Developing writing skills

Indice
1. Introduction
2. Development
3. Conclusion
4. Bibliography

1. Introduction

Nowadays most people actually do very little writing in day – to day life, and a great deal of what we do write is quite short – brief notes to friends, answers on question forms, diary entries, postcards and etc.
Despite this, there may still be a number of good reasons why it is useful to include work on writing in our English lessons.
Our students have specific needs to take notes, copy resumes, describe processes.
Writing involves a different kind of mental process. There is more time to think, to reflect, to prepare, to find alternative and better solutions.
Writing should be as communicative, or functional, as possible. That is, it should be seen to fulfill the sort of normal communicative purposes, or functions it is used (for) in every day life. Although written English should certainly support and be integrated with grammar and vocabulary learning, the teaching of writing should be recognized as a special part of language teaching with its own aims and techniques.

2. Development

As you know, writing is the reproductive skill and our students commit many mistakes organizing in a sentence, sentences into a paragraph.
Writing is intimately related to the other language skills. One reads a text to write answers to questions (in reading comprehension activities) or to summarize it (in summary writing).
Similarly one usually discusses ideas before writing them down, and one listens before writing. There are different types of writing which reflect the different reasons for writing.
Effective writing, therefore depends on one’s ability to structure and organize words and sentences into a meaningful whole.
On the first steps in the teaching writing we may use sentences whose words have been scrambled. They will serve as illustrations of how the teachers explain grammar, vocabulary, and writing mechanics while teaching organizational writing.
So, the teacher can kill many birds with one stone. As an example we use the exercise 1 on page 24 or exercise 2 on page 25 ("Communicating and reading in English: an overall course for students of science and technology" Book 1).

Exercise 1

Organize the words into sentences		Restructured as:
1	Instructor-is-not-an-Jane	1	Jane is not an instructor
2	Cubans-are-we	2	We are Cubans
3	You-peruvians-are-?	3	Are you Peruvians?
4	It-is-who-?	4	Who is it?
5	An-engineer-am-I	5	I am an engineer

Exercise 2

Organize these words into sentences		Restructured as:
1	Do-study-where-you-?	1	Where do you study?
2	Does-what-language-speak-Mary Ann-?	2	What language does Mary Ann speak?
3	What-father-does-do-your-?	3	What does your father do?
4	When-have-classes-students-the-do-?	4	When do the students have classes?
5	Meet-do-you-frequently-people-new-?	5	Do you frequently meet new people?

The internal structure (syntax) of the sentences is the immediate problem for the student.
The teacher should point out that word "frequently" in the 5th sentence (Exercise 2) is an adverb and the suffix "ly" is the adverbial suffix.
The teacher can teach many other conventions of punctuation, depending on the structure of the sentence under consideration.
Once students understand sentence order, the teacher can move to sentence arrangement in a paragraph. The organization of any text depends greatly on the literary genre it represents [for instance, if a text is a narrative, or a commentary, or analysis, each genre requires and organizational format.
In an analysis, the writing must be logically organized whereas narratives require a chronological ordering; and a commentary presents an opinion with supportive facts]. Whatever the case, organizing a paragraph or a text requires an understanding of rhetorical markers. The student should watch for the following.

Organizing a paragraph or a text requires an understanding of rhetorical markers:

1. Semantic markers. They indicate how ideas are being developed. Examples of these semantic markers include firstly, secondly, finally, etc. We use widely these markers in "brief summary".
2. Markers for illustrations and examples such as, for instance, for example, etc.
3. Markers that introduce an idea that runs against what has been said earlier: but, nevertheless, yet, although, by contrast, etc.
4. Markers showing a cause and effect relationship between one idea and another. They include, so, therefore, because, since, thus, consequently.
5. Markers that show the speaker’s intention to sum up his message. Some of these phrases are to summarize, in other words, it amounts to, etc.
6. Markers indicating the relative importance of different items, e.g, it is worth nothing, it is important to note that, the next point is, etc.
7. Markers that express a time relationship, e.g, then, next, after, while, when.

