VII.

D E V E L O P I N G W R I T I N G S K I L L S

The traditional ordering of the four skills speaking, listening, reading, writing
reflects both a general belief about the natural order of skill acquisition and one about
instructional priorities. Of the four skills, writing seems to be the odd one out. All children
learn to understand and speak their mother tongue, and school ensures that most people grow
up able to read. But writing is more difficult and mastered by only a few. If we think only of
the pupils long-term needs, writing is probably the least important of the four skills. Only a
few might be expected to need any extensive writing in either Romanian or English. However,
through the mastery of writing, an individual comes to be fully effective in intellectual
organisation and in the expression of ideas and arguments. Actually, the pupils need for
writing is most likely to be for study purposes and also as an examination skill. At the purely
practical level, good, clear writing leads to school success.
Teaching writing involves guiding in analysing and developing thinking, in shaping
and organising it into central and subordinate ideas, in developing a line of thought and
carrying it to the reader. At elementary and intermediate level, writing helps pupils to think
and to learn. Writing new words and structures helps pupils to remember them; as writing is
done more slowly and carefully than speaking. That is why, written practice helps the pupils
to focus their attention on what they are learning.
Many English teachers feel that the development of writing skills represents an
unrealistic goal for their pupils as most of them are still struggling to acquire this skill in
Romanian. Writing, in general, is a difficult skill to master, requiring long practice. Writing in
English will create even bigger problems. And yet, in the English classroom, a writing
exercise may help to reinforce oral work, to confirm understanding of a reading text, to
demonstrate awareness of English, as well as to provide a welcome change of pace in a
lesson.
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
set up, apply and monitor a variety of interactive classroom writing tasks

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 offer a theoretical justification for each of these tasks
integrate writing activities with the development of one or more of other skills
identify the various sub-skills involved in the writing process
select and apply appropriate classroom activities to develop these sub-skills
assess the learning outcomes of specific writing activities.

7.1 Writing to Learn and Learning to Write

Writing to learn
Writing is widely used in the English classes as a means of engaging the pupils with
other language skills. The pupils note down new vocabulary, copy out grammar rules, write
out answers to reading or listening comprehension questions, do written tests. In these
activities, writing is mainly a means of getting the pupils to practise a particular language
point, or as a convenient method of testing it.

Which of the following kinds of text do you think your pupils would need in
Romanian and which in English?

advertisement, essay, filling in a form, letter to the manager, letter to a newspaper,

letter to mother/father, note about a telephone message, newspaper article, poem, pop song
lyric, postcard, report, shopping list, story, Ph.D. thesis.

Learning to write
Other activities have as main objective writing itself. These practise written forms
either at the level of word or sentence or at the level of content and organization. The pupils
have to express themselves using their own words. They have to state a purpose for writing,
and often to specify a readership. Examples of such activities include narrating a story,
writing a letter or a report.
Some activities combine purposeful and original writing with the learning or practice
of some other skill or content. For example, a written response to the reading of a text will
combine writing with reading. A task which provides little or no practice for the pupils to

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extend their knowledge of appropriate content or context or to raise their awareness about the
writing process is not really a writing task but a general learning task using writing.
Writing in Romanian and writing in English
You may have already noticed thst pupils progress in language complexity much
faster in English than in Romanian. They understand easily that some of the structural
differences observed between speech and writing in Romanian are similar in English, and
consequently attempt the same kind of language adjustments when they write in English.
They realise quickly that the manner in which sentences grow in complexity is similar in
Romanian and English: simple sentences are joined first through coordination, then
subordination, and finally clause reduction.
However, there are some features of written language that may cause major problems
to your pupils as they may differ from those of Romanian. These operate above the level of
the sentence: layout and physical organization on the page, text organization determined by
the social function the text fulfils, relationships between clauses and clause complexes. That is
why your pupils may benefit from an explicit understanding of how these work.

In writing English, which appears to create more difficulties to you, cohesion or

coherence?

7.2 Developing Writing Competence: Writing Sub-skills

Writing refers to several sub-skills: putting words on paper, making sentences and
linking them in paragraphs, writing a poem, developing an essay, and many others. Nunan
(1989) notes that writing involves:
mastering the mechanics of letter formation
mastering and obeying conventions of spelling and punctuation
using the grammatical system to convey ones intended meaning
organising content at the level of the paragraph and the complete text to reflect
new/given information and topic/comment structures
polishing and revising ones initial efforts

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 selecting an appropriate style for ones audience.
The first three of these are sentence-level skills; spelling, punctuation and
grammatical accuracy all receive regular attention from teachers. However, sometimes it
appears that these are the only things considered worthy of attention. The pupils failure to
produce good creative writing suggests that paying attention to just these three aspects of the
writing process is not enough.
The last three items are text and discourse-level skills and usually do not receive
much attention. When they do, it is often in the form of red-pen comments on returned essays,
such as badly organised or essay lacks shape. Section 7.4 considers the effects of this
kind of feedback.
Sometimes pupils lose their meaning in the process of writing because they have a
simplistic view of their task, or they see their writing as definitive from the beginning, except
for minor alterations of form. The ideas themselves should be seen as the most important
aspect of the writing. On the other hand, pupils need to pay attention to formal aspects:
handwriting, spelling, punctuation, grammar and vocabulary, etc.
Writing is difficult as it involves the development and co-ordination of cognitive and
conceptual sub-skills, including:
Knowledge of the language system
Pupils should have knowledge of those aspects of the language system (vocabulary,
grammar) necessary for the completion of the task. They should also be able to organize texts
appropriately in order to do particular jobs.
Knowledge of the genre
Teaching writing means teaching pupils to recognize the genre in which they are
writing, and the grammatical and lexical choices that need to be made in order to match the
text to the writing purpose. This includes knowledge of:

