英语教学法8.课件.doc
提示语-寒假心得体会
Unit 12 Teaching Writing
Aims of
the Unit
- to understand the nature of writing
in reality
to learn a communicative approach
to writing
- to be aware of the problems in
writing tasks in existing textbooks
to
understand the process approach to writing
Writing through e-mail
12.1 What, why and
how do we write?
What do we write?
Writing is a real-life reality. Whether it is in
social, work or study situations, we write to
get things done and to form and maintain
social relationships.
In reality there is a
great variety of things we write for example,
letters, journals, notes,
instructions,
posters, essays, reports, menus. We fill in forms,
answer questionnaires and similar
tasks.
Why do we write?
We write for various
reasons, such as to convey messages or just to
keep a record of what is in our
mind.
Reasons why we should get students involved in
writing in a foreign language:
Writing
can give a voice to shy students as writing can
serve as a medium through
which less confident
students can communicate with their teacher.
Writing can be less threatening for anxious
students as it gives them time to think
about
their meaning and purpose (Morgan, 2005).
Writing can also raise awareness of how language
works. Through writing, students
will become
more familiar with the linguistic and social
conventions of writing in English.
A contrast
between writing in ELT classroom and writing in
reality
writing in ELT writing in
classroom
reality
Purpose To
consolidate To convey
language
message or
recently learned for self
(writing as creation
language
learning)
Way to Students write
We may
write
according to the have
some
topic and ideas long
requirements
before we
given by the put them
teacher in
on paper.
limited period of And we
time;
the focus often plan,
is on the final draft,
and
product while rewrite.
the process
That is, we
which the focus on
students go
the writing
through while process.
do
the writing
task is virtually
ignored.
Principles for teaching writing
Choose the proper model for teaching.
Make
the writing tasks for real communication.
Focus on the process rather than the product.
Instruct clearly for each stage.
Integrate
writing with reading, listening, and speaking.
Pay attention to both product assessment and
process assessment.
Basically, in teaching
writing the teacher of English needs to give equal
weight to clarity of
expression, preciseness,
conciseness, frequency, accuracy, and the ability
to organize and
summarize ideas.
12. 2. A communicative approach
to
writing
Mechanical writing activities that are
done in traditional ELT classroom do not by
themselves
motivate students. To motivate
students, it is necessary to engage them in some
act of
communication. This means writing for a
specific recipient or engaging in an act of
creative
writing where their work is intended
to be read by an intended audience.
In short,
students can be motivated by authentic writing
tasks that have some communicative
elements.
Some writing activities can be between
“writing for learning” and “writing for
communication”.
12. 3 Problems in writing
tasks
Many writing tasks, both in existing
textbooks and in classroom teaching, fail to have
a
communicative element due to the following
deficiencies:
1. They are mainly accuracy-
based.
2. They are designed to practice a
certain target
structures.
3. There
is insufficient preparation before the writing
stage.
4. There is no sense of audience or
authenticity.
5. Students are given ideas to
express rather than invited to invent their own.
6. There is no opportunity for creative
writing, particularly for expressing unusual or
original ideas.
7. Many of them are test-
oriented.
12.4 A Process Approach to Writing
1. What is process approach to writing?
The teacher provides some help to guide
the students through the process that they
undergo when they are writing. Of course this
kind of guidance should be gradually withdrawn so
that the students finally become independent
writers.
2. What are the features of process
writing?
Features of the process approach to
writing summarized by Brown (1994:320-321):
Focus on the process of writing that leads to
the final written product;
Help students
writers to understand their own composing process;
Help them to build repertoires of strategies
for prewriting, drafting, and rewriting;
Give
students time to write and rewrite;
Place
central importance on the process of revision;
Let students discover what they want to say as
they write;
Give students feedback throughout
the composing process; (not just on the final
product) to
consider as they attempt to bring
their expression closer and closer to intention;
Encourage feedback both from the instructor
and peers;
Include individual conferences
between teacher and student during the process of
composition.
Suggestions on the Process
Approach to Writing
Before writing, students
work together to brainstorm topics and ideas.
While writing, students should finish it by
themselves.
After writing, there are a lot of
options for the teacher to decide what to do next,
e.g. peer reading,
discussion,
rewriting.
The teacher could provide the
students with a checklist to guide their peer
reading and feedback.
