Teaching wriitten speech during the basic course

     The plan 

Introduction

Chapter 1. Teaching writing as a type of communication

Part 1. Skill building and the process approach to writing

Part 2. Main techniques for getting started writing process

Part 3. Teaching writing techniques

Chapter 2. Teaching creative writing techniques

Part 1. The methods of developing creative writing skills

Part 2. Activities for teaching creative writing techniques

Conclusion

The list of used literature 

 

      General characteristics of the work 

     The actuality of the work. In recent years language researchers and practitioners have shifted their focus from developing individual linguistic skills to the use of language to achieve the speaker's objectives. This new area of focus, known as communicative competence, leads language teachers to seek task-oriented activities that engage their students in creative language use. In the process of learning English as a foreign language, writing is considered as one of the most essential skills. In addition to being a communicative skill of vital importance, it is a skill which enables the learner to plan and rethink the communication process. Therefore, teaching writing skills should be taught gradually starting from instrumental skill to content-based writing. Teaching writing should be started from beginning level. Most school textbooks are focused on teaching writing separately without integration of other skills. In other words, our qualification work pursues as its major aim to help foreign students improve their writing skills with the integration of other skills from the beginning level. The significance of our work can be proved that we tried to find optional methods of improving writing skills from the beginning level and we applied them in practice.

     The degree of studiedness. Teaching writing is a common theme among most researchers who worked in the sphere of language learning and methodology.

     The tasks and objectives of the work. Having based upon the actuality of the theme we are able to formulate the general goals of our qualification work.

     a) To study, analyze, and sum up the modern methods of teaching writing;

     b) To analyze the major results achieved in the studied field;

     c) To prove the idea of importance of improving students’ writing skills;

     d) To analyze school textbooks and work out a series of activities for improving students’ writing skills.

     The methods of the research. The main methods for compiling our work are the method of analysis and the method of research. In our work, we analyzed school textbooks and added some new activities which we considered suitable for teaching and improving students’ writing skills.

     The methodological foundation of the work. In our research we used the ideas of Uzbek, Russian and foreign methodologies who worked in the sphere of foreign language teaching methodology and language learning. We addressed to works of J. Jalolov, G. Rogova, Spack.R, G. L. Rico, J. Arnold, M. Boden and others for theoretical part of our work. In practical part of our work we appealed to school textbooks “Fly High” 5 and 7.

     The novelty and practical importance of the work. The novelty of this research work is to find information about how to improve students’ writing skills, analyzing school textbooks and applying found ideas into the lessons appropriately. This theme has been worked out by many scientists and researchers before but from the point of analyzing Uzbek school textbooks and creating a series of writing tasks in those textbooks hasn’t been done yet. Also, we consider the idea of approbating new writing materials on English language lessons during our pedagogical practice is also one part of the novelty of our work. The present work might find a good way of implying in the following spheres:

     1. In High Schools and scientific circles of language teaching methodology it can be successfully used by teachers and philologists as modern material for writing research works dealing with improving writing skills.

     2. It can be used by teachers of schools, lyceums and colleges by teachers of English as a practical manual for teaching writing.

     3. It can be useful for everyone who wants to enlarge his/her knowledge in English.

     The structure of the work. Content of the work. The present qualification work consists of four parts: introduction, the main part, conclusion and bibliography. Within the introduction part, there is given a brief description of our qualification work where we described its actuality, practical significance, and fields of amplification, and described the role of writing skills in learning English. The main part of the qualification work includes several items. There we discussed issues such as skill building and the process approach to writing, main techniques for getting started writing process and teaching writing techniques. In the second chapter (practice part) of main part we described different types writing activities and included worksheets. In the conclusion part our qualification work we tried to draw some results from the scientific investigations made within the main part of the qualification work. In bibliography part we mentioned more than 20 sources which were used while compiling the present work. It includes linguistic books and articles dealing with the theme, a number of used encyclopedias, textbooks and some internet sources. 

