Job Discussion Forums

[riverboat]

I'm having some problems teaching 'writing style' at the moment, and would appreciate any advice or suggestions.

I've been giving one to one lessons to a 40-something year old lady for a few months now. She already has an excellent level of spoken English, and isnt interested in improving her grammar, fluency, listening, pronunciation or reading skills.

All she wants to work on is improving her written English, and in very specific ways. She works for an international oil company, and frequently has to write reports, newsletters, meeting minutes and user guides in English, which are circulated around the world.

Her audience is largely non-native English speakers, so she doesn't want to use a writing style that is at all academic/sophisticated/full of flowery phrases and idioms and phrasal verbs etc.

At the moment, her written documents are understandable, but they really do recquire some work on the readers' part to catch her point. There are grammar mistakes (mainly to do with prepositions and word order) but she doesn't want us to work on grammar stuff, because, as she says, there are plenty of native speakers at her work who she can get to correct the small grammar errors in her work. What she wants to improve is her "style" and I agree thats what's lacking from her writing. It just sounds unnatural, turns on dimes everywhere, and is sometimes hard to follow.

However, I'm finding it very very difficult to help her. Nothing I've done in the past has prepared me to teach "writing style" except perhaps my non-related BA degree. We've worked through a book called '10 Lessons in Clarity and Grace" (Williams) which was good, and she engaged well with the exercises and advice. However, now that's finished I'm finding it hard to get her to apply what she has supposedly learnt to her "real" documents. Despite having these lessons at her own request, she's incredibly defensive of her written work, and argues against a lot of re-drafting exercises I suggest. Also, although ostensibly she doesnt want to improve her spoken English, she LOVES to talk, and at least 45 minutes, if not more, of our weekly 1.5 hour lesson consists of her talking and talking about work and herself.

Lessons have now disintegrated into a pattern whereby every week she brings some of her documents in, I "proof read" them by marking errors or explaining why something isnt very clear, and she occassionaly is able to make a suitable correction, or else just asks me to correct it for her, or else says she likes it the way it is and doesnt want to change it. I really dont feel like I'm teaching her anything, I'm just a glorified proof-reader and sounding board. But at the same time, I feel like I can't summon the effort to be anything else with her, its just too difficult and she's too resistant.

Having spoken to my employer, Ive just been told "as long as she's happy, don't worry about it". She professes to be happy with the "lessons". It's just me who feels like a phoney.

What would you do?

[Sashadroogie]

You are probably right about the lessons being a waste of time for her. But that's the key point - she's wasting her own time, you are not. By your account, you've tried to do the right thing by her, and she has resisted all your efforts. Do as the employer has said. Don't worry about it.

[johntpartee]

You said that you explain to her why some things aren't clear. Try marking the errors that you see and ask HER to explain why it's wrong.

"If you want to know more about a subject, pretend you understand it and try to explain it to somebody else."

Somebody

[Glenski]

Actually, what you are being asked to do is teach a writing genre, not style. Style is flair. Genre involves specific formats (whether for speaking or writing), word collocations, discourse, etc.

The very first thing you and she should do is look at good examples of the things she is trying to write:

a user guide (for what? a toaster, a car, a lab protocol, etc.)

meeting minutes (not too hard; just write in very outlined form as if you
were a newscaster, not a color commentator)

reports (what kind? I bet it's not a scientific journal, but more like a summary for laymen. Start with determining what information is supposed to be in such a report. If it needs Materials and Methods section, break it down to include that.)

newsletters (ok, now here is the first time where actual writing style might come into play. But first, determine what information is needed to go into this newsletter, and whether it will be written in casual or professional voice.)

[tttompatz]

An old professor of mine from way back in the day said that the best way to learn writing was to read as much as I could and try to follow a similar style.

That old bit of wisdom still holds true today. The best way to learn to write is to read as much as you can in the formats that you are interested in from as many different authors as you can find.

It never hurts to read short stories and essays as well for improving a writing style aimed at the business environment. It allows her to learn how to say things in ways that she may not always be aware of.

In addition to the links above, look at project Gutenberg (google it) for more short essays and/or short stories.

.

[artemisia]

As this student writes in an unnatural way that�s hard to follow, especially for her non-native English would-be readers, I�d think she�d ideally need to work on improving her general writing capacity first. Using realia examples of particular business writing forms: minutes for meetings, user guides and so on is something I�d do with her once she�d worked on some basic language structures.
Tricky situation. The only thing I can really add to other advice here is trying to get her away (for a bit) from her work documents where she feels she calls the shots. It might make her less resistant and defensive to redrafting. I don�t know what facilities/ materials you have at your deposal. Hopefully if you could use news reports (eg CNN), Utube interviews etc. (perhaps related to her field) in class time, you could get her to listen & take notes. Then get her to write a short report on the main points - if you can get her to write in class time - and then revise it once you�ve highlighted (but not necessarily corrected) problem areas.

As suggested in another post, she could explain what needs to change, and then write a more concise draft with a reduced word limit. It�s a shame she�s opposed to reading as that�s probably what she needs most to improve her writing - reading news items and writing short summaries, paraphrasing etc. � you�d have to �sell� it as writing practise. Dictogloss might be useful here, too. Are you familiar with it? Just in case you�re not, she (ideally) discusses a topic, you have a short text on that topic which you read out at normal speed and she listens. You read it again, she notes down key words and then has to try and reconstruct the text from the key words. It�s primarily a small group, listening task but I think it works well for improving writing, too.
You might have done this stuff already (not familiar with the Williams book) but all you can really do is put out a few options and if your student won�t have any of it � so be it. Doesn't sound like opting out of this class is possible.

[naturegirl321]

Get some books on FCE and CAE or even CPE writing. They have different types of writing: such as letters, CVs, reports, etc as well as examples, tips and tricks.

[Phil_K]

I had exactly the same problem with a class. They were super-fluent speakers, but wanted a writing course. The problem being that I could never get hold of EXACTLY what it was they wanted. The only clue was really that their boss wanted them to write in the same style as him, although I could never arrange a meeting with him to clarify...and he was Colombian!!

It was just a case of muddling through a 32 hour course. I think your boss had it about right.

[Jetgirly]

[Insubordination]

Great ideas.

It's hard to know exactly what her problem is without seeing her writing, but you are right to want to make more of an effort than just proofreading. It sounds extremely dull for both of you. I think controlled practice (one paragraph) of her specific problems on a relevant topic might help.

Is it that her sentences are in the wrong order? Then the genre of a report (or whatever) would help. There are plenty of resources online for all kinds of reports. Find one which is similar to what she's expected to produce at work and get her to follow the pattern.

I have a book called 'Advanced Reading and Writing for Secondary Students' by John and Jenny Barwick. I don't often use the book, but I borrow the ideas in it. I will copy some of the table of contents. Maybe one use a piece of her writing, identify one of the problems below, and create a lesson on it.

Purpose and audience*using better verbs/nouns
*sequencing ideas in paragraphs*sentences within a paragraph
*Headings and subheadings*Referencing biobliographies and footnotes
*tone*consistency in tense*plain writing
*saying what you mean*summarising texts
*writer's checklist*forward and backward referencing
*Distinguishing fact from opinion*Word families.

I think it could all be quite interesting. Writing is one skill where a teacher can really help.