TEFL : TEACHING WRITING

TEACHING WRITING

A PAPER

Presented To Fulfill the Requirement of the Task of Seminar on TEFL

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.     BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

In English there are four skills, including Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. Listening is the first skill that we have to get it. Because, when we often listening English, it can develop our speaking. When we often speaking in every day of course we can reading well. And when we can reading well we also can make sentences, phrase, paragraphs well or writing well. Writing is the last skill that has to get the person who wants to be mastery in English. Especially, for students’ English education study programs. Why? Because they have to mastered this skill to be a good teacher in writing when they teach in a institution. But, how could our writing to be good writers?, and how we can be a good teacher in writing? In this chapter the writer will be focus on these problems. These problems is very important, because we as a new generation should be able to be better than last generation. We should be able to give the best thing for our students when we teach, especially in teaching writing.

B.      PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION

1.      What is definition of teaching writing?

2.      How the principles for designing writing techniques?

3.      How the characteristics of written language?

4.      How many types of classroom writing performance?

5.      How could we evaluate student writing?

C.      THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

1.               To know the definition of teaching writing

2.              To know the principle for designing writing techniques

3.              To know the characteristics of written language

4.              To know many types of classroom writing performance

5.              To know about evaluating student writing

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A.     THE DEFINITION OF TEACHING WRITING

Based on Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary:

Teach to give lessons to students in a school, college, university, etc; to help somebody learn something by giving information about it.

Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 8th edition

              Write to make letters or numbers on a surface, especially using a pen or a pencil. Or to produce something in written form so that people can read, perform or use it, etc. or to put information, a message of good wishes, etc. in a letter and send it to somebody.

Teaching is systematic presentation of facts, ideas, skills, and techniques to students.

Writing is a way of recording language in visible form and giving it relative permanence. Until the invention of audio recording, speech was limited to those within earshot or on the other end of a telephone, and it faded away immediately, except in the memories of speaker and hearer.(Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009)

From that statements we can draw the conclusion that teaching writing is giving information systematically about how could we produce an expression, letter, or information in written.

Written language is our language or expression that expressed by written sentences, texts or paragraphs.

B.      THE PRINCIPLE FOR DESIGNING WRITING TECHNIQUES

Out of all these characteristics of the written word. Along with micro skills and research issues, a number of specific principles of designing writing techniques emerge.

1.      Incorporate practices of ‘good’ writers

This first guideline is sweeping. But as you contemplate devising technique that has a writing goal in it, consider various things that efficient writers do, and see if your technique includes some of these practices.

·         Focus on a goal or main idea in writing

·         Perceptively gauge their audience

·         Spend some time  ( but not too much! ) planning to write

·         Easily let their first ideas flow onto the paper

·         Follow a general organizational plan as they write

·         Solicit and utilize feedback on their writing

·         Are not wedded to certain surface structures

·         Revise their work willingly and efficiently

·         Patiently make as many revisions as needed

2.      Balance process and product

Because writing is a composing process and usually requires multiple drafts before an effective product is created, make sure that students are carefully led trough appropriate stages in the process of composing. This includes careful attention to your own role as a guide and as a responder (see #8). At the same time, don’t get so caught up in the ultimate attainment a clear, articulate, well-organized, effective piece writing. Make sure student see that everything leading up to this final creation was worth the effort.

3.      Account cultural / literary backgrounds

Make sure that your techniques do not assume that your students know English rhetorical conventions. If there are some apparent contrasts between students native traditions and those that you are trying to teach, try to help students to understand what it is, exactly, that they are accustomed to and then by degrees, bring them to the use of acceptable English rhetoric.

4.      Connect reading and writing

Clearly, students learn to write in part by carefully observing what is already written. There it, learn by observing, or reading, the written word. By reading and studying a variety of relevant types of text, students can gain important insights both about how they should write and about subject matter that may become the topic of their of their writing.

5.      Provide as much authentic writing as possible

Whether writing is real writing or for display, it can still be authentic in that the purposes for writing are clear to the students, the audience is specified overtly, and there is at least some intent to convey meaning. s haring writing with other students in the class is one way to add authenticity. Publishing a class newsletter, writing letters to people outside of class, writing a script for a skit or dramatic presentation, writing a resume, writing advertisements – all these can be seen as authentic writing.

