Planning compositions can often lead to frustrations in students, as one commenter noted: Loretta wrote on Forumosa’s Teaching Board (can’t find the exact reference)…
Taking the ideas and organizing them into a list that becomes the outline of the composition is waaay too hard. It’s far easier to just start writing and then make a list later to show teacher. They’re just going through the motions without really recognizing the importance of it.
They seem to think that planning is a waste of time. The process of getting their ideas together takes so long that they don’t have time to write the composition, so they think it’s better just to start writing. Given say 40 minutes they’ll spend 30 struggling to decide what to say, and when they start writing they stop looking at the plan anyway.
The usual result is garbage.
We’ve done a lot of exercises to help them think of things to say about unfamiliar topics, and they’re better at that now. But the structured presentation of those ideas is another story.
I used to teach a lot of writing classes. Some observations….
1. break the process of writing into different stages (as you have done)…
2. increase the amount of peer review that the writers have to do…
3. encourage your ‘writers’ to evaluate each other’s writing…
4. don’t despair at their writing… they have to write the crap first before they have any chance of writing something decent…
5. try freewriting as an alternative writing task… I always made my students do this, hah!
6. increase students’ actual READING, not just MODELS. A good writer is always a good reader. Most students don’t read enough of the language to get to the subtleties. They need to read a variety of English to understand the textures of English, not just their own ESP variety. That usually leads to a lopsided English ability.
7. don’t forget to see writing as a holistic part of the activity of learning English, not just for passing an exam…
8. set criteria if you can’t find any… and be prepared to score toughly. Fail a few papers, too. Don’t be generous with your marking. They won’t get any favors from the examiners…
9. GEPT writing guidelines are available in Chinese of course! in the exam pack available from GEPT organization for about $200. This includes a model exam. What level are they?
10. most Chinese think good writing means flowery words/sentences with little or no organization, copied phrases/idioms/etc., lots of “Frankly speaking,/etc…” crap, and homily kind of treatments of topics. Yuck! The only answer is a big RED PEN to most of this.
11. We are teaching a VALUE system when it comes to the general Academic writing that is expected in TOEFL/GEPT. Our values are clarity, organization and content. A good turn of phrase helps a great deal! But it won’t get you past an exam.
12. Don’t forget to mold their expectations of how much they can achieve. It took my class 60 hours to grasp the basics over a year. But they usually improved. You might be able to do this in 40 hours or so. But there aren’t any ‘short cuts’.
13. You can offer lots of tips however. BUT students who don’t want to do the writing (that means Homework, too) won’t really make sufficient improvement to pass.
What other tips do readers having for teaching writing? Have you had any notable successes or failures?
Kenneth
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