TEACHING WRITING

1. TEACHING WRITING

2. Questions • In Turkish which of the 4 skills do you find more difficult? • What have you written in the past two weeks?

3. Why include writing in Teaching English? • Sts. learn by writing • Examinations • Gives the teacher a break!

4. WRITING CONVENTIONS • HANDWRITING • SPELLING • LAYOUT AND PUNCTUATION

5. 2 aspects of writing • A means of learning/practicing lang. forms • A means of communicating a message

6. PROCESS AND PRODUCT • When concentrating on the product we are only intereseted in the aim of a task and in the end product. • A process approach to writing pay attention to the various stages that any piece of writng goes through. By spending time with learners on pre-writing phases, editing, redrafting, and finally publishing their work. • A process approach aims to get to the heart of the various skills that should be employed when writing.

7. PROCESS WRITING STAGES ARE: Drafting Structuring (ordering information) Reviewing (checking contexts) Focusing ( that is making sure you are getting the message across you want to get across) Generating ideas and evaluation (assesing the draft)

9. WRITING AND GENRE • In a genre approach to writing students study texts in the genre they are going to be writing before embark on their own writing. We let them look at typical models of materials before starting to compose. A genre approach is especially appropriate for students of English for Specific Purposes. This could be seen as as extremely prescriptive or reproduction rather than creative writing.

10. CREATIVE WRITING • This suggests imaginative tasks as writing poetry, stories and plays. Creative writing is a journey of self-discovery, and self- discovery promotes effctive learning. • There is always a danger that students may find writing imaginatively difficult. It is also important to expect whole compositons from the first. We need to build up it bit by bit, starting with phrases and sentences before expecting whle compositions.

11. WRITING AS A COOPERATIVE ACTIVITY • Cooperative writing works well with both process and genre based approaches. In the first case, reviewing and evaluation are greatly enhanced by having more than one person working on it, and the generation of ideas is frequently more lively with group works. • Writing in groups, whether as part of a long process or as part of short game like communicative activity, can be greatly motivating for students, including as it does, not only writing, but research, discussion, peer evaluation and group pride in a group accomplishment.

12. Which skills are involved? • Mastering basic sentence construction (SVO) • Extending basic sentence construction with vocabulary • Use of word combinations and collocations • Developing a theme from paragraph to paragraph • Using discourse markers: eg. Therefore, however, etc. • Becoming aware of layout conventions (e.g. letters) • Use of complex sentence constructions with connectives • Mastering spelling, punctuation, capitalization etc. • Linking basic sentences by using connecting words (and/but/ or). • Complex sentence construction (e.g. conditionals) • Selecting appropriate patterns, vocabulary (style) • Organizing information logically and clearly (coherence and cohesion)

13. ??? What could be the possible order of the skills to be presented from elementary upward ??? • ??? Decide which of the above skills you need to work on with your intermediate students ???

14. Writing work in the classroom 1 2 3 4 copying doing guided free writing exerciseswriting Practicing lang. ........ communication of ideas Controlled ................. free Accuracy ................... fluency Elementary to intermediate and advanced

15. Copying (From words to sentences and paragraph) and exercise • Practicing lang. • Elementary level • Controlled

16. Guided writing (from paragraph to essay) • Sts become better writers • Sts. are shown how to write • They are introduced a series of preparatory steps

17. Types of guided writing Model: (Earlier stages sts do not create, make alterations. Later based on a model they create a text) • Controlled composition • Parallel writing • Oral preparation (Q & A Tech.) • Question and answer • Cloze paragraph

18.  Controlled composition • Grammatical changes Present-Past Direct-Indi. Speech Subject pronoun etc.

19.  Parallel writing • Hosseis’ s new house is off Kings Street. He moved there because it was quiter. It’ s next door to a hospital ..... • 1. Jim/flat/ Park Road.// move/cheaper.// cinema/.... • 2. Now write about your friend’ s house

20.  Question and answ. Tech • T. Systematically asks questions • T notes down the key points on the b

21. Cloze pargraph • Write a short model paragraph, • leave every 5 word out. • Give some words to sts to fill in the blanks. • When sts. finish writing delete more words. • Stst. write it on a new page.

22.  More: guided writing • “You think you have seen a man who is wanted by the police. Write, for the police, a short description of the man, saying when and where you saw him.” • Begin: The man I saw was coming out of .........(place, time, date). Description of clothes, briefcase, etc. appearance, manner

23. ?? WHAT IS OUR JOB AS A TEACHER ???

24. THE ROLES OF THE TEACHERS • Motivator: to motivate the students, to create the right conditions for the generation of ideas, to persuade them of the usefulness of the activity and to encourage them to make as much effort as for maximum benefit. • Resource: during more extended tasks, we should be ready to supply information and language where necessary. We need to tell the students that we are available and be prepared to look their work and to give suggestions.

25. Feedback provider: giving feedback on writing tasks demands special care. Teachers should respond positively and encouragingly to the content of what the students have written.

26. Stages: • Prewriting • Whilewriting • Postwriting

27. So prewriting: 1 • Model • (reading (preferred)or listening) • Comprehension of the model • Analysis of the model (if needed) • To see the substitutable parts • how the model is constructed • To determine the morphological or syntactic structures

28. So prewriting: 2 • Model • (reading (preferred)or listening) • Comprehension of the model • Analysis of the model • Considering the topic they will write • Initial individual, pair, group work • Selection and rejection of ideas • Sorting and ordering ideas • Small groups and class construct a skeleton • Individuals or groups write the first draft • Feedback and corection • Final draft

29. Postwriting • Responding • Feedback and correction • Grading

30. Responding • Message oriented, • emotions and feelings conveyed

31. Feedback and correction • Learn whether your sts. want to be corrected or not if not, just give feedback • If yes, tell them • what you’ ll be correcting (Narrow down the scope) • How you will be correcting • How you will be marking (if you intend to do so)

32. Feedback and correction • -Who can correct? • Teacher, students, sts. from other classes... • -How can we correct? • Reformulation • Correction codes • Letter in reply • No correction but discussion in the c.r.

33. Feedback and correction • Write the correct answers in the margin or at the end of the writing (R) • Use correction codes in the margin (CC) • Underline all errors of one type • Write a letter in reply (RL) Or • Sts. correct and mark each other’ s work • Use errors and devise an exercise, a quiz, game or a give a dictaiton

34. Correction codes • V. verb • WW: wrong word • WO: Word order • SP: Spelling • P: punctuation

35. Things to remember • Before sts. write make sure they • speak- read • know what you want them to do • know how you want them to do it • know why they are doing it • You as a guide, • Move from simple tasks to challenging ones • Give practice in planning, organizing and expressing info. • Give models • Practice relevant structures before they write their own • Keep a record of common mistakes and focus on one per lesson • Insist on corrections • Make them write in class • Do writing as group work

36. SUGGESTIONS FOR US • Teachers have to the specific required for a particular task and make sure the students know what type of language to use. • Teachers should also know how to integrate writing into a lesson. • Correction is very important because the focus on accuracy is much greater than it is with speaking. • Teachers should work on ways to reduce the pressure that students feel when doing a writing activity.

37. REFERENCES • J. Harmer,2001. The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman. • R. David, . Teach Yourself, teaching english as a foreign language. • www.eslcafe.com

38. THANKS FOR LISTENİNG TO US 