Teaching Writing
By Michael Barrantes-Solano
Pre-Service Teacher, School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Post 257
Teaching
writing might be one of the most important skills in English; a person has to
know how to write and speak in the target language because one skill complements
the other one. Writing can be a little difficult at first, but with time and
practice you as learners will acquire this important skill in the language
learning.
According
to Chapter 8 from “How to teach English” (Harmer, 2007), writing might be one
of the most important skills in the language learning process. Writing helps in
language processing; learners have more thinking time at the time to write
because the learner will be able to think more about what to write. However, in
a conversation you have to think faster.
Two
types of writing are mentioned in this chapter (Harmer, 2007). First we have
writing for learning; this helps the student to practice the language and work
with it and learning at the same time the structure of sentences and paragraph
in the target language. Second we have writing for writing; this helps to
develop the students’ skills as writers giving them the chance to practice the
structure by writing essays. A process should be taken into account at the time
to write; it involves planning, drafting, reviewing and editing. These are the
main four steps that we as learners must use in order to write a high quality
essay.
There
are some writing sequences that can be used depending of the level of the
learners. For example post-cards; we can use these with pre – intermediate to
intermediate level. Second we have e-mail interview and this can be used with
pre intermediate upwards. Finally we have writing reports, and these can be used
with upper intermediate because this exercise is more detailed than the
previous two and will take some time. This is used especially with advance
students as a challenge for them to prove their knowledge in the target
language.
Some
pros about teaching writing are that we help the student to develop their
writing skills in order to help them to improve their selves in the field. We
also can pick some interesting topics for the learners so we can keep them
motivated while they write an essay or a paragraph, knowing their likes and
dislikes will make the difference at the time to work with writing. And also a
huge advantage is that we can also include a small oral part so they can expose
their ideas about what they wrote.
But
there are some disadvantages, too, with teaching writing. For example some
students seem to believe that they cannot write anything because the lack of
ideas. Also they might think that it is boring to write an essay or even a
paragraph, or in some cases they have nothing to say about the topic being studied.
These are some disadvantages and make that job harder, but if the writing
process is taught correctly, this can be changed.
Bottom-line
teaching writing might help you as a learner to improve your knowledge in English
even more that you think. We have to focus this skill on topics that catch the
attention of the learners. Taking into account what was mentioned on this
critique can be helpful at the time to teach writing, also it can be helpful to
help the student to improve themselves with time practicing writing often.
Reference
Harmer,
J. (2007). "Teaching Reading". how to Teach English. Person Longman
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
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