The reason and advantage of choosing the topic
As it well known, English has become an international language. In order to communicate with other countries effectively, we must learn to use English accurately and fluently. Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the fundamental in language learning. Of these four, writing is not only output but also a process that improves students’ ability in learning. In this process, students’ vocabulary, grammar and expressing are integrated. What’s more, writing is a test in English exam. Therefore, writing has been paid very important attention to in teaching. As a middle school English teacher I know how the students are learning writing and what difficulties they encounter in writing. For most students, writing is a hard task. But what’s the reason? I think it’s mainly because that the students don’t have sufficient vocabulary, good knowledge on grammar and skills to express. How to train and improve students’ ability on written work has become a new subject in English teaching. In this essay I will try to discuss some problems in writing according to my teaching experience.
Good writing has its features. To identify these features is helpful to students in writing. Generally speaking, good features are showed in the form of the writing, language and expressing. Good writers usually follow certain processes that lead to successful writing. The writing processes can be generally divided into two stages, pre-writing, drafting and editing. In the stage of pre-writing, the writer should develop a sense of purpose and a sense of audience, generating ideas and organizing ideas. In stage of drafting and editing, the writer writes, reads and reviews it to bring new ideas and to rearrange ideas already expressed. There are some ways to train and improve students’ writing skills. Controlled and guided writing tasks and free writing tasks are two ways commonly used to practice writing. Controlled and guided tasks can be such ones, combining, substitution, completion, reproduction, compressing and paraphrase. For purpose of designing free writing tasks for students, we can make students do the following things, getting ideas on topic, selecting and expanding one idea, making an outline, writing and improving a draft.
1. Introduction
2. Theory
3. The ways of improving the students’ writing skills
3.1 Guide students to identify the features of good writing
3. 2. Pre-writing
3. 2. 1 Developing a sense of purpose and a sense of audience
3. 2. 2 how to generate ideas
3. 2. 3 how to organize ideas
3. 3 drafting and editing
3. 3. 1 how to focus information
3. 3. 2 drafting
3. 3. 3 editing
3. 4 ways to train and improve students’ writing skill: design guided and control written tasks and free writing tasks
3. 4. 1 guided and controlled writing tasks
3. 4. 2 designing free writing tasks
Conclusion
Bibliography
1. Introduction
We may teach writing in English classes for various reasons based on the needs of the students and the requirements of the curriculum .The role of teaching writing in the whole process of English language teaching can be categorized in several aspects.
First, writing serves as a tool in teaching all language skills. It can be integrated with the teaching of listening comprehension, oral presentation, and reading skills. For example, making notes and writing summaries can be used in teaching listening comprehension., writing outlines and scripts can be used for the preparation of oral presentations, and writing can be integrated with the teaching of reading skills by asking the students to write answers to reading comprehension questions.
Second, writing may be a goal in itself. Since writing is often required for passing a particular examination, from writing simple answers at an elementary level to composing essays at an advanced level, teaching writing can surely help meet students’ needs in fulfilling their full course of study.
Third, writing has its practical value and can be used as stimulus in motivating students to learn the language. For example, students may write notes or letters to communicate with teachers, classmates, and friends. If they have access to Internet, they may be able to communicate with others around the world in English wherever they are. They may find writing useful in applying for further study opportunities as well as in looking for a better job since many jobs require applicants to have good command of written English.
In conclusion, there is no one reason for teaching writing or one method that can prepare students for all the different situations they might encounter. However, writing is worth developing in the whole process of language teaching because of the role it plays in communication. What is important for learners to understand is the process of writing.
2. Theory
Here are some points from English Language Teaching Methodology concerning on teaching writing written by Gu YueGo .
We do written work for different purpose. First, writing is a means of communication. We may write to tell others something or express our feelings or points of view, such as writing letters, notes, explanations, instructions, applications and complaints. Second, we do written work for entertainment, such as writing poems, novels and stories. But to students, it’s more complicated. It’s a skill required in examinations, for students are demanded to finish certain writing work in the examination. What’s more, writing is not an isolated activity in language learning. It’s may be integrated with the activity of speaking, listening and reading. Writing can be used to improve students’ listening comprehension and reading skills by taking notes and writing summary, to make oral presentation by writing down their speech outline or even the whole script. In one word, writing is means and aids in language learning.
