Presented by

Arash Akbari

Importance of teaching writing in L2

Writing has always been a crucial part of a foreign language teaching curriculum, and by the advent of technology it has gained even more prominence in various fields such as business and education for different purposes like transacting business, interacting on social networking sites, or pursuing academic degrees.

To teach writing in a second language effectively we need to learn about the nature of L2 writing abilities

L2 writing abilities:

Cognitive ability: a set of skills and knowledge that reside within an individual

Sociocultural ability: a means of communication within a particular setting aimed at achieving specific goals.

Cognitive ability

Having writing skills in both L1 and L2 and a reasonable level of proficiency in L2.

Incorporating a set of points and subpoints and including an overall message in writing and knowing how to organize them.

Anticipating who your likely audiences are , what information they find persuasive and how they might react.

Being able to plan , monitor, revise and find the appropriate language.

Sociocultural ability Knowing about a set of socially and culturally situated

literacy practices shared by a particular community.

Understanding the processes of being a member of a discourse community.

Being able to produce texts not in isolation , but shaped by and responsive to other preexisting texts.

Cognitive differences between writing and speaking

Writing takes longer

Leaves physical trace

Speaking needs at least two participants

Speaking allows nonverbal and contextual clues

Speakers get continuous feedbacks about whether they’re being understood and they can repair their mistakes

Writers have to anticipate and consider existing knowledge ,goals and interests of likely readers and tailor choice of word and sentence structures

Sociocultural differences between writing and speaking

Writing is used for different purposes and functions

It can be planned

It leaves a record

Accuracy is important

It is more formal and more complex

It is planned more carefully

Correctness is more valued

What you need to be an expert writer

Writing is not a linear process

Writing involves going back and forth among planning ,writing ,rereading ,and revising

It needs to be edited for content and organization

You have to have a great understanding of your limitation and the needs and expectations of your audiences

You need to have a more highly developed schemata for different genres

Reading and writing connectionsHirvola (2004) provides a rationale for including reading as an integral component of the writing classroom , primarily through three main areas of reading – writing connections:

Reading response theory: the learners are asked to discuss their understanding if a particular text and reflect on strategies they use for reading , problems they encountered , and how they dealt with them.

Writing to read: In order to prepare students for a reading task , they are asked to write a topic.it helps create a deeper understanding of the texts and in turn in their future writing.

Reading to write:using reading as a source of input in creating a written text. Students search for rhetorical , linguistic and stylistic knowledge ofwriting.

Importance of syllabus for teaching writing

Provides a road map for students and teachers

Helps clarify expectations and class policies

Provides an opportunity to think through the overall goals of the writing course and the major learning activities that serve those goals

It helps determine the learning outcomes and course objectives

Writing a lesson planAccording to Ferris and Hedgecock (2004) there are five

phases that have to be considered in a lesson plan:

Activation of prior learning

Preview/warm up

Lesson core (instructions , procedures and participation)

Closure

Follow up/reflection

Appropriate activities for writing classes

Prewriting

Writing

Feedback

Revising

Editing

Some possible prewriting activities

Setting up the assignment

Providing input for students in the form of texts , visuals or videos

Introducing and practicing specific points of grammar or vocabulary that are important for completing the assignment

Various activities for brainstorming and idea generation

Writing tasks mainly depend on the language proficiency of the learners.

For lower level students some appropriate tasks include giving advice and instructions or some collaborative activities like dictoglosses.

For students with a higher proficiency and especially in academic contexts writing tasks like summaries , proposals, reading responses and case studies are suggested.

Some useful guidelines for major writing assignments Make sure that the scope of the task is feasible with the

time allocated

Structure the task to reduce the possibility of plagirism

Provide appropriate scaffolding of the task

Specify the topic , genre , and purpose

Provide the scoring criteria at the beginning

Specify the intermediate deadlines for assignments

Feedback, revision and editingCommenting primarily on content rather than language issues is often recommended. Based on this notion three drafts of a paper with two cycles of feedback and revision are required.

The first cycle focusing primarily on content and organization, and the second one focusing on language structures.

One or both of these cycles can involve peer feedback instead or in addition to instructor’s feedback.

Merits and demerits of peer feedback Students have an authentic audience

It develops critical reading skills that in turn can affect students’ writing abilities

Peer may point out issues that the teacher might not find noteworthy or have the time to comment on.

Students do not always give good feedback

Students often resist or disregard peer feedback activities as not useful

Teaching students to self-editIn the modern process approach composition classroom, editing refers to finding and correcting grammatical , lexical and mechanical errors before submitting a final written product. Because there is not always a teacher to correct students’ errors , it is important that they learn to edit their own work.

Philosophical assumptions behind self-editing Students and teachers must focus on the main pattern

of errors rather than attempt to correct every single error

Because not all students make the same errors, personalizing editing instructions seems necessary

The global , most frequent and stigmatizing errors should be focused on

The three stages of the editing process

Focusing on form

Recognizing major error types

Self-editing practice

Stage 1: Focusing on form

At this stage the students are convinced of the necessity of editing by giving them short sentences that contain a variety of editing problems.

They could also be given an essay assignment and then be provided with written feedback about their ideas , detailed information about their editing problems , and an indication of what grade they will receive if they still write at this level by the end of the semester.

Stage 2: Recognizing major error typesAt this stage students are trained to recognize different types of errors.The main errors are categorized as follows: Type 1: Nouns1. Noun endings2. Articles

Type 2: Verbs1. Subject verb agreement2. Verb tense3. Verb form

Type 3: Punctuation and sentence structure1. Sentence fragments2. Comma errors3. Run-on sentences4. Semicolon errors

Type 4: Word form errors (adj.s/n./v.)

Type5 : Preposition errors

Stage 3: Self-editing practiceAt this stage students are required to find and correct

errors in their own and other students’ drafts. They can also keep a log of their error frequencies in different categories so they can observe their progress. As the students get more and more editing practice , the amount of feedback produced by the instructor is decreased and editing tasks are turned over to first peer editors and then writers themselves.

Conclusion

Writing is a complex ability involving consideration of a wide range of issues and subskills, and teachers need to develop experience in many different areas to become effective at teaching writing. Writing is perhaps the most challenging and time-consuming skill to teach because of its complexity , but it is also one of the most rewarding.