Teaching of writing

Types Of Writing
Often, the types of writing arc
grouped into modes according to
form and purpose. The chart at right
shows the writing modes you will
encounter in this book.
Writing can also be classified as:

Extensive writing
on the other hand, is writing
for which you are given a
subject or a range of subjects.
Writing extensively results in
sharing your writing.

The Writing Process is a series of steps to help you
write a paper. It is like using a map to get to an
unfamiliar place
The Process of Writing
A stepbystep process in which some mastery at one
level is essential before the learner advances to the
next level.

Revising is the stage in which you rework
your rough draft to improve both its form
and its content.
Editing and proofreading are the stages in
which you polish your writing, fixing errors
in grammar, spelling, and mechanics.
Publishing and presenting are the sharing of
your writing.

Developing your writing skills will not only help
you to express yourself more effectively, it will
also help you achieve success in life. Being a
strong writer will help you do well in school
and it will serve you well in a wide range of
occupations—from law and medicine to
nursing and auto mechanics.
Why Write?

What Are the Qualities
of Good Writing?
Ideas
Starting with an idea that interests you makes it
more likely that you will produce a good piece of
writing. It is important, however, to consider
whether potential readers will also find the idea
interesting. Even the best pieces of writing won't
succeed if the audience is uninterested.

Organization
Good writing has a clear and consistent
organization that suits the topic. For example,
if you are telling a story, you will probably
want to arrange your details chronologically, or
in the order in which they occurred.

Voice
Refers to all of the distinctive qualities
of your writing—from the type of
language you use and the way you put
together sentences and paragraphs to
the ideas you like to write about and
the attitude you convey to readers.

Word Choice
Is a key element of good writing. By choosing
words that convey your meaning as precisely
as possible and capture your attitude toward
your subject, you will help to ensure that
readers understand your points and will
increase the likelihood that you can sway them
to accept your viewpoint.

Sentence Fluency
In a piece of good writing, sentences
seem to flow seamlessly from one to
another. Transitions make it clear how
one sentence connects to the next. A
variety of lengths, structures, and openers
helps to create a rhythm that engages
readers.

Conventions
Finally, it is essential for a piece of writing
to follow the conventions of English
grammar, usage, and mechanics. Errors in
these areas will distract readers.

These are the stages of the writing process:
Prewriting
is the stage in which you explore possible
topics, choose a topic, and then gather
details you can include in your writing.

Free writing
students write for a specified period of
the time without taking their from the
page (usually three minutes for a first
attempt an then typically for about five to
eight minutes)

Brainstorming
a group exercise in which all students
in the class are encouraged to
participate by sharing their collective
knowledge about a particular subject

Listing
the student is encouraged to produce
as lengthy list a listing as possible of all
the main ideas and subcategories that
come to mind as he or she thinks of the
topic at hand.

Clustering
begins with a keyword or central idea
placed in the center of the page (or on the
blackboard) around which the student (or
the teacher, using studentgenerated
suggestions) quickly jots down all free
associations triggered by the subject matter,
using words or short phrases.

Choosing Your Topic
Writing with invisible ink
Narrowing Your Topic
Use a Planning Web or Cluster Diagram
Considering your audience and purpose
Considering your Audience
Identify who will read your article.
Think about what your audience does and does not
know about your topic.
Consider the type of language that would suit them.

Considering your Purpose
Identify what you want to accomplish through
your writing.
4. Gathering details
Gather the specific information and
ingredients you need before you write your
first draft.
Use the Reporter’s Formula Strategy to gather
details.
Who, What, When, Where, Why, How

II. Drafting involves putting ideas down on paper in a
rough format.
1. Shaping your Writing
Focus on the form each form of writing has its own set of
objectives.
Attract your readers’ attention with strong lead
2. Providing Elaboration
As you develop each of the paragraphs in the body of your
paper, focus on elaborating, or developing your key points
by providing a thorough set of facts, examples, and
details.

III. Revising Is the stage in which you rework your rough
draft to improve both its form and its content
1. Using Systematic Approach
Ratiocination- applying logic to the way you look at your
work by color coding items for analysis. At each stage,
use a process of color coding and marking clues in your
work to help you revise.
2. Revising your overall structure
Start by examining the soundness of your structure or
overall organization. Your ideas should flow logically from
beginning to end.

3. Revising your paragraphs
Consider the way each sentence contributes to
the point of the paragraph. As you evaluate your
draft, rewrite or eliminate any sentences that are
not effective.
Revising your sentences
Check to see that they flow smoothly from one to
the next. Look to see that you have avoided the
pattern of being most of your sentences in the
same way.

