Chapter Twelve: Teaching Students How to Write

Think about everything youve written in the past week. Jot them down.

Now, place your items in one of two categories: everyday functional writing or extensive writing.

Types of Writing Tasks

Functional Writing Tasks Work-related Filling in forms to report defects of parts Filling in accident reports Writing resumes Completing registration forms Extensive Writing Tasks Writing a thank you letter to a visitor Responding to email messages Writing letters of apology Writing lab journals Writing essays Writing research papers

Academic

Personal

Addressing letters Writing checks

Writing essays for an ESL class Writing a letter to a teacher at school Writing a letter of complaint to a landlord

Product-oriented
Focus on getting it right Controlled tasks following models Final product evaluated

Process-oriented
Focus on the steps that go into writing Giving and receiving feedback and creating multiple drafts Initial focus on ideas/content

What does writing include?

Word choice
Appropriate grammars & syntax Mechanics

Organizational structure
Audience Purpose

Audience & Purpose

Audience
Writers determine their audience types by considering: who the readers are (age, sex, education, occupation, economic status, area of residence, ethnic ties, political/social/religious beliefs, etc.); what level of information these readers have about the subject (novice, general reader, specialist, or expert); and what opinions, values, prejudices, and biases these readers already possess about the subject.

Purpose
Purpose is the reason or reasons why a person composes a particular piece of writing. Focusing on purpose as one writes helps a person to know what form of writing to choose, how to focus and organize the writing, what kinds of evidence to cite, how formal or informal the writing style should be, and how much should be written.

Type
To express To describe

Purpose
In expressive writing, the goal is to put thoughts and feelings on the page. It is personal writing. Descriptive writing portrays people, places, things, moments and theories with enough vivid detail to help the reader create a mental picture of what is being written about,. In exploratory writing, the writers purpose is to ask key questions and reflect on topics that defy simple answers. As a purpose or goal of writing, entertaining is often used with some other purpose. Sometimes, however, entertaining others with humor is the main goal of writing Writing to inform is one of the most common of the writing purposes. Uncovering facts and writing about them as objectively as possible constitutes this type of writing The purpose of expository writing is to gather facts and information, combine them with his/her own knowledge & experience, and clarify for some audience who or what something is, how it happened or should happen, and/or why something happened An arguing essay attempts to convince its audience to believe or act in a certain way. Although the terms argument and persuasion are often used interchangeably, the terms do have slightly different meanings. Argument is a specific type of persuasion that follows certain ground rules. Those rules are that opposing positions will be presented accurately and fairly, and that appeals to logic and reason will be the primary means of persuasion. Persuasive writing may, if it wishes, ignore those rules and try any strategy that might work Writing to evaluate a person, product, thing, or policy is a frequent purpose for writing. Problem solving is another specific type of argument; the writers purpose is to persuade his audience to adopt a solution to a particular problem Traditional argument, like a debate, is confrontational. The argument often becomes a kind of war in which the writer attempts to defeat the arguments of the opposition. Non-traditional kinds of argument use a variety of strategies to reduce the confrontation and threat in order to open up the debate.

To explore/learn To entertain To inform To explain

To argue To persuade

To evaluate To problem solve To mediate

A recursive process of creating meaning

The finished product

Writing from the very beginning

handwriting Spelling & punctuation

grammar

Integrated writing skills

Tracing letters, words & sentences

Teaches
Letter recognition &

How to use it
Students trace letters/words

discrimination Word recognition Basic spelling Pronunciation Capitalization rules

written in an appropriate size & shape on tablet-style sheets Kinesthetic learners may benefit from this as this is a visual hands on type of learning activity

Copy and Change

With this type of activity, students are asked to copy a writing text AND change some aspect of it. For instance, the subject may be changed from he to she and all other accompanying changes as well (ie. him to her). Can also be done by changing verb tense in a passage and changing the subject from singular to plural.

Write Basic Sentences

Use pictures
Comparison and contrast Find the differences

Unscrambling muddled sentence parts

In this type of activity, students are given scrambled sentences that they have to reorder to form a grammatically correct sentence.

Vanishing Letters
S __ r e e t S __ r__ e t S __ __ __ e t S __ __ __ __ t S __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Scaffolded writing
Date: ____________________

Dear ________________

____________________ needs to leave school early today for ____________________. I will pick her up at ______________.
Thank you.

Yours truly, ___________________

Sentence starters
I come from________________________.

______________________ is in _____________.
In my country, people ____________________. We eat _________________________________. The capital is ___________________________.