 

      Chapter 1. Teaching writing as a type of communication 

     Part 1. Skill building and the process approach to writing 

     Within the communicative framework of language teaching, the skill of writing enjoys special status—it is via writing that a person can communicate a variety of messages to a close or distant, known or unknown reader or readers. Such communication is extremely important in the modern world, whether the interaction takes the form of traditional paper-and-pencil writing or the most ad- vanced electronic mail. Writing as a communicative activity needs to be encouraged and nurtured during the language learner's course of study, and this work will attempt to deal the early stages of EFL writing. The view of writing as an act of communication suggests an interactive process which takes place between the writer and the reader via the text.1 Such an approach places value on the goal of writing as well as on the perceived reader audience. Even if we are concerned with writing at the beginning level, these two aspects of the act of writing are vital importance; in setting writing tasks the teacher should encourage students to define, for themselves, the message they want to send and the audience who will receive it.

     The writing process, in comparison to spoken interaction, imposes greater demands on the text, since written interaction lacks immediate feedback as a guide. The writer has to anticipate the reader's reactions and produce a text which will adhere to Grice's (1975) cooperative principle. According to this principle, the writer is obligated (by mutual cooperation) to try to write a clear, relevant, truthful, informative, interesting, and memorable text. The reader, on the otherhand, will interpret the text with due regard to the writer's presumed intention if the necessary clues are available in the text. Linguistic accuracy, clarity of presentation, organization of ideas are all crucial in the efficacy of the communicative act, since they supply the clues for interpretation. Accordingly, while the global perspective of content organization needs to be focused on and given appropriate attention, it is also most important to present a product which does not suffer from illegible writing. Writing is, in a very sense, a mirror image of reading. Both are interactive. Readers decode what writers encode. Both draw upon schemata. The reader brings prior knowledge to the comprehension of a text; the writer draws upon similar knowledge in composing a text.

     Wilga Rivers1 makes the distinction between notation, or writing practice, and expressive writing, or composition. Notation ranges from mere copying to the construction of simple sentences describing facts or representing typical, uncomplicated speech. Expressive writing or composition involves the development of ideas either of a practical or a creative nature. Pedagogically, there is considerably more control in the development of notational skills than in more expressive types of writing. The expectation is that the EFL student will progress through several stages of writing practice to the early stages of creative composition. This development from control to creativity continues a line drawn throughout this manual in the chapters on dialogues, oral exercises, and reading comprehension.

     The first activities are skill building exercises taking the learners from the very beginning to the mid-intermediate proficiency level. Here the focus is on structural detail and accuracy in the use of the written language. Learners are presented with textual segments, clues, and models of typical prose to assist them as they attempt to rearrange words or sentences, complete partially written texts, and imitate or modify entire paragraphs. In skill building exercises the progression is from simple to more complex structures, a so-called bottom up approach. The second part of the chapter, which is meant for intermediate and advanced learners, shifts the focus from the mechanical manipulation of structure to the more creative activities of process writing.

     The process approach to writing is based upon a set of principles basically different from those underlying skill building. Where skill building exercises move from simple to complex structures, process writing, which is a top down model, starts with a concept or theme and works down to the grammatical and semantic units. In the process approach each learner completes a writing assignment in a group, exchanging ideas with other members of the group and receiving editorial help at various stages of composition. When conducted properly, process writing is a prime example of cooperative learning.

     The process approach, with its stress on group interaction, is a direct offshoot of communicative language learning, just as pattern practice was a product of the audio-lingual method. For many years preoccupation with structural accuracy allowed little room for the development of cognitive strategies in creative writing. Students, left to their own resources, were often at a loss as to how to formulate ideas on a topic or theme. Process writing provides for the formulation of ideas and plans through learner cooperation, Rivers eliminating much of the isolation, frustration, and uncertainty encountered in writing programs of the past.

     Recent studies have attempted to redirect the process approach with its stress on the general mechanics of creative composition to training in writing for specific content areas. The reason for this is a fear that process writing does not prepare students adequately for an academic career. In a content-based approach students develop writing skills within specific academic disciplines so that they will be able to compose essays and reports using the specialized vocabulary and structures peculiar to these disciplines. Usually offered at the university level, such courses are often adjuncts to academic courses, such as economics, history, or physics. Sometimes they are taught by teams composed of an EFL/ESL teacher and an instructor from the specific content area. In many respects, the content-based approach to writing has a lot in common with English for Special Purposes (ESP) courses, which are geared to developing oral and written proficiency in specific occupational fields.

