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  60 MINUTES TEACHING ENGLISH AS FOREGIN LANGUAGE (TEFL)

Teaching Writing
First, the roles of writing in the learning and use of language are examined. The
next sections discuss techniques for teaching basic and expanded writing skills
and for helping learners gain control of the writing process. The chapter
concludes with suggestions for ways to respond to students’ writing and sample
exercises for teaching writing skills.
Roles of writing in the learning and use of language
Let’s begin by putting writing into perspective in relation to the other language
skills. Where your native language is concerned, in ordinary, everyday use, you are
far more likely to be listening to, speaking, or reading the language than writing it.
This is true even though you are a professional with a job which requires you to
carry out frequent writing tasks: memos, letters, reports, lesson materials, and the
like. When it comes to a second language, professional people may find that a
good reading ability is essential, but for their, on the job writing tasks, they may
be more likely to use their native language. Thus in practical terms, most people
do not need to be as proficient in writing as they need to be in the other language
skills.
In the English language classroom, writing activities serve two different purposes.
On the one hand, they help your students to learn the kinds of personal,
academic, or professional writing which they will use in their daily lives. On the
other hand, writing in English has a more purely pedagogical role. It reinforces the
learning which goes on through the medium of the listening, speaking, and
reading skills.
In the classes which you teach, whether for beginners or more advanced
students, you will probably find that you often give writing assignments as a way
of following up on listening and speaking exercises or reading activities. In
addition, students in the higher grades (secondary school and above) may need
to learn how to write well organized, carefully reasoned essays. The writing of one
or more essays is often a requirement on national examinations. Widely used
standardized English proficiency examinations also require such advanced writing
tasks (For example the Test of Written English requiring a half-hour composition
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 tasks. (For example, the Test of Written English, requiring a half-hour composition,
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is now available as a part of the Test of English as a Foreign Language. The

Cambridge First Certificate in English has a composition paper of one and a half
hours.)
Stages in the development of writing proficiency
In the teaching of writing, just as in the teaching of reading, it is helpful to have a
long-range overview of how proficiency develops. You will notice that the links
between reading and writing become closer as students progress through the
three main phases of the sequence.
Early stages of writing
Proficiency level:
Low beginners
Skills and features of English to learn:
Use printed/cursive forms of Roman alphabet (as appropriate)
Learn general spelling and punctuation rules
Use simple word, phrase, and sentence forms
Materials to use:
Basic literacy materials
Writing tasks to follow up on oral and reading exercises
Short narratives/descriptions using Language
Experience Approach Dialogue journals
Expanded writing skills
Proficiency level:
High beginners and intermediate students
Skills and features of English to learn:
Use commonly occurring word, phrase, and sentence patterns
Write paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting details
Use link words to signal organization of paragraphs
Practice techniques for pre-writing, revising, editing
Materials to use:
Dialogue journals
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 Compositions using Language Experience Approach
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Exercises to teach organization of paragraphs

Paragraphs of narration, description, simpler logical relationships
Academic writing skills
Proficiency level:
High intermediate and advanced students
Skills and features of English to learn:
Use discourse patterns expected in academic writing
Develop a thesis with appropriate supporting details
Become more independent in the writing process
Materials to use:
Sequenced exercises to model and guide students’ essays
Writing tasks simulating assignments in subject-matter courses
Your students may not need to learn the most advanced forms of writing in this
sequence. However, you should keep in mind that many of the features of
advanced writing tasks are present in embryonic form at lower levels of the
sequence. Further, most students find that as they become more skilled at writing
in one language, their writing in any other language they may know also improves.
Perhaps surprisingly, this increased skill may even transfer from a second
language to the first.
General Lesson Plan for Composing Assignments
It is difficult to give a lesson plan which will cover all types of writing assignments.