In other words, writing
activities should serve to encourage a process of
brainstorming, drafting,
writing, feedback,
revising and editing, which proceeds in a cyclical
fashion resembling the
writing process of a
real writer. These types of activities should
‘encourage the idea that learning
to write is
more important than creating a final product; it
is the learning of a series skills leading
to
the product.’ (Sokolik, 2003:96)
Process-
oriented Approach
Pre-writing
Drafting
Revising
Second draft
Teacher’s
feedback
1) The Process of Writing
Drafting
Organize
Explore the new idea
Edit
Check idea and organization
Correcting
Correct mistakes, such as
spelling, usage, punctuation
Publishing
Share it with others
Pre- writing
activities
Collect material,Choose object and
audience
The process approach pays attention
to pre-writing, while-writing and post-writing
activities.
Creating a motivation to write
Brainstorming
Mapping
Freewriting
Outlining
Drafting
Editing
Revising
Proofreading
Conferencing
Creating a motivation to write
Purpose or
reason to write
Interest
Brainstorming
Students’ thoughts can be inspired by each
other’s sparkling points.
The more important
is to get the students to think freely and put
down all possible ideas that come
to their
mind.
Mapping
Mapping will give
students the opportunity to select from the list
these useful ideas to be included
in their
writing and also to see how these ideas can be put
together in a coherent and logical way
to
present a convincing argument.
As pointed by
Morgan (2005), when students see their ideas
emerge visually on the page, it can
stimulate
more ideas.
Free writing
Students are
required to write anything that comes to their
minds as quickly as possible without
caring
much about spelling and grammar.
Free writing
can help students develop fluency in writing.
Outlining
An outline usually illustrates
the main organising structure and the most
important points of the
essay.
Main idea
of each paragraph;
Notes for supporting
details;
An introduction and a conclusion.
It can be changed as the writer has
better ideas.
Drafting
At this stage,
students should be given more time to write the
first draft and developing ideas is
more
important than getting grammatical structures,
punctuations or spelling correct.
Editing
Editing is the stage when students read
through their writings and check the clarity of
ideas or the
logical development of their
arguments.
Self-editing and peer-editing
(what’s the benefit in editing?)
Exchange
of ideas between editors and writers and
justification of ideas.
Revising
Revising
is the stage when teachers guide students to make
necessary improvements in both
organization
and contents based either self-editing or peer
editing, eg. adding new points or
deleting
irrelevant facts, and correcting errors in
spelling, punctuation, grammar or choice of
words.
Revising can take several
rounds, so students need to be prepared to write a
second or third draft
before they submit the
final draft.
Proofreading(校对)
The final
stage in writing
To read the writing for
mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation, or
capitalization.
Independent proofreading is
encouraged.
Teachers should limit their
involvement in making corrections for the
students. They do not need
to present all the
correct forms. They can underline those
problematic items and leave them for the
students to do the correction themselves.
In order to keep tract of how students do
self-correction, a form can be used so that both
teachers
and students can check from time to
time to see if the same mistakeserrors are
repeated.
Conferencing
Conference
here refers to a private meeting between the
teacher and each individual student. It is
very important to talk face to face with
students about their writing, pointing out their
strength and
weakness. For small classes, if
possible, conferencing with individual student can
be done once or
twice during a semester and
5-10 minutes for a student. For a number of large
classes a teacher
teaches, there can be a
class conference focusing on the main problems and
features of good
writings.
In commenting
the students’ writing, teachers should keep in
mind that teachers’ attitude can
influence
students’ confidence and motivation to write. So
during the teacher-student conferencing,
teachers need to encourage rather than
criticize, be constructive rather than destructive
and try
their best to protect students’ self-
esteem.
Even after the marks are given,
teachers can still allow students to continue
improving their
writing. In other words,
students can revise their writing again if they
are not satisfied with the
grade and a new
grade can be given if better improvement is made
within the time frame given to
encourage
individuals to be more self-directed in learning.
2) Process writing tasks
No
.
Writing Task
Writing
Process
Methodolog
y
You are going
to
write a
composition
entitled “The
Pre-
writing
advantages
Pair work
stage
and
1
Teacher
disadvantage
(brainstormin
guide
s of watching
g ideas)
TV”. Now
you need to
make notes of
the things
you’d like to
discuss
about.
The following
is a list of
ideas about
the
advantages
and
disadvantage
Pre-writing
s of watching
stage
2
TV.
Group work
Decide
(organizing
on the ideas
ideas)
that your
thinking are
useful and
remove any
that you
think are of
little use.
Write
draftfirst
a
version
of the
DraftingComposing
composition
Individual
3
stage
based on the
work
(first version)
ideas that
you’ve
decided to use.
