英语教学法8.课件
刺秦王-英语投诉信怎么写
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
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
recently learned or 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
And we
of time; the often plan,
focus is
on the draft, and
final product rewrite.
while the That is, we
process which focus
on
the students go the
through while
writing
do the writing process.
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
original ideas.
7. Many of them are test-oriented.
A
Process Approach to Writing
1. What is
process approach to writing
or
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, . 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
·
1
to
Process
You are going
Pre-writing
Methodology
Pair
work
Teacher
write a
stage
composition
(brainstorming
guide
entitled “The
ideas)
advantages
and
disadvantages
of watching
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
Pre-writing
advantages
stage
2
and
Group work
(organizing
disadvantages
ideas)
of watching
TV. Decide on
the 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
stage
3
based on the work
(first version)
ideas that
￥
you’ve decided
to
use.
Revise the first
version of your
work. You can
4
work
reorganize your
shifting
emphasis
changing
Individual
Revising
stage
work
：
by ( second
version)
or
the
Peer
correction
order
paragraphs.
of
Write the final
version. You
Individual
Editing stage
(final version)
work
Peer
correction
need to correct
any errors
in
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
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.
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.