1. How we teach writing in
Poland
Anna Głogowska-Frączek
2. Introduction
Developing writing skills causes a lot
of problems for primary school
students. It is shown in the results of
primary school leaving exam. The
situation is caused mainly by
students’ aversion to reading.
3. Years 1-3
In Poland teachers start to teach writing
(years 1-3) from the very simple exercises,
such as putting words in the correct order to
form a sentence, filling in the gaps in the
text or creating simple, short pieces of
writing (with teacher’s help). Then students
try to write their own texts.
4. Years 4-6
Students start to learn how to
write more sophisticated texts in
year 4. Then they practise for 3
years creating various pieces of
writing: invitations,
advertisements, postcards,
instructions, letters and some
longer forms: stories, dialogues,
fairy tales, legends, descriptions of
paintings and landscapes and
many more.
5. In the beginning, the rules
of creating each text are
presented to the students,
Then, the learners have to
read and analyze the
examples. The next steps
are filling in the gaps and
putting the events in the
chronological order. The
students have to create
the texts using the list of
words given by the
teacher. The last step is
writing students’ own
texts. After the texts are
checked by the teacher,
students have to correct
them.
7. Checking students’ texts
When a teacher checks
students’ writing, she
pays attention to the
correct spelling,
grammar, a proper form
of the text and the
content.
8. That is (more or less) how we teach writing
skills in Poland.