a) content: knowledge of the concepts involved in the subject area;

b) context: knowledge of the context in which the text will be read, including the
readers expectations.
Knowledge of the writing process
Pupils also need knowledge of the effective way of preparing for a writing task:
planning, drafting, reviewing, editing, etc.

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 Writing requires more correctness of expression and higher standards of language
than speech. Luckily, the slow and reflective nature of the process of writing enables the
writer to devote more time and attention to formal aspects during the process of writing.
7.3 Approaches to Writing
There are two main ways of approaching writing: focusing on the product or on the
writer. These perspectives have determined major approaches on the teaching of writing.
The focus on the product gave birth to the traditional text-based approach. The
teachers using this perspective often present model texts, usually given in textbooks, for the
pupils to imitate or adapt. They believe their role is to cultivate conformity to models, and
accuracy rather than fluency. They see mistakes as something they have to correct and
eliminate. In this approach, the pupils write variations first on sentences, then on paragraphs,
then on very controlled compositions, and finally, at an advanced level, they work on free
composition.

Examine one of the textbooks in use.

a) What writing activities suggested in these textbooks give the pupils the
opportunity to be creative and original?
b) Find examples of activities which begin with an example text or samples of
language that the pupils have to imitate or incorporate into their own writing.

Traditionally, the teacher has been more concerned with the finished product than
with the way it has been created. The text-based approach is based on the notion that pupils
need to produce accurate pieces of writing. Over the past few years, however, interest has
swung from the product of writing to the actual writing process itself. It has become apparent
that if the teachers first concern is that an essay or story should be grammatically correct,
then this will be reflected in pupil attitude and behaviour. Firstly, pupils will regard essay
writing not as opportunity to express their views on a variety of topics, but as a long
grammatical exercise. What they actually write about will be a minor consideration. Secondly,
pupils will play safe. They will choose simple things to say to avoid the risk of error. The
result will be reasonably correct essays that say nothing.

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 However, the whole purpose of creative writing is to say something worth paying
attention to. While not totally rejecting this earlier system, the current trend is to place
emphasis on the process of writing and the writer. This approach lays stress on the activities
which move the pupil from the generation of ideas and collection of data to the production
and publication of the text. It emphasises the writing process over the product, with
recognition of the recursiveness of the process and the encouragement of exploration of topics
through writing.
It is now recognised that pupils not only need help throughout the writing process, but
that creative writing in the classroom is a shared activity. This kind of thinking has resulted in
much more attention being paid to the pre-writing stage. Scrivener (1994) proposes at least
nine stages of preparation before the final draft of a piece of creative writing is produced:
Introduction of topic. Group discussion. Clarification of main writing task.
Consideration of audience for the final text. Consideration of specific requirements style,
information, layout, etc. Consideration of likely difficulties and problems,
Initial individual or group brainstorming,
Selection and rejection of ideas,
Sorting and ordering of ideas note-making,
Focus on useful language models,
Small group or class construct of a preliminary skeleton or example text,
Individual or group preparation of draft text,
Discussion with others and with teacher,
Individual or group preparation of final draft.

The first draft must then come under close scrutiny, preferably after a time interval or
by someone other than the writer. Comments and discussion follow before a second draft is
attempted, and so on. The pupils need to be assured that the final product is not the only thing
to be judged. Praise for the first draft, and praise, advice and suggestions throughout the
writing process are very important.
If you accept that for teaching purposes at least, the process of writing is more
significant than the final product, then it follows that pupils need to be given enough time to
produce their essay. If it is a race against time, then few of the above procedures can be
applied.
Much of the teaching of writing comes at the first draft stage. Very little can be taught
after the final version has been submitted. That is why you need to sit with your pupils and

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discuss the first drafts, be appreciative of good ideas, and make suggestions for general
improvements in structure.
7.3.1 The Text-based Approach
This approach is also called the controlled-to-free approach, as depending on the
degree of freedom the pupils are allowed, the writing activities used are characterized as
controlled, guided and free.
There has been much argument about whether pupils should be allowed to engage in
free writing from the start, or whether they should be led gradually into it. Some argue that, if
writing is about expressing ones views, then pupils should be allowed a free rein. Others feel
that strict control should be maintained until the pupils can produce error-free sentences.
There is little doubt that, unless the pupils can produce syntactically acceptable
sentences, their creative writing will not be very coherent. It seems fair to assume that some
kind of sentence-level guidance will be necessary for many pupils at some stage. However,
you cannot suume that sentence-level skills will be automatically transferred to creative
writing. Further guidance, in the form of models, may be needed. You may therefore wish to
consider several stages in preparing pupils for free writing. Raimes (1989) proposes five types
of controlled writing: controlled composition, question and answer, guided composition,
parallel writing and sentence combining.