6.       Frame your techniques in terms of prewriting, pre-drafting, and revising stages.

Process writing approaches tend to be framed in three stages of writing. The prewriting stage encourages the generation of ideas, which can happen in numerous ways:

·         Reading (extensively) a passage

·         Skimming and / or scanning a passage

·         Conducting some outside research

·         Brainstorming

·         Listing (in writing-individually)

·         Clustering (begin with key word, then add other words, using free association)

·         Discussing a topic or question

·         Free writing

The drafting and revising stages is the core of process writing. In traditional approaches to writing instruction, students either is given timed in – class compositions to write from start to finish within a class hour, or they are given a homework writing assignment. The first option gives no opportunity for systematic drafting, and the second assumes that if students did any drafting at all, they would simply have to learn the tricks of the trade on their own. In a process approach, drafting is viewed as an important and complex set of strategies, the mastery of which takes time, patience, and trained instruction.

Several strategies and skills apply to the drafting / revising process in writing:

·         Getting started (adapting the free writing techniques)

·         “optimal” monitoring of one’s writing (without premature editing and diverted attention to wording, grammar, etc.)

·         Peer- reviewing for content( accepting / using classmates’ comments)

·         Using the instructor’s feedback

·         Editing for grammatical errors

·         “read aloud” technique (in small group or pairs, students read their almost final drafts to each other for a final cheek on errors, flow of ideas, etc.)

·         Proofreading

7.      Strive to offer techniques that are as interactive as possible.

It is no doubt already apparent that a process-oriented approach to writing instruction is by definition, interactive, as well as learner-centered. Writing techniques that focus on purposes other than compositions are also subject to the principle of interactive classrooms. Group collaboration, brainstorming, and critiquing are as easily and successfully a part of many writing-focused techniques. Don’t buy into the myth that writing is a solitary activity! Some of it is, to be sure, but a good deal of what makes a good writer can be most effectively learned within a community of learners.

8.      Sensitively apply methods of responding to and correcting your student’s writing.

In this chapter, some principle of error correction was suggested for dealing with learners’ speech errors. Error correction in writing must be approached in a different manner because writing, unlike speaking, often includes an extensive planning stage, error treatment can begin in the drafting and revising stages, during which time it is more appropriate to consider errors among several features of the whole process of responding to student writing. As a student receives responses, to written work, errors just one of several possible things to respond are rarely changed outright by the instructor; rather, they are treated through self-correction, peer-correction, and instructor-initiated comments.

As you respond to your students’ writing, remember that you are there as an ally, as a guide, as a facilitator. After the final work is turned in, you may indeed have to assume the position of judge and evaluator, but until than the role of consultant will be the most productive way to respond.

          

9.      Clearly instruct students on the rhetorical, formal conventions of writing.

Each type of writing has its formal properties. Don’t just assume. It students will pick these up by absorption. Make them explicit. A reading approach to writing is very helpful here. For academic writing, for example some of the features of English rhetorical discourse that writers use to explain, propose solutions, debate, and argue are as follows:

·         A clear statement of the thesis or topic or purpose

·         Use of main ideas to develop or clarify the thesis

·         Use of supporting ideas

·         Supporting by “telling”: describing

·         Supporting by “showing”: giving evidence, facts, statistics, etc.

·         Supporting by linking cause and effect

·         Supporting by using comparison and / or contrast

C.      CHARACTERISICS OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE

1.      Performance

One something is written down and delivered in its final form to its intended audience, the writer abdicates a certain power: the power to emend, to clarify, to withdraw. The prospect is the single most significant contributor to making writing a scary question! Student writes often feel that the act of releasing a written work to an instructor is not unlike putting themselves in front of a firing squad. Therefore, whatever you can do as a teacher guide, and facilitator to help your students to revise and refine their work before final submission will help give them confidence in their work.

2.      Production time

The good news is that, given appropriate stretches of time, a writer can indeed become a “good’ writer by developing efficient processes for achieving the final product. The bad news is that many educational contexts demand student writing within time limits, or “writing for display” as noted in the previous section (examination writing, for example). So, one of your goals, especially if you are teaching in an EAP context, would be to train your student to make the best possible use of such time limitations. This may mean sacrificing some process time, but with sufficient training in process writing. Combined with practice in display writing, you can help your students deal with time limitations.

