Basic principles for deloping writing

After a lot of input and oral practice, the final stage is writing. It usually develops in three stages: 1) copying words and sentences, 2) modifying and changing model sentences and texts, and 3) students producing sentences and texts of their own.

Learning to write in a foreign language is a long process. It starts with copying words, phrases and sentences from textbooks. Beginners can copy texts from their textbook or make changes in them while copying.

If the texts are first modified orally, the transition to writing is relatively smooth. The first pieces of writing are mostly short and based on models, such as postcards, short notes, e-mails or stories.

Teachers should not be worried about giving models because it reduces anxiety among weak students and the good ones tend to be creative in writing.

For many students it is far more important to speak and read a text in English than write it well.

At intermediate level teachers are advised to use differentiation in their writing tasks because the students’ skills in writing vary a lot. If the students cannot write stories yet, they can start by answering questions in exams, for example, to demonstrate their level of writing. In practice situations I let my students even use dictionaries or they can consult me if they are facing a problem.

I strongly recommend the ‘invisible’ kind of differentiation presented in my earlier article ‘Teaching beginners writing, differentiation’. ‘Invisible’ differentiation’ in a sense of letting the students choose which of the choices they would like to work on. Personally I avoid using the term ‘differentiation’ but talk about choices instead.

Advanced students can write argumentative essays, blog posts, narrative stories, descriptions, newspaper or magazine articles, various kinds of letters etc. once their structure has been taught. These demanding types of tasks will be dealt with separately. They are a great practical addition to simply focusing on essay writing.

Learning to use criteria and to give feedback, writing in pairs

Writing in pairs, for the others in the class, not for the teacher, may change the students’ whole perpective to writing; how to plan, proceed and assess pieces of writing against criteria.

In most cases we teachers ask our students to write a story or essays on their own but it is worth while trying out writing in pairs too . Writing in a group is another option but harder to control because the best writers may take the lead over the weaker ones. So let’s see how you could organize a writing task in pairs, introduce assessment criteria and give feedback to others

• First, design a student-centred writing task for a mixed-ability class. In addition, this time include an element of assessment in it as well. This task might take a full lesson or even more depending on the level of the students and how much you want them to write.
• There are two goals in this task: 1) To get an experience on how the pair proceeds with and thinks about writing compared with his/her own ways. 2) To internize the ideas behind the assessment of the writing task, in other words, how to use the criteria and understand the components in it.

• Use the 3-stage model where you first design a task for the average students and then use differentiation by making it easier for the low-achievers and finally make it a little more demanding for the high-achievers. See my model plan for such a lesson!

• You need to use your national criteria in evaluation or develop a rubric yourself or with your students, something that is simple enough for them to understand and use. If you are not pleased with your national criteria, use the one in my next article. It is valid maybe from age 12 onwards if you are aware of what can be expected from your students. Tell the students that you will evaluate the writings as well later on and give them feedback on how well their did in the assessment. Peer-assessent may seem inadequate for the students at first and the teacher needs to verify it.

• Instead of the normal way of each student writing an essay of his/her own ask the students to choose a pair and write the essay in pairs. Now they have to co-operate and negotiate how to proceed in writing. Tell them not to write any names on the paper but to draw a picture or a code word on it. When reading the essays and giving feedback of the work of others, the students should not know who originally wrote the text.

• Remind your students that even if evaluation does not take place the normal way, they still have to take things seriously. In the end, learning is what matters, not the grades. Get the students down to work and tell them how much time they have.

• Once the short writing task is done, ask the students to bring their pieces of writing to you and you will give them randomly to another pair. They  will assess the writing the best they can by writing their comments on the papers. This can be done as many times as you have time for. The written assessment is based on the criteria/rubrics and it is done within your time limit. Don’t expect too much if the students have not done this before. Opening up the criteria may be hard for the students. See how I prefer doing it in the next article.

• The young ones may be capable of giving their feedback with smileys whereas the junior and senior high students can comment at least on how pleasant the text is to read, how clear the ideas are, how good the vocabulary is and which mistakes they spotted. Positive, constructive feedback! Ideally the comments should be based on the criteria.

• In giving feedback the the ladder of feedback developed by David Perkins of Harvard University can be made use of. This model focuses on asking for clarifications and giving constructive feedback. There are also a lot of positive phrases in my earlier article that the students can use. LINK

1 Questions for clarifications: Am I reading this correctly when … I don’t get the idea in the second paragraph. Could you clarify what you mean!

2 Positive comments on value: What I think works very well is … What makes me admire you text is that … The way you present your arguments is … The best thing in your text is …

3 Comments for concern and revision: What I worry about is … If I was you I would …. The thing that what would make the essay even better is that … Maybe you could improve the ideas and grammar by …

• Finally you take all the writings back to be taken home and evaluated by you. Then it is time for the students to give you feedback on the activity / lesson. It can be done orally or in writing.

• At home you will check what kind of feedback was given on the pieces of writing and write a few comments of your own. Give a graded evaluation if you think your students are expecting it.

• If this was the first time the students gave feedback on each other’s work, you need to give general feedback on the process and how well you think the students succeeded.

I know. You may think what I suggest above may seem troublesome, but I can assure you it makes much more sense for the students than writing someting for the teacher and getting a grade for it.