Revising your word choice
Make sure that each word conveys the
exact meaning you intend. Also, look for
the repetition of words, and make
revisions to reduce the number of the
most commonly repeated words.
Peer review
Work with one or more classmates to get
fresh perspective on your writing.

Revision and Editing Focused Exercises
•The content of the passage should be related as
closely as possible to whatever topics students
are working on so that they can review core
vocabulary or concepts.
•Similar exercises could involve other frequent
morphological errors, such as regular plural
nouns without –s. Students would then check
their own drafts to correct similar errors.

Example:
We tested velocity by placing a green trace dye on
the surface of the plot, at a measured point. After each run
we estimated the vegetation cover using a five-point pin
frame. We placed the pin frame in 20 places on the plot,
moving downward.

Rewritten:
Velocity was tested by placing a green trace dye on
the surface of the plot, at a measured point. After each
run, the vegetation cover was estimated using a five-point
pin frame. The pin frame was placed on the plot, moving
downward.

*To make texts as natural as possible, the
instructor can simply underline or number the
sentences in a text to be rewritten. Afterward,
students should identify contextual factors that
influence use of the passive.
1. Sentence Combining
-this technique for developing syntactic
fluency often involved combining a set of kernel
sentences

Example:
The man was old.
The man had gray hair.
The man walked down the street.
The man walked slowly.
Combined:
The old, gray-haired man walked
slowly down the street.

2. Guided Paraphrase
ESL/EFL writers often lack the facility with
vocabulary and syntax to rephrase ideas in their own
words; most experienced teachers are familiar with the
distorted paraphrases that result when novice writers
“slot” synonyms from a thesaurus into the original
sentence without adjusting the grammar.
In cued paraphrase exercises, writers transform
sentences or parts of sentences from assigned readings,
using cues as the first step.
The cues which may be words or phrases are
designed to require syntactic restructuring in the
paraphrase.

Example:
Original: People trying to interpret a situation often look
at those around them to see how to react. (Base reactions
on)
Rewrite: People trying to interpret a situation often base
their reactions on those around them.
Original: Even if a person defines an event as an
emergency… (Decides)
Rewrite: Even if a person decides that an event is an
emergency…

3. Text Elicitation
•The instructor specifies a topic or writing
objective and a grammatical structure or
structures to be used.
•Excellent sources for eliciting summary include
surveys, graphs or charts on topics related to
writing themes, or genres such as research
articles.
•Can be used to focus on diagnosed structural
problems, to develop syntactic complexity, to
familiarize students with discourse-based
grammar conventions, and to provide strategies
for organizing and displaying information.

4. Dictation
•Can be an effective way to familiarize students
with the ways in which grammar and vocabulary
interact in common collocations as well as to
address errors in writing that may result in part
from mismatches between learners’ aural
perception of English forms and Standard English
grammar and spelling.
•The instructor reads aloud a short text several
times, usually one related to the topic or genre on
which students are working.

•The text is first read at a normal pace,
with the students just listening. For the
second reading, the teacher pauses after
each phrase to allow students to write.
•The third reading, done at a normal
pace, gives students the opportunity to
read over the texts and make
corrections.

5. Text Completion
Cloze Passage- each blank represents a
single word to fill in
-can be created either by random deletion
of words or by deletion of a specific item.
-if based on student texts can serve as an
error correction technique if the writer has
produced errors in the grammatical item
deleted.

Gapped Text- do not specify the number of words
required for each blank, they can be used to elicit
deleted verbs that include forms with more than
one word, such as passives, progressive aspect and
present perfect.
Third Type of Text Completion asks students to
consider syntactic structures with essentially the
same meaning and to choose the more appropriate
rendering of the information based on the
preceding discourse context.

Example:
Climatologists have predicted that the continual
warming of the earth’s surface, commonly known as “the
greenhouse,” could have dramatic consequences.
1. (A) the melting of the polar ice caps could be one
result.
(b)One result could be the melting of the polar ice caps.
2. (A) this melting would, in turn, cause a rise of the sea
level.
(b) A rise of the sea level would, in turn, be caused by this
melting.

IV. Editing and proofreading
are the stages in which you
pol-ish your writing, fixing
errors in grammar, spelling,
and mechanics.

Proofreading- This is a process
whereby the text is being scanned
for grammar, syntax and spelling
errors.
Editing- This process concentrates
less on the form and more on the
terminology.

