Куттыгадамова Маржан Гинаятовна, старший преподаватель

Казахская Академия Труда и Социальных Отношений, Казахстан

Developing Writing Skills

Writing as a skill is very important in teaching and learning a foreign language. It helps the learners to assimilate letters and sounds on the English language, its vocabulary and grammar, and to develop habits and skills in pronunciation, speaking and reading. There are the following types of writing:

Personal writing	Public writing	Creative writing
Diaries Journals Shopping lists Reminders for oneself Packing lists	Letters of -enquire -complaint -request Form filling	Poems Stories Rhymes Drama Song
Social writing	Study writing	Institutional writing
Letters Invitations Notes -of condolence -of thanks -of congratulations Emails Telephone messages Instructions	Making notes while reading Taking notes lectures Making a card index Summaries Synopses Reviews Reports of -experiments -workshops	Agendas Posters Minutes instructions Memoranda speeches Reports applications Review curriculum vitae Contracts specifications Business letters Public notices Advertisements

The reasons for writing

• For pedagogic purpose, to help to students learn the system of language.

• for assistant purpose, as way of establishing a learners progress or proficiency

• for real purposes, as a goal of learning, to meet students needs

• for humanistic purposes, to allow quieter students to show their strengths

• for creative purposes, to develop self-expression

• for classroom management purposes, as a calm activity which settles students down

• for educational purposes, to contribute to intellectual development and to develop self-esteem and confidence.

Planning classroom writing work

A typical route for classroom work on helping students to write involves the following steps:

1.	Introduce the topic	Get students interested maybe by reading a text showing picture, discussing some key issues.
2.	Introduce and summarize the main writing task	Make sure students are clear what they have to do. They need to know who they are writing for and why.
3.	Brainstorm ideas	Whole class: use the board to collect as many ideas as possible. Small groups: speak and take notes.
4.	Fast-write	A very good way to overcome blank page terror and get ideas flowing is to fast-write.
5.	Select and reject ideas	What’s worth leaving?
6.	Sort and order	Start to plan structure of text by arranging ideas.
7.	Decide on specific requirements style, information and layout.	How is the text to be organized. Are there any special rules? Are there things that must be included or stated in a certain way?
8.	Focus on useful models	Help students to study one or more samples of written texts similar to the one they are writing. Focus on content, message, organization, grammar, phrases, etc.
9.	Plan the text	Use notes sketches or cut up cards to start organizing a possible shape for the text.
10.	Get feedback	At various points, you, other individual students or group can read and make helpful comments about a text.
11.	Prepare	Students often benefit from preparing a draft version before the final one.
12.	Edit	Student carefully go through their own text, checking if its language is correct, etc.
13.	Prepare final text	Based on feedback, students write a finished text
14.	Readers	Rather than simply mark a text, it is great when students can respond to it in some more realistic ways.

Generating ideas

Brainstorming

It can be hard to get enough good ideas to write about. Brainstorm is a way to get the ideas creation engine running. It means opening your mind and letting ideas pour out. It also means not engaging that ‘checking’ part of your brain that too quickly dismisses things as stupid or useless. For this reason, it seems helpful to separate the ideas collection and the critical revive of those ideas.

Here’s a way to brainstorm in class:

• Write the topic or title in a circle in the middle of the board.

• Tell student to call out anything that comes to mind connected with the topic.

• Write up everything on the board.

• There should be no discussion or comments, just ideas.

Texts –starts

A lot of real-writing involves looking at other text and summarizing, reporting, responding to them, selecting ideas from them, commenting on them. Supplying text-star can be a good way to provide useful writing work for students and practices reading/writing skills that are useful in professional life and academic research. The actual content of the texts provides a lot of support for the writer in that there is something concrete to deal with and many ideas are already formulated and mainly need a response or opinion, rather than original thought.

Fast- writing

For many writers, the single most difficult thing is simply to start writing. The blank page sits in front of you, and it can become very hard even to put down the first word. The longer you fail to write, the harder those first sentences become. Instead, imagine that your students could have a whole page of their own writing to start from; not a final version but something on which to base their new writing. This what fast-writing aims to achieve. Even if only a word or a line from this first attempt makes it into the final text, it is has purpose, like the ignition key on car, getting the writing started.

•start writing about the topic;

•not stop writing;

•not put their pen down at all;

•not worry about spelling grammar etc.;

•write «um, um» or «rubbish» or something else if they can’t think of what to write;

•not stop to go back and read what they have written;

•keep writing till you say stop.

At the end they will have a page or more of writing. A lot of it will be rubbish! But there will also often be ideas and ways of saying things that are well worth retrieving. Give the learners enough time to really look back over what they have written. Tell them to be ruthless and cross out a lot of the writing but also to retrieve some good pieces. They can then use theses as starting points for the new writing.

It’s a surprisingly useful task. Often we don’t know what on earth we are going to write until we start writing it. Fast- writing is one way to start that finding-jut process.

An eight-stage approach to composition writing

1. Oral discussion of the topic. During this stage, the teacher might jot on the board a number of useful words, phrases, sentences or ideas. Sometimes key or topic sentences, for example, the first sentence of paragraph-might also go on board. During this stage, the teacher encourages the students to try approach the topic from an unusual angle, if possible but one which enables them to write from experience.

2. Individual planning. The students jot down their ideas in note form. Some do this paragraph others prefer to jot them down as they come to them, more or less randomly. The teacher helps out where necessary.

3. The students then write the composition usually in rough first. Even professional writers don’t get it right first time!

4. They check it through, possible in cooperation with a fellow student, and amend it as necessary.

5. They hand it in for marking.

6. The teacher hands to work back and discusses it with the students, drawing attention to any common problems.

7. Corrections. Sometimes students should be given the opportunity of writing out a correct version of their work.

8. Follow-up. Problems diagnosed during this exercise are treated in later lessons to prevent them from re-occurring.

References:

1. Kolker Y.M. Methods of teaching foreign languages. M.: 2000.

2. Liz Inness-Brown. The Writing Center at Saint Michael’s College, 2005.

3. Jennifer Crider. On Teaching Writing. Christian Light Publications. 2000.