I believe one of
the most overlooked skills in class must be writing. I think this is because
students do not like to spend time doing this activity and teachers do not want
to ask students to do something he knows they hate doing. Writing is, quite
possibly, one of the weakest skills for Latin American students and the one
that takes the longest to skilfully achieve.
The reason I
chose to work on process writing is because I have already done product
approach and I found it particularly helpful. I just want to see the benefits
of this new approach for me, since I have never really worked on it before, and
see how it compares and differs from its counterpart.
But, let’s start from the beginning. What’s writing?
According to Teaching Writing Skills
(Byrne 1998), “On one level, writing can be said to be the act of forming these
symbols: making marks on a flat surface of some kind. But writing is clearly
much more than the production of graphic symbols, just as speech is more than
the production of sounds.”
What is the process writing approach?
Process writing
may be a more effective method of teaching writing as it helps students to
focus on the process of creating text through the various stages of generating
ideas, drafting, revising and editing, a number of activities which can be
represented as in Figure 1.
White and Arndt
(1991:3) describe writing as a form of problem-solving which involves such
processes as generating ideas, discovering a ‘voice’ with which to write,
planning, goal-setting, monitoring and evaluating what is going to be written
as well as what has been written and searching for language with which to
express exact meaning.
In a simplified
manner, Figure 2, tries to demonstrate the complex and recursive nature of
writing and the interaction between the different operations which may occur
simultaneously (White and Arndt,1991:4; Hedge, 2005:50). Our cognitive process
or thinking is not linear. However, writing is linear and a writer must know
how to organise his/her thoughts and message in an appropriate manner. Many
writers often do not know what they want to write beforehand and many ideas are
only revealed once the writer has started. They then move backwards to revise
and change words or structures before they move forwards and they continue
doing this until they are satisfied with the end result. Thus, writing is a
‘process through which meaning is created’ (Zamel, 1982,195).
How does the process writing approach work?
It is possible
that teachers assume students know how to organise their ideas and write as
they have ‘picked it up’ in their reading or they have transferred the skill
from L1. This may pose a problem as not all languages (and cultures) follow the
same patterns of written discourse. Much contrastive rhetoric research has
focused on these differences to aid writing teachers (Brown, 2001:338). Since
writing involves a process of ‘generating, formulating and refining one’s
ideas’ (Zamel, 1982:195), writing practice in class should reflect the same
process where attention and adequate time is provided for revision and
re-drafting while the teacher intervenes throughout the whole process.
What
are the steps of the process writing approach?
I
recognize three basic and main steps:
Generating ideas: The
first part of the lesson may almost be considered the
pre-writing
stage to develop ideas. An example might be a descriptive essay which follows a
lesson or section on adjectives. An opinion essay could follow a class
discussion about a specific topic. Another good pre-writing activity is the use
of 7 brainstorming, especially if we consider the complexity of writing and how
generating ideas is an essential stage in the writing process (White and Arndt,
1991:17). The objective of brainstorming is to stimulate the imagination to
produce ideas on a topic or problem. This is particularly useful for those less
imaginative students who do not exercise their creative abilities frequently
and thus find it difficult to generate or recall encyclopaedic/world knowledge
and link ideas together. Is it not possible to assert that like many other
skills, creativity and imagination must be developed through practice?
There are many
ways in which students can brainstorm ideas, this is one I like the most and I
mostly use with my students. It lets students generate all the ideas they can
and group them at the same time, you’re basically doing 2 jobs ate the same
time (listing and grouping)
Concentration
must be paid to the global organisation of the text depending on the purpose,
as information must unfold in a structured form in order to achieve coherence.
Students must be made aware of this. A good idea to help those who have
problems organising their thoughts might be to make a visual plan for the text.
The text is
usually divided into introduction, body paragraph(s) and conclusion. In
addition to being aware of the possible text structures, students should be
aware that effective paragraphs contain good topic sentences which introduce
what the topic is about as well as the purpose of the paragraph, and these
should be written in such a way as to attract the reader’s attention.
Introduction
Paragraph 1
Childhood
memories last forever; they will never go away no matter how small they are.
Memories like going on vacation and playing outside with friends are the most
remembered and treasured by children all over the world.
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Main body
Paragraph 2
Travelling with
the family is always a good chance to spend time with your loved ones.
|
Main body
Paragraph 3
Playing outside
gives you that unique experience of interacting with children your same age.
|
Conclusion
Final Paragraph
In conclusion,
I believe that there is nothing more important for a child than all those
memories they accumulate during their childhood.
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Revising and Redrafting/Editing: Revising
is part of the writing process which entails assessing what has already been
written and is an important source of learning (Hedge, 2005). Sommers (1982:154
in Zamel, 1985:96) states We need to sabotage our students' conviction that the
drafts they have written are completed and coherent. Our comments need to offer
students revision tasks ... by forcing students back into chaos, back to the
point where they are shaping and restructuring their meaning. This is one of
the most crucial and beneficial stages in the writing process, when the most
meaningful learning will take place that will aid students in future writing as
they will have the opportunity to receive feedback while the experience is
still ‘fresh in the 12mind’ (Hedge, 2005: 121). In general, students receive
feedback from teachers’ days after the writing task has been completed,
mistakes are highlighted and corrected, suggestions for improvement are
provided. In certain occasions students may be ‘spoon-fed’ and this may account
for why there is no real improvement in subsequent drafts or writing tasks. The
teacher has done all the work; consequently learners do not mentally correct
their mistakes as meaningful learning may not have taken place.
Once again there
is an opportunity to transform this task into a student-centred activity thus
promoting real communication amongst students. Students may work in pairs or
groups and correct, provide feedback on each other’s text. This collaborative
work generates discussion and activities which may increase students’ awareness
of problems they may have in their own writing when they have to clarify ideas
or expressions used in the text (Hedge, 2005:122). By providing students with
the opportunity to correct and provide feedback on their classmates’ texts,
they are learning by doing and as Hedge points out (2005:18), ‘accuracy work
which is comparatively spontaneous’ is ‘certainly more meaningful and
motivating’.s.
I hope you find this interesting and apply it in your classes.
Happy teaching,
Erick Maguiño Matusaki
I hope you find this interesting and apply it in your classes.
Happy teaching,
Erick Maguiño Matusaki
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