Use some pre-tasks to stir the imagination of the students before you ask them to write anything. Photos are excellent in this respect.

Learning a foreign language is usually started with listening and speaking. The words and phrases learnt may be shown as visual stimuli but actual reading and writing takes place a bit later when the students are given a textbook.

Writing in its simpliest form means

• writing down or copying words, word lists or short sentences; the teacher shows a picture and the students write the word for it; the teacher says words aloud and the students write them down, etc.
• dictation: the teacher reads simple sentences or stories and the students write them down, filling in words in a text with gaps or some missing words in a song
• writing down simple sentences either copying them from the book, copying part of the sentence and changing part of it
• elaboration: students make sentences or simple stories using some words given to them
• free creative writing: the students write a fictive story using or ignoring the prompts given by the teacher

All in all, writing starts from individual words, continues in writing simple sentences which at its best are creative in the sense that they are not copied from the textbook chapters. Learning to write well is a long process and both teachers and students have to be patient until the very end of studies.

At the beginning pupils need a lot of guidance from the teacher but as they get older most students benefit from being allowed to be creative and all they need to get going is a set of titles or pictures to choose from.

Differentiation in mixed-ability classes

However, all teachers know that there is a tremendous variation in writing skills in mixed-ability classes. Let’s have a look at the following example and see how the teacher can differentiate the writing task so that the pupils can work at their own level. They know how past tenses of regular verbs are formed and some 30 irregular past tenses.

The formula of differentiation is simple

1. Revision is done the previous lesson on vocabulary and the grammatical point we wish to emphasize. The topic has to be based on the chapters that were recently studied.
2. A couple of oral pre-tasks are done in pairs or groups at the beginning of the writing session as a reminder.
3. Three (or two) choices how to get started with writing. The only difference is in how much of the guidence provided by the teacher the students are making use of.

For example Title: Last summer Be as creative as you wish.

Pre-tasks: The idea is to force 6th graders to use the past tense in telling what happened last summer. The past tense was practised the previous week but we will do a couple of warm-up exercices as a reminder.

Many students find it hard to get started with writing so we need to stir their imagination a bit with some pre-tasks, A) and B) below.

A) The students change a story on the screen written is the present tense to the past tense. It is an oral exercise done in pairs. The second time the students do the same thing but have to change something in every sentence. (5 min) In other words, the mechanical 1st version is turned to a semi-communicative more creative version.

Jane likes to go shopping on Saturday mornings. She usually goes to town by bus but sometimes she takes her own car if she plans to buy some big things. It is eight o’clock and Jane gets up, brushes her teeth and makes morning coffee. She also drinks some water and eats a banana and two sanwiches …

B) The students get into groups of four and make a mind map on what they could write about. 5 min planning. Something like this, just throwing in ideas that can be used or ignored.

C) Write a true or imaginative story of what happened to you, your friends and/or your family last summer. Choose any of the three options below.

Choice A	Choice B	Choice C (the easiest one)
Feel free to write a creative story. It does not have to be true.	You may use the beginning of the sentences below as part of you story.	1) Answer the questions OR 2) Fill in the story with any ideas that please you. The first letter or two are sometimes given to you. You are welcome to write sentences of your own too.
	Last summer I and my best friend went to … because we … First we … the train to … Secondly, we … After four hours we … because … When we came back late in the evening we … The next week me and my family …. We … there by … and the following morning we … because …	1) What did you do last summer and why? Where did you go and with whom? Pick four places and explain about them. How did you get the money for ? Why did you go there? How did you get there and back? What were the best things you did there? … OR 2) Last summer my family m… a trip to … and we stay… in a ho… for … days. We sw… in the swimming pool for many ho… and at lunch time we we.. very hungry a… like a horse. My mum w… to the nearby village and bo…. herself some new clothes. My dad likes reading so he r… some short stories when we we… swimming. Just before we le… the hotel on the last d…, we pick… up apples and strawberries. They co.. very little. My dad dr… us back home and … A week later we … The best thing last summer was when we … When school started … (Surprisingly many students give up this choice because it is not creative and because the modified cloze text (2) actually requires reading comprehension and a lot of thinking.) In most classes Choices B and C might be enough.

At first glance this kind of differentiation may seem troublesome but if you think about it from the students’ point of view, it shows that you care and try to make writing a more pleasant experience for them. Especially the weak writers need a lot of support and ideas. On the other hand, this way we do not tie the hands of more advanced students.

How does one evaluate stories like this?

This is an interesting question but I like to keep things simple.

Teacher evaluation: In our Finnish system we use grading 4 – 10. 10 is the highest grade and 4 means failure. This is what I tell my students:

• Choice A suggests you are heading for Grade 9 or 10.
• Choice B implies you wish to get Grade 7 or 8
• Choice C basically means you aim at Grade 5 or 6
• BUT the evaluation is not that simple since everyone can use the ideas given in Choice B and C. Therefore I simply have to consider the level of creativeness and language in general because someone who makes use of Choice C may well come up with a perfectly original story and deserves a high grade.
• On the other hand, someone who chooses Choice A and writes an appaling story does not deserve a high grade.
• SO, in the end I am simply using the national criteria in giving the grades but take into account how much the writer leans on the guidance given.

Student/Peer evaluation in writing

Letting the students read each other’s stories and assessing them is a delicate process of its own. In my opinion the students find it very interesting and it is great to have a group of other people who read the story in addition to the teacher. However, note the following points:

• Ask the students not to write their names on the papers. The writers draw a symbol on the paper to identify their work later on.
• Young students can indicate with some positive symbols how much they liked the story. 1 – 5 stars or roses, etc.
• Junior high students (ages 11 -15) can use positive symbols and write only positive comments about the story. If they do not understand something they can put a question mark (?) in the margin.
• Some junior high classes might be mature enough to give some constructive feedback also on the challenges or the ways the story could be made better. They might even be able to suggest the grade if they are familiar with the criteria/rubric.
• The assessment can also be done in (randomly selected) pairs.
• All the feedback is done in class before there are any teacher’s markings on the papers. The teacher moves around the class when the ‘assessment’ is going on because this is a dead-serious business and nobody’s feelings are to be hurt.
• Senior high students benefit a lot if they are allowed to assess each other’s stories, essays or any other type of written assignments.
• They will 1) get a realistic view on how good writers they are compared with others, 2) They will learn to interpret the criteria better and realize which writing skill elements they need to improve themselves, 3) They will have to think carefully how to apply all the advice given to them by the teacher. 4) They will be more motivated to write the texts since they know someone else than the teacher will be reading them too.

I hope you now realize how different the writing process becomes if it is done at least roughly as I suggest above. To me the benefits are undeniable and in the long run the teacher’s workload is not increased.