Topic > Teaching English: Writing in a Second Language

IndexTeaching listeningProviding practice in planningInteractive approachThe social constructionist viewHow do writers write? How do their ideas appear to be generated? What happens to these ideas after they are recorded? To what extent are these writers concerned with the development and clarification of these ideas? To what extent and at what point in the process are these more mechanical issues? Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay A number of findings emerged: Planning was not a single step but a thinking activity that writers returned to again and again during composition. These writers had individual strategies for “getting into” writing. Some wrote notes, lists, or diagrams, and all students spent a lot of time thinking at the beginning, but two of the best writers didn't write anything until they started the essay. The writing process was recursive and generative, with students rereading their work, evaluating it, reacting, and moving forward. There was an interesting distinction between the poorer writers, who seemed to focus on rereading only smaller parts of speech, and the better writers, who sometimes reread entire paragraphs. Revision occurred throughout the process and generally involved considerable changes: for example, composing something new, deleting sentences and moving paragraphs, and sometimes deleting them. All writers paid attention to surface-level features, but the best writers took care of them at the end of the process. They were the poorer writers who spent time in the process changing words and sentences. Language problems seemed to worry the writers less. The best writers used strategies such as leaving a blank or writing a word in their first language so as not to be distracted while developing ideas. Once ideas were written and developed, writers began to edit them for surface-level characteristics such as accuracy in grammar, word choice, spelling, and punctuation. These findings were supported by many other studies, such as that of Raimes, which supported Zamel's (1983) observations on the role of language in the composition process. He suggested that with students showing lack of proficiency in writing, poor compositional proficiency may be a more important factor than poor linguistic proficiency. He used think aloud protocols to investigate the writing process and made the following comment about experienced writers: “They consider the purpose and the audience. They consult their background knowledge. They let ideas incubate. They plan as they write, reread what they have written. Contrary to what many textbooks advise, writers do not follow an orderly sequence of planning, organizing, writing, and then revising. Indeed, while the writer's product - the finished essay, a story or a novel - is presented in lines, the process that produces it is not linear at all. intensive listening material and procedures. Listening to both types is particularly important because it provides the perfect opportunity to hear voices other than the teacher's, allows students to acquire good oral habits through the spoken English they absorb, and helps improve their pronunciation. The issues that arise For teachers, insights into what makes a successful writer involve teaching strategies for planning, revising, editing, and helping students developsense of the public. The process approach seeks to provide useful support to student writers. The nature of the support will depend on the type of students, for example, their age, background and English writing needs. It could be argued that adult learners should already have developed effective writing strategies in their first year of language learning. However, it may be that students have not received the necessary support in their first language and will benefit from a process approach in the language classroom. English, whatever their age. Therefore, the main purpose of the process approach is to help students gain greater control over the cognitive strategies involved in composing. This suggests a set of principles for the teacher to incorporate into the teaching of writing. One of the most difficult tasks in writing is getting started. Even writers who are fluent in their own language need time to generate ideas and plan what to write about. Students are no different. If we want to ask them to write something more substantial than instant writing, we need to give them the opportunity to think. This is especially true for more formal tasks such as writing narrative, offering opposing points of view on a topic, writing reports, formal letters, designing publicity materials such as advertisements and posters. In academic writing, when tutors set tasks, a first pedagogical step might be to encourage students to work in pairs and arrive at an understanding of the task by questioning and clarifying the meaning of key expressions and selecting the information needed to carry out the task . Collaboration makes idea generation more enjoyable and productive. In the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom, when tasks are set for practical purposes, the teacher has the responsibility to help students put their ideas together. White and Arndt (1991) make a useful distinction between guided techniques in which questions are used and unguided techniques in which students generate ideas on their own. Both guided and unguided techniques demonstrate the help teachers can give as students think about a topic, discover a purpose, and decide on a perspective in the early stages of writing. Note that these activities show how writing can be stimulated by students working interactively. This interaction has the value of providing student writers with an audience on which to test content selection. However, we must keep in mind the solitary nature of most writing and gradually move students toward the independent position of a writer engaged in real writing tasks. There are many techniques used to help students generate ideas. The “brainstorming technique” is an example of such possible techniques. This generates ideas through individual reflection: these are scribbled down and developed as the mind creates associations. Provide practice in planning Since we know that successful writers plan their writing in very different ways. Many teachers now find that the best help they can give is to provide students with planning ideas early on and let them undertake those that they individually find useful and appealing. At the same time, it is essential to communicate the flexible nature of the plans, which ideally should change and be adapted as the writing progresses and generates alternative ideas and structures. There are many ways to help students organize their ideas: Through group planning, strategic questioning by the teacher, organizingpoints in a hierarchy of importance for your presentation, highlight essential