Филологические науки / 1. Методика преподавания языка и литературы

Chugu S.D., Candidate of sciences

Kashina O.

Ways to Facilitate Writing in the EFL Classroom

Vinnytsia Institute of Trade and Economics of

Kyiv National University of Trade and Economics, Ukraine

There are many ways to structure learning within the innovative teaching and learning approaches. According to Krashen S. D. (1984), Batstone R. (1994), Badger R. and White B. (2000) the key to the success of language learning is a combination of different factors such as learners’ motivation, learning styles, methods and approaches of instruction, use of teaching aids, materials offered, teaching styles, classroom settings, techniques and activities used, favourable working atmosphere where students are invited to take risks and contribute to the learning success while involved in different activities.

Among the activities that proved effective Reinking J. A., Hart A. W. (1991), Hyland K. (2003) enumerate those that enhance language learners’ cognitive skills and are based on their life experiences and emotional involvement: these include role playing, problem solving, interactive tasks, games, information transfers, simulations, and the like.

Problem solving requires sharing information to solve a problem, but it is less involved than a simulation. Simulations resemble long role-plays meant for more advanced learners. They have a problem and information needed for the solution. Rescue, for example, involves players with maps that contain different information which must be shared to complete the rescue. The tutor may have to be one of the players when there are small numbers, though the process can be organized in a different way.

Role playing involves assigning learners roles in life-like situations so students can learn linguistic structures relevant to conversation and improvise conversations and behaviours for particular situations. Young children might role-play a situation on a playground or in the school while older children can role-play situations in a store, on the street, or make an emergency phone call at home. If there is only one child to tutor, the teacher will need to play a part. Masks, toys, puppets or figures on a flannel board would help a young child's imagination.

Information transfers can be done at a simple or more sophisticated level. Information in one form such as on a graph, calendar, or chart is translated into another form such as a written paragraph or an oral story.

Discussions and comparisons permit learners to share a variety of interesting materials about their country. Students can make charts to compare aspects of their culture.

Interactive tasks involve two speakers (two students or a learner and a tutor) asking and answering questions in order to complete a joint task. For example, they could each have different papers containing pictures or words which they do not show to the other person. They must ask each other questions to find out the missing information. It is possible to put up a barrier between them. An example might be drawing all of the furniture and placing it correctly on a picture of a room when each one has just half of the information. Jigsaw activities, during which small groups discuss some printed information that is unique to their group, then change groups and tell that information to a new group to complete a common task, are interactive. At least four students are expected to participate in such activities.

Games can be used to reinforce learning and to give a change of pace. With young children, much language learning can be done through action games. Computer reading-skill games at the appropriate level are a good addition to the ESL class, and may also be used in the regular classroom. When done by two students together, oral interaction is increased eventually.

Singing can be used for vocabulary building, comprehension practice (when done first without the words or with some words missing in a cloze form), pronunciation practice and meant for socio-personal reasons. It is particularly useful for pronunciation and stress, because the word stress also falls on the accented notes of the music, and words must be sung quickly in phrases. Chants are particularly useful for pronunciation and stress practice. They also enrich vocabulary and can be used for dictation exercises ( for example, a cloze format with missing words is best first, and "pair dictations" where two students take turns repeating and writing eases the pressure on the learner). There are a number of EFL cahnt books available children and adults, that come with cassettes, CDs and exercises. It is also possible to encourage students to create their own songs or chants.

Stanley G. (2007) mentions that to incorporate process instruction in language classes successfully, it is important for language learners to consider the following instructions: for example to ask students to do a lot of writing, but not to make every assignment count for a grade. Teachers are advised to read some students’ texts as a “real” reader, responding to content without seeking to correct it and to give students some class time to start brainstorming on a writing topic after the assignment is explained. 5 minutes can be effective for this task. A variety of prewriting and planning strategies should be encouraged, students sometimes need to do some writing before they know to what topic their thesis will refer.

Students react differently to different stimuli: some students work well from an outline, clustering or a tree diagram. Others may benefit from generating a series of questions they have, or think about their topic. Yet others benefit from visualizing a scenario in which they communicate the information, like a television news report or speech in a courtroom. Others can visualize by drawing scenes. Teachers should use various techniques and ways to help students visualize their writing.

The next crucial step is to assign students to peer groups to give each other focused feedback on drafts. Teachers should prepare some guidelines for peer responders, so that they can look for specific textual features, and ask them to provide written feedback to the student authors.

Peer group sessions can be held in class, face-to-face out of class, or in a computer environment (email, bulletin board, etc.). If possible, brief face-to-face conferences for discussion of student writing should be scheduled. It is advisable for questions to be framed as comments in the form of questions rather than in evaluative statements. When students produce multiple drafts of an essay, you can hold them to very rigorous standards for the final product.

Process writing as a classroom activity incorporates the four basic writing stages - planning, drafting (writing), revising (redrafting) and editing - and three other stages that are considered follow-up ones: responding (sharing), evaluating and post-writing.

Process writing in the classroom is highly structured as it necessitates the orderly teaching of process skills, and thus it may not, at least initially, give way to a free variation of writing at early stages. Teachers often plan appropriate classroom activities that support the learning of specific writing skills at every stage. Pre-writing is any activity in the classroom that encourages students to write. It stimulates thoughts for getting started. In fact, it moves students away from having to face a blank page toward generating tentative ideas and gathering information for writing.

Paltridge B. (2004) claims that activities such as group storming provide the learning experiences for students at this stage. Group members come up with their ideas about the topic. As there are no right or wrong ideas students may cover familiar ground first and then move off to more abstract or wild domains.