When your students are composing (as opposed to doing writing tasks to
reinforce oral or reading activities) you should always have a pre-writing phase
and you should always allow plenty of time for revising. In fact, it is so difficult to
separate writing and revising that the most appropriate lesson format consists of
just two main phases:
Pre-writing
Brainstorming in various forms, oral and written
Analysis of models
Reading
Notetaking
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Time for multiple drafts

Feedback from teacher and other students
Basic writing skills and reinforcement of speaking and
listening
Your students may need writing instruction at the most basic level-learning to
form the letters and other symbols of the English writing system. Students
needing such instruction range from those who have neither reading nor writing
skills in any language to those who are fully literate but who happen not to have
learned a language which uses the Roman alphabet. Chapter Five of this manual
has a section on basic literacy training, and the Peace Corps Literacy Handbook
(Manual M-21 available from Information Collection and Exchange) provides
detailed guidance. Here are some general points to consider when teaching
writing at this very basic level:
Teaching the printed forms of letters, both capitals and lower case have the
advantage that there will be a closer match between the shapes which the
students write and the shapes which they must read. However, older learners
may feel that printed letters are for children and insist on learning the cursive
forms which they associate with adult handwriting. Choose the forms which
work best for your students.
When you began to learn to write in English, you may have learned the letters in
alphabetical order. A more efficient way is to group the letters according to their
shapes. For example, a number of lower case letters in their hand printed form
are “ball and stick” figures: a, b, d, p, q.
At the same time that students are developing a legible handwriting, they can
also learn spelling rules of wide applicability, as well as the use of common
punctuation marks (especially the period, question mark, comma, and
apostrophe).
Even beginning students can handle simple writing assignments, once they are
able to form English letters in a legible and consistent way and can recognize a
few English words in their written form. Keep in mind that your students should be
able to understand everything that they are asked to write. Thus it makes sense
to present new content first via the listening and speaking skills and to use
reading and writing to reinforce what has been mastered in the aural/oral
activities.
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In Chapter Five, the Language Experience Approach (LEA) was discussed as a

way of teaching reading to beginners. It is easy and natural to extend this
technique as a way of teaching writing to beginners. When used for writing, the
LEA allows your students to express their own ideas, but it also permits you to
control the difficulty of the writing assignment and to provide support in spelling,
punctuation, grammar, and vocabulary as needed.
At this point, you should return to Chapter Five to refresh your memory of the use
of the LEA for reading. Then look at the following guidelines for using the LEA in
basic writing activities.
Base student writing on personally meaningful topics, in the same way, that you
use students’ dictation of their own experiences as the texts for beginning
reading.
Have talk precede writing. Because writing is more difficult than dictating
stories for the teacher to write, students should be given many pre-writing
opportunities to review orally what they want to say in writing.
Emphasize the act of composing. Present writing as a form of communication,
not a series of drills.
Recognize errors in usage, awkward phrasing, and difficulties with mechanics
as natural outcomes of limited mastery of English. Handle errors very
sensitively, placing more emphasis on helping the student make the meaning
clear than on perfecting mechanical details such as spelling and punctuation.
Relate writing assignments to reading and oral language activities. At first,
writing should be directly related to stories dictated by the students. As
students are later exposed to a greater variety of reading material, the
additional models of English can be used to refine written expression and
broaden the content of written work.
Two themes which appear in Dixon and Nessel’s guidelines deserve further
comment. The first is the emphasis on getting the students to communicate
through writing. They recommend that even the earliest writing assignments be
tied to narratives about personally meaningful topics. Contrast this type of
assignment with another type in which the student writes out a list of unrelated
sentences, either as practice to reinforce a particular grammar topic or as an
exercise in the application of certain translation rules. If you are required to use
textbooks which present writing as drills rather than as communication, you will
certainly want to devise supplementary writing activities which allow your
students to communicate on topics which have meaning for them.
The second theme is not as explicit as the first but it is just as important
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 The second theme is not as explicit as the first, but it is just as important.
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Composing is viewed as an iterative process. Writers gather their thoughts,

search out additional information, rehearse vocabulary and phraseology, put
something into rough written form, review what they have written, evaluate it for
adequacy of content and coherence of organization, ask for critical feedback from
another reader, add or delete content, reorganize to make the narrative or
argument easier to follow, review and revise again (in fact, probably several
times), and finally, edit to check for accuracy in grammar, vocabulary, spelling,
and punctuation.
Note how much of this process is concerned with meaning. Note also that the
writer usually does not “get it right” the first time around. Unfortunately, because
of the way composing is most often taught, students get the impression that once
they start putting words on paper, the result should be very close to a finished
product. They fail to appreciate the importance of the pre-writing activities, and
they are likely to think of revision solely in terms of proofreading for grammatical
and mechanical errors.
