Topic: Developing Writing Skills
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General objectives:
 Trainees will be able to give a lesson in
developing writing skills.
 Trainees will be able to integrate writing
with listening, speaking and reading.
Lesson One
Giving a Lesson in Developing Reading Skills
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Pre-task activities
Step One: elicit kinds and reasons of real-life
writing.
Step Two: elicit the difference between spoken
and written text.
Step Three: discuss the skills of writing.
Step Four: suggested activities in developing
writing skills.
Step Five: tips in design a writing task.
While-task activities
Step Six: trainees giving lessons in developing
reading skills.
Post-task activities
Step Eight: trainees evaluate the lessons.
 What
do we write?
 Why do we write?
The differences between
spoken and written texts
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Written language is complex at the level of
clause while spoken language is complex in
the way clauses are linked together
 Written language is also reinforced by the
tendency of create nouns from verbs
 Writing is often decontextualised
Two Versions of a Texts
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The use of this method of control unquestionably
leads to safer and faster trains running in the most
adverse weather conditions
 You can control the trains this way
and if you do that
you can be quite sure
that they’ll be able to run more safely and more
quickly
than they would otherwise
no matter how bad the weather gets
Verbs to Nouns
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Spoken
Good writers reflect on what they write
Written
Reflection is a characteristic of good writers
Skills of writing
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Ability to put sounds down on graphic form
according to the conventional sound-spelling
rules.
 Ability to spell English words correctly, including
using correct punctuation and capitalization.
 Ability to do writing practice, such as dictation,
grammar exercises, constructing dialogues
according to the model, simple translation
exercises.
 Ability to write short compositions, including
functional writing skills, such as writing simple
letters, taking notes, writing outlines and
summaries.
Major types of writing
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1. Explanation and analysis
(a) a process
(b) an opinion or point of view
(c) event(s) and phenomena
(d) instructions and directions
2. Argument
(a) persuasion
(b) refutation
(c) examining both sides of a point
3. Description and summary
(a) a thing
(b) a person
(c) a place
(d) an event
(e) concepts
4. Narration
(a) a series of events; a report
(b) biography or autobiography
(c) historical events
(d) fiction or nonfiction
How do we design writing
tasks
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Product and process
Information gap
Recursive activity involving revision of successive
drafts
Three-stage process: pre-writing,writing, revision
Interesting
Co-operative
Purpose
Linking different skills
Various
Product-oriented Approach
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Focusing on the end result of the learning process
Students producing texts for teachers to evaluate ,
not to communicate meaningfully with another
person
Classroom activities in which the learner is
engaged in imitating, copying and transforming
models of correct language.
At the level of sentence
Students are passive
Individual work
Quality rather than quantity
Process-oriented Approach
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Focusing on the various classroom activities
which promote the development of skilled
language use
At the discourse level
Focusing on quantity rather than quality
Collaborative group work between learners as a
way of enhancing motivation and developing
positive attitudes towards writing.
Linking with other skills
Writing Activities
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Written practice
Written communicative activities
Written Practice
Sentence writing
Parallel writing
Cohesion and coherence
Oral composition
Sentence writing
(a) Sentence completion:look at a picture
and then complete the sentences.
The _____is on the shell above the stereo.
(b) What are they doing?
Write four sentences about what the
people in the picture are doing.
(c) Time clauses: write four sentences using
‘after’, ‘before’and ‘while’
Parallel writing
(1) Read the symbols and their meanings
Good hotel
Simple hotel
Tel. number
City centre
Time of opening
bedroom
Central heating
B
breakfast
lunch
dinner
shower
bathroom
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Swimming
pool
Parallel writing
2. Here is the entry for the hotel Concorde
Good hotel
dinner
Tel. number8866
City centre
All year
40
Central heating
B
7---9
11---3
15
25
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Parallel writing
The Hotel Concorde in Paris is a good hotel.
The telephone number is 8866. It is in the
city centre. The hotel is open all year, and
there are forty bedrooms .There is central
heating in the hotel. Breakfast is from seven
to nine. Lunch is from eleven to three, and
dinner is from eight until eleven.There are
twenty-five bathrooms and fifteen showers.
There is also a swimming pool in the hotel.
Parallel writing
3, Read these symbols and describe the
hotels in the same way
7---9
Simple hotel
4578
City centre
All year
200
B
6---10
200
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Swimming
pool
Cohesion and coherence
(a)
1.
2.
3.
Join the following pairs of sentences using
‘and’ or ‘but’
Concorde is an ideal way to travel.
Concorde is expensive.
Concorde is fast. Concorde is comfortable.
Travellers like Concorde. People living
near airports don’t like Concorde
Written Communicative
Activities
Relaying instructions
Exchanging letters
Writing games
Fluency writing
Story construction
Writing reports and advertisements
Relaying Instructions
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
Making models
Giving direction
Writing commands
Writing message
Exchanging Letters
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Inviting
 The complaining customers
 The job application
Writing Games
(a)
(b)
Describe people and identify(guess people)
Describe events and identify
Fluency Writing
(a) The picture story
Students are given a series of pictures just as they were
for oral composition. They are given a time limit and
told to write as much as they can about the pictures.
Stage 1 Students are told that they are going to do some free
writing, and that the objective is to write as much as they
can within a certain time limit.
Stage 2 Students are shown a picture sequence and told to
write about it.
Stage 3 When the time limit expires the teacher stops the
students and collects the work.
Story construction
Stage 1 Students are put into groups of six.
Stage 2 Each member of the group is given a letter (A-F).
Stage 3 Each group is given one of the pictures from the sequence . All the
members of the group should write two sentences about their picture
together, using past tenses. Each member of the group now has the
same two sentences.
Stage 4 The teacher now collects the four pictures, and re-forms groups so
that all the A’s are together, all the B’s and so on. The new groups
must now put their sentences together to form a coherent story. They
should be reminded that they will probably have to make changes
from the original sentences, especially in terms of tense and the use
of cohesive devices ,etc.
Stage 5 The groups now read out their stories and the class compares them.
In the event of any confusion the teacher can show the original
picture sequence.
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Writing reports and advertisements
(a)The news broadcast
Stage 1 The teacher asks all the students in the class to write two news
items on a piece of paper.
Stage 2 The teacher then collects all the pieces of paper and forms the
class into small groups.
Stage 3 The teacher then distributes the pieces of paper equally between
the groups in no special order. The students are asked to combine
the items to make up a complete news broadcast.
Stage 4 Each group then reads its broadcast to the rest of the class. Ideally,
of course, each group could record their broadcast to make it more
realistic.
Writing reports and advertisements
(b)The advertisement
Stage 1 The class discusses what makes a successful
advertisement.
Stage 2 The class is divided into groups. They are told that
their task is to select a product and write an
advertisement for it which will appear in a magazine.
Stage 3 When they have completed their advertisements they
can pass them round the class. Alternatively they can be
given a period of time to design the artwork for their text.
The advertisements can then be pinned to the class
notice board.