Teaching Writing

In "Less is More, More or Less: Teaching Flash Fiction," I outline a series of observations I've gleaned about the form from my recent experience teaching an 8-week summer course online in Writing Flash Fiction. This was a topics course, one which relied on self-design, as there are very few textbooks or models devoted to the subject. My purpose would be to share my syllabus and discuss the experimental strategies I took for approaching the form, aiming to help other teachers who might have an interest in this subject, while also sharing lessons learned from working with students who primarily experienced this as their initial introduction to creative writing. These lessons will not only illuminate how today's generation of students apprehend the role of literature in the "snack culture" they are living in, but also offer numerous ways of exploiting this unique form for effective teaching of fiction writing and issues in literature.

MORE MATERIALS from the presentation on this topic are available on scribd: 
https://www.scribd.com/collections/5982310/Teaching-Flash-Fiction-Writing

or https://www.scribd.com/Dr_Arnzen

This single-subject experiment explored the effect of oral instructions and training on the expansion of written language using a reversal design. The subject, a twelve-year-old boy who attended a tutorial clinic, wrote about a stimulus picture four times a week during a twelve-week period. Productivity was based on the number of words and sentences used in the composition; the type-token ratio for vocabulary diversity was also charted. During the intervention phases of the experiment, the tutor added oral instructions to write many words and ideas. These additional instructions increased the subject's productivity. As the oral instructions were changed, the number of total words and sentences also changed. When a simple training session was provided prior to the writing of a composition, the subject wrote more adjectives.

Prepared for the Department of History at Western University, Canada.

This document employs the SQ4R technique to emphasize that close reading is fundamental to the development of excellent student writing. It provides a number of practical exercises for use in the university classroom or tutorial that will encourage student reading, reading comprehension and develop your students' writing skills.

Writing is one of the four language skills that plays a very important role in the teaching of English since writing can really help the students learn a second language. Unfortunately, make a product of writing become problematic way since student does not know how to write well.  Therefore, the students have master the step of writing process in order to get good writing such as prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing. The aim of this descriptive qualitative research is to investigate the teaching of writing especially in students’ writing process in SMP and SMA. This data of research were taken from three schools in Malang: MAN 03 Malang, SMA Islam Nusantara, and SMP Wahid Hasyim with 3 teachers come from 3 classes of each school. The data were obtained through video, observation sheets, lesson plan, and interview, and analyzed by comparing and contrasting all the research instruments. The findings of this study interpret that treating the students by using writing process will improve students’ writing skill. The comparison between teaching of writing in SMP and SMA are different in giving the topic. Thus, collaborative writing in writing process has also a big part of the teaching writing.
Keywords: the teaching of writing, writing process, junior high school, senior high school

This compilation comprises a few different topic writing paragraphs, and it aims at engaging and enhancing students' writing skills and styles, and above all stimulating them to get started writing in formal English language which is losing battles in its confrontation with technological communication protocols. The students today don't look like struggling for achievement, they become so pragmatic that they adopt the " Law of Least Resistance ". They don't want to exert any additional effort; they just let things happen, smoothly. Like their mobile phones they prefer to be on their saving energy mode so as not to be obliged to recharge every now and then. In order to drag them out of their drowsiness, they need anticipation and motivation. The Baccalaureate students are in need of some sample written paragraphs to take for model in order to stir what remains of their enthusiasm for trying to do something to improve their styles and their writing skills. They are disappointing when they look passive, lethargic and insisting on remaining within their safety zone. They never admit their negativity towards learning writing. They believe it is useless to learn writing while they can express themselves and transmit ideas in better sophisticated up-to-date modern ways. They make allusion to technology which doesn't really require eloquence or rhetoric. When it comes to the writing skill, it is not a question of what to write but how to write it. What to write is personal, but how to write is a system that has to be respected by all " writers " to be clear, systematic and systemic in delivering the output. Many students believe in their ability to write when they can draw the letters and the words. Wrong, writing is a skill that needs practice. If it is not so, why are the authors and novelists better than all those who can write and gather their ideas into sentences to make sense? It is because they are gifted. Wrong again, talent needs nourishment through practice, that is, reading and writing regularly. It is true that the learners are able to draw scripts, but how they can make them accessible to understanding and enjoyment is a craft that has to be learnt in a variety of styles. One way is by paraphrasing other writers trying to imitate them and then step by step they can build their own writing techniques and styles. It has never been a good idea to test writing before teaching it, and teaching writing is a long bidirectional process. The students should learn the same form in order to use it for producing different contents. In other words, they have to learn how a paragraph is constructed to be able to express their ideas through that construction. The more model paragraphs they are exposed to, the better results they achieve.

