sisioas stata aR ‘TEACHING JSZCOND- LANGUAGE WRETING _ Wire is’ Sepv_ 90 BR : "By Plena “bend IRS. wade English Teaching Forum - Yol 29 no. 2-‘April 1991. SUMMARY: Ghe traditional whiting aveLgnment Traditionally, when students write in asecond language, the purpose of: the writing activity 19 to catch grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors, Under these oircumastances, sometimes the only writing studente do : io to write out grammar exercises, Sometimes those grammar exercises are dksguised ae composition writing; those are called guided writing, in which studonte are given a short text and instructed to, change all the masculine pronouns to feminine ones or to change @11 singular nouns to plural nouns, ° or to change from present tense to past tense. The students ‘do not create | the texts themselves, because a more treditional philosophy jof teaching language has persuaded teachers that students are-not ready p to create, language; they are only ready to manipulate fora, The writing is cerefully controlled so that the students see grammar structures correctly used. In other, more. advanced, lasses following the same philoaophy, atudents axe aveigned compoostions or other kinds of texts to write. Moat often in these cleesea the poor teacher takes home many student papers at night and: carefully marks ell the gramiatical and mechanical errors in the writing. The focus in these types of writing exercises is primarily on lenguage structure, Studenta get good marke IF they write ‘texts with e few wrrors, In order to avoid errora, then, etudenta naturally write very cautiously and conservatively in their second, language, If, what they have to say does’ not fit with what they alreedy know how to say, they eimply write some- thing easter, something they know they can control. Tye result con bé student writing that is crippled, filled with clichés, and very boring both for the etudent who se writing and for the. poor teacher reading all those papers, : New Emphases But attitudes have changed about. the role of writing in teaching a i second languoge. Inatead of being the last, skill taught and instead of ‘bedi only a servant to gremuar, writing hea now become much more important in the second-lenguage curriculum, Writing 4s ‘the naturel outlet for the studenta! reflections on their,speaking, listening and, reading »xperiences in their second language. When, students are not focused on grammatical error but when they are instead wrig ing freely, writing or trying b write what they think they want to say, they develop confidence and a sense of power over the langudge that none of the other skills is likely to produce: until the etudente are very well advanced in their language otudies. In othor worde, etudente hove to bo quite advanced users of English vefore they eanifeel a great deal of satisfaction at being able to hold. a conversation in English, understand an overheard conversation in English or a radio broadcast, or even read’a newspaper’ or short story. But’ writingeee dn a second language is different, Writing gives students time to shape what they want to soy, to go over it until it ecems to reflect what they think, and to exert their influence.over the second Langugge, and this {9 true. even at the mont olementary levels of English proficiency, Anyone who writes. in any ‘language invents a reader to whom the writer-1e,addressin the. text; English students, too; get to.snvent this reader. who WILL under- — stand..their English. It 18, when writing that, the.languoge student has, at least as long ao the text is ‘being created, complete control over that slippery nev linguistic code, This feeling of control ean be very invigorat ing and satisfying. ‘The firet and moet inportent new emphasis is on, the xhetoricel context in which these viudents axe writing. Thore are many different kinds of wriging and many different reasona for writing. The basic question a: how’ will writing in English be useful to our studente? We may examine the role of writing in our curriculums and realize that actually English writing Le taught for only one reason! aa reinforcement for English speaking, But this is not enough, we mast then ongsge in writing activities that support that goal, Like doing interviews in English or taking notes for orl reporte or writing dialogues and acting them out. Next, there 1s a now emphacie on the content of student writing. Teaching writing no longer means eimply having students do grenmar exercises in writ ing or manipulate alien texte thet have no special meaning for them. Instead, now students axe writing about whet they are interested in end Know about, but most expecially, what they really want to communicate to soomone else, what they really want the reader to know, For the most part writing 19 easiest to do and de likely to have the highest quality when th’ writer 1e committed intellectually to expressing something meeningful i through writing. Part of the rhetorical context and part of the content of student writing le determined by who the oudience of the writing ie and what the PUEPOLE §9 the vriting is. Aveignémenta that direct studente to write for 1! the genoral public ox fox anyone who might be interested tond to be muog- much more difficult to write then assignments in which students have an dea why they are writing and who will be reeding their writing. (writing to antertaing, to inform, to persuade, et6), If the students are always and only writing for their teacher, there ts the risk thet they will eimpl try to guesa what the teooher wants and deliver thot without committing themselves intellectually to what they are writing. If students don't core what they ore saying, if they are not committed to what they are soying, they will not take risks with the language; they will stick fo wnat they know they can say rather than trying to find a way to say what they want to say. 9666866666 666 66665656 The process approsoh ALL of these new emphases constitute what is called the process approac | yo teaching writing. Previously what was important when a atudent wrote was the product that the student created (neatnees, errors) The emphasts in the newer, process appraach is leas on the product and more on the y < AE ¥ie wandering path that students use to get to the product, In the process approach, students are taught strategies that should help them to finally yeach a decent product, because-of course the product 1s still’ important and grammatical accuracy is still en important goek, but the writing class ds more exploratory, less punitive, less demoralizing; the student writer dg leas alone. It encourages students to experiment with ideas through writing and then to share thelr writing with their classmates and to get the opinions of several people to help them figure out what to sey and how to say it. The