How to Teach Writing

Firoozeh Shojaee, M.A., Kaeroon Azad University

firoozeh_shojaeeyahoo.co!

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A"stract
The aim of this article is to present writing activities. Writing
activities can be divided into three classes: controlled, guided, and
free writing activities.
There are also some guidelines on free writing which are
quoted from invaluable sources. Finally, some suggestions regarding
correction of written work are presented.

Key words# writing, writing activities
$ntrod%ction
As you know writing is a productive skill and this is because
students have to actively produce language in order to write.
Writing involves all aspects of language: grammar, vocabulary,
word order, spelling and logical arrangement of ideas. Students often
make mistakes when they start to write in sentences. This means that
the teacher has a lot of marking to do, and all the corrections in red
pen do not make the students very happy. They do not help the
students very much.
Writing activities
Teachers need to plan lessons in a step-by-step way. They
need to build up students' confidence by starting from controlled and
guided activities and move towards less-guided and more student-
centered and creative activities. The activities must start with very
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teacher-controlled activities, and move to less teacher-controlled
ones. Guided activities, which are easy and short, will help all
students to write with few mistakes in a controlled situation. As their
confidence and interest grow, less guided activities will encourage
them to write more confidently.
A# &ontro''ed Writing Activities
At elementary level students should be given exercises which
require them to think and add something of their own; but exercises
at this level should still be controlled, so that students do not make
too many mistakes. According to Baker (2003), they may be as the
followings:
(. &o)ying correct sentences# Copying sentences help students to
practice new language and is also a good way to practice writing
skill. However, copying can become repetitive and students do not
have to think, so it should not be used too often.
*. Matching "eginning and ending sentences: Select a number of
sentences. You can use sentences from your course book, or
make them up yourself. Write one half of each sentence on the left
of the blackboard and the other half of the sentence on the right of
the blackboard. The students then decide which two sentence
halves go together to form a complete sentence.
1. went to the shop . a. to ask for a favor
2. washed my clothes. b. to buy some bread
3. walked to my friend. c. to go to the party
+. S%"stit%tion dri''s# This activity gives the students a basic correct
sentence to learn from, but they have to make some choices in
order to make complete and correct sentences.
Example: show students a picture of cinema students should copy
the following sentence, choosing and writing the correct word from
the list.
[The other day/last night] Mum took us to the [theatre/cinema] to see
a [film/play].
,. Se-%encing j%!"'ed words# n this activity, jumbled words
means that the correct words are provided, but in the wrong order.
Students have to put the words in the right order.
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Example: like- afternoon-the-going--in-swimming.

.# /%ided )ractice
(. /a)0fi'' sentences# This is a more challenging activity, where
students have to think of and write some of the words in sentences
themselves.
Example: ------- two sisters and-------- like going-----------school.
*. &hanging sentences# This activity gives the basic correct
sentences, but the students have to change a grammatical
structure, for example, from singular to plural, or to a different
tense.
.Example: like bananas, but don't like oranges.
My friend----------- bananas, but she--------- oranges.
+. .&o!)'eting sentences: You give the beginning of sentences and
the students have to complete them.
Example: am--------------------------------------------
like------------------------------------------
,. 1ara''e' sentences: You write correct model sentences on the
blackboard, and the students re-write the sentences, making it true
for themselves.
Example: My name is Ali and am nine. have three brothers and we
live in a small house.
My name is .
&. Free writing
As soon as the students have mastered basic skills of sentence
writing, they need to progress beyond very controlled writing
exercises to freer paragraph and essay writing.
Teachers can give instructions regarding the organization of
essays and paragraphs and so improve students' writing. Cheron
Verster (2002) suggests the following guidelines:
Explain the overall organization of an essay to students.
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Explain paragraph organization.
Find ideas or information for a composition.
Put these ideas or information in logical paragraphs.
Make sure the meaning is clear within these paragraphs.
Make sure the paragraphs are linked together well.
Make sure the language is accurate.
Make sure the language is appropriate to the purpose of the
writing