If you teach writing as a process it is almost guaranteed that you will encourage
your students to communicate through their writing. But you must remember two
key points. First, give your students enough time in pre-writing activities to gather
their thoughts, discover the language needed to express them, and establish the
focus of the composition. Secondly, show by your response to their writing that
your first concern is the message they are trying to convey. You will defeat your
purpose if you immediately start marking up the grammatical and mechanical
errors that you find.
Many teachers find it unnerving to return a composition to a student in which
there are errors which have not been picked out with red ink or otherwise
commented upon. Perhaps it will help to view your students’ composting efforts in
the following way. In the earliest stages of learning the writing skill, the goal is to
gradually increase the length of the compositions. Don’t expect polished
productions. Instead, place the emphasis on the prewriting activities and on
helping the students to get their ideas down on paper. As your students’ writing
proficiency increases, you can gradually lead them into techniques for revision
and you can set up writing assignments so that they have time to produce one or
more non-final drafts. Even then, as you respond to an early draft you should think
primarily of how clearly and effectively the message has been presented. In a later
section of this chapter, you will find some specific suggestions on ways to
respond to students’ written work.
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Expanded writing skills and reinforcement of reading

If you are teaching very young students, or absolute beginners of any age, most
of the writing assignments which you give will be under careful control. Students
may do copying exercises to learn letter formation, spelling, and punctuation.
Written grammar exercises and written answers to questions on reading
assignments are two other types of controlled writing. Even when you use the LEA
to teach writing, you are controlling the composting efforts of your students.
These controlled writing assignments play an important role in developing the
basic language proficiency of your students. Of course, controlled writing also has
its limitations. It doesn’t allow your students to be creative or to go very far in
expressing their own thoughts. Controlled writing has even more serious
limitations if you rely on it for teaching essay writing skills. Students don’t get the
independent practice they need in selecting a topic to write about, finding
supporting details, or discovering an appropriate way to organize their
compositions. So, while controlled writing assignments are useful for some
purposes, your students’ writing activities need to be expanded in two ways. They
must be allowed to be more communicative and they must be encouraged to be
more independent.
Learning to Write While Learning to Communicate
In recent years, many language teachers have tried an interesting technique for
encouraging students to write more and to communicate more through their
writing. The technique, called dialogue journals, is a form of interactive writing
between the teacher and the student. The beauty of the technique is that you can
use it with students of any degree of language proficiency, even with beginners.
This is the way it works.
Each student has a composition book which he or she uses as a diary or journal.
On a regular basis, preferably every day, students write in their journals as much
or as little as they want to write, on whatever subject interests them at the
moment. They can return to the same topic in a later entry if they like, or they can
treat a new topic each time. They can ask the teacher questions about features of
language or culture, or about personal matters if they need to. They can express
opinions and make requests.
The dialogue aspect of dialogue journals results from the way the teacher
responds to the students’ entries. As frequently as possible, depending on the
size of the class, the teacher asks to read the students’ journals and writes an
answering entry in each one In effect the teacher and the students carry on a
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 answering entry in each one. In effect, the teacher and the students carry on a
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conversation via the journal. Here are examples of two exchanges. The first
example shows the third daily entry from the journal of Laura, a sixth-grade
student from Italy who has had no prior English language training.
Laura: Ms. Reed, I like dis room and I like you Bekes you are a good teshir and
teach my English. I like evryBety.
Teacher: Everybody likes you, too, Laura. Did you read the book? We will read
every day.
The second example is from the journal of Kazutomi, an adult Japanese student
studying English in an intensive summer program in the United States.
Kazutomi: I don’t buy a dictionary yet. If you take me bookstore and choose my
dictionary, I am delightful. Prepositions are very difficult for me. In Japan, when
I take English Examinations, I lose points due to prepositions. Also, I want to
know about an idiom.
Teacher: Good. Let’s go to the bookstore on Friday at 4:00. I will meet you
there. I can’t go today because we have a faculty meeting. So Friday at 4:00
outside the bookstore, OK? As I said, we’ll have several lessons about
prepositions. There are some rules we can study hut often you just have to
memorize them. Idioms are a lot of fun. I’ll try to use more when I write to you.
Then if you don’t get it (understand it) (an idiom) you can ask. OK?