EDITING
STRATEGIES AND
TECHNIQUES

Editing Techniques that may work for Students:
1. Read-Aloud Technique. Many students find that
slowly reading their drafts aloud to listen for errors
can help them in making corrections. For short
papers, some students who are aware of their error
patterns read through the paper several times,
listening for different kinds of errors each time.
Multiple readings are not realistic for long papers.
(Shih, 1998)

2. Pointing to Words. Some writers use
pencil, pen, or finger to point for words one by
one.
3. “Slowdown” Techniques. Involves reading a
draft in some way that is in contrast to the normal
linear process, such as starting with the last
sentence in each paragraph and reading in
reverse. May help writers detect certain kinds of
morphological errors such as missing plural
endings, but would not work well for others, such
as reference words or subject-verb agreement.

4. Word Processing Grammar Checkers. Grammar
checkers in word processors can flag certain kinds
of errors. As long as writers do not blindly follow
the suggestions (since grammar checkers can often
create errors rather than correct them if
suggestions are taken indiscriminately), checkers
can be helpful in getting writers to pay attention to
potential errors. If students do not understand the
suggested correction, they should not make the
change.

More Advanced
Writing Tasks:
Developing Basic
Communication Tools

•enable focus on both accuracy and
content of the message
•practical writing tasks, emotive
tasks, and school-oriented tasks
(Nevo, Weinbach, and Mark 1987)

SET OF SPECIFICATIONS
Task Description: to present students with the goal of the
task and its importance.
Content Description: to present students with possible
content areas that might be
relevant to the task.
Audience Description: to guide students in developing an
understanding of the intended
audience, their background, needs, and experiences.
Format Cues: to help students in planning the overall
organizational structure of the
written product.

Linguistic Cues: to help students make use of
certain grammatical structures and
vocabulary choices.
Spelling and Punctuation Cues: to help students
focus their attention on spelling rules which they
have learned and eventually on the need to use
the dictionary for checking accuracy of spelling,
and to guide students to use acceptable
punctuation and capitalization conventions.

PRACTICAL WRITING TASKS
•lists of various types, notes, short messages,
simple instructions, and other writing tasks
•useful in reinforcing classroom work
•suitable for writing activities that focus
primarily on spelling and morphology
procedural in nature and have a predictable
format

Lists can be of many types: “things to
do” lists, “things completed” lists, or
shopping lists.
Each of these list types provides us with
opportunity to combine some spelling
rules with morphological rules and with
the logical creation of a meaningful
message.

“Things to do” lists
•are useful for practicing verb base forms
and reinforcing various sound-spelling
correspondences.
•It is either personal or intended for a group.
•Content specification will have to indicate
whether this is a list of things to do in
preparation for some event or just a plan for
someone’s daily routine.

Example: a list for a group of students
who are preparing a surprise birthday
party might look like this:
Things to do
1. Buy a present for Donna (Sharon).
2. Call Donna’s friends (Gail).
3. Write invitations (Dan).
etc.

“Things completed” lists
•Specifies the things that have already
been taken care of and is therefore
useful for practicing past forms of verbs.
•Enables students to practice the spelling
of irregular past-tense formations.

Example: The list might look like this when
partially completed:
Things completed:
1. Planned the games for the party.
2. Wrote the invitations.
3. Bought the present.
4. Called the friends.
5. Tried to call Donna’s mother.

Shopping lists
•Provide us with a very good
opportunity to practice the spelling of
the plural ending of countable nouns
and the use of quantifiers.

Notes and messages
•Allow students to practice brief and
simple sentences with proper
punctuation and a meaningful message.
•Students can design their own message
headings and then fill them in.

Example:
Messages for My Little Sister
Wash the dishes in the sink.
Feed the dog.
Watch your favorite program on
TV and have a good time.

EMOTIVE WRITING TASKS
•Concerned with personal writing
•Includes letters to friends and
narratives describing personal
experiences, as well as personal journals
and diaries.

Letter writing
Emphasis can be placed on format,
punctuation, and spelling of appropriate
phrases and expressions.
Personal experiences writing
Usually done in a narrative format- spelling of
past-tense forms can be reviewed and
practiced.

Diaries and journals
Can take the form of personal letters and
serve as a review of letter writing in general.
The different types of emotive writing
activities are, of course, suitable for the
more advanced stages of the course, but
they can be carries out, in a more limited
manner, even at the initial stages.

Thus:
Personal letters can be limited to the
level of structural and vocabulary
knowledge of the students at each point
in time.
Journal and personal writing activities
can reflect the learner’s proficiency
level.

SCHOOL-ORIENTED TASKS
one of the most important functions of writing in a
student’s life
Students are writing assignments, answers to
questions, or a variety of essay-type passages.
It is the combination of content and organization
with accepted formal features that will lead
learners to better utilization of the writing skill in
their future use of English.