1. Controlled writing
Controlled writing activities provide both content and form. The pupils are not asked
to create anything. You give them a passage and ask them to make alterations to it. These
alterations are normally grammatical. For example, you may ask them to re-write a passage
about a single child so that it becomes a passage about several children, to re-write a direct
speech text in reported speech, or to re-write a present tense passage in the past simple.
Other activities include copying, gap-filling, re-ordering words, substitution (e.g. If
he stayed/left/spoke they would disagree with him), correct the facts (e.g. re-write the
sentences so that they match a picture), and dictation. They are typically used with beginners
and the objective of this kind of activities is that pupils make as few mistakes as possible.
This explains why in all these activities the pupils have to add little if anything of their own.
These activities can be made more meaningful and interesting, still remaining very
controlled, if the pupils are given a chance to think what they are writing. For instance,
copying is completely mechanical when they are asked to copy a string of words: a sentence
that they do not understand. In this case, their attention is focused only on spelling. But

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copying may become more meaningful if the pupils can contribute something to the text.
Part(s) of the sentence can be left out for the pupils to write themselves. The teacher may
write the sentence outline on the board, (e.g. they home afternoon), say the whole sentence
and ask the pupils to write what they heard. You can also show or draw a picture to replace
part(s) of the sentence. Alternatively, you may write the sentence on the board, and ask your
pupils to write a similar true sentence about themselves.
Another extremely restricting activity, gap-filling, can become more involving and
challenging if the pupils are given the opportunity to choose between alternatives given in
brackets.
Without real comprehension, dictation is also a mechanical activity, restricted to
practising spelling. If done traditionally, you read a text once through and then dictate it
phrase by phrase. Then the text is read through once again. Even done this way, dictation
cannot be denied a number of advantages: it is an intensive activity which helps to develop
both listening and writing, requires concentration, and can be done with large classes.

What are, in your opinion, the disadvantages of dictation?

An alternative to traditional dictation is the dictocomp (a combination of dictation

and composition), which develops both listening and writing skills and focuses on meaning.
The dictocomp is not exclusively controlled writing, as it requires not only careful listening
and accurate spelling but also thinking. The pupils listen to a text, jot down notes and then try
to reconstruct the original from notes or from given prompts. They need to understand the
text, think about its content and how to reproduce it, and how to construct the sentences. The
dictocomp can be used with pupils at all levels, provided the original text chosen is
challenging enough.

2. Questions and answers

A question and answer procedure continues your control over what is produced but
allows the pupils a little more freedom. The text emerges from the answers produced by the

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pupils to questions asked by you. The questions may be based on a set of notes or a picture. A
picture sequence can be used to make the task a little more interesting.

picture 1: Classroom. Children studying. One boy with thought

cloud above his head to show he is dreaming of playing football with his
example friends.
picture 2: Same boy at teachers desk, holding head and looking
sick.
picture 3: Same boy playing football with his friends on playing
field
picture 4: Footballers point at restaurant, suggesting cold drink
picture 5: Boy with friends in restaurant having cold drinks
picture 6: Teacher walks into restaurant.
You begin by asking what is happening in each picture in turn. Individual pupils
suggest answers, such as The boy is asking the teacher if he can go home because he is
sick. You write the best answer for each picture on the board. When all the questions are
complete, you ask the pupils to use the six answers as the basis for their text, reminding them
that the story must be told in the past tense. Before settling down to produce their texts in
pairs or small groups, the class may decide together what the wording of the first sentence
will be.
As confidence and skill grow, you can ask the pupils to create a story directly from a
sequence of pictures, without the question - answer stage. In this activity, writing can be
integrated with oral work. Class discussion establishes what is happening in each of the
pictures, then pupils decide in pairs or small groups how they are going to put the story
together. Each pair writes a first draft of the story then passes it to the next pair for comment
and correction. Second drafts are then written, and so on. In this way, all the class are
involved in the writing process.
In another version of this activity the whole class share in the writing of the same
story (e.g. a fairy tale type in which the characters and plot are fairly predictable). After class
discussion of standard forms and sequences of events in fairy tales, one pupil is asked to write
the first sentence of a story on a piece of paper. The paper is then passed on to the next pupil
who writes the second sentence, and so on. Once the class is accustomed to this kind of
combined writing, several stories can be circulating at the same time. The completed stories
are read out to the class by individual pupils for comments and suggestions. As a follow-up

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task, the pupils may be given copies of the story to check for grammatical accuracy and
punctuation.

3. Guided writing
In guided writing, you still retain a certain amount of control over the form and
content of the pupils writing. The pupils are given information that they must include in their
writing. Sometimes you also give the first and last sentences. The information may come in
the form of a picture. For example, you give a picture of a lake on a summer day with people
doing various things (e.g. swimming, diving, having picnics and sunbathing). In the distance a
farmer is seen with his sheep dog. The task is to write three paragraphs about the scene.
You tell the pupils to begin by saying that the picture shows a scene in the
countryside. Then you ask them to say something about the weather, the colour of the sky, the
sun and the shade given by the trees round the lake. They must describe the lake: is it big,
small, deep, shallow, clear or dark? In the second paragraph the pupils are asked to describe
the people and say what each group is doing. What does the farmer use his dog for? Finally,
you tell them to end the paragraph with the words Other people can enjoy themselves in the
summer sun, but the farmer has to work.