Academic writing classes typically focus on "real world" content.  A model essay of a particular type (e.g., cause & effect) is introduced, analyzed and then "applied" to a particular real world topic (e.g., climate change).  While such an approach is certainly necessary in order to place writing into a meaningful context, the focus on "real world" content can become a distraction, as students to learn to grasp meaning but fail to acquire the linguistic competence necessary to produce meaning on their own.  Studies in stylistics suggest that language acquisition requires a recurrent focus on form.  Widdowson (2003), for example, recommends the use of literary texts, such as poems, which are disconnected from contexts and thus draw attention to their own form.  Fish (2011) goes even further, suggesting the use of "nonsense" texts which force students to focus on form and create meaning for themselves.  This presentation aims to promote the use of non-academic texts, such as poem, jokes and nonsense, as a necessary supplement to academic writing classes.

Writing, outside the academic realm, is often seen as a neglected skill in teaching English as a second or foreign language. It is perceived as boring and irrelevant by many students, and teachers, in turn, will often skip the writing sections of the course books. However, the Anglo-Saxon culture arguably relies on the written medium of communication more than many other cultures, so learners need to develop the skill. This paper looks at the practical task rather than theoretical implications of teaching a class to a group of intermediate learners of English (L1 Turkish speakers) where the students approach writing a letter of complaint (an email asking for a refund for faulty goods bought online). Since refund emails fall under the broader category of letters of complaint, which in their turn are types of formal lettersI start by exploring the genre features of these texts. I then proceed to identify the common challenges faced by English learners when faced with writing a formal text (namely, lack of genre awareness, poor proofreading and/or self-editing skills, Lack of both system and process knowledge). Finally, I conclude with putting forward suggestions to teachers seeking to overcome these challenges (these include activities to introduce topical lexis and functional language, to develop the learners' proofreading and/or self-editing skills, pre-writing strategies such as brainstorming).

In this paper, I will write about teaching writing in classrooms of English as a foreign
language. I will briefly mention the nature of writing and the writing approaches that have
been developed so far. My emphasis will be on a particular approach of writing, The Process
Approach. I will explain this approach, its history and its implications in English and
introduce two tasks for learners with high level of English competency that can be used in this
approach.

What Is It "Writing For Pleasure" Teachers Do That Makes The Difference? was a one year research project which investigated how Writing For Pleasure teachers achieve writing teaching which is highly effective (greater than average progress) and also affective (pertaining to positive dispositions and feelings). This research comes at a time where we are seeing profound underachievement in writing coupled with an increase in young people's indifference or dislike for writing. The principal purpose of this research was to identify and describe the kind of writing teaching which constitutes a Writing For Pleasure pedagogy. It was a requirement that the practices of the teachers participating in the research be based on what studies tell us are the most effective writing teaching, associated with high levels of pupil motivation, self-efficacy, agency, self-regulation, volition, writer-identity and pleasure in writing. Teachers were also required to provide evidence of exceptional or above expected academic progress among their pupils. The research investigated the principles employed by the most effective teachers of writing and linked them to the affective domains of Writing For Pleasure. The study employed a mixed method design. It required a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to be gathered. This included empirical data from participant observations, teacher and pupil interviews, viewing pupil assessment data and pupil questionnaires. From a rich literature review, an audit was generated which named fourteen interrelated principles, and their associated practices, which are strongly associated with high levels of student achievement and pleasure in writing. Findings showed that teachers who teach the principles of Writing For Pleasure at a high level of proficiency have classes who feel the greatest enjoyment and satisfaction in writing and in being a writer. Writing For Pleasure teachers attend to self-efficacy, agency and self-regulation in rich combination. Some principles of Writing For Pleasure were not observed at a high level of proficiency by the teachers as a whole data set and so need to be further investigated. The affective domains of motivation and writer-identity were not realised adequately by the pupils as a whole data set and so need to be further investigated. Finally, a Writing For Pleasure pedagogy is a highly effective pedagogy. [Co-published with The Goldsmiths' Company and The University of Sussex. The Goldsmiths' Company also provided funding for the project.]

