1. Teaching writing

2. When is your birthday?
How do you usually celebrate it?

3. Why is Laurence writing to you?
What does she want you to bring to her dinner?

4. Teaching writing: objectives
By the end of the session you will have:
Experienced writing in a foreign language
Identified and discussed two approaches to teaching writing
Identified some of the skills good writers use at text, sentence and word level
Examined and shared ideas about how to help learners develop these skills

5. A process approach to teaching writing
Writing is ‘ a complex, cognitive process that requires sustained intellectual effort over a considerable period of time’. ( Arndt and White 1991)
‘One of the most important facts about the composing process that seems to get hidden from students is that the process that creates precision is itself messy’. (Shaughnessy 1977, quoted in Hedge)
What are the key features of a process approach to writing?

6. A process approach to writing
Learning to write through writing.
Focus on contextualised communication: on the message more than the details
Higher order choices determine lower order ones
Research shows that successful writers focus on organising ideas before paying attention to spelling, punctuation and grammar’
Importance of awareness of the audience
The focus is on the steps involved in drafting and redrafting a piece of work
Research shows feedback between drafts is more useful than corrections written on work returned to the students after the process has finished
Writing can be done collaboratively as well as individually
The readers can be other students as well as the teacher:
Students become more aware of audience if they know they are writing for each other
Students develop the ability to evaluate their own and others’ writing.

7. How do good writers plan?
I don’t know what I think until I see what I’ve said. E.M. Forster
I write to find out what I’m talking about. Edward Albee

8. What does research tell us about the planning process?
Planning is not a single phase but a thinking activity
different writers plan in different ways
writing process is recursive and generative
Revising takes place through the whole process
All writers pay attention to surface level features, but better writers deal with these at the end of the process.
Good writers focus on purpose and audience

9. How can I use elements of a process approach in the classroom?
How do you motivate students to write?
Do you give students time to generate ideas for writing?
Do you let students spend time writing in class?
Do you give students opportunities to draft and redraft work?
Do you get students writing in pairs or groups?
Do you get students to look at and evaluate each other’s work?
How do you get students to focus on the message as well as the language?
How do you help students to be aware of the audience for their writing?

10. To summarise….
focus on meaning rather than form (grammatical correctness )encourages writing development; 
writing should be contextualised and content should be meaningful and relevant to learners; 
learners need some degree of overt instruction which includes talk about writing, substantive, specific feedback, and multiple opportunities for revision; 
socio-cultural variation in writing practices and genres need to be taken into account; 
all writing pedagogy reflects a stance about the learner in relation to the social order.
Elsa Auerbach
'Making meaning making change; Participatory Curriculum Development for Adult ESL Literacy' (1992?)

11. Process approach- evauluation
What were the weaknesses of this approach? How could I have done it differently? What’s the other approach called?

12. Process and product compared
learning to write through writing
Focus on contextualised communication
Focus on the steps involved in drafting and redrafting
Writing can be done collaboratively as well as individually
The readers can be other students as well as the teacher
Product
Learning to write through imitating models
Focus on features of texts and getting Ss to use these accurately
Focus is on the finished product: ‘the coherent, error free text’. (Nunan 272)
Traditionally writing is done by the individual and often for homework
Traditionally the work is marked by the teacher

13. A product approach What do good writers do?
What do we need to teach our learners to do?
What skills do learners need to develop at Entry 3?
Text
Sentence
Word

14. Entry 3 writing criteria
Text
Plan and draft writing – including awareness of audience and genre
Organise writing in short paragraphs
Sequence chronological writing
Proof-read and correct writing for grammar and spelling
Sentence
Write in complete sentences
Use correct basic grammar
Use punctuation correctly
Word
Correctly spell common words and relevant key words for work and special interest
Produce legible text

15. Match activities and curriculum descriptors
Have you tried any of these ideas?
Could you try them?
Any other ideas for developing the same skills?

16. Choose one idea you’d like to try out. Tell your group about it.

17. Responding to students’ writing
5 tips

18. Responding to students’ writing
Use a correction code and train students in how to use it
Respond to content as well as language
Mark positively as well as negatively (Petty: medals and missions):
Tell them what they’ve done right
Give clear goals for improvement
Assess at all three levels: text, sentence and word
Let students know what they are being assessed on and involve them in the assessment process. Give them a simplified version of the criteria example of marksheet: Tick if you/your partner met the criteria
Get them assessing each others’ work
Get them assessing their own work
Find ways of making them aware of an audience (ie not only the teacher is responding):
Display their work on the wall
Make little booklets of their writing and display them on the wall
Get them writing to each other
If possible get them writing to real audiences (the council, the local paper, etc)
Pick out common errors and put on handout/IWB. Students in pairs correct the errors
Reformulation: take one student’s work. Keep the same basic ideas but improve it in terms of accuracy, organisation, appropriacy, etc. Students in groups compare the original and reformulated work and discuss reasons for reformulation. This is best done between first and final draft, so the students can apply to their own final draft.