Revise
your
You
reorganize
4
your
work by
shifting
emphasis
order
or
of
changing the
paragraphs.
the
work.
can
Revising stage
(
second version)
Individual
work
Peer
correction
first version of
Write the final
version.
need
correct
errors
5
grammar,
vocabulary,
spelling,
punctuation,
and
references.
From the
above discussion, we can see that writing tasks
can involve a lot of oral discussions. This
is
because writing and speaking are always related to
each other because both are forms of
language
production, and in reality, much writing is done
based on what has been discussed, for
example,
in group project work. And in teaching, we try to
advocate integrated teaching of
language
skills.
12. 5 Motivating students to write
Is writing an interesting skill to develop?
The way to motivate students to write is a key
point to the successful teaching of writing.
1)Make the topic of writing as close as
possible to students’ life
Giving students a
few topics so that they can choose what they want
to write about can be a way to
meet the needs
and interests of different learners.
2) Leave
students enough room for creativity and
imagination
Students like to use extraordinary
ideas to write.
3) Prepare students well
before writing
Some pre-writing activities are
necessary.
4) Encourage collaborative group
writing as well as individual writing
Designing group writing activities once in a
while can greatly motivate students to write. It
can
also provide an opportunity for different
students to exercise different talents. In this
kind of
writing activity, they can help each
other and learn from each other.
5) Provide
opportunities for students to share their writings
You
to
any
in
Editing stage
(final version)
Individual
work
Peer
correction
Teachers can
organize class presentation or group presentation
to allow students to share their
writings. It
can provide another opportunity for students to
learn from each other.
6) Provide constructive
and positive feedback
Giving feedback is
integral part of teaching writing. Every student
wants hisher writing to be read
seriously by
the teacher or their classmates.
The feedback
should include at least three elements:1) positive
comments on the good features of
the piece of
writing;2) areas for improvement; 3) your personal
opinion on the issue the writer has
discussed
in his her writing.
Feedback for each writing
should be personal and specific so that it can
help build up a trust
between teachers and
students. Students will feel more motivated to
write if he she realizes that
the teacher
takes hisher writing seriously and discusses with
them in meaningful ways.
7) Treat students’
errors strategically
Teacher’s attitude
towards errors plays a key role in motivating
students to write. As making
mistakes is an
inevitable part of the learning process, teachers
should encourage students to take
risks to use
new vocabulary and structures in their writing. If
teachers often show negative attitude
towards
errors, students will not dare to take risks but
use only very simple words and structures in
order to guarantee accuracy. Eventually, they
make no obvious progress in their writing skills.
8) Give students a sense of achievement from
time to time.
Progress in writing is usually a
slow process and it is not easily observable. And
this can easily
discourage many students.
Therefore, enabling students to experience a sense
of achievement from
time to time is quite
crucial in motivating students to continue writing
practice.
Organizing a writing conference,
displaying works in a writing exhibition in the
classroom and
publishing a class writing
newsletter are all good ways to give students a
sense of achievements.
The limitation may be
that we do not have enough space to exhibit all
the writings of all the
students. In this
case, guiding students to create their own writing
portfolio is a good way to
encourage every
student. Each portfolio can be a unique file of
writing because each student can
decide what
to put in hisher portfolio and how to design it. A
portfolio can demonstrate the
progress made as
one examines the whole writing process through
first draft, second draft to the
final product
with peer editing comments and self reflection.
12.6 Using the internet to promote process
writing
Traditional way of writing
Research indicates, rather than handing in the
‘perfect’ final product, students are more willing
to
submit drafts one at a time to the teacher
and revise their work after seeking comments or
advice
from the teacher (Warschauer,1995). In
doing so, the traditional hand-in-and-return
method will
not suffice.
E-mail provides
a perfect mechanism for students to submit drafts
and for teachers to look them
over at their
convenience and send them back with comments---
once, twice or several times. New
ideas are
shared promptly and can be responded to quickly.
Another advantage is that the teacher
can
easily store all the drafts of a document for
later review and analysis of the revision process.
All these help promote the application of the
process approach to writing in ELT classroom.
The students can send their work to each other
to exchange and share ideas.
When writing
through e-mails, students have a feeling of real-
time writing. They feel that they are
writing
for real purposes of exchanging ideas.
Besides
e-mails, Blogging and BBS are also very useful
ways in teaching writing. The teacher can
set up a class writing blog or BBS for
writing tasks. Students can paste their
assignments on the
blog or BBS. In this way,
students in the same class can read and comment on
each other’s
writings. It can motivate
students to write and give them a real sense of
communication through
writing.