
   • 1. WRITTEN VERSUS SPOKEN TEXT
     • 1. Permanence
       • Writing: whatever tim, speed and level of thoroughness the individual reader wishes
       • Spoken: fleeting and moves on in real time
     • 3. Density
       • writing: the content is densely
       • Speech: the information is diluted and conveyed through more words
     • 2. Explicitness
       • In written text is explicit, meanwhile spoken text contains information that is assumed and need not be made explicit
     • 4. Detachment
       • In writing you work alone, meanwhile speaking you interact with known listeners
     • 5. Organization
       • written text is organized and you can edit it
       • Spoken is improvised and disorganized
     • 6. Slowness of production, speed of reception
       • Writing is slower than speaking
     • 7. Standard language
       • writing uses a standard variety of language, meanwhile speech there is a limit of incomprehensible dialects
     • 8. A learnt skill
       • Written form is taught and learned, whereas the spoken language´s acquisition is intuitively
     • 9. Sheer amount and importance
       • Spoken texts are essential for survival and longer, than writing is
   • 3. TASKS THAT STIMULATE WRITING
     • 1. Book report
     • 2. Book review
     • 3. Instruction sheet
     • 4. Narrative
     • 5. Personal story
     • 6. Describe a view
     • 7. Describe someone
     • 8. Describe people
     • 9.Answer a letter
     • 10.Job application
     • 11.Propose change
     • 12. News report
     • 13.Ideal school
     • 14. Describe process
     • 15. Film music

2. RESPONDING, CORRECTING, AND GUIDING CHAPTER 7

   • 2. WAYS OF CORRECTING STUDENTS' WORK
     • a. Selective correction
       • Not to correct everything, focus on specific aspects
     • b. Using marking scales
       • Scales and number of points per category/aspect to evaluate
     • c. Using correction symbols
       • Encourage Ss to think about what the mistake is
         • Teacher writes symbol above or next where the problem occurs
     • d. Reformulation
       • Showing Ss how they could write correctly,shows how they would write the incorrect sentence (during drafting and re-drafting
     • e. Referring Ss to a dictionary/grammar book
       • Teachers indicate a mistake and encourage Ss to go and look the problem up in a dictionary/grammar book
     • f. Ask me
       • Teachers ask Ss to talk to them so they can sort out the problem face to face
     • g. Remedial teaching
       • showing the errors to the whole class, the mistakes to be anonymous
   • 4. PEER REVIEW
     • Teacher may start by getting them to read an example in the same genre/encouraging them to generate ideas and plans
       • Helps Ss to view both colleagues and teahcers as collaborators
         • Encourage Ss to work collaboratively
   • 1. WAYS OF REACTING TO STUDENTS' WRITING
     • a. Responding and correcting
       • Responding: accuracy of performance content
         • A kind of affective dialogue with Ss
       • Correcting: indicate when something is not right
         • Underline, symbols, correct the mistakes
         • ask questions, make suggestions, indicate where improvements might be made to the content and the manner in which it is expressed
     • b. The roles of the teacher
       • Examiner, audience, assistant, resource, evaluator, and editor
     • c. Who responds?
       • Teacher-students (peer review is an important element)
     • d. What students do?
       • At least consider their work based on the suggestions
   • 3. WAYS OF RESPONDING TO STUDENTS' WORK
     • a. Responding to work in progress
       • During a writing task in class, visit Ss and talk to them about what they are writing
     • b. Responding by written comment
       • writing down what we think is good in the Ss' work (encouragment is important at this stage)
     • c. Post task statements
       • At the end of a writing sequence teachers end up giving final comments
     • d. Taped comments
       • Teacher might consider taping their comments about a piece of Ss writing on tapes provided by the Ss
     • e. Electronic comments
       • Via e-mail or through text editing programmes
   • 6. MAKING HOMEWORK SUCCESSFUL
     • Discussing homework issues
       • why homework? Helps Ss to remember things and work out language and construction problems
       • homework load: It's important to find out how much homework all the different teachers expect , and get agreement from the ss abput how Eglish can fit into this programme
       • Appropriate homeworks tasks; asking to Ss what kind of tasks they think would be helpful
         • Influence the Ss' preferences for different kinds of homework
       • Explain the marking criteria: Teacher can encourage Ss to concentrate especially upon spelling by making it one of our criteria
       • Punctuality and even handedness
         • it will help if we show that we expect homework to be handed, and homework procedure benefit from prompt marking on the par of the teacher
   • 5. TRAINING STUDENTS TO SELF-EDIT AND SELF-CORRECT
     • a. Finding mistakes: to enable Ss to notice mistakes
     • b. Understanding correction symbols
       • stage 1, Teacher explains that the class is going to llok at symbols that indicate mistakes , then put the symbols on the board
         • stage 2 , Teacher copy a piece of Ss work onto the board, Ss can write their symbols on the the sentences the teacher has written on the board
           • stage 3, Teacher hands the Ss incorrect sentences with symbols, and they have to identify the mistake
     • c. Removing symbols gradually: Ss make corrections on their own when mistakes are indicated
       • stage 1, lines and symbols
         • stage 2, underlining with no symbol
           • stage 3, margin symbol
             • stage 4, margin marks
               • stage 5, one margin mark
     • d. Making corrections
       • it's good idea if Ss are given time in class to rewrite the material correctly
     • e. Error checklist:
       • Encourage Ss to edit their writing with care
     • f. Directed questions
       • A series of questions for Ss to consider when editing their writing
     • g. Discussing writing
       • Ss will have insights about the process which they might otherwise not have been aware of

3. THE WRITING PROCESS STRATEGIES FOR WRITING A LETTER

   • 1. BRAINSTORMING IDEAS
   • 2. GROUPING IDEAS
   • 3. REVIEWING
   • 4. EXCHANGING LETTERS WITH A PARTNER