3.      Distance

One of the thorniest problems writers face in anticipating their audience. That anticipation ranges from general audience characteristics to how specific words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs will be interpreted. The distance factor requires what might be termed “cognitive” empathy, in that good writers can “read” their own writing from the perspective of the mind of the targeted audience. Writers need to be able to predict the audience’s general knowledge, culture and literary schemata. Specific subject-matter knowledge, and very important, how their choice of language will be interpreted.

4.      Orthography

Everything from simple greetings to extremely ideas is captured through the manipulation of a few dozen letters and other written symbols. Sometimes we take for granted the mastering of the mechanics of English writing by our students. If the students are non- literate in the native language, you must begin at the very beginning with fundamentals of reading and writing. For literate students, if their native language system is not alphabetic, new symbols have to be produced by hands that may have become accustomed to another system. If the native language has a different phoneme-grapheme system (most do!), then some attention is due here.

5.      Complexity

The complexity of written-as opposed to spoken-language was illustrated. Writers must learn how to remove redundancy (which may not jibe with their first language rhetorical tradition), how to combine sentences, how to make references to other elements in a text, how to create syntactic and lexical variety, and much more.

6.      Vocabulary

Written language places a heavier demand on vocabulary use than does speaking. Good writers will learn to take advantage of richness of English Vocabulary.

7.      Formality

Whether a student is filling out a questionnaire or writing a full-blown essay the conventions of each for must be followed. For ESL students, the most different and complex conventions occur in academic writing where students have to learn how to describe, explain, compare, contrast, illustrate, defend, criticize, and argue.

D.     TYPES OF CLASSROOM WRITING PERFORMANCE

   While various genres of written text abound, classroom writing performance is, by comparison, limited. Consider the following five major categories of classroom writing performance:

1.      Imitative or writing down

At the beginning level of learning to write, students will simply “ write down” English letters, words, and possibly sentences in order to learn the conventions of the orthographic code, some forms of dictation fall into this category, although dictations can serve to teach and test higher-order processing as well. Dictation typically involves the following steps:

a.      Teacher reads a short paragraph once or twice at normal speed.

b.      Teacher reads paragraph in short phrase units of three or four words each and each unit is followed by a pause.

c.       During the pause, student writes exactly what they hear.

d.      Teacher then reads the whole paragraph once more at normal speed so

e.      Scoring of students’ written work can utilize a number of rubrics for assigning points. Usually spelling and punctuation error are not considered as severe as grammatical errors.

2.      Intensive or controlled

Writing is sometimes used as a production mode for learning, reinforcing or testing grammatical concept. This intensive writing typically appears in controlled, written grammar exercises. This type of writing does not allow much, if any creativity on the part of the writer.

A common form of controlled writing is to present a paragraph to student in which they have to alter a given structure throughout. So, for example, they may be asked to change all present tense verbs to past tense; in such a case, student may need to alter other time references in the paragraph.

Guided writing loosens the teacher control but still offers a series of stimulators. For example, the teacher might get the students to tell a story just viewed on a videotape by asking them a series of questions: where does the story take place? Describe the principle character. What does he say to the women in the car?

Yet another form of controlled writing is a dicto-comp. Here, a paragraph is read at normal speed, usually two or three times; then the teacher asks student to rewrite the paragraph to the best of their collection of the reading. In one of several variations of the dicto-comp technique, the teacher, after reading the passage, pats key words from the paragraph, in sequence, on the chalkboard as cues for the student.

3.      Self-writing

A significant proportion of classroom writing  may be devoted to self writing or writing only the self in mind as an audience. The most salient instance of this category in classroom is note-taking may done in the margins of books and on odd scraps of paper.

Diary or journal writing also falls in this category. However, in many circumstances a dialogue journal, in which a student records thoughts, feelings and reactions and which an instructor reads and responds to, while ostensibly written for one self, has to audiences.

4.      Display writing

It was noted earlier that writing within the school curricular context is a way of life. For all language students, short answer exercises, essay examinations, and even research report will involve an element of display. For academically bound ESL student, one of the academic skills that they need to master is a whole array of display writing techniques.