Parallel Writing
My Family There are six people in my family: my grandmother, my parents, my older sister, my younger brother, and I. We are from Taiwan, but we live in Los Angeles now. We are very close. In the Chinese culture, children live with their parents for a long tie. Daughters live with their parents until they get married. After the children are married, parents live with their oldest son. My parents have only one son. They will live with him.

Composition writing Language play writing Newsletter writing Pen pals Dialogue journal writing

Composition Writing
1. Prewriting

4. editing

The final draft

2. drafting

3. revising

Brainstorming Strategic questioning Sketching Information gathering Free writing Clustering Interviewing Exploring the senses

Prewriting Stage: Brainstorming

Brainstorm in the class
Accept all ideas Have a visual focus to get started

Push beyond the obvious

Prewriting Stage: Strategic Questioning

- What do you want to write about? - What is your goal? - What do you know about this topic? - What do you need to find out? - What interests you or surprises you about this topic? - Who might want to read what you are about to write?

Prewriting Stage:
Sketching
A visual idea generating

Information Gathering
Students collect information

strategy, useful when visualizing descriptions or showing the plot of a story

about a topic through library research

Prewriting Stage: Use

Graphic organizers
Venn diagrams Comparison and contrast charts

Sensory details charts

Evaluation charts Charts in which students draw conclusions Sequencing charts

Mind Mapping/Clustering

Venn Diagrams

Comparison & Contrast

Prewriting Stage: Free writing

Focused Free writing Use a blank paper or computer screen and set a time limit of 5 - 15 minutes Summarize the topic in a phrase or sentence; generate a free flow of thought Write anything that comes to mind, whether on topic or off, for the period of time you chose, Don't pause, don't stop. don't rush; work quickly Don't review what you have written until you have finished At the end of your time, refer back to the beginning: Rephrase the initial topic Repeat a word, phrase, or important thought or emotion that makes sense. Review: are there words or ideas you can grab onto for the topic? Is there a main idea to this sequence of ideas?

You Try
Topic: Difficulties in teaching writing to a group of beginning EFL learners.
Free write on this topic for a fifteen minute period.

Prewriting Stage: Clustering

Prewriting Stage:
Interviewing
Students interview each other

Exploring the Senses

Suitable for generating ideas

or people outside the classroom to gather information on a topic

for descriptive essays Teacher guides students through their senses by asking them to visualize, hear, smell, and feel a person or a place

Outlining
I. Introduction A. Set the context B. Explain why the topic is important C. State the thesis. II. Body A. Build points B. Develop ideas C. Support the main claim III. Conclusion A. Reemphasize the main idea B. Restate the thesis

Drafting
Linear approach: write sequentially from beginning to

end Recursive approach: work on one section for a time, move on to another part of the essay, and then return to the earlier section

Writing the Introduction

Grab the readers attention

-use anecdotes -do not begin with a question: change a question into a declarative structure -define your purpose in writing : Thesis statement

Revising
Problems
Not an enjoyable process for

Whats a teacher to do?

Require multiple drafts along

students Some students dont see the value in the revision process Others simply lack the patience to do a revision

with the final draft Drafts can either be: -edited versions of the original -ones where the intro or conclusion has been changed -one where the climax changes, etc.

Editing
Requires
Hard work Knowledge in grammar,

Whats a teacher to do?

Circle errors and write notes

syntax, and mechanics A lot of time commitment

to students on papers Select one or two aspects of the students work (grammar, spelling) and mark only these errors

Peer Reviews Symbols Student-to-student writing conferences

Use Correction Symbols

Indent this line
SC Im not sure what you mean Divide letters or words Sentence combining error (fragment or run-on)

^
a A

Add something here

Change to capital or lowercase

WO SP P

Begin a new paragraph here

Word order Spelling error Punctuation/capitalization

VT
WC WF

Verb tense
Word choice Word form Take out the space

Peer Reviews
Are useful ways to get

students talking to each other about their own work

Student-to-student conferences
Another useful tool in getting students talking about their papers and for helping one another with grammatical inconsistencies, lexical errors and errors in syntax

When Not to Use Error Correction

Student journals
Freewriting activities Any single-draft assignment

Any assignment designed to develop fluency over

accuracy

Problems with Comments on Content and Organization

If it is vague, it can be confusing to students.
There is no guarantee that students will read it. It is counterproductive if comments are mostly

negative. It is less effective when used without one-on-one conferences. Despite this, such comments have proven more effective than error correction.