Since writing is important in English learning, as a teacher of English teaching, we should make clear the purpose of writing, the processes of writing, explore some ways to improve students’ writing skills and set suitable work to train the students. Different teachers have different points in teaching writing. But there are many in common. The former experts and teachers have left us some experienced points. To cater for the students, there are still quite a lot to be explored. I try to discuss some I hope it will provide some food for thought in our own practicing of teaching writing in English.
3. The ways of improving the students’ writing skills
3.1 Guide students to identify the features of good writing
To become a good writer of English, a student should be aware of the features of good writing. Normally, good features contain the following aspects. Layout, like spacing, indention, handwriting or typeface should comply with convention. For language, a well-written text includes spelling accurately, getting the grammar right, punctuating meaningfully, have a range of vocabulary, and an appropriate choice of word and using a wide range of sentences. For example, ideas should be developed and organized clearly and convincingly, and ideas and information in sentences should be linked in a coherent fashion.
The organization of ideas and the ways in which the ideas are linked coherently in sentences are of great importance to a well-written text. Unscrambling a list of jumbled sentences is one of the methods to help students understand the structure of a text and know something about sentences sequencing. Narrative texts and those describing a process can be good for this kind of practice. We could select a text with good structure and sentences sequencing, scramble it, and then ask the students to think about sentence sequencing and rearrange the sentences to form a coherent text. It would help if we could provide the students with some assistance, like giving the first and last sentences, providing a diagram showing the structure of the text, or pictures showing the process of an event.
Some cohesive devices indicate meaning relationships or within sentences. These include those of addition, comparision, contrast, result, exemplification and so on. It’s through these devices that the writer is able to organize his ideas and help his reader follow him one sentence to another. Other cohesive device link sentences like sentences in a grammatical way through signaling relationships. Another kind of cohesive is to use repetition of key words or synonymous words to Lind sentences together. It’s necessary for us to help students become aware of these cohesive devices
3. 2. Pre-writing
The process of writing itself serves as s method of learning English in a practical way. Good writers usually follow certain processes that lead to successful pieces of written work. Good writers usually have a sense of purpose, a sense of audience, and a sense of direction in their writ-ally have a sense of purpose, a sense of audience, and a sense of direction in their writ-ing. They always start off with an overall plan in their heads. They think about what they want to say and whom they are writing it for. They then draft out sections of the writing and as they work on them they are constantly reviewing, revising, and editing their work.
Pre-writing is a very important stage of the whole writing process. During this stage we can help our students to work out a general plan for their writing. Activities at this stage may include deciding on the purpose, the purpose, the audience, the contents, and the general out-line.
3. 2. 1 Developing a sense of purpose and a sense of audience
When we set a topic to our students we should make sure that they know they know the purpose of this piece of writing and for whom they are writing if .In other words, students must have a sense of purpose and a sense of audience.
For example, students are told to write on the topic of “My Town”. Was that easy? Because your topic was not given a sense of purpose, you could have chosen any aspect of it to write on. Your choice of contents would probably be very different from someone else’s. It is not a very lifelike activity, because we would rarely write anything that did not have a definite purpose or a targeted reader.
3. 2. 2 how to generate ideas
To have a sense of purpose and a sense of audience will significantly influence the first stage of the writing process, that of exploring possible content and planning outline. One of the strategies you need to employ before writing on any topics to gather information or ideas about the topic. First ideas need to be gathered and just simply noted down. At a later stage they need to be arranged according to their importance, or grouped according to sub-topics.
Imagine your students have to write an essay on the topic of The purposes of Writing in English.
First ask students to think about the topic and note down all the things associated with it that come into their minds. You should let them use Chinese if they do not know the English words.
Then ask them to share what they have noted down with other students. They should discuss with each other what they have noted down in English and try to find suitable translations for anything they wrote in Chinese.
Next, bring the whole class into a plenary session and draw a spider map on the blackboard as students shout out their ideas.
3. 2. 3 how to organize ideas
After the ideas have been generated, the students should decide which ones they want to keep and if there are any that they feel are not relevant, which can be eliminated. We could then design some tasks to organize the ideas according to the sequences, categories or sub-topics the generated ideas. For writing about a personal experience, sequencing might be very helpful in arranging the ideas in a chronological order. As for the topic discussed in the above task, categorizing the ideas might be an appropriate approach .
