Introduction to Teaching Writing Skills

GENERAL

• Make sure that your students are at the right level before they attempt the General Training Writing Tasks. Lower level students will not be able to complete these writing tasks and you should always make sure that the writing tasks you give are at the right level for your students.
• Make sure that you focus on the writing process as well as on the testing process. You can do this by giving students essays to write in their own time at home as well as timed essays in class under exam conditions. It is important to develop their writing skills as well as to give them exam practice.
• Try to provide a balance of activities so that you do not always focus on grammatical accuracy. While accuracy is important it is equally important to develop planning skills, organisational skills and fluency and coherence in writing. This will also ensure that your lessons are more balanced.
• Encourage students to adopt new language learning strategies. For example, you can encourage them to take an active approach to learning vocabulary by recording new words and ensuring that they attempt to actively use them as often as possible.
• Increase your students’ motivation to write by making their writing more important. You can do this by ‘publishing’ their work around the classroom or in a class journal. You can also vary the reader of their work by swapping essays with a different class or with their classmates or showing them to a different teacher.
• To do well in an exam situation, students need to perform independently of their teacher. If your classes are usually teacher-centred then you may need to train your students by organising more student-centred activities. Make sure that you encourage your students to actively participate in their own learning process.
• Timed writing practice is essential for your students to be able to do their best in the exam. They need to develop a feel for how to plan, write and check their answers within the time allowed. Timed writing practice can be done in class and also for homework so that your students become less dependant on you telling them to stop one task and begin the next.

Increasing Motivation

Clearly, getting your students to write is the best way for them to practise this skill. However, motivation is often a problem as, while some might enjoy the writing process, many find it a laborious task even in their own language. Below are some ways to increase student motivation to do more writing practice.

• Make it clear from the start of your course how many pieces of writing you expect your students to produce. Tell them when they will be due. If you set this into their weekly timetable, they will develop an expectation to be writing at a particular time. You can also get each student to commit to this at the start of the course.
• Explain exactly what will happen to the writing they produce. Will they be given feedback 1 or 2 days later or will this take longer? Will they be expected to re-write their essays? Decide where, when and how you will handle marking, correction and feedback and let your students know what to expect.
• Encourage your students to build up a portfolio of their writing and to look back at their progress from time to time.
• Vary the class organisation. They may write individually, in pairs or as a group. You may choose to produce one whole essay as a class onto an OHT. You could ask them to write ideas onto large sheets of paper, in a poster format, to put around the classroom, or they could write onto OHTs so that they may be discussed as a class. Any means you can use to get your students writing will help.