Paragraphs and texts that contain sentences with the above rhetorical markers are much easier to organize than those without them. As an example of the exercise we use in our lessons is the exercise 1 on page 46.

1. English is a subject at the university because the students need it to read scientific books in that language.
2. A university student has to pass many examinations. In other words ha has to student hard.
3. To consult magazines for scientific work, some steps are necessary: first, scan the table of contents to select some articles; next skim through the articles selected, lastly study the articles and take notes.
4. Science demands effort, systematic work and self-control. In short, it demands discipline.

As point out earlier, the teacher can teach other components of writing by teaching organizational writing. Apart from teaching grammar, vocabulary, content, and mechanics through organization, the students are also encouraged to create a meaningful text out of confusion. This can therefore be a starting point for teaching creative writing to our students. (I’ll talk about this later)
Although some critics may say guided writing of this sort stifles the student’s ability to create his own text. Moreover, the text serves as a model for the student in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraph indentation.
Teaching organizational writing means introducing many different types of texts (scientific, historical, fiction) in the language class. The use of a wide variety of texts chases away monotony and boredom.
Some methodologists agree that in teaching writing we should follow this chart.

Writing work in the classroom falls on a continuum from copying to free writing

1	2	3	4
Copying	Doing	Guided	Free
	exercises	Writing	Writing

The copying exercises are the most simple exercises we use in our lesson.
The examples of the 2nd step are the exercises from our book "Communicating and reading in English".
Exercise 3 on page 36
Complete the sentences:

• Mary Ann will ____ a course in chemical engineering.
• Richard will ____ chemistry.
• Alice and Bill will ____ an English course.
• Engineering students ____ basic courses in mathematics and physics.
• Mechanical engineering students ___ force and vectors.

Exercise 2 on page 36
Write questions for the following answers:

• ________?Physics, mathematics and chemistry.
• ________? No, I haven’t.
• ________? In the engineering college.
• ________? Because engineering is very interesting.
• ________? The student.

The examples of the guided writing are:
Write down, in point form, all the details you can think of in answer to the following questions about a typical day

• How long is your day?
• What clothes do you wear?
• How many buildings do you go into? What are they like?
• What and when do you eat?
• How many different people do you see?
• Whom do you talk to? What about?
• What jobs do you have to do?
• What do you do for relaxation ?

Writing
The answers to these questions should, together, tell a great deal about your daily routine. Your assignment is to write a passage with the title, "A Typical Day". You don’t need to use all the details in the order in which you first gave them. Simply write and organized a composition about your daily routine.
Some ways in which guided writing exercises can help student prepare for a writing task:

• Students think about the topic before they write.
• Sts brainstorm ideas and approaches.
• Sts discuss the topic with other sts, getting new ideas and clarifying their own thoughts.
• Sts see example writing that deals with similar issues.
• The class works on a piece of similar writing together.
• Sts do some preliminary writing exercises –making notes, answering questions, ordering ideas, linking sentences, etc.
• Sts work through some language exercises containing language that may be useful in their writing.
• Sts prepare a rough draft of writing for discussion, correction and amendment.

