Teaching Writing: Ends and Means

Presenter:
Monjurul Alam
Associate Professor
Institute of Modern Languages

Teaching Writing means

EFL Teachers often
Teach how to write Sentences?
Use Grammar as a means of teaching.
Give some writing tasks writing paragraphs,
essays, letters, etc.
Feedback Error Correction & Editing Scripts.
&
Feel that Teaching Writing has been done.

Learning Writing means

EFL / ESL Learners
Aims at translating native language
thoughts into target language(s)
Use grammatical rules while translating
Adopt Think-Say strategy while writing
Hardly revise their writing
&
Satisfied that the job has been done.

But
Research / Empirical Studies show that
current practices and understanding
neither result in learners (desired)
achievements nor teachers (expected)
success.
That is, most L2/EFL writers remain
inexperienced (or, less successful) in
writing.

Because
According to researches
L2/EFL student writers cannot become
successful writers because of two factors
i) strategies used & ii) writing process
manipulated.(Zamel, 1982; Raimes, 1985)
In terms of writing processes there is
evidence of less planning, having no
goals (purposes), and organizing
materials. (Victori, 1999; Silva, 1993)

So
Teachers current approaches - i.e. Teaching
Writing are not successful.
Because Maybe, not trained How to teach writing or,
have misconceptions about teaching writing.
As a result, what we see is - instead of Teaching
all through, the writing teachers end up Testing
learners ability to write.

What does theory say?

Writing is a Cognitive Process
Research in L1 writing process:
a) Cognitive Process Model [Flower and
Hayes (1981)]
b) Knowledge Telling & Knowledge
Transforming Model [Scardamalia &
Bereiter (1987)]
c) L2 Composing Process Model [WangWen (2002)]

What does theory say?

(by combining most the existing theories we may
define)
Writing is a process in which learners are
engaged in a goal directed cognitive activity
embedded in social context
The aim of teaching writing is to make the learners journey from inexperienced / novice writers to experienced /
expert writers.

Theory of Expertise in Writing

(Carter, 1990)
It is a combination of cognitive and social
theories and holds that learners learn to
write as they move from knowledge that is
relatively general to knowledge that is
relatively local.
That is, student writers develop expertise as
they move through the different stages of
a continuum, as follows:

Expertise in Writing Continuum

1. Novice (Use only general strategies; have no or, little
local knowledge)
2. Advanced Beginners (Use less general strategies;
& some specific knowledge )
3. Competent Writers (Developed general writing
strategies; No writers block; write for an audience)
4. Experienced Writers (Use more Local Knowledge
and General Knowledge)
5. Proficient Writers (Expert user of both general and
local knowledge)

Theory of Expertise in Writing

Implications: Writing teachers should
Begin with general writing topics (domainfree, audience-free and purpose-less);
And Continue to and through, (domainspecific, audience-specific, and
purposefull) writing activities providing
cognitive apprenticeship
[Krashen (i+1), scaffolding, ZPD
(Vygotsky, 1978)]

Student Writers should be Taught to overcome Writers Block issues that

cause a writer to experience anxiety and bars
written production by modeling while
scaffolding. [Cumming, 1995]
Taught the distinction between Writing Sentences
and Writing a Discourse
Sentence: a group of words combined and having
a sense.
Discourse: a series of sentences organized
coherently to convey a message.

Student Writers should be Made aware of the language specific cultural

distinctions between the L1 and the Target
Language (here, English)
by showing Contrastive Syntactic Analysis:
e.g. (in Bangla, the be-verbs are often silent;
whereas in English they are obligatory)
It is raining. ewlU nyQ|
So that, students avoid word for word translation
and be oriented to the culture of the language.

Student Writers should be Taught to Write for a Purpose (Goal Setting):

That is, to narrow down the choice(s) from the
many "correct" issues to write about any subject.
For example, the topic dormitory food can be
narrowed down as follows:
i) Do you want to arouse pity in the readers as the
students have to eat intolerable food?
ii) Do you want to analyze large-scale institutional
cooking?
iii) Do you want to compare University of Dhaka dorm
food to that served at University of Chittagong?

- to develop a/the purpose for writing.

Write for a Purpose (Goal Setting):

Answer to such Journalistic questions
like, Who? What? Where? When? Why?
How? So What?
while while/before starting to write will lead
to purposeful and audience-specific
writing.
And having a purpose and an audience
will eventually help them shun the ThinkSay strategy and be goal-directed.

Student Writers should be Exposed to a variety of Feedback

procedures; e.g. student-teacher one on
one conference; peer-feedback; etc.
Feedback acts as Cognitive Loop.
To encourage Revision which is different
from proof reading.
To encourage Multiple Drafting before the
final production (write-up).

Concluding remarks:
While planning writing lessons the
teacher should postulate the ends first and
then formulate the means to that end.
It is the guidance, and only through proper
guidance (associated pains of the teacher)
can make the student-writers have a good
start as well as a good finish.

Thank you.