4. Parallel writing
Such activities are typically used with pre-intermediate and intermediate pupils. In
this type of writing activities, content is free but form is given. You first give the pupils a
piece of writing to see and then they use it as a basis for their own work. The original piece
sets a model and guides them in expressing themselves. This type of activity is central to the
teaching of connected discourse since it sets models from which the pupils can work. It
generally addresses the paragraph level.
Parallel writing tasks come in various forms to allow for varying degrees of control
by the teacher.

example John is an English boy who lives in Shipton, in the north of

England. Upton is a small village on the edge of the Irish Sea, near
Lanchester. The village has a church, a small shop, and a post office. There
is no school in Shipton, so Peter goes to school in Lanchester. To get into
Lanchester he has to catch a bus outside the post office. The bus leaves the
post office each morning at eight oclock.

Your task is to:

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 1. Write a similar paragraph about Rita, using these notes:

Rita Scottish girl Heston small town River Benlow

Edinburgh supermarket cinema football club small railway station
no library train library in Edinburgh railway station every two
hours.

2. Write about your own village or town.

5. Sentence combining
Sentence combining tasks are rather more mechanical than parallel writing tasks.
They provide the pupils with the materials and ask them to manipulate them. You give sets of
simple sentences and ask the pupils to combine them in grammatically acceptable ways to
produce complex sentences. This helps to develop their style.

example Combine each of the following pairs of sentences into one

complex sentence:

She overslept. She was late for school.

He was injured. He played football.
They were having a picnic. It started to rain.
The singer arrived. Everyone was seated.

At a higher level of organisation, pupils need practice in combining sentences to form

cohesive and coherent paragraphs.
The main difficulty encountered by pupils working at paragraph level is cohesion.
Cohesion is difficult in writing because often we do not get direct feedback on our writing
from our readers and we are not in a position to clarify points which have not been
understood. Cohesion involves not only the ordering of sentences, but also the use of cohesive
devices. Typical activities practising cohesion are sentence combining, sentence reordering,
sentence insertion and noun and sentence substitution. Unfortunately, it seems that pupil
performance in improving the syntactic complexity of writings tends to erode once sentence-
combining practice is discontinued.
Paragraph writing has to be practised as soon as the pupils have mastered basic skills
of sentence writing and need to progress beyond very controlled writing exercises to sentence
combining. This transition is more easily done by offering a short text as a model or by doing
oral preparation for the writing. The main problem is finding a suitable model as it is not

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always possible to use a text from the textbook. The model text might be limiting or
misleading, especially if the pupils topic is somewhat different and they are in the habit of
following models closely.
During oral preparation you can build an outline on the board to which the pupils
contribute suggestions, and you key expressions. Later on, the pupils use this material as a
basis for their writing. This technique is flexible and involving and reveals the interests and
abilities of the class. Also, it requires no specially prepared materials. The ideas about what to
write are generated by the pupils themselves.

Before asking your pupils to write an example of a particular text type, you might
want to go with them through some stages. Put the stages suggested below into an appropriate
order and justify your decision:

a) practising guided writing which follows prompts (e.g. pictures or sentences

that summarise paragraphs)
b) doing exercises that practise characteristic features of text type (e.g. passive
voice)
c) reading examples of the text type
d) analysing a sample text to isolate typical features.

Free writing
Free writing tasks can be assigned after the study of the respective genre models. You
can ask pupils from intermediate to advanced to write narratives based on a picture or series
of pictures. They may describe an occasion when they felt disappointed or afraid, surprised, or
relieved. They may describe someone they know very well, or write descriptions of people
and places, based on photographs or some information about them. They may write an answer
to a (given) letter of complaint, write application letters, etc.
You can ask more advanced pupils to describe the process represented in a flowchart
or any kind of diagram, write reports of books they read, reviews of books they enjoyed (and
would like to recommend to other people in the class), instruction sheets for something they
know how to do well (e.g. prepare some kind of food) or essays on various topics.

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 Essay format
Whatever kind of writing activities pupils practise in the classroom, at some stage
you will probably require them to produce an essay, and this will have to conform to an
acceptable format. A sample format is given below. This format is by no means the only
acceptable format for essays; many others are possible. But it may be useful as an indication
to pupils that each of the parts of an essay must be clearly related to the rest, to form a
coherent whole.

a) Introduction. Here they need to define the terms. If the topic of the essay is,
for instance, Urban Pollution, they may need to show that they understand what urban
and pollution mean. Also here they need to state why the topic is of interest, where their
main focus on the topic will be, how many parts they will break the topic up into. This will
give the number of paragraphs they will have in the body of the essay.
b) Body of essay. The introduction will tell how many paragraphs they are going
to write. Thus: each paragraph refers back to the introduction. For example, the
first/second/third type of urban pollution is Each paragraph discusses a different aspect of
the topic and provides an example to illustrate the point(s).
c) Conclusion. This is a brief final paragraph. There is no need to repeat what
was said in the introduction or summarise the contents of the body paragraphs, except perhaps
in a brief sentence. For example: Thus there are a number of clear reasons why urban
pollution is a serious problem. The remainder of the conclusion looks briefly at any further
implications of what has been said in the body of the essay.