information, sequence the information provided, and sort and match ideas. The advantage of mind maps such as brainstorming, for example as a planning strategy, particularly for descriptions, is that all aspects of a topic can be easily related to each other and possible connections between sections of the composition are suggested . This can help in planning the overall text in advance. All of these techniques provide initial support for what will ultimately be an individually undertaken process. Helping student writers develop a sense of audience is another important task. With less mature writers, who may not have developed a sense of audience by writing in their first language, we can create an audience and increase reader awareness. For example, the school may provide an audience composed of its English language learner population; for example, class magazines can be published for the wider school community. Inside the class it is possible for the teacher to set up pair work. The ability to speak fluently presupposes not only knowledge of the characteristics of the language, but also the ability to process information and language on the spot. Numerous problems arise for any teacher who tries to incorporate the principles of process writing into their professional practice. First, teachers need to allow time for writing in the supported learning environment of the classroom. Many students will benefit from structured assignments, which teach them strategies for planning, drafting and revising. Many teachers argue that setting aside time for feedback and reviewing several drafts is unrealistic, particularly within the confines of the school. systems; and above all where the classes are large. Regarding this issue, a compromise is to spend as much time as possible teaching writing in the early stages and then encourage independence through practice outside of lessons. If it is true that you learn to write by writing, this suggests that the more you practice, the better. The activity, therefore, from a simple task becomes a more natural exchange of ideas and reflections with the teacher and the rest of the group. class. The process approach to writing is not without its critics, and issues related to time and large classes are certainly implementation issues that every teacher must take into account. Another concern concerns students who are preparing for the exam. The multiple draft approach is hardly suitable for testing: a distinction needs to be made between classroom writing aimed at developing efficiency and tests, which aim to demonstrate such efficiency and for which other strategies are needed. A related serious criticism is that the process approach does not address the realities of the lives of those students working with English writing in academic contexts, where essays must be produced under time constraints. The process approach aims to get to the heart of various problems. skills that should be employed when writing. The writing process is more complex, and the various stages of drafting, revising, rewording, and writing, etc., are performed recursively: we work backwards and move forward through these various stages. Therefore, during the editing phase we may feel the need to return to a pre-writing phase and think again; we may edit parts of our writing as we draft it. Ron White and Valerie Arndt are keen to underline that "writing is rewriting that revision, seeing with new eyes, which has a central role to play in the act ofcreate a text" in According to their model, the writing process is an interrelated set of recursive phases that include: Drafting Structuring (ordering information, experimenting with arrangements, etc.) Revision (checking context, connections, evaluating impact, editing ) Focus (i.e. making sure you get the necessary information) message you want to convey). Generating ideas and evaluating the draft and/or subsequent drafts it takes time: time to brainstorm ideas or gather them in other ways; time to outline a piece of writing and then, with the help of the teacher perhaps revise it and modify it in various ways before, perhaps, changing the focus, generating more ideas, rephrasing, reassembling and so on. However, the various stages can involve discussion, research, study of the language and a considerable amount of interaction between the teacher and students. so that, when the writing process is handled appropriately, it extends across the entire writing process.entire curriculum.There are times when process writing is simply not appropriate, because class time is limited, or because we want Whether students write quickly as part of a communication game, or when working alone, we want them to compose a letter or story brief on the spot. Much of the previous criticism of the process approach comes from advocates of English for academic purposes, which seems as much a reaction to the process approach as an attempt to build a new and distinct perspective on the composition of ESL. An important part of this criticism is that the process approach does not adequately address some central issues in APS writing. Reid (1984) suggested that the approach neglects to seriously consider variations in writing processes due to differences in individuals, writing tasks, and situations; linguistic competence; level of cognitive development. Critics also question whether the process approach realistically prepares students for academic work. According to Horowitz, the approach “creates a classroom situation that bears little resemblance to the situation in which (student writing) will eventually be practiced” (p. 144). He goes on to suggest that a process orientation ignores certain types of important academic writing tasks (particularly essay exams) and that what he sees as two fundamental principles of the process approach – “content determines form” and “good writing implies writing" - are not necessarily true in many academic contexts. In essence, he claims that the process approach overemphasizes the psychological functioning of the individual and neglects the socio-cultural context, i.e. the realities of academia – that, in fact, the process approach operates in a socio-cultural vacuum. The proposed alternative involves a primary focus on the genres of academic discourse and the range and nature of academic writing tasks, aimed at helping to socialize the student into the academic context and thus “ensure that students' writing falls within the range of behaviors of acceptable writing dictated by the academic community". The suggested teaching methodology aims to recreate the conditions in which real university writing tasks are carried out and involves the examination and in-depth analysis of academic discourse formats and the specifics of writing tasks; the selection and intensive study of original materials appropriate for a given topic, question or problem; the evaluation, synthesis and organization of relevant data.