  

5.      Real writing

While virtually every classroom writing task will have an element of display writing in it, some classroom writing aims at the genuine communication of messages to an audience in need of those messages. The two categories of real and display writing are actually two ends of a continuum and in between the two extreme lies some combination of display and real writing. Three subcategories illustrate how reality can be injected:

a.      Academic. The language experience approach gives groups of the students’ opportunities to convey genuine information to each other. Content based instruction encourages to exchange of useful information and some of this learning uses the written words. Group problem-solving task, especially those that relate to current issues and other personally relevant topic, may have a writing component in which information is genuinely sought and conveyed. Peer-editing work adds to what would otherwise be an audience of one (the instructor) and provides real writing opportunity. In certain ESP and EAP courses, students may exchange new information with each other and with the instructor.

b.      Vocational/technical. Quite a variety of real writing can take place in classes of students studying English for advancement in their occupation. Real written can be written; genuine direction for some operation or assembly might be given; and actual forms can be filled out. These possibilities are even greater in what has come to be called “English in the workplace” where ESL is offered within companies and corporations.

c.       Personal. In virtually any ESL class, diaries, letters, post card, notes, personal messages, and other informal writing can take place, especially within the context of an interactive classroom. While certain tasks may be somewhat contrived, nevertheless the genuine exchange of information can happen.

  

E.      EVALUATING STUDENT WRITING

   The evaluation of writing, especially in a process-oriented classroom, is a thorny issue. If you are a guide and facilitator of students’ performance in the ongoing process of developing a piece of written work, how you can also be the judge? What do you judge? The answer to the first question how can you be a judge and a guide at the same time is one of the primary dilemmas of all teachers. Juggling this dual role requires wisdom and sensitivity. The key to being a judge is fairness and explicitness in what you take into account in your evaluation. The six general categories that are often the basis for the evaluation of student writing:

   Content

·         Thesis statement

·         Related ideas

·         Development of ideas through personal experience, illustrations, facts, and opinions

·         Use of description, cause/effect, comparison/contrast

·         Consistent focus

Organization

·         Effectiveness of introduction

·         Logical sequence of ideas

·         Conclusion

·         Appropriate length

Discourse

·         Topic sentences

·         Paragraph unity

·         Transitions

·         Discourse markers

·         Cohesion

·         Rhetorical conventions

·         Reference

·         Fluency

·         Economy

·         Variation

Syntax

Vocabulary

Mechanics

·         Spelling

·         Punctuation

·         Citation of references (if applicable)

·         Neatness and appearance

Expert disagrees somewhat on the system of weighting each of the above categories, that is, which of the six is most important, next and so on. Nevertheless, the orders in which the six are listed here at the very least emphasize the importance of content over syntax and vocabulary, which traditionally might have had high priority.

  

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

Teaching writing is giving information systematically about how could we produce an expression, letter, information in written.

The principle for designing writing techniques, includes : Incorporate practices of ‘good’ writers, Balance process and product, Account cultural / literary backgrounds, Connect reading and writing, Provide as much authentic writing as possible, Frame your techniques in terms of pre-writing, pre-drafting, and revising stages, Strive to offer techniques that are as interactive as possible, Sensitively apply methods of responding to and correcting your student’s writing, and Clearly instruct students on the rhetorical, formal conventions of writing.

 The characteristics of written language, there are permanence, production time, distance, orthography, complexity, vocabulary, and formality.

Types of classroom writing performance, involve: Imitative or writing down, Intensive or controlled, Self-writing, display writing, and real writing.

The six general categories that are often the basis for the evaluation of student writing: content, organization, discourse, syntax, vocabulary and techniques.

TEACHING PRACTICE

EXAMPLE

A.                      Step 1

Teacher give a piece of paper of task to the student

B.                      Step 2

Teacher give five minutes to students to do the task

C.                      Step 3

The student do the task of writing with use three stages( pre-writing, pre-drafting, revising)

D.                      Step 4

After their finish, they should collect to teacher

E.                       Step 5

Teacher correction the result of the task

   

The task

Make a descriptive paragraph from the words below! Choose one of these words!

a.      Bedroom                                                c.   House                   

b.      College

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The task

Make a descriptive paragraph from the words below! Choose one of these words!

c.       Bedroom                                                c.   House                   

d.      College

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The task

Make a descriptive paragraph from the words below! Choose one of these words!

e.      Bedroom                                                c.   House                   

f.        College

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