LESSON 3.

DEVELOPING WRITTEN COMMUNICATION SKILLS:

Writing.

1.What do we know about the writing skill process?

Writing is the result of employing strategies to manage the composing process, which
is one of gradually developing a text. The process view of writing involves several
activities:

 Thinking.
 Generating ideas.
 Organising information.
 Selecting appropriate language.
 Making a draft.
 Reading.
 Reviewing and editing.

1.1. What strategies do skilled writers use as they compose?

 Planning. It is a thinking activity to which writers retuned again and again during
composing.
 Individual strategies before and while you are composing.
o Writing notes, list or diagrams
o Spend some time thinking at the outset and then write your ideas.
 Re-read their work, assessing it, reacting and moving on. That makes the
difference between the poorer writers who seemed to focus on re-reading chunks
of discourse and better writers who sometimes re-read whole paragraphs. In
conclusion, better writers changes their words at the end of this process.
 Revising took place throughout the process and generally involved considerable
changes:
o Composing something new.
o Deleting sentences.
o Shifting paragraphs around or eliminating them.
o Change their grammar structures, spelling and punctuation.
1.2. What activities characterize the writing process?

 Planning. Good writers concentrate on the overall meaning and organization of a

text and engage in planning activities. This will involve thinking about the
purpose of writing, for example:
o A letter of complaint about a poor service.
o An email to a friend.
o A wedding letters.
 Revising. During reflection, writers may re-read the sentences on the page or look
back at their original plan and think about how to express the next set of ideas.
o Is my argument expressed through a clear set of points?
o Does my reader have to make conceptual leaps in order to follow me?
o Is any section repetitious and can they be missed out?
o Do I need to rearrange any sentences?
In this way, additions, deletions, and rearrangement can be made in order to
improve the writing.
 Producing ‘reader-based ‘prose.
o What the reader needs to know?
o How to make information clear and accessible?
o What is an appropriate style (friendly, formal, persuasive…)?
Good writers are sensitive to the audience of their writing.

2.What are the implications of a process approach?

 Sense of audience. Teacher can help students develop a sense of audience. A

process approach tries to provide useful support for student writers. Good
activities are a school magazine or write letters for people.
 Backgrounds. The nature of the support will depend on the kind of learners.
o Ages.
o Background.
o Needs for writing in English
 Helps students to generate ideas.
o Providing key vocabulary
o Interactive working
o Brainstorming.
 Revision strategies help students to connect ideas and improve their writing skills.
They need to answer this question ‘Have you organized your points?’. The
procedures of revision strategies are:
o Conferencing.
 Teacher can talk with individual students about the work in
progress, questioning and support student writer in getting ideas
together, organizing them and finding an appropriate language
 Give them a good feedback on conferencing.
o Reformulation. 1º draft
 All the students carry out a guided writing task
 Each student writes a first draft and hands it to the teacher.
 The teacher ‘marks’ the words by indicating problems by means
of underlining of highlighting.
 The teacher chooses one student’s essay and reformulates it,
following the ideas closely but improving the expression in terms
of accuracy and appropriacy
 Original and the reformulation are copied so that students compare
them.
 Teacher, with the class discusses the changes and gives a rationale
inviting comments and questions.
 Student then go through their own first drafts and revise them in
the light of any useful information they have gained.
 Text-based approach to writing:
o Types of writing and words you need: personal, creative…
 Supporting student with technology
o Using collaborative tools to work with students to process text. (google
drive, one drive…)
3.What are the implications of a text-based approach to writing?

 Helping students to identify their writing needs.

 Building awareness of discourse organization.
 Helping student to develop crafting skills.
 Enabling student to appreciate the criteria of an effective text
 Discuss topics and projects.

