Teaching writing

- Help students develop criteria or tips for writing a particular genre or format (e.g., haiku, short story, letter), then post these on a bulletin board or have students record them in their notebooks for reference as they write.

- Set up a section of the classroom as a writing reference area and make available language resources such as dictionaries, thesauri, and grammar and usage texts. Encourage students to use these as needed individually or with peers and the teacher.

- Encourage students to use word-processing programs. This may be done in co-operation with teachers of Computer Science, Information Processing, or other areas of study where computers are used.

Post-writing: Preparing To Go Public

When students have an authentic audience and purpose, they want to rework their written drafts, polishing them for presentation or publication. Going public means taking a huge risk; the student's self-esteem is on the line, so the decision about how and with whom to share their writing must be up to the student writer. Teachers may encourage students to share certain pieces or determine the number of pieces that students are required to share or publish within a set time period, but ultimately the decision about which pieces to share, and with whom, should be left up to the writer.

To prepare a final, polished draft, students may write in legible handwriting or use a word-processing program to prepare a polished written work. Then their writings go to public through

1. Sharing

2. Publishing

3. Using a portfolio

Sharing

Students may share their written work.  Sharing is a useful post- writing activity since it provides students with an immediate audience. Some examples of sharing students’ writings include
1. The author's chair, which provides opportunity for students to share their writing aloud with the whole class;

2. Sharing in small groups or with a partner; and

3. Using bulletin board space assigned to a specific genre or to a class of students.

At times, students should be provided with opportunities to decide if they wish to share their written work, and whether they will share in pairs, in small groups, or with the whole class.

Publishing

Students may choose to publish their writing.  Some examples of publishing formats include:

- Class booklets

- School or local newspapers

- Yearbook

- Writing contests

- Magazines

Using a portfolio

To decide if the written work will be placed in the student's assessment portfolio, teachers can negotiate with students to generate guidelines about the number and variety of pieces that they are required to place in their portfolio for assessment and evaluation purposes. Contracts may be useful to address individual student needs and abilities. Students should be involved in making choices about which of their written pieces will become part of their portfolios.

Some suggestions for post-writing scaffolds include the following:

- Discuss or develop with students the criteria for polished pieces. Post these or provide them as handouts for students to refer to as needed.

- Provide opportunities for students to use computer word-processing programs to create final drafts.

- Have students share their final compositions with classmates or with others in the community, such as younger children or elderly people.

- Post or publish students' work in the classroom and provide opportunities, when appropriate, for students to submit to publishers outside the classroom.

2.3 Mini-lessons

At some point during most writing classes, in a 5-10 minute mini-lesson (length depends upon the procedure, concept, skill, or convention to be taught), the teacher provides students with information necessary for their writing. Mini-lessons about language usage and conventions such as spelling, sentence structure, and punctuation are necessary; however, they should emerge from the students' writing or the curriculum objectives, rather than being arbitrarily determined by the teacher. It is important to allow time for students to practice concepts introduced in mini-lessons within the context of their own writing.

The decision about what to teach in a mini-lesson depends upon the selected objectives as well as upon the students' needs and interests. The following lists provide examples of topics that may require mini-lessons.

Writing Process Procedures

1. pre-writing activities

2. writing rough drafts

3. self-reflection

4. participating in writing groups

5. peer and teacher conferences

6. writing folders and assessment portfolios

7. revising and editing final drafts

8. sharing and publishing.

Literary Elements and Devices

1. plot

2. characters

3. main idea/theme

4. setting

5. narrative hook

6. point of view

7. flashbacks

8. foreshadowing

9. comparisons (e.g., analogies, metaphors, similes)

10. personification

11. alliteration

12. rhyme and repetition.

Language Conventions and Mechanics

1. writing sentences

2. varying sentence structure (adding, deleting, substituting, moving, and combining)

3. writing opening and concluding paragraphs

4. writing descriptive paragraphs

5. punctuating items in a series

6. using the apostrophe

7. choosing titles

8. punctuating dialogue

9. selecting appropriate words (e.g., to show fear, suspense, bravery, or other characteristics).