For example, we could ask our students to think again about all the points collected and tell them that some points are headings (or sub-topics) that may cover other points. Then ask students to write down the headings and the points they cover. After this we could ask them to share each other’s answers. Then they may work together to arrange all the points in a logical order, they may start from organizing the headings to rearranging points covered by the headings. Now, Iet’s play the role of students and work on the topic about The Purposes of Writing in English again.
The purpose of the above task is to help our students to group ideas and to form a general structure of their writing. In order for them to have a better plan before writing, we could do another follow-up task to help our students to order the categorized points into a more logical structure. We could provide them with some help by discussing the criteria for organizing. Such as, is there some kind of logical order; does one section naturally lead on to another, what is the best point at which to begin or to end? Now, let’s play the role of students again.
3. 3 drafting and editing
3. 3. 1 how to focus information
The drafting process starts when our students take the ideas generated in the pre-writing stage and organize them into a logical structure. For various reasons, one may choose not to use all the ideas generated from the pre-writing. Some ideas may not be backed up with evidence, and others my not be appropriate or relevant. It’s necessary for writers to find a focus, organize the main points and then elaborate on them in detail. They may ask themselves is all the information necessary in my writing? Which in-formation can best express the points I want to make? How should I present this in-formation in my writing?
One way to find a focus is to narrow down a topic. Narrowing down can reduce a large topic to one that can be covered in a relatively short paper. For example, a topic like “My Childhood”could be the subject for an entire book. It can be narrowed down to a topic like “An Unforgettable Event of My Childhodd.”The topic could be further nar-rowed down to a special aspect of the topic, like “Lion Dancing in People’s Square —An Unforgettable Event of My Childhood.”
3. 3. 2 drafting
When students find a focus in their writing and have a clear purpose in their mind, it’s gime for them to make the first draft. But writing the first draft is often interrupted as the writer stops to read over and review it ,to get an idea of how the text is developing,to revise plans ,to bring in nes ideas, and to rearrange ideas already expressed.There is a good deal of recycling in the process from planning to drafting ,reviewing ,replan-ning ,revising, etc. Good writers tend to concentrate on getting the content right first and leave the details like correcting spelling, punctuation, and grammar until later.
3. 3. 3 editing
As mentioned before, the writing process is a constant recycling of planning, drafting, reviewing, replanning, and revising until there is the final product. However, there is still something we can do during the post-writing stage. This stage is characterized by reading through the draft from a reader’s perspective. Editing is the most important ac-tivity of the post-writing stage and its purposes are to check for accuracy, provide feed-bck to a piece of writing for further improvement, final version.
A writer can edit his own writing, but it’s much more meaningful for others to do the editing. This is when the reader can tell us whether or not he has understood what we meant to say . The way the reader provides feedback is especially important when editing the writing of others. Generally speaking, feedback should be helpful and should help the writer to make his writing better .We need to tell the writer what works well and what does not work well, and we should give him feedback constructively without dam-aging his self-confidence. That means that we should praise shat is good and not just criticize what we think is bad .We want to encourage and motivate the writer to improve, not discourage him and make him feel the task is hopeless
3. 4 ways to train and improve students’ writing skill: design guided and controlled writing tasks and free writing tasks
3. 4. 1 guided and controlled writing tasks
Now, Let’s think about how we can provide some practical work for our students. For students who are not yet ready to do completely free writing, it’s more appropriate to design some contolled or guided writing tasks for them to get used to the principles and requirements of English writing. In this activity we will discuss several commonly used writing tasks which focus the students’ attention on various aspects of the writing skills, and which are sufficiently controlled and guided to avoid serious errors.
(1). Controlled writing by combing
To combine elements are suitable for beginner students since they are very simple to do. They can join words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs or paragraphs into essays. These kind of tasks are not totally mechanical because students are involved in constructing some writing .So they are very useful to prepare our students before they are able to write creatively and freely. Here are some exaples we can follow to learn how to design tasks for our students.
Prepare some pictures to show the stages in a process. For example, several picturesshowing the process of making chocolate like the following:
·Cocoa beans dried in the sunshine
·Cocoa beans Crushed into Pieces
·Crushed Pieces boiled With sugar
·Chocolate liquid cooled To form Chocolate
·Chocolate sold in stores
Also prepare two columns of sentences, so that each sentence in the first column has to be joined with one from the second column to make a compound sentence related to the stage in the process .For example, sentences about the process of making chocolate as the following:
a) The cocoa beans are dried in 1) The dried cocoa beans are
the sunshine. crushed into small pieces.
b) The crushed pieces are mixed 2) The cocoa-water-sugar
with sugar and water. cooked and boiled for several
c) The cocoa beans become sweet 3) The chocolate liquid mold
and rich after being boiled with -ed in different shapes.