Notice how in each case the teacher treats the student’s entry as a message
rather than as a writing sample to be corrected. At the same time, the teacher’s
response subtly reshapes parts of the student’s entry and provides a model of
correct language.
Teachers who have used dialogue journals with their students throughout a
semester have found that they bring many worthwhile results, both personal and
pedagogical. Because the written dialogues are informal and private, most
teachers feel that they achieve a greater mutual understanding with their
students. On the pedagogical side, the students gradually increase their writing
competence, moving toward greater independence as writers. Thanks to the
feedback provided by the teacher, they gain a greater understanding of the
features of written English. Their entries become longer and more complex. At the
same time, because they are exploring their own ideas and interests, they are
building up a store of topical material which they can mine for later writing
assignments of a more formal sort.
Mastering Features of Written Discourse
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As your students advance to more complex forms of writing, the links between
reading and writing become increasingly important. The texts that you use for
instruction in reading provide your students with food for thought and topics for
oral and written discussion. At the same time, the formal features of different
types of written discourse serve as models which your students can use in their
own writing. As you take up different features of discourse in reading
assignments, you can introduce parallel writing activities which employ the same
features. (See the section “Some Significant Features of Expository Prose” in
Chapter Five.) To complete the circle, when students have tried to incorporate
new formal features into their writing, they become more aware of those features
when they crop up in subsequent reading assignments. Thus reading and writing
play mutually enhancing roles.
In Chapter Five of this manual, among the examples of exercises for the
development of the reading micro skills is one type which helps students to pick
out formal discourse features. Such exercises are an aid to reading
comprehension, but they also have a purpose in writing instruction. Properly used,
they can help students learn to organize their thoughts and present them in
writing according to commonly used patterns of written discourse.
Students learn, for example, that in a narrative the sequence of events is a central
factor. Although the writer may deliberately choose not present the events in
strict chronological order, once the tale has been told the sequence of events
must be understood Another type of writing where chronology must be taken into
account is in the description of a process. For maximum clarity, each step of the
process should be described in order; otherwise, confusion may result. The
chronological order also figures in the explanation of a chain of causes and
effects.
Other types of logical relations hinge on the perception of similarities and
differences: contrast, comparison, analogy, the classification of like things
together, and the definition of things, where distinguishing characteristics are
pointed out. Whatever the logical relation, a certain thought pattern will be called
for, and this, in turn, must be matched to the writing patterns which we
conventionally use for presenting it.
Learning the writing process
In order to become independent writers, your students not only must master the
formal features of written English but must also become more conscious of the
writing process itself and learn techniques which will make the process work more
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 writing process itself and learn techniques which will make the process work more
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smoothly for them. In particular, you can show them various devices to use during
the pre-writing phase which will launch them more confidently into the first rough
draft. Further, you can give them guidelines and techniques for the revising phase
of the process which will encourage them to look for and remedy substantive
deficiencies in their writing, rather than simply making a clean copy of the first
draft.
Pre-writing
The purpose of the pre-writing phase of the process is to get the kettle boiling.
When your students begin a writing project they need ideas, a purpose or plan
which will provide a focus for the ideas, the language with which to express the
ideas, and enough interest and enthusiasm to sustain the effort of getting the
ideas down on paper. Depending upon the age of the students, and the level of
their language proficiency, a variety of techniques may be used for launching the
project.
One of the most flexible of these techniques is brainstorming. It can be done with
either novice or experienced writers, young or old, individually, in small groups, or
as a whole class. The point of a brainstorming session is to free-associate, to
produce as many ideas on a given topic as possible, as quickly as possible,
without worrying about the quality of the ideas or about grammar, spelling, or
punctuation.
Ann Raimes points out that, with any one of a number of different points of
departure (a personal experience, a picture, a map, a reading selection, a
textbook topic, even an examination question), brainstorming can be used to start
the writing process. You can vary the type and content of the prompt according to
the nature of the writing assignment and the language proficiency of your
students. Here is how Raimes uses brainstorming together with a picture as a
prompt.
The students see a photograph in which a young girl and an old man are sitting
together on a park bench and playing checkers. (The photograph is from a
collection by Edward Steichen, The Family of Man.) They are asked to observe
and talk about the picture.
Examples of responses from a group of four students:
She is probably about four years old.
I wonder who’s winning?
Where is her mother?
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 Where is her mother?
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Does her mother know she’s playing with the old man?