Give students a list of connectives that they could use in their
essays. Make sure that they understand the relationships that are
implied by these connectives.
Give students a model essay. Once they have read it, ask them
to write an outline of the essay in the following way:
Firstly, identify the thesis. Write it in a circle in the middle
of a blank piece of paper.
Next, identify the claims or statements that are made to
support this thesis. Write these around the thesis.
Then identify and list the details and examples that are
given to support each claim/statement.
Finally, write relevant connectors between the thesis and
the claims/statements and between the claims/statements
themselves.
Ask students to use their outline to write their essay.
Give students a topic. As the objective of any writing class is to
have students work on their writing, the topics students write about
must be carefully designed, sequenced, and structured. n this way
the teacher knows exactly what the learning goal of each paper is
and the students gain some thing by working on the assignment.
Based on Ur (1996) teachers should encourage learners to
progress through a number of untidy drafts before reaching a final
version. Students should accept messy drafts as a positive stage in
writing. Good writers think about content first and form later.
Teachers should advise learners to write down their ideas first, and
then correct spelling and grammar.
Teachers must decide where the writing is to be produced: in
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class or at home. According to Kroll as cited by Celce-Marcia (2001)
one way is to consider some assignments as timed writing, written in
a given time framework, submitted, and responded to as final
products in class. Other writing assignments can be prepared over a
span of several class periods (either in class or at home) and
feedback provided to assist in the revision process.
Regardless of the type of free writing activity, a good place to
begin class work is to explore the prewriting stage, the stage prior to
actual production of a working text. At this phase the goal of the
teacher should be to expose the students with a variety of strategies
for getting started with a writing task and to encourage each student
to try to discover which strategies work best for him or her. Students
feel that they have a variety of ways to begin an assigned writing task
and they do not always have to begin at the beginning and work
through an evolving draft sequentially until they reach the end.
Free writing activities
There are some activities, which are helpful for students to start
writing assignment. According to Kroll as cited by Celce-Marcia
(2001) they are as the followings:
(. Writing "ased on a te2t: We can teach students how to write by
giving a short text as a model, for example students read a short
text, and study particular features of it. They then write a
paragraph that is similar, but involves some changes. For
example, students read a paragraph about a student's day, then
they write about their own day; students read a description of a
room, and then write a description of another room shown in a
picture.
*. .rainstor!ing: This is often a group exercise in which all of the
students in the class are encouraged to participate by sharing their
collective knowledge about a particular subject. One way to
structure this is for the teacher to suggest a broad topic, such as
reasons for choosing a particular academic major, and have
students call out as many associations as possible, which the
teacher can write on the board. The result would be far more
material generated than any one student is likely to think of on
his/her own, and then all students can utilize any or all of the
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information when turning to the preparation of their first drafts.
+. 3isting: Unlike brainstorming, as described above, listing can be a
quite and essentially individual activity. Again, as a first step in
finding an approach to a particular subject area, the students are
encouraged to produce as lengthy a list as possible of all the
subcategories that come to mind as they think about the topic at
hand. This is an especially useful activity for students, who might
be constrained by undue concern for expressing their thoughts in
grammatically correct sentences, because lists do not require
complete sentences.
,. Free writing: Freed from the necessity of worrying about grammar
and format, students can often generate a great deal of prose
which provide useful raw material to use in addressing the writing
assignment at hand. This technique often works best if the teacher
provides an opening clause or sentence for the students to start
with. For example, if the students are supposed to write a paper
about one's personal philosophy of life, they can begin with the
words like "life is difficult but it is also worthwhile. The students
copy this sentence and continue to write down whatever comes
into their heads.