Writing Formats and Genre

1. friendly or business letter

2. news article

3. short story

4. haiku poetry

5. personal experience narrative

6. science fiction.

Some mini-lessons may be planned for the whole class because the teacher has determined the need for students to have specific information that supports their learning or the unit of study. Other mini-lessons may be provided to individuals or small groups as the need arises. If the concept to be taught is complex, the teacher should provide instruction in steps, allowing students the opportunity to practise each step before putting them all together.

Teachers should keep records (e.g., lesson plan sheets, anecdotal notes, checklists) of mini-lesson topics and to whom they were presented. Students may also be required to keep records of mini-lessons received (e.g., handouts, notes, checklists), for future reference.[7]

CONCLUSION

              In my course work I have tried to show the importance of teaching writing process properly. From my point of view it is one of the most important skills to be developed during English language lessons at schools and universities.

The development of educational systems on the modern stage is characterized by the pressing attention to the problems of teaching writing, which is conditioned by the increased role of this kind of activity and higher requirements of modern society to the written products as well.

This question is even more important during the studying foreign languages at school, because our pupils have no foreign languages environment. And teacher has to make his/her best teaching pupils writing, because as it often happens for example grammar rules some times are differ in native language from foreign language.

One step towards achievement this goal is to design environment to provide an adequate conversational framework. In this sense existing methods, based on principles of virtuality as the most effective way of the autonomous learning, integrated with multimedia innovations could provide a great potential for successful language learning. But at the same time I do not want to say that we have to think only about new technologies, I think previously developed methods (games and exercises) which were developed for the development of written speech are also very good.

Another focus should be made on increasing a number of professionally qualified English teachers army of which couldn’t be possible without promotion of new learning methods and technologies for further integration them in our traditional schools. The training new kind of teachers means also changing the function of language teaching in those schools which will in future receive the products of new teaching.

LIST OF LITERATURE

1.      Российская Е.Н., Методика формирования самостоятельной письменной речи у детей. Москва Айрис Пресс 2004

2.      Alexander., L.G. , First Things First. Teacher’s Book., 1987.

3.      Gear, J. and R. Gear. 1988. Incongruous visuals for the EFL classroom. English Teaching Forum, 26, 2. pp.43.

4.      Teutsh, Ph., Vivet, M. A Model of “Situation of Knowledge Evaluation” for Foreign Language. Proceedings of IFIP'98 Congress, 1998, Vienna/Hungary.

5.      Raimes, A. 1983. Techniques in teaching writing. New York: Oxford University Press

6.      Haycraft, J. 1978. An introduction to English language teaching. Harlow: Longman.

7.      Hubbard, P., H. Jones, B. Thornton, and R. Wheeler. 1983. A training course for TEFL. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

8.      Lee, W. R. 1979. Language teaching games and contests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

9.      Rixon, S. 1981. How to use games in language teaching. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

10. Mario Rinvolucri and Paul Davis.1992. More grammar games. Cambridge University Press.

11. Abbott, G., D. McKeating, J. Greenwood, and P. Wingard. 1981. The teaching of English as an international language. A practical guide. London: Collins.

12. Berer, Marge and Frank, Christine and Rinvolucri, Mario. Challenge to think. Oxford University Press, 1982.

1.         [1] Российская Е.Н., Методика формирования самостоятельной письменной речи у детей. Москва Айрис Пресс 2004, стр. 5

[2] Raimes, A. 1983. Techniques in teaching writing. New York: Oxford University Press

[3] Teutsh, Ph., Vivet, M. A Model of “Situation of Knowledge Evaluation” for Foreign Language. Proceedings of IFIP'98 Congress, 1998, Vienna/Hungary.

[4] Raimes, A. 1983. Techniques in teaching writing. New York: Oxford University Press

[5] Abbott, G., D. McKeating, J. Greenwood, and P. Wingard. 1981. The teaching of English as an international language. A practical guide. London: Collins

[6] Raimes, A. 1983. Techniques in teaching writing. New York: Oxford University Press

[7] Raimes, A. 1983. Techniques in teaching writing. New York: Oxford University Press