Nurlanbekova Y.K.

Kazakh state women’s teacher training university

Kazakhstan, Almaty

Writing is an effective means in language learning

Writing is probably the linguistic skill that is least used by most people in their native language. Even in the most 'advanced' societies a significant percentage of the adult population writes with difficulty. Good writing skills usually develop from extensive reading, some specific training, and a good deal of practice.

Writing involves the following basic skills:

- handwriting or typing

- spelling

- constructing grammatical sentences

- punctuating.

Those learners whose language does not use the Roman alphabet may have to spend a considerable amount of time in getting a good command of the alphabet, spelling, and punctuation. A lot of this work may be done through reading activities – for example, word, phrase, and sentence recognition - as well as writing. You can organize some of the necessary practice as games and competitions.

At higher levels, writing involves cognitive skills such as:

- gathering information and ideas relevant to the topic, and discarding
what is not relevant

- organizing the information and ideas into a logical sequence

- structuring the sequence into sections and paragraphs

- expressing the information and ideas in a written draft

- editing the draft and writing out a final text.

These composing skills are necessary for all formal writing, such as formal letters, academic assignments or articles, and business reports. They are not so necessary in the writing of informal letters. We may write the latter as if we were speaking, putting ideas down on paper as they come to us, often adding a postscript containing something we forgot when we were writing the main part of the letter.

Writing activities

Writing in an English language course may be handled in different ways for different purposes. The aim of the commonest type of writing practice is to consolidate the learning of functional or grammatical items. For example, you might give the learners sentence completion exercises or a guided composition requiring the writing of several examples of comparatives after you have presented and practised them orally. This can be very useful to clarify the grammar, to provide a change of activity in a lesson, or to give extra practice outside the classroom as homework. The other main type of writing practice is intended to develop higher-level writing skills. That means the ability to do the writing tasks in intermediate and advanced proficiency examinations, and to do real business and academic writing. However, some work towards this type of writing can be started at lower levels. It can even be combined with writing principally intended to consolidate grammar.

Teaching ideas

Here are three examples of simple writing tasks:

• Parallel compositions

With the whole class, discuss the topic of animals' characteristics and habits to

elicit sentences in the Simple Present like:

Chimpanzees live in central Africa. They eat fruit and leaves. Adult chimpanzees weigh 40 to 50 kilos. They are very intelligent animals.

Ask for volunteers to write these sentences up on the board. Correct them if necessary. Then, telling the learners to use the sentences on the board as patterns, get them to work in pairs and write a parallel composition about some other animal, for example, kangaroos. You could then ask them to write compositions for homework about animals of their choice. Similar work could be done about cities (to practise 'There is/are') or famous people (to practise the Simple Past).

• Parallel letters

Get the learners to read a letter, consisting mostly of personal information, from someone looking for a pen pal. Then tell them to write a reply with their own personal information, following the format of the original letter. The first paragraph might state the purpose of the letter, the second and third might give personal information, and the last paragraph might be a request for a reply. Another letter could ask for information about things to see and do in their city, or for information about a specific hotel.

• Picture compositions

Get the learners to tell a simple story illustrated by a sequence of pictures, as in the example on the next page.

Ask for volunteers to repeat the whole story from memory. Then get the learners to write the story in pairs or groups. It may be divided into three paragraphs – the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story.

Recommended Literature:

1.Campbell, C. and H. Kryszewska. Learner-based Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. Hadfield, J. Elementary Communication Games. Walton-on-Thames: Nelson.

3. Hedge, T. 1988. Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.