Teaching Writing - Week 4 - Writing and Teaching Writing

Introduction: Hello and welcome to Week 4 of the course Teaching Writing for the Bachelor's in English Teaching at ULACIT in term IIC 2023. In this class we will talk about six approaches that have been used to teach writing, describe their strengths and limitations, and discuss ideas about how to integrate the approaches. We will also take time to review your third creation and preview the task for creation number four.

Today's Goals:

• Review your third writing activity creation.
• Classify the purposes and strategies of six major orientations in L2 writing instruction.
• Define the concept of a narrative frame activity.

Guiding Questions:

• How can you use poetry and artistic expression to guide student writing?
• What approaches have proposed for the teaching of L2 writing?
• How can we help student connect their ideas in extended texts?

Task 1: Activity Type Demo - Poetry and Artistic Expression

Nearly every week of this course you will submit a unit writing activity creation in order to build a portfolio of writing activity types. 

• Characteristics: What are the features of poetry and artistic expression tasks?
• Example: What activity did you create?
• Strengths: In what ways are poetry and artistic expression tasks potentially beneficial?
• Challenges: What potential limitations or challegnes are associated with them?

• Additional Considerations: CLICK HERE

Task 2: Reading Exploration - Writing and Teaching Writing

Let's discuss the following questions regarding the assigned reading for this week, "Writing and Teaching Writing".

• Opening Quotes: The following quotes help to explain why it is important for teachers to be familiar with different approaches to writing instruction.

• “Everything we do in the classroom, the methods and materials we adopt, the teaching styles we assume, the tasks we assign, are guided by both practical and theoretical knowledge, and our decisions can be more effective if that knowledge is explicit. A familiarity with what is known about writing, and about teaching writing, therefore help us to reflect on our assumptions and enable us to approach current teaching methods with an informed and critical eye.”

• Focus on Language Structures
• Focus on Text Functions
• Focus on Creative Expression
• Focus on Writing as a Process
• Focus on Content
• Focus on Genre

• “…while often treated as historically evolving movements, it would be wrong to see each theory growing out of and replacing the last. They are more accurately seen as complementary and overlapping perspectives, representing potentially compatible means of understanding the complex reality of writing. It is helpful therefore to understand these theories as curriculum options, each organizing L2 writing teaching around a different focus (p. 2).”

• Exploring the Approaches: Click the link to explore how the six approaches work, their strengths, and limitations:

• Group Worksheet: CLICK HERE

• Closing Quote: The following quote illustrates how these six approaches to writing instruction are complementary.

• “While every act of writing is in a sense both personal and individual, it is also interactional and social, expressing a culturally recognized purpose, reflecting a particular kind of relationship, and acknowledging an engagement in a given community (p. 27).”

• Your Thoughts: Now that you have explored the six approaches in detail, discuss the following questions.

• Which of the six approaches have you experienced as a student in high school and at ULACIT?

• Which of the six seem particularly relevant to the way you teacher or might teach in the future? Why?

Task 3: Narrative Frames

Let's finish today's class by previewing your creation assignment for this week.

• Worksheet: CLICK HERE
• Sample Narrative Frames for Academic Writing: CLICK HERE

References: 

Hyland, K. (2003). Second Language Writing. Cambridge University Press.