result io that the writing clees is; suddenly noisy a6 etudent: work in groups to write, read each other's writing, and comment on it. u What about the product? : Not every plece of writing becomes a "product". Some writing assignments ike fournal writing or invention writing, will Weyer be formally prepared for a reader. They mey remain sloppy and filled with errora, that's fins. But obher wriring asainments are intended to be formally prepared for a reader. These anaignments are declared; ‘for whatever reason the writer or the writing contéxt dictated worthylof all the work it takes to try to make, a text neat and error-free, These are the aseignménts that go through several drafte end then might be carefully edited and proofread, by the author, by other clasamates and by the teacher too - not to criticize the writer for not knowing English perfectly, but instead to work together, to collaborate in getting the text to look as good as it can, The thinking theae days seems to be that ecrwor-free-writing without eudstance te not as good as substantive writing even WITH errors. If both goels of correctness and substance can\be accomplished, wonderful; if not, it ecems vevter to save the energy fér the content. : Agoigning grades | This chabge in focus obviously calls fur some ghenges, then, in the way thot teachers grade papers that learners write in English, The tend te definitely awey from colledting student's papers, marking fhe errors, asaig: ing a grade, and rekurning the paper wi h a oonnent that they should try harder next time not to make so many erwera, This. older form of responding to atudente! writing can be very disoouraging for’ young writers, This approach does not help studente to avoid errors in, the future, The teacher spends houre teaching a point in grannar,. having: students’ prectice the point, correcting incorrect verstons of that grammatical feature, and then finding thet same error over: and fover again, Many studies in faret- and second-language acquiet ton point to the probability that euch errors will not disappear just because the teacher, thinks it 1s time for the students to stop making that’ error. In fact, 1ike an accent in spoken language, certain written exrors may never disappear. But current thinking is. simply hot focused av much om error. “nd in the process appreach te writing, often ‘he teacher has deen involved with the student throughout the writing of the paper and has been intoiening and responding to the writing by helping the student clarify meaning and. correct errors throughout the writing assignment.se RR a q i 4 i Purthermore, in the process approach very often, the teacher is not the only reeponder or “evaluator of “texts; now atudents' classmates are also involved in responding to writing. So how can teachers now assign grades to papers thay thay helped to write? The answer is that teachera will have to return to the original.question of why they ere teaching their students to.write,.what the students’ goals are, and what the teacher's goals have | been for that class, Depending,on what the goals are, grades will reflect ‘he degree. to which the students have met the,goals. While this hos always been the case, nowadays only rarely te the goal simply how accurately the student writes in English, NOTE from a LECTURE on WRITING It 49 not enough for teachers to give titles, They must provide a situat': and create a purpose ‘for writing. See the difference between "A pergon I admire” "Write @ letter of reference to recommend @ person you admire" ® We lose the pleasure of writing wa had in childhood as we grow older as @ consequence of unpleasenat experiences. i If we consider writing ae a process we will distinguish different steps in its development: 4, Identity why they are writing (meaningful purpose) 2, Identify who they are Writing for (audience) 3. Gather materiel through observing, brainstorming, making notes or liste taking, reading, roleplaying, holding debates 4. Plan how to go about the teok and how to omganise the materiel (formal = and dnformal planning) ‘i Write a draft , which could be a cooperative process between the teache and the pupil 16, Read. the draft critically. It should be a cooperative activity, not a lonely voring one. 7. Revise. “he fixot draft must be written without paying mich ettention to the languare because if you think too much about it the idea is lost. Students may even use L1, drawings or graphics. 8. Prepare more drafts and a final version, Drafts must be read together, a pupil to another , The atudents should correct the works themsélves. 9, Proofread for errors Source: Ann Raines Tevaniguee sh : . Teaching writing . OUP 14a3 SOME TIPS « Make pupils fee responsible for the activity + Do not do writing inthe classroom, The first draft should be done at i home. S + There should be loop writing and colleborative writing. : + Remember thet writing ie a long-term project + Correction must sometimes be done by the teachers and sometimna by the groupe or etudents « “he taska the teachers set must clearly refer to audience and purpose. » Bo not use dialogues x, «Do not try to. choose compositions that require writing newspaper article because generally students cannot use the correct register. Give Nigh of chutes Be leng “prautia and vinting paateeBelow is a suggested sequence for the writing process Focus Function ‘Activities | Ist Stage: PLANNING input rotation and generating ideas hough i tapa Starerforthe — bretastormieg destin, esearch ingtai" taking note handouts 2. types of eision of wring, sareyng posses nd writing |, comme purpose an Iulject 3. Writing. Teappogoutan desing on way of handing strategy ep thers 2) Organization cetionoftext_—_ deciding on vel petentation nd )Ongetisation eee icq SSedeg ion section ofatext_ narrowing down content and bInfommetion, Seay ‘Sheorng Sppropsate aceon vo sats and ideas developed so ar ‘2nd Stage: DRAFTING 1. Text evolved cil ofwhat has re-vending the text, so fir ‘been writen Aa iene ala al 2 Cohesenes fides, rE a . argaizaon, getter blag content 1. Gobesion, sata, gl ineoemet eng dmg ig an epson, ats, gp iment ig ig gn nig ee | eee CS Paposs, ae” Rigel Bt ration the text intended parpose; rewriting if | a Sample Correction Code SYMBOL TYPE OF ERROR cap capitalization a : P punctuation i py Dame inrvone ge Ja soesto De tbeoat = SP spelling A, the fizwt wathona® park vas foun in 1973, EO Zp X omit this R Cdeword regis panes ove toes natn tenants oe C2 pedens 4. aw ean ntnan oh enin's roe of trees, 1 paragraph aaa ae # number winauar orate Se amanten eee Pe SV subject-verb agreement i oe VT verb tense VF verb form igernd, parti, ete) WC word choice dF word Form inn vet aleve, WE Gir ee WO word order frag sentence fragment % wmgevew mene : RO run-on sentence 7 ~ connect this a 7 unclear English Teaching Forum «July 1993 39