Matakuliah
Tahun
: G0444 / MATERIAL DESIGN and TESTING
: 2009
Pertemuan 4
WRITING ACTIVITIES: FUN?
QUESTIONS TO PONDER
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Do you think writing is fun? Why or why not?
What makes writing (in general) difficult?
What makes writing in English difficult for our students?
What do people write? List down as many real writing activities as
you can think of!
• Why do people write?/ What makes people write?
• Think of your own writing experience (be it in English or Indonesian).
When was the last time you had to write something? What did you
write? What made you write it? What did you do before you write it?
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Bina Nusantara
WHAT MAKES WRITING DIFFICULT?
Physically
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Limited time given to reflect on what to write and to organize ideas
Limited or no exposure to authentic writing
Intellectually
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Insufficient information about the topic to write
Limited vocabulary
Limited knowledge of related grammar
Unclear purpose of writing
Emotionally
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Absence of mood for writing
Absence of need for writing
Absence of pleasant writing atmosphere
Bina Nusantara
FACTS ABOUT WRITING
1. Writing is essentially a reflective activity that requires enough time to think
about the specific topic and to analyze and classify any background
knowledge.
2. Writers need suitable language to structure these ideas in the form of a
coherent discourse.
3. Even professional writers must make plans, use notes, reflect on issues,
and make several rough drafts before completing their word.
4. Teachers need to provide pre-writing activities as prompts to get students to
write.
5. The aim of these activities is to give learners the necessary input before
they write.
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Adapted from “Dynamics of Writing” by Anima Chkraverty and Kripa K
Gautum, English Teaching Forum, July 2000.
Bina Nusantara
A writing
lesson
• Pre-teaching
– Get them interested in the
topic
– Get them ready to write
• Teaching
– Relevant background
knowledge
– Necessary language
– Sample writing
– Process
• Post-teaching
– Guide them through the
process
– Let them try in stages
• Writing Tasks
– Choose interesting topics
– Provide prompts
– Give them sufficient time to
reflect and think before writing
Why do people write?
Purpose
Types
• To describe
Description
• To tell a story
Narration
• To persuade/
convince
Argumentation/P
ersuasion
• To give
explanation
Exposition
Bina Nusantara
Controlled Writing Activities
A. Gap – filling
Listen to the teacher, then write out the complete sentences.
Paper……………………wood. It ………………….. The Chinese in
…………..
B. Re – ordering words
Write the sentences correctly.
We/six o’clock/and/tea/drink/get up/at.
Then/the patients/wake/go/and/the wards/we/round.
Sometimes/medicines/injections/them/we/or/give.
C. Substitution
Write a true sentence like this about yourself.
Samir enjoys playing football and reading adventure stories.
D. Correct the facts
Re-write the sentences so that they match the picture.
At the market, I saw an old woman sitting in a chair.
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She was selling eggs. It was raining.
Problems of free writing :
1. Many students would probably find it quite difficult, and make
many mistakes. If so, they would find the task frustrating and
probably not learn very much from it.
2. Students would probably approach the task in different ways, and
produce a wide variety of different paragraphs. So the only way to
correct their work would be individually, book by book; this would be
very time-consuming for the teacher.
As soon as they have mastered basic skills of sentence writing,
students need to progress beyond very controlled writing exercises to
freer paragraph writing.
However, students will make this transition more easily and learn more
if we can guide their writing. There are two main ways of doing this :
- By giving a short text as a model.
10 writing
– By doing oral preparation for the
Writing based on a text
Examples of how a text can be used as a model for writing
- Students read a short text, and perhaps study
particular features of it (e.g. the way sentences are
joined, the use of verb tenses, the use of the passive).
They then write a paragraph which is similar, but
involves some changes.
- Examples of texts that could be used: students read a
paragraph about a student’s day, then write about their
own day; students read a description of a car, then write
descriptions of other cars from notes; students read a
description of a room, then write a description of a
another room shown in a picture
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Discuss what difficulties students might have in doing the
exercises, and what preparation might be necessary:
- The model text might be too limiting, especially if the students’ own
town or village has quite different features. This may lead students
either to follow the text too closely (and so write something which
sounds unnatural) or to move away from it too much ( and so make
many mistakes ). If all the students are writing about the same town,
it would help to go through the exercise orally with the class first,
and ask students to suggest what to include in the description.
- The main problem with this kind of exercise is finding a suitable
text. It is sometimes possible to adapt a text from the textbook – this
can be written on the board before the lesson, or copied onto
worksheets.
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Oral Preparation
Another way of guiding paragraph writing is to do oral
preparation beforehand with the whole class; the students
make suggestions, and the teacher builds up an outline or
a list of key expressions on the board. The students then
use this as a basis for their writing.
Advantages of this approach :
• It is flexible : it can be done in different ways according to the
interests and ability of the class.
• Ideas about what to write come from the students themselves; this
makes the activity much more interesting and involves the class
more
• It does not require specially – prepared texts or other material.
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