Tập huấn Thay sách Anh 12 - 2008

TEACHING WRITING

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1.What kind of writing should
students do?
2. Point out writing activities as controlled
writing and free writing- Implication
for teachers.
3. How would teachers correct
student’s written work?
4. Suggest possible techniques in
responding to students’ writing.

What kind of writing should
students do ?

According to Harmer (1995:80), the type of
writing teachers get students to do will depend
on their age, interests and level.

The writing tasks/activities include writing
postcards, letters of various kinds, filling in
forms such as job applications, writing narrative
compositions, reports, playscripts,
advertisement, or poems.

What kind of writing should students
do? (continued)

There is no limit to the kinds of text teachers can ask

students to write. Teachers’ decision will be based on how
much languages the students know, what their interests are
and what teachers think will not only be useful for them but
also motivate them as well.

Below is the kind of writing teachers use for elementary to
intermediate level (Doff, 1995: 148)

A. Writing activities as controlled writing
(Doff, 1995: 150-152)
1. Gap-Filling
2. Re-ordering words
3. Substitution
4. Correcting the facts
5. Dictation

B. Writing activities as free writing
(Doff, 1995:154-155)
1. Paragraph writing
2. Letter writing
3. Essay-writing

Writing activities as free writing (continued)

Problem for free writing: When facing a free
writing such as writing a paragraph to describe
their own town or village, many students would
probably find it quite difficult and make many
mistakes. If so they would find the task frustrating
and probably not learn very much from it.


Students would probably approach the task in
different way and produce a wide variety of
different paragraphs.

NOTE TO THE TEACHER
Thus the only way to correct their work would be individually,
book by book, this would be very time consuming for the
teachers.
Therefore, teachers should help students progress beyond
very controlled writing to freer paragraph writing by guiding
their writing:

Giving a short text as a model

Doing oral preparation for the writing

Writing correction

Correction is worthless if students ignore the
mistake and correction.
 Teachers have to ensure that students
understand the problem and then redraft the
passage correctly.