TEACHING WRITING

WRITING is a productive skill that allows humans to transmit messages through the written word, thus remaining in time and space. The written discourse differs from the spoken discourse: writing is not simply putting the oral text in paper, it has its specific features, structures and styles. The closest form of spoken discourse to the written discourse is the talk as performance, since it generally requires from a previously written script. The talk as interaction and transaction, on the contrary, feature a series of characteristics (pauses, doubt, immediacy,…) that are not part of writing.

Students of Primary might face a series of difficulties when they begin their writing process:

• Lack of metalinguistic elements: at first, students don’t know the different structures of texts and base their discourse on the spoken language. 
• Time-space problems: since writing also needs from hand-eye coordination and motor skills, it’s difficult to adjust to the space given at first and do it in a specific time period. It is important to dedicate time to writing in class so the teacher can monitor the initial steps.
• It takes a long time to master writing: the motor skill of writing letters is learnt relatively quickly, but the ability to be creative and produce a text for themselves (think of the structure, the contents, etc.) takes years and needs to be taught.
• Grammar and spelling errors: it takes time to learn the proper spelling of certain words, especially in a foreign language. Spanish’s written forms are very similar to their pronunciation, but English’s spelling differs significantly from its pronunciation. This can lead to negative transfers, given that students might be used to writing what they hear, and they might mistakingly apply that rule in English -> hello/jelou.

Despite its difficulties, writing provides many benefits to students, even before they master it completely. The only way to dominate an ability is by practising, and in that process, students…

• Can express their personalities, likes and dislikes, which motivates them
• Reinforce learning: writing what they learnt helps them remember better, given that they can reflect on the knowledge.
• Foster accuracy, because the structures and spelling are visual, and that makes it easier to realise errors and mistakes.
• Use larger vocabulary and more complex structures than in oral texts.

ACTIVITIES TO TEACH WRITING

As mentioned above, writing takes time to master. The best way of teaching writing is making a progression from controlled activities where students can focus on the motor process of writing, then to guided activities where they can start to think of contents for themselves, and finally to free writing activities where they create a text from scratch by themselves.

• CONTROLLED WRITING: all the information is provided. Examples: straight copying, matching two parts of a sentence out of a number of options, organising a text and copying, delayed copying, dictation.

• GUIDED WRITING: part of the information is provided, like the structure. Examples: fill-in exercises, dictation of the structure, letters/invitations.

• FREE WRITING: the students build the text themselves. It is important to first do some pre-writing activities (talking about the subject to evoke ideas, think of keywords, build vocabulary charts with topic vocabulary…) so that students can land on the context of the text and get some ideas before writing. Examples: dialogues, descriptions, letters, stories…
• It is important that students READ examples of the texts they are expected to write in order to get familiar with structures and words.

As final considerations, the teacher should focus on the content on the text and encourage pre-writing work, also remark the positive things about their products and encourage re-writing when they make mistakes. It should be avoided announcing the topic out of the blue, correcting every single mistake, and preparing activities beyond their level without previous preparation.

Let’s see a real example of a writing activity…

COMPLETING ELMER’S STORY

This activity is a continuation of the activity prepared to teach READING, which can be found here. After the reading sessions are finished, we will begin the writing sessions. Hence the activity is aimed at Second Grade students with an A1 level. 

Since the students have done this previous work, they are already familiar with the context of the book and its keywords. Still, before the activities, there will be a group brainstorm.

1) Controlled writing activities ➡️ organising and coping. In groups, the teacher gives the students different sentences about moments of Elmer’s book and they have to order them chronologically. Then, individually, they have to copy them in their notebooks.

2) Guided writing activities ➡️ individual activity. The teacher gives them incomplete sentences and they have to fill the rest of the sentence. For example: “At first, Elmer was sad because…”, “When the rain came…” 

3) Free writing activities ➡️ In groups, students have to write an epilogue to the book. Specifically, they have to write what they think is going to happen after Elmer gets his colours back, using the ideas they had in the reading session: how he feels, what they feel about the ending, what they’d like to see happening,…

REFLECTION

Even though I learned to write at school, free writing was never really fostered, and that is one thing that I found very contributing about this unit. One of the main critics I have towards our current education system is the lack of a continuum across the curriculum, since students are never or very rarely taught or asked to create texts of their own, but then in the university access test, one of the tasks is writing a discurssive essay. How are people supposed to do this if they never learn about different text structures, appropriate language and connectors?

I quite liked the progression presented in this lesson and will definitely use it in my future job. I will make sure to create writing programs that go from the basic activities which aim to develop the technical skills to tasks that include different types of texts and registers, and the correct tools to create them. I also believe these programs would be more sucessful if they are tied with reading programs, as reading provides children with examples of different texts, vocabulary, organisational patterns and structures.