7.3.2 The Communicative Approach

The communicative approach emphasises task-oriented activities that involve the
exchange of information, with focus on fluency. Although the approach practises a good deal
of modelling and controlled practice, a lot of attention is paid to motivation and to self-
expression. It stresses purpose and audience and encourages interaction among the pupils,
with less emphasis on form and accuracy. Through the activities, many of them based on
information gaps, and done in pairs and groups, the pupils are exposed to a lot of written
language. Listening and reading materials of a factual nature are also frequently used. Here
are some popular ideas of written communicative activities:

Relaying instructions

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 One pupil or one group of pupils elaborate instructions for the performance of a task.
They have to tell another pupil or group to perform the task by giving them written
instructions.
Writing reports, advertisements, brochures
The pupils write items for a school news broadcast or a school magazine. They can
join together to write a brochure about the place they live in or are studying in. They can write
and design their own advertisements.
Co-operative writing
The pupils may write joint stories, each pupil contributing a sentence. They may start
either at the first or the last sentence (these may be or may not be supplied).
The agony column
The pupils invent some problem, write letters to the columnist and then have them
answered by other members of the class.
Letters of complaint
The pupils write letters of complaint about faulty goods they have purchased or bad
service they received. The company representatives reply to these letters.
Job applications
The applications can be later on judged and a decision taken about who is successful.
Journals
You can write a letter to the pupils in a (small) class, telling them something about
yourself and inviting them to write letters to you, which you would reply to personally. The
pupils may engage in correspondence about learning, their experiences, how they feel about
school, etc. The pupils use writing for genuinely communicative purposes and get individual
attention from you. The disadvantages of this procedure, as Rinvolucri, the initiator admits,
are firstly that some pupils get too close to the teacher and secondly that it takes a lot of your
time.
Alternatively, you can ask the pupils to keep diaries. Here they will write what they
want about what interests them. They will comment on the classes, on their personal
experiences, on politics or they will write stories. You can ask them to write in their journals
for five minutes at the end of every class, but also when they themselves want to. Such an
activity ensures frequent writing practice and all pupils have a chance to use English to reflect
their own thoughts and feelings. You have the advantage of interacting with your pupils as

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individuals. These diaries are not primarily to be corrected, but rather to be reacted to. In this
activity, content feedback is far more important than form feedback.
Projects
Projects are longer pieces of work that involve the collection of information and
reporting. The quality of the end product is important. The pupils can use tape-recorders and
video cameras to record interviews with native speakers they can find, or they can consult
libraries (including electronic ones) for source material.

7.3.3 Purpose and Motivation

The communicative approach has led us to pay more attention to the purpose of
language, to the content of the message the pupils intend to get across. But it is sometimes
difficult for both teachers and pupils to think of writing as a motivating, purposeful activity,
especially if the goal of the activity is grammatical accuracy. In order for the pupils writing to
be more effective, and for reading to be more enjoyable, it is important to create other
purposes for writing.
The class should approach their task in terms of two questions: to whom they are
writing, and for what purpose. When the pupils have a better idea of whom their readers are
and of how they can get prepared to negotiate meaning, their writing is more purposeful. For
instance, instead of asking them to write a short autobiography, you could tell them they are
applying for a scholarship to spend a year in Great Britain. The purpose of the pupils writing
becomes thus more goal oriented. They will have to select the relevant qualities to speak
about and present the information in such a way as to show that one could benefit from such
experience and merits the scholarship over someone else.
The incorporation of an element of real communication, such as publication, is
motivating for most pupils. Going public in newsletters or class magazines and/or organizing
the reception of a real response (from either a classmate, pupils in another class, pen-friends
or the teacher) may determine the production of more effective writing.

What factors should you consider when setting a writing task?

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 Encouraging your pupils to help each other in preparing their written tasks may also
provide motivation and increase their confidence. The pupils can brainstorm ideas on a topic,
organise points for, neutral and against a specified argument, negotiate a line of thought, etc.
Pictures such as cartoons or drawings, may be used to stimulate ideas. Written tasks can also
be the result of other classroom activities such as reading, debates, role play, etc.
Your response on a pupils paper can also be an influential text in a writing class.
Some teachers ask their pupils to keep diaries in which they record aspects of their life and
address the teacher directly to ask for help or advice.
In practice most teachers and textbook writers draw on more than one approach and
combine and adapt various elements to suit their classes.

7.4 Feedback on Writing

In your own experience of learner of English, what kinds of feedback did you receive
from your teachers? How useful did you find their feedback?

