TEACHING WRITING
The topic deals with:
The issues and concepts in pedagogical research that are
related to teaching writing
Some unique difficulties involved in learning to write
effectively
types of written language, micro and macroskills, and types
of classroom writing performance
Principles of designing writing techniques to a lesson
design.
Some basic principles and formats for evaluating and assessing
writing.
Some issues in teaching on second language writing.
1. Composing versus writing
The process of writing requires an entirely different set of
competencies and is fundamentally different from speaking. The permanence and
dinstance of writing, coupled with unique rethorical conventions. Written
products are often the result of thinking, drafting and revising procedures
that require specialized skills.
The upshot of the compositional nature of writing has
produced writing pedagogy that focuses students on how to generate ideas, how
to organize them coherently, how to use discourse markers and rethorical
conventions to put cohesively into a written text, how to revise text for
clearer meaning, howto edit text for appropriate grammar and how to produce a
final product.
2. Process versus product
A half century ago, writing teachers were mostly concerned
with the final product of writing: the essay, the report, the story, and what
the product should like. Compositions were supposed to meet certain standards
of prescribed english rhetorical style, reflect accurate grammar and, be
organized in conformity with what the audience would consider to be
conventional.
While the process approach do mostly the following (shih,
1906):
1. Focus on the process of writing that leads to the final
written product;
2. Help student writers to understand their own composing
process;
3. Help to build repertoires of strategies for prewriting,
drafting, and rewriting.
4. Give students to write and rewrite.
5. Place central importance on the process of revision.
6. Let students discover what they want to say as they write
7. Give students feedback throughout the composing process
8. Encourage feedback from both the instructor and peers
9. Include individual conferences between teacher and student
during the process of composition.
Another process aproach can be observed as follow (adapted
from Hedgcock, 2005):
1.allowing students to discover tbeir own voice
2.freewriting, journaling, and fluency activities
3. Tasks that engage learners in meaningful writing
4. Giving writers a sense of audience and authentic tasks
5.encouraging inventions, prewriting, and revision
strategies
6. Providing formative feedback through confencing
3. Contrastive rhetoric
Robert Kaplan's (1966) article on contrastive rhetoric has
been the subject of much discussion nd debate. Kaplan's thesis was that different
languages and culture have different patterns of written discourse. English
writers get straight to the point, Chinese writers get "spiral", etc.
4. Differences between L1 and L2 writing
Toni Silva (1993) stated that L2 writers did less planning
and that they were less fluent (used fewer words), less accurate (made more
errors), and less effective in stating goals and organizing material.
Differences in using appropriate grammatical and rhetorical conventions and
lexical variety were also found, among other features.
5. Authenticity
Another issue in teaching of writing surrounds the question
of how much of our classroom writing is "real" writing (Cassanave,
2004; Hedgcock, 2005; Silva and Brice, 2004). Real writing is writing when the
reader doesn't know the answer and genuinely wants information. We could
address how authentic the classroom is.
6. Responding to student writing
The role of teacher must be one of facilitator and coach,
not an authoritative director and arbiter. As facilitator, the teacher offers
guidance in helping students to engage in the thinking process of composing
but, in a spirit of respect for student opinion, must not impose his or her own
thoughts on student writing.
Ferris (1997) offered useful guidelines for making teacher
commentary more effective, they are (a) posed questions and (b). made positive
comments.
7. Voice and identity
The problem is also significant as course designer and
instructors must attend to "the socially and politically situated contexts
of writing and how these contexts influence both how writing gets done snd the
end products of writing" (Casanave, 2004).
Characteristics of written language
1. Permanence
2. Production time
3. Distance
4. Orthography
5. Complexity
6. Vocabulary
7. Formality
Types of Classroom Writing Performance
1. Imitative or writing down
2. Intensive or controlled
3. Self-writing
4. Display writing
5. Real writing
Principles for Teaching Writing skills
1. Incorporate practices of "good" writers
2. Balance process and product
3. Account for cultural/literary backgrounds
4. Connect reading and writing
5. Provide as much authentic writing possible
6. Frame your techniques in terms of prewriting, drafting,
and revising stages.
7. Strive to offer techniques that are as interactive as
possible
8. Sensitively apply methods of responding to and correcting
your students' writing.
9. Clearly instruct students on the rhetorical, formal
conventions of writing.
Assessing Writing
One way to view writing assessment is through various rating
checklists or grids that can indicate to students their areas of strength and
weakness and in many cases such taxonomies are scoring rubrics.
The concept of formative assessment is prominent in a course
that uses a process approach to writing: the assessment should serve the
purpose of facilitating improvement in a student's work and judgment of the
final product. Teachers should act responsibly in evaluating writing: respect
the tine-tested principles of validity, and washback in writing assessment.
