|
Do your students have difficulties when it comes to writing? The teachers in the VTTN provinces
found a lot of common problems and came up with a lot of good advice.
Problems
Students:
•
don’t have enough vocabulary or structures to
express ideas.
•
tend to use spoken English when writing.
•
have limited background knowledge.
•
tend to translate ideas from mother tongue into
English .
•
write one draft only.
•
misuse or use wrongly different writing styles.
•
tend to express ideas in long sentences and
long paragraphs.
•
are not aware of different kinds of writing, thus
making them unable to write in real life.
•
feel bored when doing written work.
•
experience a lack of support and motivation.
Advice
→
The pre-writing stage is very important as students
can help each other with ideas and vocabulary. In
this stage, the teacher should also provide students
with necessary vocabulary and structures to express
ideas around the writing topic. Models should also
be set at this stage for students to follow.
→ Select topics carefully and give students writing
tasks suitable for their level.
→
Provide support for writing with language, pictures, a
model text.
→
Raise awareness of thinking in English so that they
can minimise the influence of L1 when writing.
→
Familiarise students with process writing by actually
using the different stages of this approach in your
lessons.
e Help students to identify the audience and aim of
each writing task. If the book doesn’t make it clear,
then you will need to do so yourself!
→
Cohesive or linking devices are very worthwhile to
help students shorten their sentences and
paragraphs, but still keeping the meaning clear.
→
As much as possible keep tasks authentic so that
students can relate writing to real life
communication such as letters, form filling,
questionnaires.
→
Give students writing activities such as games,
designing posters, creative writing, poems etc. to
allow fun and creativity.
→
Don’t always set writing for homework. If you do,
students will develop have negative associations
with writing. Try and do writing tasks in class time
and set, for example, reading for homework instead.
Back to top |