Dialogue Journals
Benefits
an important way of

Difficulties
Writing to each student can

individualizing instruction and encouraging independent thinking Allows teacher to get to know students through their personal writings TSs Teacher able to better understand students language difficulties Teaches students that we write to an audience

be very time consuming for the teacher Students write about what they think the teacher wants to read, not what they are interested in writing about The problem of status!!!

The Lesson Plan

Stages Common to a ProcessOriented Lesson Plan

1. Identify the purpose Relay information to a friend in a letter. Academic purposes for writing (essays, research papers, scientific reports) An office worker reading a form. A friend reading a letter. A teacher reading the paper. Brainstorm key ideas alone or with a partner. Organize ideas using graphic organizers, word webs. Make outlines Writes ideas first, worry about mechanics later. Write multiple drafts. Share drafts with a peer. Self/peer edit Revise and write final draft.

2. Identify the intended audience

3. Prepare for writing 4. Organize ideas 5. Write multiple drafts

6. Revise

Sample Lesson Plan

1.
A.

B.

Prewriting Whole Class: T: Did you have a job in your country? How did you find that job? What did you need to send to the employer? What do you need to do in the USA? (Send in an application or write a resume) Brainstorm information to be included (students work in pairs and then one student gathers and writes information on board)

Things to include on a resume: Work experience hobbies Age education Family situation sports Training languages

Continued.
C. Learners look at three sample resumes written by former students who have found jobs. Learners are asked to identify the categories and the types of information included in each. Teacher elicits similarities and differences between what the class predicted and what they found out on the samples (e.g. We dont include age and family status in the USA)

Continued.
2. Organizing information: Creating word webs A. With a partner, student write what they have done in each category and create a word web for each one: Personal information, education, jobs, etc.
Server (USA) JOBS Midwife (Peru) Nanny (USA)

Teachers Aide (Peru)

3. Writing first draft Create first draft of resume 4. Peer reading: Classmate Revision Checklist
Classmate Revision Checklist Writers Name:________________________________
Checkers Name:______________________________ 1. Is the resume complete? (If you circled no, highlight the incomplete portions) 2. Did you understand everything your classmate wrote? (If you circled no, ask him/her to revise the unclear portion.) 3. Are the verbs in the correct tense? (If you circled no, help the writer correct them.) Yes Yes Yes No No No

5. Revision Revise draft using feedback from peers.

Before the First Draft

Students read authentic texts related to their topic.
Students engage in group work, pair work and

classroom discussion to explore their topic. Students choose their own topic (possibly from a limited set provided by teacher). Students plan the various sections of their assignment and compare with classmates.

First Draft
Students divide into pairs and read each others essays.
Students fill out a teacher-prepared worksheet

designed to help them give constructive advice to their peers. The teacher collects all essays and provides written feedback on content/organization only.

Sample Peer Review Questions

Write one thing you liked about your partners essay. What is especially good about it? 2. What is your opinion of your partners arguments? Are they generally good? Did your partner use examples from our readings? Explain. 3. Write two or three things your partner can do to improve her essay. Be specific.
1.

Second Draft
Students conference with teacher to discuss comments

(no more than 3-5 minutes) Students use the comments from their peers and their teacher to make improvements to their essay Students submit all drafts together The teacher provides written feedback on language errors only (assuming content and organization have already been addressed)

Second Draft
Students conference with teacher to discuss

comments (no more than 3-5 minutes each). Students use the comments from their peers and their teacher to make improvements to their essay. Students submit all drafts together. The teacher provides written feedback on language errors only (assuming content and organization have been addressed).

Third Draft
Students use teacher comments to make

improvements to their essay. Students submit all drafts together. Teacher writes minimal comments, often little more than a grade.
Students rarely read comments when they feel their

work is done.

Discussion
What do writing experts mean when they say writing

is a recursive process of creating meaning? What type of writing activities should you use with beginners? Which prewriting activities have you used? Why did you chose to use these types over another? What results did it generate for you?

Homework
Design a process-oriented lesson plan for a beginning ESL class.

References
1.

Brainstorming. (http://www.brucevanpatter.com/brainstorming.html). July 14, 2011.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Gebhard, Jerry G. (2009). Teaching English as a Foreign/Second Language. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Parrish, Betsy. (2004). Teaching Adult ESL. New York: McGraw-Hill. www.elcivics.com www.berghuis.com.nz/abiator/lang/lscr/23b.htm. http://www.eslwriting.org/wp-content/parallel-structure-a.pdf http://go.hrw.com/resources/go_mk/la/latm/SENSORYD.PDF