4. Learning to write in L1 and L2.

The kinds of writing activities pupils do tend to fall into two sets in the same way that
they do for reading:

 Learning to write. Pupils are involved mostly in tightly guided copying which
focus on ‘surface’ features that mean that writing activities are focus on word or
sentence writing only.
o Handwriting
o Spelling
o Punctuation
o Using the correct words and grammar.
 Writing to learn. It is a less controlled activities.
o Creative writing. Where there are higher cognitive demands and a greater
focus of meaning and personal expressions as well as form.

The demands of activities and task for Productive Skills (speaking and writing) can
be divided into two.

1. Choosing the right language.

2. Thinking and having ideas.
a. Remembering.
b. Choosing
c. Selecting
d. Ordering
e. Prioritizing and interpreting visual clues using a picture of graphips.
 It is important to understand what native-speakers’ children can do in terms of
writing at different stages so that teachers appear do not make unrealistic demands on
children writing in a foreign language.

Kroll and Wells (1983). Writing skills and their attitudes to writing phases:

 Preparatory stage (seven-year-old). Child acquire the basic mechanisms of

handwriting and spelling.
 Consolidation stage (Seven years and older):
o Writing is still personal, colloquial, situational and context bound. In that
age, children write captions for drawings or short stories.
o Children are willing to rub out or alter letter shapes or spellings but are
rarely willing to revise or edit their work.
o At the age of seven and nine-year-old: native-speaker children are
becoming fluent story writers
o Notion of audience (nine-year-old)
o At the age of nine or ten years old: there is a differentiation stage that’s
show evidence of writing structures becoming more distinct.
 Stories structures are more shaped and organize
 Sentences structures becomes more formal and less colloquial.
4.1. When should children learn to write in the foreign language?

4.1.1. The early stages.

In the early stages of learning to write in an L2 young pupils may still be consolidating
their concept of print. Copying at this level:

 Opportunities to practise handwriting, learn and consolidate their understanding

of a new vocabulary.
 Develop an awareness of and confidence in English spelling.
 Practise a range of simple sentence patterns they have learned to use in speaking.

An important principle at all levels is that children should not asked to write something
that hey cannot say in English. Writing practice also helps gradually to widen and
consolidate the range of vocabulary, grammatical structures and sentences patters they
can produce. It is helpful to provide plenty of practice in the meaning and spelling of
basic words so their use is familiar and gradually becomes more automatically.

Writing skills in the second year:

 Practice writing sentences and very simple, short texts.
 Writing activities.
o Selecting and spelling words correctly.
o Using the correct word order.
o Using the grammatical structures accurately
o Linking sentences together with simple conjunctions.
o It is a good idea to personalize writing task, where possible.
4.1.2. English spelling.

English spelling is illogical and difficult and is not easy for young children to learn.

Palmer (1991). Four ways in which children learn the spelling of words:

Visual style Auditor style

Learners respond to the shapes of It is better for learners to sound the
words and the patters of letter word out as they can recognize the
strings within them and have a relationship between sound and
feeling whether something looks letters or group of letters.
“right”
Linguistic style Kinaesthetic style
Children might draw on as they Spelling is a graphic motor skill,
grow older and develop skills in and the writer lets the hand
seeing relationship between words remember the kind of movements
based in grammar, meaning and so and shape made when producing
on. words.

It is important to remember that a multi-sensory approach is probably the best for all
young learners. Some common spelling games you can play with younger learners are

 Hide and seek

 Nought and crosses
4.1.3. Guidelines for a supportive writing classroom

 Reinforce the connection between writing-speaking and reading-writing in

English.
 Try to develop an awareness of environmental print.
 Make sure your own classroom has many examples of English writing (functional
print).
 Develop the concept of English letter with letter cards, magnetic or plasticine
letter and alphabet games.
 Letter days. Children bring in thing which begin in English with a particular
letter. Label and display them.
 Count the words in a line of print or clap for each word spoken.
 Songs, jingles, and games helps to
reinforce the concept of words or letters.
 List of high frequency words from their
reading and writing using personal
picture dictionaries.
 Compile a class new book where you write
news vey simple with the help of the class.
 Word banks cards.