Tập huấn Thay sách Anh 12 - 2008

Point out writing activities as controlled writing and free writing- Implication for teachers2. Writing activities as free writing continued Problem for free writing: When facing a fre

TEACHING WRITING

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1.What kind of writing should students do?

2 Point out writing activities as controlled

writing and free writing- Implication for teachers.

3 How would teachers correct student’s written work?

4 Suggest possible techniques in

responding to students’ writing.

What kind of writing should

students do ?

 According to Harmer (1995:80), the type of

writing teachers get students to do will depend

on their age, interests and level

 The writing tasks/activities include writing

postcards, letters of various kinds, filling in

forms such as job applications, writing narrative

What kind of writing should students

do? (continued)

 There is no limit to the kinds of text teachers can ask

students to write Teachers’ decision will be based on how much languages the students know, what their interests are and what teachers think will not only be useful for

them but also motivate them as well.

 Below is the kind of writing teachers use for elementary to

intermediate level (Doff, 1995: 148)

A Writing activities as controlled writing

B Writing activities as free writing

(Doff, 1995:154-155)

1 Paragraph writing

2 Letter writing

3 Essay-writing

Writing activities as free writing (continued)

 Problem for free writing: When facing a free writing such as writing a paragraph to describe their own town or village, many students would probably find it quite difficult and make many mistakes If so they

would find the task frustrating and probably not learn very much from

it

 Students would probably approach the task in different way and

produce a wide variety of different paragraphs

NOTE TO THE TEACHER

Thus the only way to correct their work would be individually, book by book, this would be very time consuming for the

teachers

Therefore, teachers should help students progress beyond very controlled writing to freer paragraph writing by guiding their writing:

 Giving a short text as a model

 Doing oral preparation for the writing

Writing correction

 Correction is worthless if students ignore the

mistake and correction

 Teachers have to ensure that students

understand the problem and then redraft the passage correctly

Basic procedure for correcting simple

written work in class

 The teacher writes correct answers on the board, or

gets students to write them

 As the teacher gives the answers, students correct

their own work

 Then the teacher moves around the class to

supervise what they are doing; or students can

exchange books and correct each other’s work

Techniques for correcting written work

 With more advanced classed and even with lower level

classes, it is important for the teacher to correct students’ work individually.

 Over correction can have a very demovating effect One way

of avoiding the ‘over-correction problem is for teachers to tell their students that for a particular piece of work grammar they are only going to correct mistakes of spelling or grammar, etc

Ways of correcting the students’ work more

 The teacher could only correct the errors that seem

most important or only errors of a certain kind (e.g items that were taught recently, or just problems with verbs)

 The teacher could reduce the amount of underlining

and write corrections in the margin; this would make the page look less heavily corrected

Ways of correcting the students’ work more

positively and effectively.(Continued)

 The teacher could simply indicate where the

student has made important errors, and asks her

to try to correct them herself This would

encourage the student to look again at what she

Note to the teacher

 For more advance classes, systems of abbreviations can

be used Teachers regularly write in the margin to indicate different kinds of error, e.g

sp = spelling mistake

g = grammar mistake

wo = word order

Note to the teacher

This way helps the students to correct all their own

mistake, and gives good training in reading through and checking what they have written and makes correction look less damaging.

 It is always worth writing a comment at the

end of a piece of written work – anything from “well

done” to “this is good work but you must look again at

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN

TEACHING WRITING

Motivator

- Teacher motivates students, creating the right conditions for them to

generate their own ideas.

- Teacher gets students involved in

creative writing activity so that students find it easier to generate ideas.

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN

TEACHING WRITING (continued)

Resource

- Teacher should provide information and language where necessary.

- Teacher offers advice and

suggestions in a constructive and

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN

TEACHING WRITING (continued)

 Feedback provider

- Teacher should give feedback on students’ writing tasks with special care.

- Teacher should respond positively and

encouragingly to the content of students’ written work.

- Teacher chooses kind of mistake to focus on when correcting their written work Overcorrection should

be avoided

Example of a checklist

 Check carefully to see whether all the subjects

agree with the verbs

 Check carefully to see if the verbs are in correct

Approaches to teaching writing in

ESL classes

1. The controlled to free approach

2. The free writing approach

3. The communicative approach

Techniques in planning writing class – basic questions.

1. How can writing help my students learn their

second language better?

2. How can I find enough topics?

3. How can I help to make the subject matter

more meaningful?

4. Who will read what my student write?

Techniques in planning writing class –