Tập huấn 6

TEACHING WRITING QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1.What kind of writing should students do? 2. Point out writing activities as controlled writing and free writing- Implication for teachers. 3. How would teachers correct student’s written work? 4. Suggest possible techniques in responding to students’ writing. What kind of writing should students do ?  According to Harmer (1995:80), the type of writing teachers get students to do will depend on their age, interests and level.  The writing tasks/activities include writing postcards, letters of various kinds, filling in forms such as job applications, writing narrative compositions, reports, playscripts, advertisement, or poems. What kind of writing should students do? (continued)  There is no limit to the kinds of text teachers can ask students to write. Teachers’ decision will be based on how much languages the students know, what their interests are and what teachers think will not only be useful for them but also motivate them as well.  Below is the kind of writing teachers use for elementary to intermediate level (Doff, 1995: 148) A. Writing activities as controlled writing (Doff, 1995: 150-152) 1. Gap-Filling 2. Re-ordering words 3. Substitution 4. Correcting the facts 5. Dictation B. Writing activities as free writing (Doff, 1995:154-155) 1. Paragraph writing 2. Letter writing 3. Essay-writing Writing activities as free writing (continued)  Problem for free writing: When facing a free writing such as writing a paragraph to describe their own town or village, many students would probably find it quite difficult and make many mistakes. If so they would find the task frustrating and probably not learn very much from it.  Students would probably approach the task in different way and produce a wide variety of different paragraphs. NOTE TO THE TEACHER Thus the only way to correct their work would be individually, book by book, this would be very time consuming for the teachers. Therefore, teachers should help students progress beyond very controlled writing to freer paragraph writing by guiding their writing:  Giving a short text as a model  Doing oral preparation for the writing Writing correction  Correction is worthless if students ignore the mistake and correction.  Teachers have to ensure that students understand the problem and then redraft the passage correctly. Basic procedure for correcting simple written work in class  The teacher writes correct answers on the board, or gets students to write them.  As the teacher gives the answers, students correct their own work.  Then the teacher moves around the class to supervise what they are doing; or students can exchange books and correct each other’s work.