43 Teaching Writing

27th February 2017    

Ailsa Glen's elegant demeanour in the classroom.

How can it be extended into a longer piece of writing?

Alica demoes a free writing –  give us a topic--a love story. and than we write the story  for 3 ms. (In the story, I wanted to write "flowers"  but "tree", because I am afraid of being misunderstood, and yestoday I played with a lady who loves fllowers very much. )

Hope to give a certain amount of solutions by the end of the lesson.

Do they ever ask ss to write (beyond the sentence level) in class? Why/Why not?

what typical writing grammar errors do their ss make?

Could they/ do they have specialised materials addressing these problems?

It is a good classroom activity, but we didn't experient. 

Writing is a complex skill and involves many elements. In pairs, do they think any one is more important, do they focus on some more than others? Returning to common complaints about ss saying it is not real world how could they make a email/ letter for a job application task feel more real? In groups – look at TE writing bank hand out and adapt it to create a ‘real’ audience (split the class at stage four so half apply for one and half to the other. Write collaboratively and then swap with the other group who then role play being the employers scrutinising the applications. Then look at genre with Parrott activity.

student-centred; teacher as facilitator and resource (CCQ this role)

(A good Activity but not practice)

Awareness that not all these stages are appropriate for every classroom – product & process not mutually exclusive Which stages do ECP teachers use?

they brainstorm as many reasons for brainstorming  (tell them there are 11) provide A3 paper with advs of brainstorming in the middle and then they swap to check with board

What does this remind them of on this course ie writing their essay – they should be in this stage at the moment

In the considering genre you need to consider register – transformation exercise

This could be either teacher or and peers

Confidence can be built by free writing and practice and selective emphasis on accuracy, real life can be brought in with creative attempts to construct audience (can be really real now with the proliferation of internet sites), solitary make it collaborative, demotivating and time consuming – be selective, encourage self correction using a code, trial specialised materials for your age, level, monolingual groups (collaborate with colleagues), write yourself in English and be enthusiastic about writing.

CAE transformation tasks/style tasks

Emphasise that if they get a problem solution question in the final meth exam that they need to only write about the stated number of problems and the solutions need to match the problems (they can be different from those discussed in class but need to make sense!) and written in

Reference Material