TOPIC 5 : BUILDING

THE WRITING HABIT

Building confidence & enthusiasm

Instant writing

Collaborative

Writing to each other

What to do with habit-building writing

 BUILDING CONFIDENCE & ENTHUSIASM

Unwillingness may derive from :

Students anxieties about their handwriting, spelling, or ability to

construct sentences and paragraphs.

They rarely write even in their own language, and so the activity
feels alien.

Writing does not interest some students.

Writing Habit :

Is making students feel comfortable as writers in English and so

gaining their willing participation in more creative activities.

Its involves choosing the right kinds of activity with appropriate

levels of challenge and providing them with enough language and
information to allow them to complete writing tasks successfully.

Choosing writing tasks and activities :

Should be an engaging writing task

Should cater for pupils learning styles.

1.
2.
3.
4.

Students needs :
Information & task information
Language
Ideas
Patterns & schemes

1.

INFORMATION & TASK INFROMATION

Pupils need to have the necessary information to complete the

task.

They have to understand clearly the what they need to do and

they also have to be clear about the topic details.

2.

LANGUAGE

If pupils need a specific language ability to complete a writing

task, we need to help them by offering phrases, parts of
sentences or words.

3.

IDEAS

Teachers to suggest ideas to help students when they get

stuck.

One of the skills of a good writing is to be able to throw out

suggestions without crowding out the individual pupils with
too much of oppressive detail.

Teachers have to be aware of which pupils need more or less

help and stimulation.

4.

PATTERNS & SCHEMES

One way of helping students to write is to give them a

pattern or a scheme to follow.

When pupils are given a frame to write in, it does offer the
writers support.

 INSTANT WRITING

Pupils are asked to write on the spot without much in the way of preparation
or warning.

It can be used whenever the teacher feels it is appropriate.

Is one way of getting pupils to write quickly and write things that mean
something to them personally.

Activities of instant writing :

1.

Sentence writing

Pupils are asked to write sentences either as language reinforcement or in

preparation for a forthcoming activity.

Dictating sentences for completion

Getting students to write creatively is to dictate part of a sentence which they

have to complete themselves.

Writing sentences

Students can be asked to write two or three sentences about a certain topic.

The weather forecast

The teacher asks pupils to write about themselves and their day as if they
were writing a weather forecast.

2.

USING MUSIC

Is an effective way to stimulate a writing activity since it often provokes strong feelings
and ideas.

Best music for writing purposes is instrumental as we do not want the pupils to be
distracted by listening out for words.

Words

Play a piece of music and have students write down any words that come into their heads
as they listen.

What is the composer describing?

Pupils are told that in the piece of music they are about to hear, the composer is trying to
describe something specific.

As they listen to the music, they should write down whatever they heard.

Film scores

Pupils listen to a piece of music and then create the opening scenes for a film that the
music suggests to them.

They should describe the scenes before the dialogue starts.

How does it make me feel?

Teachers can play students music excerpts and get them to write their reactions as they
listen.

Musical stories

Pupils can write stories on the basis of music they listen to.

Teacher can dictate the first line of the story and asks the pupils continue the story.

The teacher tells students to turn their pieces of paper over and then dictates the same
sentences again.

3.

USING PICTURES

Pictures are often used to present situations for grammar and vocabulary work.

Describing pictures

Getting pupils to write about pictures is simply to ask them to write a description of
one.

Can give a complex pictures and a time limit and ask the pupils to write quickly to get
down as much information as they can.

Suspects and objects

Give pupils a variety of pictures and ask them to write about only one of them.

Then ask the pupils to give their descriptions to another pupil who has to identify the
picture that is being described.

Write the postcard

Give the pupils postcard scenes and then ask them to write the postcard which they
would expect to write to an English-speaking friend.

Portraits

Students can write a letter to a portraits, asking the character questions about his or
her life.

Story tasks

Pictures are really useful ways to prompt pupils into writing stories.

4.

WRITING POEMS

Allows pupils to express themselves.

Something really meaningful and powerful can be written in a much shorter space and
time.

Acrostics poems/Alphabet poems

An acrostic poem is one where the first letters of each line, when read downwards, form a
word.

Pupils can be given any numbers of words to write acrostic poem.

Stem/frame poems

Teachers give pupils sentence or phrase stems to complete and once completed, ask
them to make it a poem.

Metaphor generators

Allow the pupils to write about things using metaphor.

By being given the framework for the poem, it is probable that they will be able to produce
such poems fairly, quickly and then exhibit their work.

Model poems

Pupils can imitate others work.

Pupils quickly understand a model and then follow it by producing similarly formed writing
of their own.

 COLLABORATIVE WRITING

Successful collaborative writing allows pupils to learn from each other.

It gives each member of the collaboration access to others minds and

knowledge.

1.

USING THE BOARD

One way of making collaborative writing successful is to have the pupils

write on the board.

Sentence by sentence

A pupil go to the board and the rest of class can help by offering
suggestions, corrections or alternatives.

Dictogloss

Students re-create text or story that the teachers reads to them.

Get them to analyse the difference between their writing recreations and
the original.

2.

WRITING IN GROUPS AND PAIRS

Rewriting sentences

Pupils are presented with a stereotypical statement and asked to amend it

to reflect the opinions of the group.

First lines /last lines

Pupils are given either the first line of the story.

Directions, rules and instructions

Ask pupils to write instructional text for others to follow.

Story reconstruction

Each pupils are given different piece of a jigsaw and by sharing what they
have seen or heard, they have to resemble the bits into a coherent whole.