He’s her grandfather.
I like his face.
He looks like my grandfather.
She’s pretty.
What time of day do you think it is?
The students make comments and free associations for about five minutes. Then
they make written notes, examine them, summarize them, and develop them into
a topic for a more focused discussion. After the second, more focused discussion
they do a writing assignment. A variation of brainstorming has the students asking
speculative questions about a reading selection. The questions lead to discussion,
which is then followed by a writing assignment. Ann Raimes shows an example of
speculation as applied to a reading selection for intermediate level students.
When the fire engine left the fire station on Hicks Street at 8:00 p.m. on Saturday,
the fireman Bill Roscoe did not know that he would return a hero. Flames were
leaping out of a first-floor window of the corner house on Livingston Street.
Neighbors, police, and firemen stood outside on the sidewalk. Suddenly they all
looked up and shouted as they heard a scream. A boy, about ten years old,
appeared at a third-floor window. It wouldn’t open. He was very frightened. Bill
Roscoe dropped the hose, stepped forward, jumped, and grabbed the bottom
rung of the metal fire escape ladder. Then he climbed up to the window, broke it,
pulled the boy out of the window, and carried him down the ladder. Both were
safe, and the crowd cheered. In asking speculative questions, students have to
think beyond the given text. These are some of the questions which could be
asked about this reading selection.
Why was the boy alone in the house? What does a fireman do every day? How
would the boy describe the event in a letter to his grandmother? What letter
would the owner of the house write to the insurance company? What precautions
should everyone take to prevent fire at home? How would the boy describe the
incident? Would you like to be a fireman/woman? Why or why not? The more
promising questions are those which can set off a discussion generating lots of
ideas, which the students can then incorporate into a follow-up writing
assignment.
Still another variation of brainstorming is a technique called loop writing or
looping, which is more appropriately done on an individual basis with students at
an intermediate or advanced level of proficiency. Each student writes without
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 stopping for five to ten minutes, putting down anything that comes to mind on a
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given topic. As in all forms of brainstorming, there is no editing. No worry about

the aptness of the ideas, the brilliance of the prose, the accuracy of the grammar,
spelling, and punctuation. The student then stops, reads what has just been
written, reflects on it, and then sums it up in a single sentence. This sentence
becomes the kernel idea for the next loop. After going through this procedure two
more times, the student should have arrived at a summary sentence which he can
use as the focus for an essay. The following example shows looping as used by
Julio, a college ESL student in the United States, but the technique works well
also for students in secondary school and for adult learners.
Loop 1
Because I arrived late to class I am very sorry but I had to talk with a person of
Mexico who is going to come to study here the next month and I opened my
house and help for the time he will need to find a home for he and his family. Then
I came running to class. And I am writing the same thing I did yesterday. I received
a cassette I bought and I was listening to some of them I am very happy with the
music I bought and I enjoyed listening to Chakovsky’s 1812 simphony, the best of
the classics played by the most famous piano player Liberace in which he plays
the always beautiful Tehowcorsky number one concerto. Also a bought another
about jazz. . .
It takes Julio some time to settle into the routine, but he then starts to roll with the
description of the cassettes he has just bought. Upon reflection, he decides he
wants to write about why he likes music, and this is shown in the first line of the
next loop.
Loop 2
I like music because is a kind of communication.
Music was used for our ancestors to express their feelings in situations such as
religion, war, love, etc., and music is still used for the same purposes nowadays.
For example, you can know the feelings of Schuber when you listen to some of the
famous Schuber’s senatos which are blue and become you sad.
Music is also used to express protest about political situations. For example, “The
Jolckloristas” which is a Latin-American music group, sing several songs against
the situation in Chile, Argentina, etc.
In my opinion, these are some of the reasons for which I consider music a kind of
communication and for this reason, I use music to communicate my feelings too
b f I f h
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 by means of songs I wrote to my father, my mother and my wife. . .
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Reflecting on the second loop, Julio decided that the most important idea was
feelings, and this led him to think of music in a more metaphorical sense.
Loop 3
What do you need to listen to music?
You need just be quiet for a minute and you can hear your own music which can
tell you if you are sad or happy. This can result you so funny that you aren’t going
to try but think, which music is a deaf and dumb person listen to? You can answer
any music because they don’t know how to produce it: they don’t know the noise.
