Teaching Integrated Writing Skills.doc

Teaching Integrated Writing Skills
Dr. Cecilia B-Ikeguchi
Tokyo Kasei Gakuin: Tsukuba Women's University (Japan)
This article was published in the International Journal for Teachers of Writing Skills.
(January, 1997)
This paper presents a technique in the Advance Writing Class that has been proven
successful in teaching the skills of summarizing, outlining, expressing opinion through the
medium of writing. In integrating Writing Lessons with reading, speaking and of course
listening, students are able to produce dynamic writing output.
A Brief Theoretical Background and the Background of
the Students
This paper rests on the assumption that there is a staged development of language
acquisition, and that ESL learners go through different stages of development towards the
target language. More specifically this implies that students learn different grammatical
structures at different levels of development in each of the four skills of listening, speaking,
reading and writing. At each stage, some grammatical structures build on other structures
and can not be acquired before other structure. With focus on Writing skills, this paper
reports on a successful and effective teaching and learning technique used with Japanese
university students in the Advance Writing Classes.
Japanese students come from a mono-language environment, where Japanese is the
predominant language at home and in the community, notwithstanding the school. English
education in Japan is spelled out in such a way that students start to learn the language
formally in Junior High School where heavy emphasis is placed on translations and
grammar studies in preparation for University Entrance Examination. This being the case,
university students are placed into three levels: the Beginning, Intermediate and Advance
in their Writing classes.
Japanese students in the advance level usually are a good mixture of those who have at
least a year of overseas study and those who have not. Based on the Developmental
Language Acquisition Theory mentioned above, learners at this stage, with influences from
L1 Writing, are now said to be able to write in paragraph forms, with a paragraph being
defined as a coherent presentation of a number of utterance tied together by an overall

message or intent. What distinguishes a paragraph from a set of sentences is primarily
textual cohesion which refers to elements that refer forward and backward among across
sentence boundaries that tie sentences together. By this time, Japanese university students
are able to narrate, describe, and manipulate sentence structures to a certain extent that they
express what they really are eager to communicate. Consequently, they are also able to use
correctly discourse connectors, subordination and coordination. After having mastered the
structural elements and style of paragraph writing, they can and should tbe allowed to write
longer forms of writing.
The Teaching of Writing, Integrated with Other Skills
The most common problem that confronts teachers of a Writing Class does not lie so much
on what to ask students to write about; the difficulty is more on how to motivate the
students to write interesting and effective materials. Writing for writing sake is a drag, and
produces boring output. The lesson plan presented here, by combining the teaching of
writing with other skills, allows students freedom to express themselves meaningfully.
The first phase of the lesson begins one week before with the giving of the
ASSIGNMENT. I read (or write on the board, or make copies of) a list of as many topics
which I think to be of interest to the group. I allow the students to choose any one topic that
they are most interested in, and something that they would like to know more about. Then I
tell them to look for a short (the shortest is one paragraph, the longest is one page)
magazine or newspaper article, read thoroughly until they understood the content, and
make a copy to bring to class. No writing is done yet; students are required only to
completely comprehend the text they had chosen.
The second phase of the lesson is the INTERACTIVE PHASE which begins on the day of
the next class. Students who had chosen the same topic are called to sit together and form a
group. The are then told to take turns in reading- or reporting- each of their articles to the
group members, while everybody else listens and then ask questions to clarify points that
are unclear, or make comments . I allow as much time as the students are willing to talk, or
half of the whole class time. At this point, I make sure that students within the same group
recognize common or diverse aspects relating to the same topic. For instance, on the topic
on Environmental Problems, they would have chosen articles on: Deforestration, Garbage

Problems, Noise Pollution, etc.
The third phase of the lesson is the WRITING stage. I ask the students to get back to their
seats and write about two things: (1) the topic they had chosen to read and bring to class,
and (2) the other related aspects of the same topic that they found out from the group
interaction. I usually am surprised to find out that they write endlessly and use up until the
last minute of the lesson time.
The length of the written material required will depend on the skills to be tested, the
purpose of the lesson, and on the readiness of the class. The shortest can be a one-
paragraph writing of either a summary or reaction to the articles they chose. The students
are required to hand in the finished material at the close of the period.
For a lesson on teaching skills on summarizing, I usually ask student to find 3-5 sentences
indicating the main points in the article, and re-write these in their own 3-5 sentences.
For a lesson and at the same time an exercise on outlining, I ask them to identify 2-3 main
ideas in the article- or as many as they can find, re-write these main ideas in their own
words. At the same time they are told to include a sentence supporting each of these main
ideas.
For a lesson on expressing personal opinions / beliefs, students are told to identify, again,
2-3 main ideas (or as many as they think there are) and give their personal reaction to each
of these ideas.
At the end of the term, or the school year, I require them to do a summative writing which
tests the application of some or all these skills in a set of paragraphs forming a coherent set
of ideas to form an essay or a full composition. The final product would be an essay, for
example, which consists of: the 1st paragraph as a summary, the 2nd paragraph as the
outline (with main ideas and supporting ideas indicated), the third paragraph containing
their personal reaction to the article, and so on.
The only hang-up with this technique is that it entails a lot of work on the teacher. To be
able to check students skill in summarizing or outlining, the teacher has to read every
student's article, thereby increasing work twice as much.
Teaching the set of skills of summarizing, outlining, reacting to a posted article using
writing as a medium helps Japanese college students organized ideas while allowing them

to express these ideas in complete sentences. They are trained to put ideas logically and
organize thought patterns and makes writing more interesting for both themselves and the
teacher. This technique allows the students to write freely, and gives them a feeling that
they have an investment on the topic to be able to produce really dynamic writing expected
at their level.