10.

Ways of introducing product-focused (guided) writing; controlled and free guided

writing.

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 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: Controlled 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:

1. Copying 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.
2. Matching beginning 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. I went to the shop a. to ask for a favor
2. I washed my clothes b. to buy some bread
3. I walked to my friend c. to go to the party


3. Substitution drills: 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].

4. Sequencing jumbled words: In 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.
Example: like- afternoon-the-going-I-in-swimming.


B: Guided practice
1. Gap-fill sentences: This is a more challenging activity, where students have to think of
and write some of the words in sentences themselves.
Example: I ------- two sisters and-------- like going-----------school.


2. Changing 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: I like bananas, but I dont like oranges.
My friend----------- bananas, but she--------- oranges.

3. .Completing sentences: You give the beginning of sentences and the students have to
complete them.
Example: I am--------------------------------------------
I like------------------------------------------
4. Parallel 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 I am nine. I have three brothers and we live in a small house.
My name is


C. 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.

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 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.


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:

1. Writing based on a text: 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 students 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.
2. Brainstorming: 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 information when turning to the preparation of their first
drafts.
3. Listing: 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.
4. 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 ones 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.


Responding to Students 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:

1st. 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 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.
2nd. 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.
3rd. In 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 students 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.
4th. 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. Label specific errors according to the feature they violate, using either the
complete term or a symbol system.
4. Indicate the presence of errors but not the precise location. (e.g., noting
that there are problems with word forms)
5. A combination of two or more of the methods mentioned above,
depending on what they perceive to be the needs of the student

5th. Finally, teachers should decide who would correct the errors.

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'.

From copying to free writing

Writing work in the classroom falls on a continuum from
copying to free writing, from imitative writing to self-
writing.

1

2

3

4


imitative
writing

Controlled writing



Self-writing
1 copying 2 doing exercises 3 guided writing

4 free writing
creative writing

At one end the student is practising forming letter shapes in a handwriting book, noting dow
substitution tables from the board, copying examples from a textbook, etc.
At the other end the student chooses both subject matter and form. Very close to this on the
scale would be essay writing where the topic or title is given, but no further help. Accuracy is
more of a concern towards the left of the scale; fluency increasingly important towards the
right.