Nevertheless, I tell you they have their own internal song, their heart, stomach,
etc. they can feel more than us because we have more noise outside that is
impossible we hear the beautiful song our heart play when he works.
We can listen to a beautiful music authors play but I recommend you try to be
quiet for a minus during your busy day and get a chance to heard your heart sing
when he works it will be the best of all experiences you can hear our all
fascinating music there are in the world.
Besides being an individual rather than a group technique, looping takes a longer
time to work properly than other forms of brainstorming. You and your students
must allow for this and give the ideas a chance to flow and develop. If Julio had
stopped after the second loop, he might have had a workable focus for his essay.
However, it is apparent from the way the third loop develops that Julio’s thoughts
had not yet jelled. In the third loop, Julio has finally found a focus that interests
him, and it is quite likely that the essay he now writes will be more interesting to
his readers than an essay based on the second loop would have been.
Revising
The purpose of the revising aspect of writing is to make sure that you have
actually said what you intended to say. The focus is still primarily on ideas, though
(as compared with pre-writing activities) you have to be more critical of the way in
which the ideas are expressed. Students often think of revision as being one
single step, the last step before handing in the assignment. It is more realistic to
think of revision going on constantly as you write. Even in prewriting activities,
one can often find revision going on, as some ideas are discarded while others are
retained and more fully developed.
Your students are likely to think of revision in the same way that their teacher
does You can set the example by planning writing assignments so that there is
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 does. You can set the example by planning writing assignments so that there is
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clearly more than one revision stage. Show them through your own reactions that
comments, suggestions, and other responses in the earlier revision stages should
be directed at the message. Grammar and spelling can wait until the end. Ann
Raimes gives some practical suggestions:
When you pick up a student’s piece of writing, don’t immediately reach for a pen
or pencil. Read the whole piece through before you write anything.
Look for strengths as well as weaknesses, and let the student know what the
strengths are.
Your main job is to help the writer see what to do next. Ask yourself: What
should the writer do now to improve this paper? What does this paper need
most?
Here is an example of a student composition, the way Raimes responded to it, and
the subsequent revision by the student:
Ever since I was a small child the magic of tricks always were mysterious to me.
One person who I believed was a master of it is Harry Houdini. He was the
greatest and his magic will live on as the greatest. If I was to meet him at my
magic dinner, all my mysteries would be answered. Maybe he will even teach me a
trick to amaze my friends. I feel I’m the person who should find out the secrets
that were buried with him.
Comment: You have made me very interested in Houdini. What did he do that
was so great? What mysteries do you want to be answered? What exactly
were the secrets that were buried with him? I’d like to know.
This is a real success story. The student not only reacted to the specific questions
of the teacher, but she also corrected the subject-verb agreement problem in the
first sentence without having it called to her attention.
Ever since I was a child the magic of tricks always was mysterious to me. One
person who I believed was a master is Harry Houdini. All his escapes from chains
and jails shocked millions. His death in the water tank truly was a mystery. Some
people think he did not know how to escape; others believe he suffered a bad
cramp. I will find out at my dinner. I would like him to even teach me a trick to
amaze my friends. The story doesn’t end there. The student, bothered by the
mystery of Houdini’s death, went to the library to research the question. She
found out that Houdini had died of peritonitis. So she revised again.
You may feel that it is not practical to try to carry out Raimes’ suggestions in large
classes, but there are ways to cut down on the teacher’s workload in reading
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student compositions while still preserving the emphasis on revising to clarify the
message.
Each student working independently uses a checklist to guide the revision of
the paper. The checklist might consist of a series of questions. What is your
purpose? Which sentence states the purpose? Where are your supporting
ideas? Are they clearly stated? Have you given examples where they are
needed? etc. For more elaborate writing assignments, more elaborate checklists
may be devised.
Students work in pairs or small groups, reading their papers aloud to each
other. Students sometimes discover their problems for themselves in this way.
The other members of the group, serving as the audience with whom the writer
is trying to communicate, ask questions about anything in the paper that they
don’t understand. (They should not critique the grammar.)
Each student exchanges papers with a partner. The partners use a checklist
such as the following to respond to each other’s paper.
Who do you think is the audience for this essay?
What is the purpose of this essay?
Underline the thesis statement and the topic sentences in the essay Circle the
controlling ideas in each.