4ote writing is a writing activity that is suggested by Nik
Peachey (2002). t is an activity that is really useful for helping
learners to write more fluently and can also help you to diagnose
problems with your students' written work and ability to formulate
questions. You can use it at the beginning or end of a class as fun
filler, or as an integral part of your lesson.
Give out a sheet of A4 paper (219mm x 297mm) to each
student and ask them to watch and follow your instructions:
Hold up your paper and fold it in half. Then fold it in half again
and then again. Press hard on the paper and then open it out. The
folds should have divided the paper into eight rectangles. Use the
fold lines to tear the page into eight rectangular pieces of paper.
Once they all have their eight pieces of paper, ask the students
to write their names in the bottom right-hand corner of each piece.
Next ask them to think of another person in the class and to
think of a question they would like to ask them.
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Tell them to write the name of the person on the top left-hand
corner and then to write the question on the piece of paper.
Once they have done this, tell them to pass the paper to the
person the question was intended for.
Students then read any questions they got and start to write
replies. Students who didn't get a question can start writing
another question for someone else.
Get the students to keep writing and answering questions until
all their pieces of paper are used up.
You may in the early stages need to prompt the students to
keep writing and also to make sure they are using English, but try
not to interrupt ones that are busy writing or to correct anything at
this stage. You may actually like to get involved yourself and start
writing a few notes to your students.
&reating a fra!ewor5 for writing# Jeff Fowler (2002) who is a
teacher and trainer suggested an activity that creates a framework for
writing. This is a creative writing exercise in which the teacher moulds
the story but allows plenty of scope for the students' creative
expression.
The students work in pairs or groups of three. The teacher
dictates a part of a story and then gives instructions on how the
students should continue the next part of the story in their pairs.
(This usually involves adding description or dialogue).
Once the students have added a part to the story, the teacher
once again dictates the next part and asks them once again to
add more.
This process can continue for or 6 paragraphs or until the
students lose concentration.
You can use this procedure with any short story, but it works best
when you dictate the movement of events and your students add
description or dialogue. Students do generally like to decide on the
end of the story themselves, so if you sense they are getting tired,
just tell them to finish the story.
6'iciting voca"%'ary "efore writing narratives: Brian Fowlis (2002)
suggests this activity. This is an idea to help students with their
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writing of narratives. t gives all the students some essential (and
some superfluous) vocabulary.
Before giving the students the title (or first line) of the story, play a
game of word association.
The teacher gives one word and the student on the left must
say the first word s/he can think of which is associated with it.
Then the student on her/his left says the first word that s/he can
think of which is associated with the previous word.
This can be repeated around the class a few times.
The teacher writes all the words on the board as they appear.
Eventually you should have 20 or 30 words on the board, the
latter ones bearing no relation to the original.
Here is a typical collection: tree, forest, countryside, city,
buildings, offices, work, leisure, holidays, beach, sun, moon,
night, dark, black, reggae, music, piano, jazz, etc.
The teacher then gives the students the first line of the story
using some of the vocabulary on the board (e.g., 'll never forget
the night went to my first reggae club while was on holiday in
a strange city.
The students (individually or in pairs) continue the story,
drawing on the vocabulary on the board for ideas.
7es)onding to St%dents8 Writing
Responding to students writing has the goal of fostering student
improvement. The result of all studies strongly suggests that teacher'
comment has little impact on student writing. Therefore, in setting
goals, teachers should focus on implementing a variety of response
types and on training students to maximize the insights of prior
feedback on future writing occasions. Students must also be trained
to use the feedback in ways that will improve their writing. Kroll as
cited by Celce-Marcia (2001) suggested the following guidelines:
1. Students routinely produce more than one draft of an essay;
therefore, feedback on a first draft should most appropriately
provide guidelines and suggestions for how to produce a second
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draft that would show improvement at the level of content and
organization. Rewriting is an integral part of the writing process,
and reinforces learning. Teachers should give evaluation only on
the basis of the rewritten, polished version.
2. The papers that students write are likely to exhibit problems in
language control. However, it is very important for the teacher not
to be swayed by the presence or numbers of these problems into
turning a writing course into a grammar course.
3. n addition to deciding when to correct errors, teacher must also
decide which errors to correct, and how to correct errors. The
decision whether to address all or selected errors is a complex one
and probably depends a great deal on the level of writing the
student is capable of producing. However, correcting all of a
student's errors is probably rarely called for, unless there are very
few errors present in the text. Rather, the teacher should probably
concentrate on calling the student' s attention to those errors that
are considered more serious and/or represent a pattern of errors in
that particular student' s writing.
4. How to call students' attention to the errors they have committed
is also a complex issue. Teachers can choose to:
1. Point out specific errors using a mark in the margin or an
arrow or other symbolic system.
2. Correct or model specific errors by writing in the corrected
form
3. abel specific errors according to the feature they violate,
using either the complete term or a symbol system.
4. ndicate the presence of errors but not the precise
location. (e.g., noting that there are problems with word forms)
. A combination of two or more of the methods mentioned
above, depending on what they perceive to be the needs of the
student
. Finally, teachers should decide who would correct the errors.
1. Teachers should bear in mind that feedback can be oral
as well as written, and they should consider the value of
individual conferences on student papers. Students in a writing
class need to have individual conferences with their teacher. t
can provide an opportunity for the teacher to ask the student
about intended messages that are often difficult to understand
by simply reading a working draft. Conference allow the
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teacher to uncover potential misunderstandings the student
might have about prior written feedback or issues in writing that
have been discussed in class, and they can usually learn more
in one to one exchange.
2. From another point of view, most writing teachers realize
that they have many students in one class and they have a very
limited amount of time to provide feedback to any one student.
Teachers can turn to the other students in the class to assist in
the feedback process, but peer responding in the writing class
must be modeled, taught, and controlled in order for it to be a
valuable activity. One way to control peer response is for
teachers to provide a short list of directed questions which
students address as they read their own or other students'
papers, such as to check for a particular grammatical feature or
to check to assure that no irrelevancies have been included.
Another way is for students to be trained to read and respond to
other students' papers by reviewing an essay written by a
student in a previous class. A peer-editing sheet asks a few
specific questions that would elicit both general reactions to the
paper and suggestions for improvement.
off (1990) suggested some valuable guidelines based
on the level of the students. With large classes and at lower
levels, teachers can give students controlled writing activities
that can be easily corrected. A basic procedure for correcting
simple written work is:
1. The correct answer can be written on the board.
2. Students correct their own work and the teacher
moves around the class to supervise.
3. Teacher can draw attention to some common
mistakes for the benefit of the whole class.
He believed that for more advanced students the teacher
should correct students work individually and positively.
1. Teachers should correct most important errors or
certain errors.
2. Teachers should write corrections on the margin.
3. Teachers can indicate where the students have made
important errors and encourage them to correct them.
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76F6764&6S
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Celce-Marcia, M and Hills, SH. (19). Techniques and Resources in
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Ur, P. (1996). % 'ourse in Language Teaching. Cambridge:
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