While clustering students form words related to a stimulus offered by the teacher. The words are circled and then linked by lines to show possible clusters. Clustering is a simple yet powerful strategy.

The next logical step is rapid free writing when within a minute or two, students freely and quickly write down single words and phrases about a topic individually. The time limit keeps the writers' minds ticking and thinking fast. Rapid free writing is done when group brainstorming is not possible or because the personal nature of a certain topic requires a different strategy. As the next step it is recommended to ask special questions about the topic as the answers to these provide additional information that can be used in further writing.

In addition, ideas for writing can be elicited from multimedia sources such as printed material, videos, films, as well as from direct interviews, talks, surveys, and questionnaires. Understandably students will be more motivated to write when given a variety of means for gathering information during pre-writing.

Once sufficient ideas are gathered at the planning stage, the first attempt at writing - that is, drafting - may proceed quickly. At the drafting stage, students focus on the fluency of writing and are not preoccupied with grammatical accuracy or the neatness of the draft.

Stanley G. (2007) and Steele V. (2004) point out that one attribute of good writing is the ability to visualize an audience. Although writing in the classroom is almost always for the teacher, the students may also be encouraged to write for different audiences composed of peers, other classmates, pen-friends and family members. Awareness of audience needs helps choose an appropriate style. In addition students should also have in mind a central idea that they want to communicate to the audience in order to give direction to their writing.

Responding to students’ writing by the teacher or by peers has a central role to play in the successful implementation of process writing (Chen Y.2007). Responding intervenes between drafting and revising. It is the teacher's quick initial reaction to students' drafts. Response can be oral or in writing, after the students have produced the first draft and just before they proceed to revise. The failure of many writing programmes in schools today may be explained by the fact that responding is done in the final stage when the teacher simultaneously responds and evaluates, and even edits students' finished texts, thus giving students the impression that nothing more needs to be done.

At the revising stage students review their texts on the basis of the feedback given in the responding stage. They reexamine what was written to see how effectively they have communicated their meanings to the reader. Revising is not merely checking for language errors. It is done to improve global content and the organisation of ideas so that the writer's intent is made clearer to the reader.

While editing students are engaged in tidying up their texts as they prepare the final draft for evaluation by the teacher. They edit their own or their peer's work for grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure and accuracy of supportive textual material such as quotations, examples and the like. Formal editing is deferred till this phase in order that its application does not disrupt the free flow of ideas during the drafting and revising stages.

Editing within process writing is meaningful because students can see the connection between such an exercise and their own writing in that correction is not done for its own sake but as part of the process of making communication as clear and unambiguous as possible to an audience.

Concerning evaluating students’ writing Flower L.S., & Hayes J.R. (1981) insist on the fact that the scoring may be done in different ways, the most common being analytical, that is based on specific aspects of writing ability, or holistic, based on a global interpretation of the effectiveness of the piece of writing. In order to be effective, the criteria for evaluation should be made familiar to students in advance. They should include overall interpretation of the task, role of audience, relevance, development and organisation of ideas, format or layout, grammar and structure, spelling and punctuation, range and appropriateness of vocabulary, and clarity of communication.

Depending on the purpose of evaluation, a numerical score or grade may be assigned. Students may be encouraged to evaluate their own and each other's texts once they have been properly taught how to do it. In this way they are made to be more responsible for their own writing.

Post-writing means any classroom activity that the teacher and students can do with completed pieces of writing. This includes publishing, sharing, reading aloud, transforming texts for stage performances, or merely displaying texts on notice-boards. The post-writing stage is a platform for recognising students' work as important and worthwhile. It may be used as a motivation for writing as well as to hedge against students finding excuses for not writing. Students must be made to feel that they are writing for a very real purpose.

In conclusion, for the writing process to be a success, teachers should plan classroom activities in an adequate and logical way, design the writing process at every stage carefully and teach specific writing strategies to students through meaningful classroom activities. Consideration of different factors that include variables of the learning process and effective pedagogical approaches result in the active involvement of the students that in its turn will facilitate the learning process and ensure good achievements.

References

1. Badger, R. & White, B. (2000). A process genre approach to teaching. ELT Journal, 54 (2),153-160.

2. Batstone, R. (1994). Product and process: Grammar in the second language classroom. In Bygate, Journal of NELTA Vol. 15 No. 1-2, December 2010

3. Chen, Y.(2007). Learning to learn: the impact of strategy training. ELT Journal, 61 (1), 20-29.

4. Flower, L.S., & Hayes, J.R. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College Composition and Communication, 32(4), 365-387.

5. Hyland, K. (2003). Genre-based pedagogies: A social response to process. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12, 17-29.

6. Krashen, S. D. (1984). Writing: Research, theory and applications. Oxford: Pergamon Institute of English.

7. Paltridge, B. (2004). Approaches to teaching second language writing. 17th Educational Conference Adelaide 2004. Retrieved on 20th September 2010 from http://www.Englishaustralia.com.au/ea_conference04/proceedings/df/ Paltridge.pdf

8. Reinking, J. A., & Hart, A. W. (1991). Strategies for successful writing. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

9. Stanley, G. (2007). Approaches to process writing. Barcelona, Spain: British Council. Retrieved on 17th August 2010 from <http://www. teachingenglish. org.uk /think/write/process_write.shtml>

10. Steele, V. (2004). Product and process writing. Retrieved on 5th Sept. 2010 from http:// www.englishonline.org.cn/en/teachers/ workshops/teaching-writing/ teaching-tips/product-process