Sugar. 4) The hardened chocolate is
d) When the chocolate liquid cools the chocolate that is sold in
It becomes hard. Shops.
Then ask the students to use a line to match the sentences in the two columns with eachother according to the sequence of the boxes or pictures.
Next ask the students to turn the matched two sentences into one compound sentence. Finally ask the students to order the sentences to make a logical paragraph describ-ing the process of making chocolate.
The sentences in the above example are in correct order. That is a) is matched to 1),b) is matched to 2), c ) is matched to 3), and d) is matched to 4). For your students, you need to mix up the order to make the task more challenging. The final result of the task might be something like the following:
After the cocoa beans are dried in the sunshine, they are crushed into small pieces. The crushed pieces are then mixed with sugar and water, which must be cooked and boiled for several hours. The cocoa become sweet and rich after being Boiled with sugar , and the chocolate liquid is then cooled in molds of different shapes. When the chocolate liquid cols it becomes hard like the rind of chocolate that is sold in stores.
(2) Controlled writing by substitution
Some people believe that imitation of models is one way to learn to write well. But free imitation can still lead to many errors. One way to avoid this problem is to use controlled writing by substitution. Substitution tasks can help students to pinpoint the items to be imitated and it is a way of controlling their work.. They can be used for direct imitation or for contrastive imitation. In direct imitation, we can present a model and then pro-vide the new words, sentences, paragraphs, etc. that are to be substituted for some of those in the model . We can indicate where the substitute items are to go by underlining parts of the model. In contrastive imitation, the new items provided by the substitutions must be something different from the original, like different tense or different point of view.
Substitution tasks must be well prepared. Students should be shown exactly where to make substitutions. In a totally controlled substitution task, all items are given and students are told where to fit them. We can practice students do substitution of words and phrases in sentences and substitution of sentences in paragraphs.
( 3 )guided writing by completion
Guided writing stands as a bridge between controlled and free writing. It includes any writing for which students are given assistance such as a model to follow, a plan or an outline to expand from , a partly-written version with indications of how to complete it ,or pictures that show a new subject to write about in the same way as a text that has been read . The main exercise types are completion, reproduction, compression, and transformation.
The best-known completion exercise is “filling in the blanks”. A passage is given, with selected words or phrases missing, sometimes with an indication of how many leters or words have been omitted. Students have to complete the passage.
Completion exercises can be used for any of the writing skills .The most obvious applica-tion is to the teaching of linking words and phrases. But more complex skills can also be helped by completion exercises. For instance, to teach the logical presentation of con-trast in description students can be given a paragraph with one half of the contrast miss-ing ,or to teach the description of a process they can be given a paragraph with one or two stages of the process missing .
.( 4 )guided Writing By Reproduction
There are few reasons for us to ask students to make an exact reproduction of something read or heard either by copying it or by rewriting it from memory in their own words, but free reproduction can be a bridge to totally free writing. The original passage that is to be reproduced could be written in Chinese so that the reproduction would involve some free translation, or it could be a text that students have listened to. Here are some reproduction exercises we may use to train our improve writing skill.
a. Reproduction by copying
Prepare a Reproduction by copying passage and leave out the punctuation.
Ask the students to copy the passage and supply the punctuation.
Reproduction an alternative task for this is to read the passage to the students and ask them in pairs or groups to reproduce it from their memory.
b. Reproduction by matching Reproduction by matching
Read a passage to the students or let them read the passage by themselves.
After this, give the students some pictures showing the development of the ideas.
Then ask the students to reproduce the passage according to the description of the pictures.
This task is useful when students are being trained to write narration
( 5 ) guided writing by compression
Compression exercises, like writing a summary for example, can be useful in many aspects. First of all, students frequently asked to write a summary of a longer written text for examination purposes. Secondly, such exercises can help the students to focus their attention on the main points of a passage and to develop their ability to paraphrase. A commonly used technique for training such skills is underlining. The student may be asked either to underline the key points or those not so important. For example:
Prepare a long report on certain facts.
