Some thoughts on teaching writing

Writing as a forgotten skill:

Writing is sometimes regarded as the 'forgotten skill'. Arguably, writing receives the least attention because it is at the bottom of the list of teachers' priorities. With limited classroom time and limited time for correction of written work, anything more than a piecemeal approach will both occupy time that could perhaps be spent on more immediate linguistic needs and, perhaps more crucially for many teachers, make excessive demands on their preparation time. With its associations of homework, written exercises and examinations, writing may seem both 'traditional' (in the negative sense of the word) and irrelevant to learners' immediate needs. From a purely pragmatic point of view, they may not view time spent writing in class as time well spent, preferring the time to be spent on more active aspects of language learning. Like reading, writing is generally a silent, reflective activity and silence is not something that learners (and many teachers) generally associate with a language classroom. Likewise, many teachers may regard writing as something that 'takes care of itself, a side issue that is best taken care of in the form of an occasional homework task. In short, writing gets a bad press, particularly in relation to the other productive skill, speaking.

If we consider some of the reasons for negative attitudes to writing in relation to speaking' some of the following issues emerge:

Feedback on oral production can be instant (correction of errors of syntax, pronunciation and so on). Such interaction in class can be motivating, lively, even fun.. Error correction may come from the teacher, from other learners or from the speaker himself or herself If such classroom interactions are skillfully managed, the oral element can be clearly seen to have a direct relationship with performance and improvement.

Feedback on written work, by contrast, usually lacks this sense of immediacy. Error correction comes later, often days or even weeks later, when the original task may no longer have much relevance to the writer. Even if it does come within a single lesson, if correction of the written work is carried out by the teacher, there will necessarily be an interval where the teacher is involved in the correction, and his or her involvement with the learners is consequently reduced. This will often lead to a quiet period when learners are, perhaps, reading or doing more writing. The effect on pace and classroom dynamics can be negative. The hustle and bustle of the 'market-place' of oral interaction and correction is lost.

With written work, correction will tend to come from the teacher. Peer correction, though possible, is, from a practical point of view, often less easy to manage and may not be widely used as a consequence. Simply returning the text to the learner with all the corrections made can have the same effect on the learner as the kind of oral correction where the teacher simply repeats the correct form each time without giving the learner the chance to self-correct. Except in the case of the most committed learners, written work returned to the learner with all the corrections made by the teacher is likely to finish up fairly quickly in the nearest waste receptacle, the learner pausing only to see what mark has been awarded or how many ticks there are on the piece of work concerned. Self-correction of written work seems to be the most favoured method, since it involves more self-discovery and trial and error on the part of the learner, but it also demands a great deal of application. Rewriting the same text following a scheme of error notation introduced by the teacher is, no doubt, extremely beneficial. However, it lacks the freshness of, say, trying to express something orally in a different way, having made an error or errors the first time. Since such rewriting may demand two, three or even more attempts, the question of motivation and application is a central one. By the fourth time of writing, the text may be as unappealing as a sentence repeated orally by the learner ad infinitum until the teacher accepts it as 'correct'.

Many learners simply find writing more difficult than speaking. Of course, this is not true for all learners and there are certain cultures, Japanese, for example, where more emphasis is placed in education on the written word and this, combined with cultural restraints on taking the initiative in conversation, can lead to the impression that such learners are much better at writing than at speaking. For the most part, however, the opposite is the case and writing is associated with difficulty. One of the major reasons for this is that written discourse, almost by definition, requires a greater degree of formal accuracy than oral discourse. Whereas a learner may be able to get his or her message across relatively successfully in an oral form, despite making a number of grammatical, lexical, syntactic and phonological errors, the same message in written form would generally be regarded as unacceptable, even incomprehensible, if accompanied by a similar number of errors (the phonological errors being replaced by corresponding errors of spelling and punctuation). More accuracy is demanded and this may be as frustrating for many learners keen to express themselves fluently in written form as it is for learners struggling to communicate orally and being constantly corrected. The need for accuracy also means a far greater amount of time is needed. Spontaneous writing, unlike spontaneous speaking, tends to be relatively rare. Preparation time is needed, as is follow-up time, probably involving self correction of some kind. The whole process seems more time-consuming, more demanding and, possibly, less rewarding.

The above argument rests on the basic premise that writing, as part of the language-learning spectrum, is an area where tasks are set, written and corrected (either by the teacher or by the learners), and where accuracy of written form is the ultimate goal. Writing of this kind is generally regarded not as an end in itself, but as a means of practicing language items and, ultimately, as a means of testing all-round language proficiency.

TASK 1

List some things you have written in the past two weeks.

Commentary

Nowadays most people actually do very little writing in day-to-day life, and a great deal of what we do write is quite short - brief notes to friends or colleagues, answers on question forms, diary entries, postcards, etc.

TASK 2

What are the implications of this for the English language classroom?

Commentary

In everyday life the need for longer, formal written -work seems to have lessened over the

years, and this is reflected in many classrooms -where writing activities are perhaps less

often found than those for the three other skills.

Reasons for teaching writing

Despite this, there may still be a number of good reasons why it is useful to include work on writing.

