Ларіна О.С., Суховецька С.В.

Житомирський державний технологічний університет

Teaching Writing: General aspects

The definition of success in the language learning classroom is often determined by the measure of accuracy in production by the students. Although accuracy is one dimension of a learner’s ability, it is limited in scope as a measurement of capacity to communicate effectively. In fact, in many instances, when learners are intent on producing language with prescriptive accuracy, they will opt to forgo opportunities to use their second language in creative and productive ways. It has also been questioned whether a strict focus on accuracy produces improved results in output.

When we talk about teaching writing most teachers will say that it is a fairly low priority in their classrooms. Of course, there are exceptions to this. For example, in a writing class, a business class or an exam class where one component is a writing paper, it clearly has its place. But, in general, writing often falls below speaking, vocabulary, grammar and even reading and listening in terms of perceived importance. One of the problems is that writing is often seen as time consuming. This is compounded by the fact that writing is seen as an individual or solitary activity and usually requires a fairly lengthy product, e.g. a letter, an essay, etc. Therefore, writing is often set as a homework task and neglected in the classroom.

There several good reasons to teach writing:

· It is something we do in our first language and will probably need to do in our second language.

· It involves a different process than speaking and gives students more thinking and preparation time.

· It is more tangible than speaking. Students are able to look back at what they have written, analyze it, edit it and improve it.

· Writing is a form of consolidation and can help students remember things.

· It can be incredibly motivating. Being able to look back and reflect on what was achieved and also see concrete examples of progress.

· It's a good activity for noisy classes and can also be used to change the pace of a lesson.

Absolutely nothing as long as the groundwork has already been done in the classroom. The problem is that this is often not the case. Writing is set cold for homework and then students struggle to write anything half decent, and we really shouldn't be surprised. For example, students do a lesson on holidays. The lesson starts with a vocabulary lead-in activity, followed by a listening on three different holidays, then reading a postcard and matching to one of the holidays mentioned in the listening activity and finally a speaking activity where students discuss which place they would like to visit. Students are then asked to write a postcard imagining they are in that place. To my mind, not enough work has been done to enable the students to produce a good piece of writing. And yet, there is the raw material within the lesson to help students to focus on how to write a postcard and what to include. If a little bit of time had been devoted to this, the written task would have been appropriate homework.

How can teachers help students with their writing in the classroom? The first thing to do is to decide what exactly we mean by 'writing' because if we define what types of activities are included, then we can take a closer look at how these can be developed within a classroom.

An essential thing to realize is that writing does not just mean extended pieces. Simple things such as copying down sentences from the board, or writing out a jumbled word sentence from a workbook are writing activities. In fact, they are often very important activities in terms of helping our students with their writing. If students are unable to copy sentences correctly, then they will make lots of mistakes when they come to write something longer. Simple writing activities such as copying, filling in the blanks, unbundling sentences and completing forms are a great way to get students to write at lower levels and will stand them in good stead later on when they do need to write longer pieces.

At higher levels it is the key that teachers contextualize any writing activities. It is extremely beneficial if students can discuss any writing activity in pairs or small groups. These discussions can be directed with a series of questions: Who are you writing to? Why are you writing to them? What response do you want from them? What is your relationship with them? How formal does the piece of writing need to be? Is there a particular style or format associated with the type of writing? By getting students to discuss these kinds of questions they are no longer going into them cold. Additional classroom tasks focusing on particular language issues such as choice of words, paragraphing, syntax and so on will of course increase the chances of students producing quality pieces of work.

Purpose is the key here. If students see a reason for writing that is relevant both to their learning and to their life, they are more likely to be motivated. It is not enough for a teacher to say, "I'd like you to do this because it will be good for you."

When we write in our daily lives we always have a reason for doing so. It's often worth discussing the type of writing students do in their first language and trying to mirror these types of things in the target language. So, if your students write lots of texts and emails, why not start with these?

Also, when we write in real life we often receive some kind of response. This may be in the form of a phone call, a spoken comment or a written reply. So, is there any way you can build in a response to anything your students write? It doesn't necessarily have to be you replying to everything. Perhaps students can write to each other.

In many ways writing is like speaking. In both cases there is an audience, someone we are addressing. We would not think of speaking as a solitary activity because we would usually expect someone to be listening to what we were saying. Well, when we write it should be the same; we are writing with an audience in mind, a reader. The main differences are that there is a greater distance and this means there is a time lapse in the responses we receive. However, when we write we often require or expect a response in much the same way we do when we speak. When we are speaking we will usually get an immediate response to what we say. When we write we still want a response, but we have to wait for it.

When we write we have to think about the person who will read it and therefore we have to include them in some form in the process of writing the piece.