Many teachers feel a terrible temptation to take the pupils work, indicate all the
places that need fixing, and return it to the pupils. Undoubtedly, the papers would be better if
the pupils handed them in the second time. The question is whether the pupils care enough
about their papers to want to put them into acceptable form and whether teachers know how
to encourage them to do that.
C. Tribble (1996) identifies four basic roles that teachers may assume when giving
feedback: audience, evaluator, examiner and assistant.
As audience we read the text and say how we find it, and if the authors point is
clearly formulated. We respond to the pupils ideas, feelings, and attitudes and indicate
whether or not we enjoyed reading the text. Unfortunately, we often avoid this role and
assume the other three, identifying problems, commenting and grading.
Our purpose as evaluators is to give feedback on the present strengths and
weaknesses of a text, with a view to help our pupils to improve their future performance. The

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text is assessed on all dimensions: task fulfilment, content, organisation, vocabulary,
language, and mechanics.
Each dimension is normally accompanied by descriptors, adapted to the class level
and purposes and made public. One main advantage of the descriptors is that the pupils know
the basis on which their work is assessed. Another is that the teacher can recognise excellence
in one aspect while indicating weaknesses in others. This will help the pupils to identify the
areas they have to work on. The scores are finally converted into an overall grade. If they are
not too vague (e.g. Good work, Well done), evaluations can encourage the pupils and
point them in the right direction for future writing. Evaluations may be accompanied by a
short personal response to the message of the text. Thus the pupils get complete feedback on
the impact their texts have had on the teacher.
Evaluating is pointing out strengths and weaknesses, while examining is assigning a
grade. By giving a grade you indicate the degree of excellence that a task has achieved. Once
a task has been graded, the pupils will give it little thought or work. You need to assess the
pupils skills on the basis of explicit criteria. The use of analytical assessment criteria helps
the pupils to understand what is expected from them and how a weak paper can be improved.
Giving separate scores, one for each area, you can also help the pupils to understand their
strengths and weaknesses. Weighting content and ideas twice as heavily as language or
structure, for instance, will underline the importance of content.
As assistants, you tell the pupils if you find their text effective in relation to its
purpose, pass advice on language, genre, structure, and subject matter. You devote time to
their command of language, trying to assist them at each stage in the writing process, and
encourage collaboration among them. In this role, the most significant contribution that you
can make in the writing classroom is to create a community of readers. However, your
assistance cannot help the pupils to improve a text if you also grade it.
As audience, evaluators, and examiners you give feedback on the pupils text as end
product and your comments come too late to influence the piece of writing. Your feedback is
usually limited to grading, commenting (superficially) and correcting errors. You give the
pupils no indication of what they are to do next or what they have to work on. If their task has
not been clearly specified and if they do not really know what the purpose of the writing has
been, this sort of feedback can be time-consuming and demoralising for both you and the
pupils.

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 Consider the following comments made by various pupils. Try to identify what role
their English teacher assumed when giving feedback:

1. My teacher wrote at the bottom of the page that my grammar is acceptable,

but I still have some problems with the present perfect, and the definite article.
2. She told me to change the introduction, making it more interesting for the
reader.
3. The teacher re-wrote my text, without changing its content and arguments and
brought both my draft and hers to class. We all discussed and compared the text organisation,
development of ideas, sense of audience and style, but my classmates were not told whose text
the teacher used.
4. I got an 8 in my last assignment.

1. ..
2. ..
3. ..
4. ..
You need strategies to give constructive comments on drafts. If feedback is done
effectively, by the time the text is finished, most of the problems have been solved. Moreover,
the pupils will understand the purpose of your feedback at each stage.

Writing involves content, organization, style, syntax, mechanics, grammar and

spelling. When looking at any piece of writing, you often feel you have to respond to all
these. However, the most important thing to consider, especially at post-beginner level, is
content, followed by organization and presentation. The quality and amount of pupil writing is
very sensitive to constructive teacher feedback on content, and relatively insensitive to teacher
correction of form. Feedback on content, unlike feedback on grammar, can determine the
improvement of writing. If you limit your feedback to pointing out and/or correcting errors,
your pupils will concentrate on producing error-free writing, neglecting the interest or even
the meaning of the content. The equation teaching writing = error elimination is counter-
productive and may result in a waste of time and discouragement. Ideally, your pupils should
be familiar with various types of feedback.

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 One problem is how to maintain a fair balance between form and content when
assessing and giving feedback. This balance depends, to some extent on your own teaching
situation, experience and opinion.
The correction of written work can be done on much the same basis as the correction
of oral work. You should not always be preoccupied with accuracy. There may be times when
you are concerned with accuracy and other times when your main concern is the content of
the writing. Some of us, although fully aware of the importance of content and organisation,
find ourselves dealing mainly with language accuracy in our feedback, conveying the implicit
message that this is what matters. This happens because language mistakes are difficult to
ignore, they catch the eye; they are more easily and quickly diagnosed and corrected than the
ones of content and organisation. Moreover, many pupils want their language mistakes to be
corrected.
In spite of all this, you should not convey the message that the language mistakes are
your main concern. To avoid this to happen, you may note corrections within the body of the
text, and write comments on content and organisation at the end. Feedback in the form of
comments by the teacher is extremely helpful. The most important contribution you can make
is that of being a careful reader, willing to respond to what pupils write in terms of clarity,
coherence, and effectiveness of content.

We have distinguished between learning to write activities, meant to help the pupils
learn to write and writing to learn activities, meant to help them write to learn. What essential
difference will there be between the way we respond to texts that have been written with these
two different purposes?