What is the best part of the essay?
What questions could you ask the author?
Are there places where more information is needed? b. Are there places that
you find confusing?
Are there details that do not contribute to the main ideas in the essay? d. Are
there examples that do not relate to the thesis statement?
Is there information that the audience will already know?
After your students have revised their work under the prompting of one of the
above techniques, you can then read the papers and will probably find fewer
problems to deal with. Another suggestion is to designate some writing
assignments as “practice compositions,” not requiring your students to polish
them to perfection. As the semester progresses, the students will become more
proficient at managing the writing process and you can set higher standards for
their output. You might then ask them to use their greater writing skill to return to
the earlier practice compositions and revise them.
Examples of exercises to develop the writing skills
Exercises for beginning writers should build on material which is already familiar to
th t d t Th iti h h ld t i l t f l k d th
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 the students. The pre-writing phase should contain a lot of oral work and the
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actual writing done by the students should be limited and controlled in various
ways. Here are some suggestions for beginning writing activities which are guided
by the technique of the Language Experience Approach.
Have students dictate the first part of a story. After three or four sentences
have been dictated, give the students the story to complete independently in
writing.
Give students copies of cartoons from which the characters’ dialogue has been
omitted. Have them compose orally, experimenting with various things the
characters might say, and then write their ideas on the cartoons.
Have students invent and act out brief social exchanges: asking directions,
making a purchase in a store, greeting someone in the street, ordering food at a
snack bar. Then have them write these in dialogue form.
If you are teaching beginners, you may find that the LEA is so effective you will
want to use it for most of your less controlled writing assignments. However, you
should not forget the value of dialogue journals in encouraging students to write
more extensively and communicatively. Remember also that as your students’
writing proficiency develops, they need more assignments to help them to
become independent writers.
Expanded writing skills require students to produce longer and more complex
sentences. For this purpose, many writing textbooks contain exercises in which
the students are instructed to combine two or more simple sentences into a single
more complex sentence. For example, the exercise might contain pairs of
sentences which the student is to combine by making one sentence into a relative
clause which is then used to modify some noun in the other sentence.
History is the course. + It causes me the most trouble.
= History is the course which causes me the most trouble.
This type of exercise can be quite helpful, but you should be aware of its
limitations. The focus here is more on the grammatical form of the sentences than
on the way sentences are strung together to form a discourse. For this reason,
students should also sometimes do sentence combining exercises within the
context of a whole paragraph, as in the following example.
Directions: The following paragraphs are written in short, choppy sentences.
Combine some of the sentences to increase the unity and coherence of the
paragraphs. It may be necessary to rewrite some of the sentences; use coherence
devices, and perhaps even rearrange the sentences.
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 de ces, a d pe aps e e ea a ge t e se te ces.
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It’s snowing outside. I feel a kind of loneliness. Everything looks lonely outside. No
one is on the streets. All I see are empty cars and snow. The trees are bare. They
look cold. They look lonely, too.
This is not my first time away from home. It is the longest. Maybe it is the most
helpful. I have to learn to be independent. I have to solve my own problems. That
will make me more responsible. I have to keep track of my money. I have to be
careful how much I spend. If my decisions are wrong, it’s my own fault. It’s no one
else’s fault. Being alone is the best way to learn responsibility.
Notice that combining sentences within the context of a paragraph is much more
like an authentic revision activity. There is no single correct answer to an exercise
such as this. Students can compare their results and discuss the differences.
Students need help in organizing their paragraphs and longer essays into
coherent patterns of discourse. The following is an exercise which points up the
need when writing a narrative to put events in a chronological order.
1. Issue a muddled picture sequence to Group A. Tell them to put the pictures in
the correct order.
2. Issue a muddied sentence sequence to Group B. Tell them to put the sentences
in the correct order, independent of Group A.
3. Call Group A to the front of the room. Tell them to hold up their pictures in the
order they have decided upon. Ask Group B whether the picture sequence
matches the order of their sentences. Encourage class discussion as to the
correct order of events in the story.
4. When an order is agreed, tell members of Group B to stand with their “partner”
in Group A. Ask individual students to read sentences from the story.
5. Tell the groups to return to their seats, and then display the picture sequence at
the front of the room, together with verb cues in the simple past tense. Tell the
class to write the story.
