what English writing problems do your students have???

[Melinda Wu]

The major problem is not being able to "turn off" their mother tongue, because if they are taught with the translation "crutches", or having to deal with tons of rules and boring explanations about tenses or the use or articles, etc., they will never produce English in a natural way, and much less write a simple sentence without mistakes, because they will continue thinking in their native tongue.

The big secret is exposing the students to much reading and listening. "Bathe them in English", would say an Inspector in the Ministry of Education to the young teachers in my country. The exposure leads to the production of the language.

ya, I think I can understand it, "Bathe them in English", but it's really hard, I think, and how can I help them? you know, the education in China is not the same as yours. Most of students are busy on doing homework and preparing for the tests.

[Melinda Wu]

Do your students have difficulties in their English writing? What kind of problem do they have, such as the vocabulary, the sructure and the ideas? What have you done to help them?

I don't think I said this is due to "bad teachers/methods" in my reply. I replied to Melinda Wu about my teaching experiences as requested, and described what I saw: some teachers who teach English using explanations in Hebrew the whole lesson, and testing their students later only regarding those rules. No interaction, nothing.

yes, there used to be lots of the "some teachers" in China, but it's changing now. To some teachers, the role of teachers is a examiner. their job is to teach new words and grammar and test the students how well they have learned, some of students may feel that teachers is happy to find their mistakes or errors in papers and it seems that they are their enemies. But actually, teachers should be the helpers for the studnets and help them make progress while some of teachers have forget it.

[Melinda Wu]

If a grammar obsessed teacher gave students a lot of chances to compose sentences, I think that the students in that class might turn out to be very good writers. If teachers just talk on at the board, then maybe not.
Basically, you won't be good at what you don't practice, so in those classes where informal conversation is not attempted, students won't learn how to listen and respond to that kind of language. I suppose to some extent you might want to practice writing at speed but that is taking it a bit far - speed is mostly just a natural by-product of ability in terms of production. (though you need to practice listening to native language at natural speed, because it will sound very different from slowed speech)

yes, practice makes perfect! I did make great efforts on my writing and It obviously took some effect. Besides I have noticed that if you have spent lots of time on how to compose sentences in writing, It will also help you speak more frequent. Language should not be learned seperately and Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing are all related to each other.

[Melinda Wu]

Actually I believe the most obvious problem is failing to carefully apply what they do actually know - it's very hard to do that in a foreign tongue because there are just so many things to think about as you write. So, as you yourself have, they may fail to capitalize the first word and make some odd spelling mistakes. They may also fail to attend to presentation.
I find Chinese students tend to try and introduce informal, friendly intercourse with an imagined reader too often, because Chinese texts seem to do this a lot. They may use slangy idioms while doing this, and it is very easy to misuse these. (You have done this too - "wanna" is short for "want to").
As to structure, that's a hard question. It seems to me that students often don't worry about it very much at all, but that if they do attend to it, the problems are not massive. However they will sometimes write startlingly short or long paragraphs.

Hi, Woodcutter, I am just writing my final thesis on this topic for my BA. I wonder if you have read any articls or relative books related to the "English writing difficulties for the English learners "? I can't find much information on Western researchers and most of my materials in hand are the studies done by CHinese researchers.
so, I'll appreciate if you can recommand some relative thesis.
Thank u!!

[Melinda Wu]

The major problem is not being able to "turn off" their mother tongue, because if they are taught with the translation "crutches", or having to deal with tons of rules and boring explanations about tenses or the use or articles, etc., they will never produce English in a natural way, and much less write a simple sentence without mistakes, because they will continue thinking in their native tongue.

The big secret is exposing the students to much reading and listening. "Bathe them in English", would say an Inspector in the Ministry of Education to the young teachers in my country. The exposure leads to the production of the language.

Hi, Sly, I am just writing my final thesis on this topic for my BA. I wonder if you have read any articls or relative books related to the "English writing difficulties for the English learners "? I can't find much information on Western researchers and most of my materials in hand are the studies done by CHinese researchers.
so, I am turning help to u and Woodcutter.Thank u!!

[Sally Olsen]

There is a wealth of information on the posts on Dave's under writing. These are frank and probably genuine because the posters are anonymous and have nothing to lose by saying their students have problems. The students themselves comment on the student forums which would be another way to look at your research. I think over the years we have covered every topic of difficulty with writing. Just type "writing" in the search button above and you can go back many years to see the problems and suggested solutions from many people all over the world.

[Melinda Wu]

There is a wealth of information on the posts on Dave's under writing. These are frank and probably genuine because the posters are anonymous and have nothing to lose by saying their students have problems. The students themselves comment on the student forums which would be another way to look at your research. I think over the years we have covered every topic of difficulty with writing. Just type "writing" in the search button above and you can go back many years to see the problems and suggested solutions from many people all over the world.

Haha, really??? I didn't know that before……
Ok, I will have to try! thank u !!