•  Reinforcement: some students acquire languages in a purely oral/aural way, but most of us benefit greatly from seeing the language written down. The visual demonstration of language construction is invaluable for both our understanding of how it all fits together and as an aid to committing the new language to memory. Students often find it useful to write sentences using new language shortly after they have studied it.

•  Language development : we can't be sure, but it seems that the actual process of writing (rather like the process of speaking) helps us to learn as we go along. The mental activity we have to go through in order to construct proper written texts is all part of the ongoing learning experience.

•  Language style: some students are fantastically quick at picking up language just by looking and listening. For the rest of us, it may take a little longer. For many learners, the time to think things through, to produce language in a slower way, is invaluable. Writing is appropriate for such learners. It can also be a quiet reflective activity instead of the rush and bother of interpersonal face-to-face communication.

•   Writing as a skill : by far the most important reason for teaching writing, of course, is that it is a basic language skill, just as important as speaking, listening and treading. Students need to know how to write letters, how to put written reports together, how to reply to advertisements - and increasingly, how to write using electronic media They need to know some of the writing's special conventions (punctuation, paragraph construction etc.) just as they need to know how to pronounce spoken English appropriately. Part of our job is to give them that skill.

•  It can give the teacher a break, quieten down a noisy class, change the mood and pace of a lesson, etc.

Integrating skills

It is the teacher's responsibility to see that all the skills are practiced. There is a division between productive and receptive skills.

  The Productive skills: speaking and writing

The Receptive Skills: Listening and reading

This suggests that in some way the skills are separate and should be treated as such; on one day students will concentrate on reading, and reading only, on the next speaking and only speaking, etc. In fact this position is clearly ridiculous for two reasons. Firstly it is very often true that one skill cannot be performed without another. It is impossible to speak in a conversation if you do not listen as well, and people seldom write without reading - even if they only read what they have just written. Secondly, though, people use different skills when dealing with the same subject for all sorts of reasons. Someone who listens to a lecture may take notes and then write a report of the lecture. The same person might also describe the lecture to his friends or colleagues and follow it up by reading an article that the lecturer suggested. Another case would be that of a person who reads about a concert or play in the paper and invites a friend to go with him. The same person will probably read the programme for the concert/play and talk with his guest. Later he may well write a letter to someone telling of the experience.

In these cases, and in many more, the same experience or topic leads to the use of many different skills, and in our teaching we will try to reflect this. Where students practice reading we will use that reading as the basis for practicing other skills. Students involved in an oral communicative activity will have to do some writing or reading in order to accomplish the task which the activity asks them to perform. Students will be asked to write, but on the basis of reading, listening or discussing.

Often our activities will have a focus on one particular skill, it is true, so that at a certain stage the students will concentrate on reading abilities. But the focus can later shift to one or more of the other skills.

Differences between written and spoken English

At this point it might be a good idea to make some comparisons between written and spoken English, since the differences imply different types of exercises which focus on different aspects of language.

A speaker has a great range of expressive possibilities at his command. Apart from the actual words he uses, he can vary his intonation and stress, which helps him to show which parts of what he is saying are more or less important, or whether, for example, he wishes to be taken seriously.

At any point while he is speaking he can re-phrase what he is saying or speed up (or slow down) depending on the feedback he gets from his listeners. People listening to him can show by a variety of means that they do or do not understand/approve of what is being said, and of course the speaker can use facial expression, gesture and body posture to help to convey his message.

Of course these points are especially true of a speaker involved in a conversation, where other participants can interrupt, ask for clarification or give other types of feedback. The speech maker, however, may not be asked for clarification, but he will still learn a lot from the attitude of his audience. Speaking on the telephone obviously does not allow for the use of facial expression or gesture, but intonation and stress are used to great effect as well as re­ phrasing, etc.

Perhaps the single most important difference between writing and speaking, however, ' i concerns the need for accuracy. Native speakers constantly make "mistakes' when they are speaking. They hesitate and say the same thing in different ways and they often change the subject of what they are saying in mid-sentence. Except in extremely formal situations this is considered normal and acceptable behaviour. A piece of writing, however, with mistakes and half-finished sentences, etc. would be judged by many native speakers as illiterate since it is expected that writing should be 'correct'. From the point of view of language teaching, therefore, there is often far greater pressure for written accuracy than there is for accuracy in speaking.

The writer also suffers from the disadvantage of not getting immediate feedback from the reader- and sometimes getting no feedback at all. He cannot use intonation or stress, and facial expression, gesture and body movement are denied him. These disadvantages have to be compensated for by greater clarity and by the use of grammatical and stylistic techniques for focusing attention on main points, etc. Perhaps most importantly there is a greater need for logical organisation in a piece of writing than there is in a conversation, for the reader has to understand what has been written without asking for clarification or relying on the writer's tone of voice or expression.

Lastly there are the twin problems of spelling and handwriting. English spelling is notoriously difficult for speakers of other languages, and handwriting is particularly problematical for speakers of Arabic, Chinese and other languages which do not have Roman script.

When teaching writing, therefore, there are special considerations to be taken into account which include the organising of sentences into paragraphs, how paragraphs are joined together, and the general organisation of ideas into a coherent piece of discourse.

Students need to see the difference between spoken and written English.