What is writing?
Writing is thinking. It helps to share your ideas and feelings. When you write you let your imagination run free. Writing, unlike speaking, is not an ability we acquire naturally even in our native language. It has to be taught. Teaching writing is not just grammar and spelling. It is focusing ideas, organizing them.Writing helps to express thoughts, develops writing skills.
Writing, unlike all other aspects of language, is communicative. We write letters, CV-s, e-mails, lists, notes, responds, assignments, dialogues,essays. Our students write articles, work on blogs, so teaching writing is very important in the whole process of teaching a foreign language.
We also need to make a distinction between writing to learn and learning to write. If we understand this distinction and make sure our learners will do too and the communicative purpose of writing will be clearer.
While teaching writing I use the following stages:
As the first stage of preparing to write, I give learners the topic to write on. Learners work in pairs or in groups to share ideas and knowledge and it provides a good opportunity to practice speaking and listening skills and generating ideas. Then each group presents its ideas to the class. It doesn't matter if the idea isn't used in the final piece of writing. The important thing is to break through the barrier of "I can't think of anything to write".
By going through these stages learners use their own ideas to produce a piece of writing.
Writing is thinking. It helps to share your ideas and feelings. When you write you let your imagination run free. Writing, unlike speaking, is not an ability we acquire naturally even in our native language. It has to be taught. Teaching writing is not just grammar and spelling. It is focusing ideas, organizing them.Writing helps to express thoughts, develops writing skills.
Writing, unlike all other aspects of language, is communicative. We write letters, CV-s, e-mails, lists, notes, responds, assignments, dialogues,essays. Our students write articles, work on blogs, so teaching writing is very important in the whole process of teaching a foreign language.
We also need to make a distinction between writing to learn and learning to write. If we understand this distinction and make sure our learners will do too and the communicative purpose of writing will be clearer.
While teaching writing I use the following stages:
- The first stage of writing - Generating Ideas
As the first stage of preparing to write, I give learners the topic to write on. Learners work in pairs or in groups to share ideas and knowledge and it provides a good opportunity to practice speaking and listening skills and generating ideas. Then each group presents its ideas to the class. It doesn't matter if the idea isn't used in the final piece of writing. The important thing is to break through the barrier of "I can't think of anything to write".
- The second stage - is the writing process. I tell my students to write individually for about 15-20 minutes, without worrying about grammar. If they don't know a particular word, they may ask their friends or write it in their native language. This often helps to develop some of the ideas used during "generating ideas" stage. Learners then use a dictionary, ask the teacher or each other to find in English any words or phrases they wrote in their native language. I think the teacher can also comment on the content and the organization of ideas.
- The third stage - The learners should check the details of grammar and spelling. Instead of correcting the writing myself, I help the students to correct their own writing and learn from their mistakes.
By going through these stages learners use their own ideas to produce a piece of writing.
