Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PART 1
FOCUS ON
WRITING
3. The nature of writing process and its effectiveness in the EFL classroom..............5
4. Problems and difficulties learners face in the development of their writing skills
.................................................................................................................................6
5. Remedies and solutions are provided for the enhancement of writing skills in the
Greek EFL classroom ……………………………………………………........................7
6. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...8
7. List of References………………………………………………………………..9
But the fact that people frequently have to communicate with each other in
writing is not the only reason to include writing as a part of our second-language
syllabus; we also need to teach them how to learn to write because writing first
reinforces the grammatical structures, vocabulary and idioms that we have been
teaching our students.
Secondly, when our students write, they also have to be adventurous with the
language, to go beyond what they have just learned to say, to take risks. Thirdly,
when they write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language;
the effort to express ideas and the constant use of their hands, eyes and brain is a
unique way of reinforcing learning (A. Raimes 1983).
However, with the increase in attention to students` practical needs, born out
of functional/notional approaches and further developed in the various areas of
ESP, the importance of certain text types as skill learners might need has come to
the tore. This gradual increase in the status of writing as a skill, alongside with the
development of discoursal based approach and the general moves toward learned-
cent red syllabuses, has totally changed the view of writing( N. Holmes 2000-
2004) – but, still writing continues to be one of the most difficult areas for students
and teachers to tackle.
2. Approaches to Writing
Over the years a number of writing approaches have presented to make their place
in history by Raimes cited in Ghaith 2002:
It views all writing as creative since the writer is responsible for producing
the text that evolves from the raw material, which is generated almost entirely
from the writer`s imagination. What is important for us as teachers of English is to
engage our learners in the creative process; to excite them about how their texts
are coming into being; to give them insights into how they operate as they create
their work; to alter their concepts of what writing involves; and above all, that
evaluation is not just the province of the teacher alone at the final stage of the
process, but it is equally the concern and responsibility of the writer at every stage.
Indeed, with native speakers a writing course can lay greater stress on
rhetorical problems, though it must necessarily include producing the proper
language. On the other hand, with L2 learners language problems should definitely
play a major role, especially at the earliest stages. R. J. Owens` belief cited in
Sherwood- Smith (ibid) is the language problems are “grossly underestimated”
and that we shift emphasis to rhetorical ones much too soon. He thinks that “model
sentences and contextualized practice in abundance are vital to satisfactory
achievement”.
As for more proficient writers, they edit their papers, but they also spend
considerable time and effort working on their overall content to see that what
they want to say is said and is said in a way their readers can understand (Faigley
& White, 1981) cited in Chenoweth (1987). As Raimes (1985) urges us not to
forget, our students, as L2 writers, both skilled and unskilled ones do face the
common problem of getting their meaning across effectively and they cannot be
understood by their readership; they lack strategies for handling the content of
their essays as a whole –they work on bits and pieces only (Sommers 1980,
Beach 1976) – and the topics of the essays ought to be motivating and
interesting, as well so that our students will put effort into their work.
The other source of error is a cognitive one, which has to do with various types of
knowledge, including discourse knowledge, understanding of audience, and
sociolinguistic rules (O`Malley & Chamot, 1990); organization at both the
sentence and the text level is also important for effective communication of
meaning, and for the quality of the written product (Scardamalia & Bereiter
,1987), i.e. coherence problems have to do with not knowing how to organize the
text and to store relevant information.
They are valuable because they allow students to control the interaction,
clarify responses, negotiate meaning and enable teachers to assess how students
react to their feedback, and how their comments help students revise their writing
(Shin 2003).
6. Conclusion
Even adults need to be taught how to work independently to balance the demands
of those competing interests which affect the quality of their writing (Taylor
2003); rather than being expected to turn in a finished product right away, they are
asked for invention heuristics and pre-writing exercises (Myers 1997). In other
words, creative writing encourages students to venture along the path of self-
expression since it involves them personally, taking time to explore the language
and experiment freely with it (Mohamed 2004). Consequently, learners become
more involved in their own learning process and remain motivated (Hedge 1998).
Chenoweth N. A., “The need to teach rewriting” ELT Journal Volume 41/1
January 1987 © Oxford University Press 1987
Myles J., “Second Language Writing and Research: The Writing Process
and Error Analysis in Student Texts” TESL-EJ ISSN 1072-4303 A-1
Shin Sarah J. “The reflective L2 writing teacher” ELT Journal Volume 57/1
January 2003 © Oxford University Press