The next exercise also makes students more conscious of patterns for organizing
discourse. It uses the technique of guided analysis of a model essay. After the
students have been led to understand the organization of the model essay, they
write an essay of their own guided by the model and by a new set of data
provided by the teacher or the textbook writer. This technique has wide
applicability, but would probably not be usable with very young learners, since
some degree of abstraction is needed for discovering the author’s organization
and then applying it in one’s own writing. On the other hand, analysis of a model
works well for logical relationships such as comparison and contrast or cause and
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effect. Relationships such as these do not lend themselves as readily to the type
of “physical” representation which was used for chronological order in the
previous exercise.
The following example shows how to use analysis of a model in an essay
organized to present a comparison and contrast.
1. The students read an essay describing two brothers. (It could be two towns or
cities, two books, two holidays-any two things which may be compared and
contrasted.)
2. The students analyze the essay with the help of a table such as the following, a
list of the characteristics on which the two brothers are compared. Extracting
details from the essay, the students become aware of how the author
presented the similarities and differences between the two brothers.
3. Now the
procedure is
reversed. The
students are given
a second table
already filled in.
Using the data in
the table, and
following the
model of the essay about the brothers, they write their own comparison and
contrast essay about two young girls.
The type of text which may be taught by using the analysis of models ranges from
personal and business letters, through various types of expository paragraphs, to
longer texts such as critical reviews and descriptions of laboratory experiments. In
the following example, the technique is applied to a paragraph of description.
First, the students
see a model
paragraph.
The librarian for the
children’s section of
the City Library will have a variety of responsibilities. Duties will include planning,
organizing, implementing, and evaluating children’s programs and services. The
librarian will be responsible for building and maintaining the library’s children’s
collection as well as supervising the staff of the children’s section. The candidate
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 for this position must have a bachelor’s or master’s of library science degree from
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an accredited library school and 3 to 5 years’ professional experience. This person

should enjoy working with children and should also be able to supervise adults.
The salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.
The students analyze the paragraph by answering a series of questions:
1. According to the topic sentence, what position does this paragraph describe?
2. Fill in the spaces with information from the paragraph.
Duties and responsibilities:
Qualifications:
Salary:
3. For what audience was this job description written? For what purpose was it
written?
In the next step, the students see a format for this type of paragraph:
Format for Writing Static Description Job Description
Topic Sentence: a statement naming the job and the place of employment
Support: duties and responsibilities qualifications (professional and personal)
Concluding sentence: a statement about salary for the position
Finally, they are given information to write into a paragraph similar to the model
paragraph:
A head nurse is needed in the intensive care unit of the University Hospital. Use
the following information to write an advertisement describing the position for the
newspaper.
Head Nurse-Intensive Care Unit
Responsibilities:
Planning, organizing, and directing all intensive care unit activities
Teaching staff and patients
Performing surgical, postoperative, and medical procedures
Qualifications:
3 to 5 years’ experience in critical nursing
Registration with the State College of Nurse
Managerial skills
Interested Applicants Apply to:
N. Smith
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Director of Personnel
University Hospital
1 Belmont Avenue 392-21 46
Topic Sentence: State the position available and the place where it is available.
Support: Describe the responsibilities and qualifications.
Concluding Sentence: Tell applicants how to apply for the job.
More advanced writing tasks
Many of the techniques and exercises which we have already examined may also
be used in connection with the types of writing tasks carried out by college and
university students and professional people. In each of the following types of
written text, students will need help with prewriting and be revising activities and
techniques. The study of model texts will give them patterns for the overall
organization of the discourse. Attention to logical relationships (description of
processes, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, classification, and so on)
will help them focus their thoughts and match them to patterns for expressing the
relationships in writing. The following are some of the types of advanced writing
tasks for which you may need to prepare your students.
Objective reports: e.g., a report on a field trip, or a description of a laboratory
experiment. (See Peace Corps Manual No. M-31 ESP: Teaching English for
Specific Purposes.)
Summaries: e.g., summarizing (with or without critical commentary) a short
story or an article done as a reading assignment.
Research papers: using appropriate reference material to support a chosen
thesis through argumentation.
DISCUSSION

glorynkosi01 6 YEARS AGO

I find it difficult to understand what recourse is.
Please explain it to me. Thank you.
REPLY

ASK QUESTION
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