THE
WRITING CLASS
BY Sazha Patrizia E. Blanca

WAYS TO CARRY
OUT A WRITING
CLASS

SYLLABUS DESIGN
Considerations in making a syllabus in a writing
class:
1. How much writing students are expected to
complete during the term divided into less formal
work such as journals and more formal work such
as assignments.
2. What the timelines and deadlines are for working
on and completing papers.
3. How many of the formal writing assignments will
be done in class as “timed” pieces.

4. What aspects of the composing process will
be presented?
5. What aspects of English grammar and syntax,
if any, will be directly addressed to the class?
6. What will be seen to constitute “progress” in
acquiring improved writing skills as the term
moves along?
7. How much reading (and possibly which
specific readings) will be covered.
8. How the students’ grade or a decision of
credit/no credit will be determined.

Using Readings in the Writing
Class
Advantages:
•Readings provide models of what English language
looks like (particularly for ELLs who have less
proficiency in language), and even if not for the
purpose of imitation, awareness of English
language prose style.
•Close reading exercises can be done to draw
attention to particular stylistic choices, grammatical
features, methods of development, and markers of
cohesion and coherence, etc.

• Help to raise awareness of the choices writers
make and the consequences of those choices
for the achievement of communicative goals.
• Further readings help students develop and
refine genre awareness.
• Writing tasks assigned by professors require
students to do a great deal of reading in order
to synthesize and analyze academic material
in particular content areas.

• Using readings as a basis to practice such skills
as summarizing, paraphrasing, interpreting,
and synthesizing concepts.
Disadvantage:
• If a teacher uses the topic or content area of
the readings to turn generic writing course
into a class in the subject matter area of the
readings.

Writing Assignments
6 Guidelines for the Preparation of Successful
Writing Assignments
•A writing assignment should be presented with its
context clearly delineated such that the student
understands the reason for the assignment.
•The content of the task/ topic should be accessible
to the writers and allow for multiple approaches.
•The language of the prompt or task and the
instructions it is embedded in should be un-
ambiguous, comprehensible, and transparent.

• The task should be focused enough to allow for
completion in the time or length constraints given
and should further students’ knowledge of
classroom content and skills.
• The rhetorical specifications (cues) should provide
a clear direction of likely shape and format of the
finished assignment, including appropriated
references to an anticipated audience.
• The evaluation criteria should be identified so that
the students will know how their output will be
judged.

Responding
Key Questions to Address
a. What are the general goals within the
writing course for providing feedback to
students?
b. What are the specific goals for providing
feedback on a particular piece of writing?

c. At what stage in the writing process
should feedback be offered?
d. What form should feedback take?
e. Who should provide the feedback?
f. What should students do with the
feedback they receive?

Goal-Setting
• implementing a variety of response types and
on training students to maximize the insights
of prior feedback to future writing occasions
• students make best use of commentary
provided to them

Shaping Feedback
• Students must also be trained to use the
feedback in ways that will improve their
writing, be it on the next draft or on other
writing assignments. The more specific and
the lengthier the individual comments are the
more likely they are to lead to positive
change.

Teaching
STraTegieS:
WriTing
Reported by
JenelynDesalit and Jean Rose Toledo

Guidelines in the
Management of
the Teaching-
Learning Process
for Writing

1. In the early stage of language learning,
written English grows out of oral
English. In short, for beginners writing is
an opportunity to record the work in
oral language.
2. When one sits down to write
something, one wants to have control of
the language and to be able to use it
readily and effectively
Guidelines in the Management of the Teaching-Learning Process for Writing

3. Writing is the act of putting sentences
together in connected discourse, but
the main focus is on basic
communicability.
4. An acceptable writing program is
designed to give beginning learners the
feeling that they are able to write and
what they write has value.

5. Writing is communication-oriented.
6. When one writes, one transforms
experiences and thoughts into
arbitrary symbols labeled as words.
7. To write well at all, one must have
had experiences and must be able to
use one or more sets of symbols.

8. To write well, one must
understand the experiences he has
and one must also be able to
manipulate words and English
patterns to give the reader a clear
sense both of the experiences which
are transformed and of ideas about
attitudes towards those experiences.

9. Writing activities should be
functional and should be performed
in an audience situation and in a
setting as natural and life-like as
possible.
10. Teachers of writing can avoid the
problems caused by the limited mastery
of grammar and of the English idioms by
requiring their students to use facts of
first-hand experience.

11. Good writing can be taught by
teachers who provide frequent and
challenging opportunities for writing
to enable the students to develop
their skill and confidence.