Free writing is another warm up activity that generates ideas and get people to start writing. It is also called speed writing as one writes as quickly as possible without stopping. Again, as in brainstorming, the writer concentrates on content rather than on form or correctness. The idea is to get as many ideas down on paper as possible. This activity can be done alone or as a class.
After a short brainstorming session the teacher tells the class the purpose of the activity and then proceeds to demonstrate free writing on the blackboard. A two minute time limit is set and the teacher chooses an item from her own brainstorming notes and writes freely and quickly until the time is used up.
There is close relationship between free writing and creative writing. Writing is essentially a creative process and good writers must learn to communicate their ideas clearly to an unseen audience. This takes a lot of practice.
However, students have traditionally learned to write by completing fill in the blanks exercises which focus on accuracy rather than o the composing process. Creative writing on the other hand, gives learners practice in composing and complements more traditional approaches.
Here are some activities that focus on communication and self expression students will be encouraged to write if writing tasks motivate them and keep them interested. Pictures are a good starting point for writing narratives. One method is to collect about twenty photographs of people of different ages from various magazines. Then the teacher tapes these to the board and tell students that they should choose a picture of one person and try to write a narrative imagining that they are that person. They have to concentrate on details like job, hobbies, whether single or married, children, and so on. The teacher also tell them to avoid describing the person’s physical appearance and to use first person singular pronouns throughout. After they have finished writing they take reading their imaginary autobiographical narratives out loud while the other students have to look at the board and guess which of the people is "talking". As there is no description of physical features, the students have to listen closely to try and identify the right person.
Using the first person helps to make the narratives sound authentic and convincing.
This activity emphasizes the importance of writing as communication because any lack of clarity means that the listeners will not be able to recognize the "speaker". It combines writing and listening. To make the second stage more exciting it’s also possible to divide the students into teams and ward points for each person correctly identified.

3. Conclusion

As we have said, there are numerous opportunities to help students develop the writing skill.
Writing assists the listener, reader or observer in achieving a better understanding of what facilitates recall of facts as well as oral expression and reading.
The students language level and the purpose which the writing is to serve will determine the type of guidance the teacher must provide to help them to write in class and later on the job.

Recommendations

1. Focus on the content, avoiding language errors. Since the student will be deleting, adding, and re-writing a great part of the composition, making language mistakes would be a waste of time at this stage. On the other hand, focusing on the content separately from grammar helps us to deal with the rhetorical structure –an essential part of composing that is unfortunately neglected by English teachers most of the time.
2. Make specific comments avoiding cryptic language, jargon and symbols, and respond with questions as well as statements. Just as our students should write with an audience in mind, it’s our responsibility to show an awareness of the student writer as audience.
3. Do not impose your own interpretation on the students’ writing. They may misunderstand that what they have to say is not as important as what teacher wants to say. In this way the changes that follow may have nothing to do with what the student originally intended.
4. Note strengths as well weaknesses. Do not allow the errors to distract you from commenting positively on a student’s attempt to produce something to the best of his or her potential. It’s easier to locate the weaknesses in a paper then the strengths, but we should never forget that doing justice to our students involves noting both the pos and the cons.
5. Do not correct errors in grammar by providing the correct lexical or grammatical item. We should point out errors or categories of errors and let the students do the editing. Literature reveals that direct types of corrective procedures have proven ineffective.
6. Diagnose some general problems along with the individual errors and work on them in class. We can develop, for example, supporting sentences from the students’ own writing to deal with general trouble spots in grammar and mechanics.
7. Above all, make a comment, preferably an end comment, that is positive-something we usually tend to forget.

4. Bibliography

• Janice M. Laver: "Four Worlds of Writing". Second edition. Sponsoring Editor 1985.
• Jim Scriver: "Learning Teaching". 1994 p. 156
• Georges Terroux-Howard Woods: "Professional Handbook". Teaching English in a World at Peace. Mc Gill University. 1991. p 113.
• Vol 33 N 4 October 1995 "Forum Magazine" p. 30
• Vol 36 N 1 Jan-Mar 1998 by Gabriel A. "Write Right for a Job" p.28.
• Vol 32 N 3 July 1994 Kevin Keys "Happy families: a multiple writing stimulates activity" p. 37
• Vol 32 N 4 Oct 1994. "Responding to Student Writing" p. 25
• Vol 36 N 4 Oct-Dec 1994. "Creative Writing" p. 25
• Vol 34 N 2 April 1996. "Teaching Organizational Writing" p. 38
• Vol 38 N 1 January 2000. "Writing Cohesion" p. 28

 

 

Autor:

Liubov Andreevna Rusenko

Elena Sergeevna Velazco
University of Camagüey
English Department