Por escolhermos seguir uma sequência de atividades, a prática de ensino facilitou o reconhecimento das dificuldades dos alunos, tanto quando trabalhavam em pares ou em grupos.
Enfatizamos que os procedimentos com sequência didática requereram conhecimento teórico, bem como um trabalho detalhado na criação de atividades voltadas às teorias. 
Observando os resultados quanto ao aprendizado, os conteúdos propostos dentro das necessidades dos alunos fizeram com que os educandos pudessem dar sentido do que estavam estudando, e se identificassem além do trabalho com writing, reading, listening e speaking, tornando-os colaborativos com os colegas e conscientes do próprio aprendizado.
Tratando dos conhecimentos sobre o gênero, as propostas que versavam acerca da compreensão e produção textuais, no caso, a criação de currículo, ampliaram a confiança dos alunos ao definirem objetivos e ao se organizarem para realização das tarefas.
Sendo um conteúdo contextualizado, a adaptação das tarefas à realidade dos alunos, mantivemos a característica de uma aprendizagem significativa e dinâmica, já que conseguimos abordar o desenvolvimento das capacidades linguísticas, dos conhecimentos prévios e culturais dos discentes.
Vale destacarmos que uma unidade didática nunca está completa, pois não se trata “receita” para a aula, mas sim de um conceito/uma ideia, dependendo de fatores que vão além da prática.

LINK to download the e-book (free): http://petra.id/festschrift2021

Research shows that reading and writing are closely connected. Students who can read well can be expected to write well. However, repeated observations show that this is not always the case. Students who have developed an advanced reading ability often continue to experience difficulty when they try to express themselves in writing. This chapter first discusses oft-cited sources of students’ writing difficulties, which typically involve difficulties at the linguistic (e.g., vocabulary, grammar and text structure) and cognitive levels (e.g., selecting relevant contents, connecting different parts of the writing). The next part of the chapter explores the relationship between reading and writing in detail, highlighting areas that need to be linked more tightly together. The last section presents an instructional model that promotes more efficient input processing and focused noticing of linguistic features found in the target text. The model also encourages student writers to  engage in writerly reading and readerly writing to further strengthen their writing proficiency.

Writing is a complex activity. Understanding this complexity is the key to effective teaching of writing. In this chapter, I will present a brief historical overview of various approaches to teaching writing, including the controlled approach, process approach, and genre approach. Essential to implementing these approaches is understanding the recursive nature of the writing process and knowing what constitutes competent writing. Indeed, writing competence encompasses not only word choices, sentence variations, punctuation choices, and other linguistic tools for cohesion and coherence, but also ways to structure and develop arguments at the micro and macro levels. It is important to adopt a writing pedagogy that explicitly trains students in the kinds of thinking processes that are conducive to good writing. To this end, this chapter presents the socio-cognitive approach to teaching writing. I will discuss guiding principles and pedagogical implications of the approach. I will also highlight strategies for enhancing the quality of second language writing, drawing upon insights from the literature of writing research.

Students have asked me to make this sheet about writing academic paragraphs available. If you want to use this instruction sheet in your classes, you have permission. You do not need to contact me for permission.

Central to work at the university is the empirical method, which is the art of using credible evidence to clarify and justify claims you make. This paragraph assignment has been designed to train students in the art of using the empirical method for defending and supporting claims about a literary work. What I ask you to do in this paragraph is something you should do regularly in your writing and thinking about literature. For your benefit, I have identified five essential parts of the academic paragraph. Topic sentence: This sentence should make a point that is not obvious and that needs support, or evidence, to be convincing.

This autoethnography explores our experiences teaching an undergraduate autoethnography course entitled, ‘Writing Lives’. We, Keith and Nathan, Professor and Doctoral candidate, convey narrative scenes and reflections of sharing and analysing our published stories with students, working with students through the process of writing their personal stories, and transformative moments during the course. We emphasise a vulnerable, reflexive, and empathetic approach to teaching and learning that allows students and teachers to uncover aspects of who they are and hope to be in the classroom. This work advocates a number of unique benefits to autoethnographic practices that foster open and intimate bonds.

Students learning what they perceive as a ‘dead language’ can feel a sense of distance from what they are studying. This paper offers an array of practical suggestions to bridge that gap and develop in students a sense of ownership as they study Latin. It offers examples of creative writing assignments suitable for students in their first year of language study: cartoon strips, letters, haiku poems, compositions practicing specific grammatical or vocabulary elements, inscriptions, and literary translations of Latin poetry into English. In addition to discussion of the rationale and learning outcomes of assignments, the paper includes assignment prompts and examples of student writing.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing skill using meta-analysis. In line with this main purpose, the frequency and percentage distributions of the studies, which are included in the research as part of the meta-analysis, according to the moderator variables, the overall effect size of the relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing skill, and the differences in the effect sizes of the studies based on the moderator variables were examined. In order to collect data, "writing self-efficacy", "self-efficacy and writing", "writing motivation", "writing belief", "yazma öz yeterlik", "yazma öz yeterliği", "yazma motivasyonu" (Turkish terms for writing self-efficacy and writing motivation) keywords have been searched in Web of Science, Proquest, ERIC, Council of Higher Education National Theses Center, ULAKBIM (Turkish Academic Network and Information Center) Social Sciences databases, Google Scholar and Google Akademik (Turkish name of Google Scholar) search engines. 70 studies were determined as the result of these searches, and among these studies, those that did not comply with the inclusion and exclusion criteria were eliminated and 37 studies were selected as the sample of the research. In the analysis of the data, Comprehensive Meta-analysis v3.0 statistics program was used. Random effects model was chosen as the meta-analysis model for the research, and Fisher Z value was used in calculating the effect size value. As the result of the analysis carried out, the overall effect size of the relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing skill was positive and moderate (0.369). In addition to the foregoing, there were some differences between the effect sizes of the studies examining the relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing skill based on moderator variables.