•Consolidatory writing -designed
to reinforce oral skills. It provides
opportunity for the application of the
basic structures, the grammar rules,
lexical items, and rhetorical patterns
gained through oral and reading
experiences and activities.
Two Dimensions of Writing

•Free writing or free composition-
focuses on the creative use of
language in the communication of
ideas. Example: personal notes
and letters, business notes and
letters, explanation,
argumentation, simple narration,
etc.
Two Dimensions of Writing

Trends in
Classroom
Practices and
Techniques

Copying: The First Step
pupils begin by copying sentences
from their readers or from their oral
exercises. After several practice
exercises on sentence copying, the
pupils advance to copying paragraphs,
dialogues, short conversations, and lines
or stanzas of poetry.

The major concerns in every copying
activity are legibility and accuracy.
Close attention is given to
capitalization and punctuation rules
as well as paragraph structure and
correct spelling.

Capitalization
1. Every sentence begins with a capital
letter.
2. The personal pronoun ‘I’ is always
written as a capital letter.
3. Proper nouns begin with a capital
letter; abbreviations of proper
nouns are capitalized.

4. Most adjectives derived from proper
nouns begin with capital letter.
5. Every title attached to the name of
the person is capitalized.
6. Every line of poetry begins with
capital letter.

7. The first word of a direct quotation is
capitalized.
8. All names that refer to God and the
names of all sacred books are capitalized.
9. The first word and other words in title of
books, poems, stories, and compositions,
except articles, conjunctions, and
prepositions are capitalized.

10. The names of the definite
geographical parts of a country begin
with capital letter. The words: north,
south, east, west, when used merely to
indicate direction do not begin with
capital letter.

11. Father, mother, uncle, aunt, cousin
and other words which show personal
relationship do not begin with capital
letters unless they are used as a part
of a proper name.

12. The names of the days of the
week, the months of the year,
holidays, but not the name of seasons,
are capitalized.
13. The names of the school subjects
are not capitalized unless they are
proper nouns or proper adjectives.

14. The first word including the nouns,
in the salutation of a letter begins with
a capital letter.
15.The first word of every part of an
outline is capitalized.

Punctuation
A period is used:
After a complete declarative and an
imperative sentence.
After an abbreviated word or a single
or double initial letter representing a
word.

A question mark is used after a direct
question.
An exclamation mark is used after a
sentence indicating a strong emotion.

A comma is used:
to separate words in a series.
to separate the parts of addresses,
dates, geographical names.
to set off a noun used in direct
address

to set off yes,no from the rest of the
sentences.
to set off quotation expression such as
he said, he says, etc.

Paragraphing
1. The beginning of a paragraph is shown
by the indention of the first word.
2. Indent the first word of all paragraphs
the same distancefrom the margin.
In a story, a direct quotation requires a
separate paragraph.

3. In a dialogue, the exact words of the
speaker should be written in a separate
paragraph in order to make clear the
change of speaker.
4. Begin a new paragraph for each new
division of thought.

Dictation
A device in a controlled program
found by TESL teachers to be very useful
particularly in a beginners class for the
development of basic writing skills.

The Dicto-Comp
This is a combination of a dictation
exercise and composition writing activity.
In the choice of a passage for the dicto-
comp activity, the grade level of the
class, the general ability of the pupils,
their interests and needs are considered

Writing Integrated with
Speaking
The teachers involved in TESL and
TESOL programs recommend that every
writing activity should be preceded by
an oral build-up which may take the
form of a controlled speaking activity, a
brainstorming session, or a reading
exercise.

Sentence-Combining
Approach
Thiede-Gonzo found out that an
intensive sentence –combining course
resulted in the growth of students in
syntactic fluency. She points out that
“sentence-combining practice has
received enthusiastic endorsement
from teachers.”

The Model Composition
Technique
Teachers of English continue to give favorable
support to the practice of teaching composition
writing with the use of models. Behind this popular
acceptance is the conviction, which is backed up by
experienced, the one of the most effective ways of
learning how to write in English, in any language for
that matter, is exposure to the different rhetorical
patterns of the language through extensive reading
and intensive practice in the actual writing of
compositions.

Reference:
Alcantara, Rebecca, D, et.
Al. Teaching Strategies 1,
Manila, 2003

Prepared by:
LILY ELLAIN CAMIROS
KATRINA FALALIMPA
SAZHA PATRIZIA BLANCA
JUNE MAR TEJADA
JULIEN PULGADO
EUNICE BABAN
JEAN ROSE TOLEDO
JENELYN DESALIT
1st
Semester A. Y. 2013- 2014.

Teaching of writing

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