7.4.1 Strategies for the Correction of Mistakes

Correction can be seen as an opportunity to make positive responses to a pupils

work. This is extremely difficult to do if your concern is to mark every error in red pen. Of
course, ultimately a grade will have to be given to the piece of writing, but if it is based
entirely on grammatical accuracy, then the whole point of the writing will have been lost.

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 This is not to say that mistakes in syntax or punctuation should be ignored. But it is a
good idea to read a piece of writing twice: once for the content and the second time for the
language. During the first reading, try to ignore grammatical errors and concentrate entirely
on the content. Assign a mental grade to the content, then re-read to assess the mechanical
aspects: syntax, punctuation, spelling, and the way in which the text hangs together. The final
grade should reflect content, shape and grammatical accuracy.
The problem of correction of mistakes is one of potential conflict between two of the
roles of the teachers: language instructors versus assistants. If we accept that language should
be corrected, then the problem arises: should all language mistakes be noted? Sometimes
there are so many mistakes that the page will be covered with corrections and too much
correcting can be discouraging, demoralising and distracting. Over-emphasis on language
mistakes can distract the pupils attention from content and organisation. How can you judge
which mistakes to relate to and which not?
Your approach should vary according to context and the pupils individual needs. In
any situation, your comments should relate to the task assigned. If the pupils are first asked to
express their ideas in English (free writing, composition) and then to read critically what they
have written in order to make changes, then you should also give a two-stage response, by
separating your response to content and structure from your response to language accuracy.
One approach is to ignore the language mistakes that do not hinder reading. You may
correct only those mistakes which are very basic and those which affect meaning, leading to
misunderstanding or confusion, such as sentence derailments or faulty subordination. Other
errors may go uncorrected, but while identifying them you can make a list of error types as
they occur, and thus create an individual grammar syllabus.
To help your pupils to concentrate on particular aspects of language, you can tell
them that their work will be corrected for only one thing, the use of tenses, for instance. By
doing this, you ensure that their work will not be covered by red marks, and you encourage
them to focus on particular aspects of written language. You can individualise language work
by identifying for each pupil a few kinds of errors and assigning tasks that focus on these.
Where a piece of writing contains a number of common errors, you may photocopy
the work (erasing the writers name) and show it to the whole class, asking them to identify
problems. In this way the attention of the class can be drawn to common mistakes and the
photocopied document can form the basis for remedial work.
You will learn about your pupils errors if you give them the opportunity to make
them, fix them, and discuss them. You can ask your pupils to discuss where they think their

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mistakes come from and why they make them. This will help you to realise which mistakes
the pupils can recognise and which ones they cannot. Asking the pupils to discuss their
mistakes will provide you with information about their transfers from Romanian or from
another foreign language they learn. In this way, the mistakes will no longer be everybodys
enemy, but clear evidence of language learning.
Another strategy is to point out both strengths and weaknesses. Thus, your pupils will
have the chance to perceive a correct model in their own use of language and will be likely to
continue taking risks if they see that their good qualities are noted and encouraged.

Use of correction symbols

You can indicate mistakes in written work by putting a mark in the margin to show
what kind of mistake it is (e.g. V for vocabulary, WO for word order, WW for wrong word, /
for missing word, SP for spelling, P for punctuation, GR for grammar, VF for verb form, VT
for verb tense, ? for unclear meaning or handwriting, etc.) Indication of mistakes is less
time consuming for you than correcting and more effective for the pupils. The latter have to
re-read the text and spend time in identifying and correcting themselves the mistakes signalled
in the margin.
You need symbols for spelling, wrong tense usage, agreement, inappropriate
language, punctuation, missing words, unclear meaning, etc. Whatever symbols you use, your
pupils should understand clearly what they mean. When you first use the symbols, underline
the word in the text and put the symbol in the margin. Later you will only use the symbol in
the margin for the pupils to identify the mistake.
When you bring back to class the pupils writing with comments on content and
correction symbols in the margin, you should allow them time to identify their mistakes and
correct them. While they are identifying their problems, you can help where they do not know
what is wrong. If this stage is not gone through, your pupils will not take advantage of the
system of correction symbols.
There is certainly no perfect approach to giving feedback on writing. Yet it is
essential that your pupils understand how you want the feedback system to work. You should
clarify both for them and for yourself what your policy on mistakes correction is, what
symbols and abbreviations you use, and what you want them to do with their drafts and your
comments when they receive them.

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 Use a correction code to signal the language mistakes in the following piece of
writing:

I am studying english because I want to work for a big company when I will
graduate. Perhaps I may to continue my studis. So I must to reach a good level of english
because of when I will go abroad sended by the company, Ill need to understand all. My
father, who is mecanic engineer, he says that english is an interesting language for all kinds of
reason. Another reason why I am studying english is that I like myself to listen to the music. I
am learning new expressions and improve my listening, too. I can mix learning with the
pleasure of listening to the music. Something else is we often have foreigners invited for
dinner at home who are invited by my parents and usualy english is the language of
comunication.