Nowadays, language is very important for our life, especially English. It is an International language which is used for communication. The important skill which has to be had by many people is speaking. Here, the role of speaking skill is very important because it can be supporting someone to make a communication to each other. For example: most of people in the world have known and used it for making conversation or sharing using English, even they are from different country and language. It is not only used by the native, but non native can use it too. Regarding for this condition, role-play can be a way to increase students of Junior High School in speaking activity.

University students across disciplines are often expected to write argumentative texts. However, many students, particularly L2 writers, struggle writing arguments and teachers may not be prepared to effectively scaffold argument writing. Despite its importance, argumentative writing is still an underresearched area in second language writing. In this paper, we use a Systemic Functional Linguistics conceptualization of argumentation to examine emergent arguments, texts that meet some of the expectations for argumentative writing but not others. We adapt Humphrey et al. (2010) 3 × 3 professional learning toolkit to analyze student writing from a first-year university history class. The 3 × 3 allows us to highlight these texts' mixed effectiveness in meeting genre expectations, based on how they control the resources of each of SFL's three metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal, and textual) at the levels of whole-text, paragraph , and sentence/clause. Our analysis of three emergent arguments shows how each exhibits challenges controlling the resources of a particular metafunction. Our application of the 3 × 3 provides a theoretical conceptualization of argumentative writing that can help teachers uncover subtle ways that student writing does and does not meet genre expectations.

Anchored on the Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge or TPACK Framework (Koehler & Mishra, 2009) and Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition or SAMR Model of Technology Integration into the classroom (Puentedura, 2014), this study investigated a corpus of 58 blog posts written by ESL learners through weblogs. It aimed to determine the views of students on the use of blogs in learning English writing skills and to explore students' feedback on the advantages of blogging as a virtual writing platform. Research participants were 58 freshman university tourism students enrolled at a Study and Thinking Skills class in a private university in Manila, the Philippines during the first semester of the academic year 2017-2018. Research data drawn from students' blogs, survey questionnaires and focus group discussion revealed that despite accessibility issues due to technological resources, the learners viewed blogging as a viable platform in learning English writing skills because it affords them freedom to express their thoughts, it develops or improves their writing skills, and it allows them to connect and engage with their peers online, inter alia. Pedagogical implications for ESL writing teachers and researchers are offered based on these results.

This study investigates the implementation of the eclectic method of teaching writing skill in relation to teachers' perception. The problem statements were: (1) how do teachers perceive the implementation of the eclectic method to teach writing skill? (2) how is the implementation of the eclectic method to teach writing skill viewed from lesson plan? (3) what are the teachers' strengths and weaknesses in implementing the eclectic method? The design of the research was a descriptive qualitative. The subjects of this study were 3 teachers. A questionnaire was used in collecting the data and teachers' lesson plans as observing the documents is a pure qualitative method based on the underlying theory of (Creswell,2013). The present study revealed three findings. First, teachers have responded positively to the items contained activities and materials used in the classroom. Therefore, they positively perceived the implementation of eclectic method. Second, eclectic method was realized in the planned activities the two target lesson plan. Third, there were some strengths and weaknesses realized from the responses to the questionnaire related to the implementing the approach. In conclusion, the present study could successfully achieve its goal in obtaining teachers' perception towards the implementation of eclectic method in teaching writing skill as well as describing its implementation through the level of lesson plans. The suggestions are proposed to teachers to attend some conferences related to teaching EFL, theories to have deeper knowledge about the fundamental principles of the eclectic method to reflect their teaching in the real classroom.

Story is a panacea. It is cure-all for all sorts of problems. As all sorts of learners, be it auditory or kinesthetic or visual; or be it kids or grown up adults or old grannies; or be it fast or slow learners; all and sundry, finds attraction is learning through stories. Stories have power to stimulate, revitalize, rejuvenate, energize, and exhilarate the learners. Similarly, Blog also have its own glamour. Together they can work wonder in teaching writing skill. This paper deals with an experiment in using blog to enhance writing skill though story writing.