LEARNING TO LEARNTRAINING PROGRAM

LEVEL 7

Writing

OBJECTIVES

To help you realize the place of

Writing in the process of learning a

language and the skills involved in it.

To make you aware of the different

strategies that may be used to

practice Writing.

Activity

They say that good listeners become good speakers, and good readers become good writers.

Explain how this works, how is this possible and/or logical?

Think about a few specific things that you could probably improve in your writing by working on your reading. Ask around: your classmates, teachers, tutors, other people.

Discuss the following:Writing is a complex skill.It involves many different aspects.When you write in your own language you

are not always aware of all the things your mind considers in order to produce a piece of writing.

When you write in a different language you have to make a conscious effort to prepare, oversee and evaluate what you are writing.

Activity How many

different things can you think of that are involved in producing a piece of writing?

What are the aspects your mind considers every time you write something?

CLEAR, FLUENTAND EFFECTIVE

COMMUNICATIONOF IDEAS

Compare your answers and discuss:

CLEAR, FLUENTAND EFFECTIVE

COMMUNICATIONOF IDEAS

SYNTAXSentence structure,Sentence boundaries,Stylistic choices, etc.

CONTENTRelevance, ClarityOriginality,Logic, etc.

THE WRITER’S PROCESSGetting ideas,Getting started,Writing drafts, Revising

AUDIENCEThe reader(s)

PURPOSEThe reason for writing

WORDCHOICEVocabulary,Idiom, tone

ORGANIZATIONParagraphs,Topic and support,Cohesion and unity

MECHANICSHandwriting,Spelling,Punctuation, etc.

GRAMMARRules for verbs,Agreement, Articles,Pronouns, etc.

Think about this:

If there are so many aspects to consider how do we ever write anything?

We can write because we follow steps in a process and we do it in stages.

Good writing is basically done following three easy steps: Pre-writing Writing Post-writing

The writing process

PRE-WRITING

Thinking Discussing Free-writing Gathering Organizing

WRITING

Organizing Writing Editing

POST-WRITING

Editing Proofreading

Activity

How many of these aspects in the three basic steps do you already follow?

Which ones do you think you could incorporate to your writing process next time you write something?

Re-write something you had already written, this time follow all the steps in the process. Compare it to the previous text. How are they different?

Think about this:

Nobody was born knowing how to write. You have probably been writing in your

own language for a long time, and that still does not guarantee that you are good at writing.

People need practice to become good at something: including writing.

One way to practice writing is to do writing practice in stages.

Stages in writing practice

Think about they way you started producing pieces of writing in your own language, what were the first things that you did? Then what? And now?

The stages go from: Copying, Controlled writing, Guided writing, to Free writing.

Activity:

To improve your writing skills practice activities for each one of the four different stages.

Little by little upgrade the level of difficulty of the activities you use and practice, practice, practice.

Next you will find some suggestions for activities you can do for each stage.

Writing activities by stagesCopying Controlled

writingGuided writing Free writing

•Straight copying.•Copying with sentence combination.•Copying with some transformation of the information.

•Dictation.•Writing from grammar practice.•Cloze summaries from readings.•Question sequences that result in summary.•Parallel writing.

•Stimulus-response, from pictures, stories, comics, etc.•Following models. •From a provided outline.•From a provided situation.•From oral cues provided.

•From situations provided.•From opinion.•From fact or fiction.•From a title.