Rewriting
When you receive written tasks, you normally correct and comment on them and give
them back. The question is whether you should insist on the pupils rewriting their tasks,
incorporating your suggestions. Your pupils do not like doing it, but, on the other hand,
frequent opportunities for writing and rewriting are an important tool for improving language,
content and structure. Irrespective of the feedback the pupils receive from you, they improve
their work when they rewrite their texts. According to A. Raimes, the number of language
mistakes decreases by about 20%, even when the teacher response includes no explicit
correction of mistakes (Raimes, 1983).
Pupils rewriting should be followed by your re-reading. You can motivate your
pupils to rewrite by seeing the first version as provisional, and assessing the revised version.
In this way the pupils will carefully read and incorporate your comments and new
assignments in their final version. Another reason to ask for rewriting and not spending a long
time on first draft correction is that you can misread your pupils intentions. Successful
communication also means that pupils say in writing what they mean. To make sure that their
ideas are communicated accurately, you have to ask them to rewrite and edit their own texts,
assisting them with questions and comments on the parts of the text that you find obscure.

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 Peer correction
Correcting written work is very time-consuming, particularly if you have large
classes. One possible solution is to let the pupils correct and edit each others writing. Even if
they cannot discern all the strengths and weaknesses of an assignment, they will detect at least
some of them. The problem is whether your pupils feel comfortable correcting, or being
corrected by their classmates, and whether they accept criticism (positive or negative) form
each other. Their comfort will depend on the general classroom climate. The attitudes that
make peer correction helpful are mutual trust; a real listening to each other; a mutual
recognition that whatever is said is a subjective opinion and not necessarily the absolute,
objective truth, and a general desire to communicate effectively taking into account the others
reactions.
You could train your pupils in giving and asking for specific and constructive
feedback. For instance a statement like I think that this sentence would be better if you
added some colour words is constructive while Your sentences are problematic is
destructive. The pupils should be encouraged to ask for feedback on spelling, punctuation,
sentence variety, style, etc. Also, they should constantly check with their group members to
make sure their comments are clear. They can be taught to ask questions like:

Is there any place in my text that is hard to follow?

Is there any point that you do not really understand?
Is there any place in which my examples, reasons, or explanations need
developing?
Is there any place where I should add more details?
Is there any place where I seem to wander from my topic?
Are there any unclear or missing transitions?
If peer correction works, it can be a substitute for your first-draft reading. The pupils
can work together, giving each other feedback on language, organisation and content. They
then rewrite and give in the final version to you.

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 The following activity is intended to teach pupils how to evaluate the content clarity
and effectiveness of a classmates composition. The order of the steps has been modified.
Your task is to try to put the steps in logical order:

1. Without looking at the text, tell the author what you think s/he is saying, or, if
it is a narrative, tell the story back to the author as precisely as you can.
2. After each of you has given and received feedback, rewrite your task.
3. Then your partner(s) should give you the same type of feedback on your text.
4. Ask your partner(s) about anything which seems unclear or for constructive
suggestions.
5. Read each others paper carefully.

Self-correction (critical reading)

V. Zamel (1991) suggests four self-correction techniques that the pupils can use to
correct their own work in class with a critical eye.

1. The pupils read their papers aloud to other pupils. Reading aloud will help
them spot some of the mistakes. In most cases, they will naturally hesitate when a sentence
does not seem to work.
2. A classmate reads the paper aloud. The new reader may pause when coming
across a mistake or when a sentence is problematic.
3. The pupils take their text, cover up everything on the page except the first
sentence, put their pencil point to one word at a time, and say the sentence aloud, word by
word. They try to pick out the core (subject + verb) of the sentence.
4. The pupils read their last sentences first and so on, backwards through the text,
sentence by sentence. This is a way of focusing attention on sentence-level accuracy and
preventing the eye from leaping ahead for the content.
The question of class climate, personal relationships, trust and willingness to accept
criticism and help from one another remains. Because critical reading does not come naturally
for many pupils, you can help them with checklists and/or questions to answer. Thus the
pupils will learn what to look for in a text in order to offer useful and constructive feedback.

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 Summary

Although recent ELT methodology considers the clarity and effectiveness of the
content of a piece of writing to be more important than language correctness, writing is still
regarded by some teachers as transcribed speech. They tend to consider the quality of writing
in relation to the frequency and gravity of linguistic errors. They neglect composition,
assuming that once the language has been mastered, the ability to use the same language for
written communication will follow naturally.
However, writing has a dual purpose: as a means (or a support skill) and as an end (or
a communicative skill). Generally speaking, you will find two types of writing activities in the
English textbooks: those designed to develop the writing skills per se (writing as an
end/communicative skill) and those which provide opportunity of practising English (writing
as a means/support skill).
The kind of feedback that teachers give on writing is largely a matter of experience.
Generally speaking, the red pencil is intimidating and discouraging, when teachers believe
that form (grammar and spelling) is everything. Alternative ways of determining re-writing
can be found, such as peer-correction and self-correction.

Key Concepts
genre
writing sub-skills
cohesion
coherence
text-based approach
process approach
audience
form
content
peer correction

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 self-correction

Further Reading

1. Harmer, J. (2001) The Practice of English Lanhuage Teaching. 3rd ed., Longman
2. Nunan, D. (1991) Language Teaching Methodology. A textbook for teachers.,
Prentice Hall

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