Reflexión: La Producción Escrita

Writing need not be a quiet, static activity in the classroom.

Last week in our session with Luz we looked at how to teach writing, something which I found really interesting as it is a skill that I have never wanted to spend much time on in class, preferring to use that time for oral activities and not knowing how to do it effectively without long periods of quiet work. However, I think that the key thing that I learnt on Tuesday was that the communicative approach does not only apply to the oral side of language learning: writing may be less immediate and therefore require a higher level of accuracy, but its main aim is still to communicate an idea to a reader.

Before thinking about the activities that we saw during the session, I think it is important to consider which skills our students are really working on when they practise writing. I touched on this subject in a previous blog post which looked at the different language skills proposed by the Diccionario Cervantes and how these differ from the traditional model of reading, writing, speaking and listening, skills which it makes little sense to teach in isolation as in the real world they do not exist in that way and neither production or comprehension is unidirectional. This means that in the classroom writing should also not be an isolated activity and its production can be combined with practising any number of skills, making it not only a more useful reflection of English use in the ‘real world’ but also a more interesting and interactive activity.

One way in which to combine these skills is to carry out an oral activity in class which leads into a writing activity at home, therefore taking advantage of all of the hours possible to speak English whilst still producing written texts individually. This also allows the use of class time for modelling activities and analysing examples of texts as, as was pointed out in class, we can never assume that our students will automatically know how to write different types of texts. In this way, the time in the classroom is devoted to discussion and the formation of a structure for the text, a form of scaffolding which the student will then be able to fill out at home using the support from class and their own ideas.

One of the methods that Luz mentioned to motivate writing in English also reflects its use in the ‘real world’: making sure that the writing has a purpose. Some ideas to ensure this include writing for competitions, display around the school, or publication on a class blog (with the permission and knowledge of the student, of course), but the one that interested me the most was writing letters to real people. I have seen in my own students how motivating an exchange can be, making them want to use the language to communicate with new, fun people of their own age, but understand that it is not necessarily possible in every school. I thought the letter to the teacher at the start of the year was a great alternative or addition as it still provides the necessity to communicate, as well as providing the teacher with important information about each student. It could even be interesting to keep these letters unmarked and hand them back to the students at the end of the school year, allowing them to mark them themselves and see immediately how much they have improved in the last ten months.

Finally, I loved the ideas that we saw in class to inspire creative writing, something which it is very important to practise with students to develop their lateral thinking skills, as well as to motivate them through creating texts which are personalised to their interests. I particularly enjoyed the idea of writing a story involving different verbs which are given to them as they are writing - a task which could even be used to practise irregular past tenses according to the verb selection - as it also encourages students to think quickly and adapt the language that they are using to an ever-changing situation, as they will forced to do when they use English outside of the classroom. I also thought that the poem produced using specific types of words on each line was a great idea as it allows the fast production of a piece of work that students at all levels are capable of and can be proud of. In my own classes I have used a similar activity based on a poem style called ‘Elfchen’ that I saw in German classes that I attended. This activity consists of writing a poem in only eleven words, increasing the number of words on each line and ending with just one to make the shape of a tree, and with each line having a specific question associated with it, starting with an initial idea then what, where or how, and a conclusion. In some ways this activity combines poetry with the five senses writing activity proposed by Luz and it could potentially be used as another way to express those senses after the initial note taking activity as well as to practise summarising, reducing the original selection of ideas to their most essential components.

In conclusion, what I learnt from Luz last week was that writing need not be a quiet, individual activity. Written production can be just as interactive and creative as oral production, especially if students are motivated and encouraged to express themselves and their individual personalities.