Writing

What and why?

In common with LISTENING, READING and SPEAKING, there are two main roles for writing in language teaching. The first is as a goal of learning. It is important for students to develop the writing skill in order to express themselves in written English in letters, messages, stories, and so on. The second role, however, is as a means of learning. Writing can provide further sources of practice and can help the students remember the words, phrases, grammar, etc. that they are learning. By working on writing tasks, students can become closely involved with the language and, in doing so, develop their general language proficiency. Writing can thus form a very important element in the course.

Practical ideas

• Encourage the students to keep written records of what they learn. The LANGUAGE RECORD will be useful in this respect.
• Before calling on the students to do any large oral activity, such as ROLE PLAY, students can be encouraged to plan in writing what they are going to say.
• Where students are involved in writing as a goal of language learning, encourage them to go through the various stages of collecting ideas, drafting, getting FEEDBACK from a reader, revising and final production. You can incorporate these stages of development into a PROCESS WRITING approach.
• Where possible, give the students real-life tasks which have a real audience. This could be writing a letter requesting information, making a PARCEL OF ENGLISH, writing to pen-friends and so on. Writing to other students can also provide an audience (see INTERACTIVE WRITING).
• In correcting students' writing, try not to over-correct. A page full of red ink can be very demoralising! There are a number of alternative ways of approaching ERROR CORRECTION:
  • Ask the students to underline the things they are not sure of or where they would like your help - you need only then correct the things they have identified.
  • Limit yourself to no more than six to eight points for correction.
  • Rather than focusing on the form of what they have written, respond to the message. Write a brief reply to the ideas they have expressed.
  • Rather than correcting, give hints or clues and encourage the students to correct their own work. You can use a marking scheme (e.g. Sp = spelling, WW = wrong word, and so on).