Ask the students to underline the key points of the report.
Then ask the students to put the underlined points together and make a proper adaptation to form a concise summary of the report.
( 6 ) guided writing by paraphrase
Writing a paraphrase involves changing the vocabulary, or the structure of a sentence, paragraph or essay without changing the meaning. We could design various types of tasks to help our students to practice writing by paraphrasing. For example, we might:
(1 )Paraphrase by imitating
Prepare a sample advertisement of something as a model.
And prepare a report of another product.
Draw the students’ attention to typical features of advertisements and of reports, preferably by means of questions.
Then ask students to change the report into an advertisement, and the advertisement into a report .
( 2 ) Paraphrase by transformation
Prepare a paragraph or essay with a particular structure.
Design a task to draw students’ attention to the structure of the passage. This might be in the form of questions or a table that has to be filled in.
Then give the students a new structure and ask them to rewrite the paragraph or essay according to this new structure. For example, they might change a paragraph starting with a generalization followed by examples into one starting with examples and ending with a generalization
3. 4. 2 designing free writing tasks
Students are often asked to produce a text in the form of a composition or essay on a given topic. Usually they have the freedom to write in the way they like, which means there is a large scope for errors. Even in free writing students still need some preparatory exercises to help them write a good composition.
One important thing about free writing tasks is that the students need stimulus before writing. A picture or sequence or sequence of pictures, a dialogue, or a letter can all be good forms of stimulus. Basically the stimulus gives the student something to write about. A picture could be a good stimulus for writing a description, a sequence of pictures for writing a narrative, and dialogues and letters can be useful for writing a letter.
For the purpose of designing some free writing tasks for our students, let’s work on an example that can best illustrate the necessary procedures for a free writing exercise.
(1) Getting ideas on the Topic
As we have discussed in the pre-writing activity, when we have a purpose to write and a sense of audience we will know better what to write about. And the first step of the writing procedure is to get some ideas on the topic. We need to design activities to help our students come up with all possible ideas. For example, if we are asked to write on the topic of “A place I often go”, weight ask the students to think about the word “place” and write down all the associations they might have it. We could ask students to brainstorm on the topic, and draw a spider map or a diagram to cover all the possible places students might be able to write about.
(2) Selecting and Expanding One idea
After students have generated many ideas related to a topic, thee next step we need to take is to help them in selecting and expanding one of those ideas.
(3) Making an outline
After students have reconsidered the narrowed topic once again and generated more detailed ideas, then we can help them to work out an outline. The purpose of the outline is to enable the students to have a clear organization of ideas and a structure that can guide them in the actual writing. We could ask students to get into small groups and discuss the structure of the outline. They might need to change several times until they all agree on a satisfactory result.
( 4) Writing and lmproving a Draft
With an outline as the guide, students can start to write the first draft. But they don’t necessarily have to keep to the outline if they find it’s hard to go on in one direction but easier to go on in another which might be more productive. Generally drafts should be written quite quickly, because they will be worked on again and corrected afterwards. To get a better result, students can work in pairs or groups to write and correct each other’s text. As we discussed before, it’s often easier to find minor errors created by others than to pick out one’s own major errors. For marking each other’s work, students should use symbols that have been agreed with the whole class, so that the writer understands them..
This procedure should take into account the importance of making notes, writing outlines, drafting, and correcting drafts before the final version is written up. The procedure of writing a composition is a process of thinking, rethinking, and making final decisions. Making students aware of this process can definitely help them to write in a better way.
Conclusion
In this essay I discuss issues concerning the features of a good writing in English; the process of writing, including pre-writing, while-writing and post-writing; and we’ve also discussed ways of designing, some writing tasks for our students. There are mainly three types of writing tasks: one is controlled, another is guided, and the third is free. All three types of writing tasks are commonly used in the teaching of writing by many teachers. They could be used separately, or combined together .As a teacher of English writing; the success of our job depends very much on the kind of tasks we are able to design to cater for the precise needs of our students.
These ways discussed in my essay come from my teaching experience and some of them are from others. Maybe some are not really tight or useful. They should be further deliberated in teaching practice. But I hope they can provide others with some advice on practice of teaching writing in English.
Bibliography
1.Gu Yueguo English Teaching Methodology
2.Byrne Don Teaching Writing Skills London
3.Hedge Tricia Writing Oxford :OUP
4.White, R.V Teaching Written English London
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