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[sidjameson]

This year I have two new writing classes. I have never taught writing before. I have inherited the texts, "Writing 2" and the equally imaginative "Writing 3" from A Littlejohn, CUP.
I find myself following the texts which to be honest don't seem to explain much, just show activities for the kids to do. If I can think of some relevant language to teach, such as in this week's letter writing class, different ways to apologize, I"ll teach that. Most weeks I try to pick up on common mistakes and write 4 or 5 up on the board. Such as this week's "I like dog" when the student was talking about as a pet rather than as a dish. I get the students to correct each other's work and help each other too.
But I wonder how to make the classes better. I really am a newbie at this and would appreciate any tips on what to teach or how to teach it. Are there any good books on teaching writing that you would recommend, either as a course book or from a pedagological perspective?
I am more used to communication classes where the lesson usually ends up with the students using the target language in a really fun way. It's quite hard for me to get used to the class finishing on a 15 minute writing exercise and silence. Is this the way it is with classes of this nature or is there some ways to round of a class in a fun way?
Any feedback much appreciated.

[PAULH]

Sid,


you have uni students right? Try the books by Curtis Kelly such as Significant Scribbles and the latest one (Im not sure of the name)

What you are doing in writing classes is teaching PROCESS i.e how to get students in to the act of writing, from brainstorming, grouping, making lists. Developing topics and themes and learning sentence structure. how to develop simple and complex sentences. You are getting them to learn how to write so they can communicate meaning clearly without just writing some old trash handing it in and expecting you to understand it. Get students to learn how to write efficiently.


Dont worry too much about correcting mistakes as they will have forgotten what you taught by the end of the lesson.

Students learn by doing and the more writing the do, the better it gets. I would simply get students working on a passage and correcting errors. Dont expect to catch every little mistake or you will detroy motivation. Work on one or two points each lesson such as use of third-person -s, or plurals or punctuation.

I would have a theme in each lesson, get students to brainstorm ideas, use their personal experience and knowledge to create ideas, use diagrams and bubbles on the board. Connect related Ideas and then show students how to write short paragraphs. Show diffrent kinds of writing e.g expository, narriative, descrition.

The main ESL publishers have a lot of good writing texts but I would use Significant scribbles to work on getting then in the habit of writing grammmatical complex sentences.

[Glenski]