     In a similar reaction to process writing, other researchers have suggested that teachers of writing classes concentrate on what is expected in the American academic community.1 Advocates of what has come to be known as the audience-based approach mean to train students in the type of writing that will be expected of them at a university or college. Valid as they are, neither content- nor audience-based approaches to writing lie within the scope of this handbook, which is meant to assist instructors in teaching "general English." The range of topics and fields to which students might direct their knowledge of the language is very wide, ranging from critical appraisals of literature at one end of the scale, to issuing written staff orders for the daily management of a hotel at the other. Basic fluency can always be channeled into specific directions at a later date, particularly through the acquisition of specialized vocabulary. Skill building exercises have been divided into three categories as follows:

     I. Constructing Sentences from Words and Phrases;

     II. Constructing Paragraphs from Words, Phrases, and Sentences;

     III. Constructing Paragraphs from Original Material.

     The purpose throughout is to train the learners to think in logical sequences and to draw upon what they know of the target language in producing limited but meaningful prose.

     I Constructing Sentences from Words and Phrases. At this stage the learner is engaged in the rudiments of writing practice as a means of reinforcing the command of basic syntactic structures. Intended for use with beginning level students, the exercises below are strictly controlled. In some cases the components of the structures are provided in random sequence, which the student is to arrange correctly. In others, essential elements of the sentence are omitted, and the student is to supply them. Both types of exercises involve copying, since the student should write out all completed sentences scattered elements provide practice in building both semantic and grammatical units.

     1. | she intends | a teacher | Mary is planning to go | to become | to the university | because 2. | the village | the mountain | after | were | difficult climb | Anna, Bob, and Ralph their | when | very tired | up | they reached | Adding missing items to incomplete sentences encourages learners to draw upon or enlarge their repertory of vocabulary items. Learners complete the sentences below by putting the correct word in the blanks. In some slots more than one answer may be appropriate.

     1. Mary _____ very happy______ see Harry _______ he returned ______his trip. ______ he _______ been away for _______ time.

     2. _____ you like ______ go fishing _______ in _______ morning _______ the sun comes______?

     II. Constructing paragraphs from words, phrases, and sentences.

     And this is what truly distinguishes the spoken from written language. People do not normally speak in paragraphs. The spontaneous give and take of conservations is composed of elements that are seldom longer than sentences or sentence fragments. A short series of logically connected sentences may be uttered ina conversation, but carefully structured paragraph belongs to writing.

     This type of writing exercises are meant to train learners first, to think logically in arranging words, phrases, and sentences in their proper order and second, to use limited amount of imagination and creativity in completing or composing sentences as part of paragraphs which have already been defined or described in some way. The tasks in section A do not require original contributions in the target language by the students. The tasks in section B do.

     Section A. Constructing paragraphs from material provided in full.

     Rearranging Full Sentences. Arrange the six sentences below in correct logical order to form a unified paragraph by placing a number in the blank to indicate the correct sequence.

     ____ After that they walked over to see the animals.

     ____ They told some funny jokes and did lots of tricks.

     ____ Last week, Harry took Mary to the circus.

     ____ Harry said there would be many different kinds, both fierce and friendly.

     ____ First, they went to see the clowns.

     ____ Mary thought they were interesting, but she preferred the clowns.

     Section B. Constructing paragraphs from incomplete text. Here, as in the section above, Constructing Paragraphs from Material Provided in Full, learners are asked to draw upon their vocabulary resources. But at this point they are required to supply mainly lexical rather than grammatical forms as well as longer, more complicated structures. In the two exercises below learners fill in the blanks with words or larger constructions to form a logical and consistent paragraph. There is more than one possible solution to these exercises.

     Supplying Missing Words or phrases.

     Harry was carrying a large ________ in his with a lot of fruit in it. His _______, Tom, was carrying _________ too, but there wasn't any in it. There was just ________

     Harry took a look at Tom's _________ and started to laugh. "I couldn't find any _______ this year," he ________ . "So I had to buy________ instead. But you were clever, Tom. Where did you find that _______?"

     III. Constructing paragraphs from models. The activities presented here are based upon specimens of writing which serve as models for the iss. The exercises have two facets. First, they require that the learners understand the structure as well the content of the model paragraphs. Second, they direct the learners to imitate certain aspects of the structure and content of the model while making changes in others. In this way both reinforcement and activity are brought into play. The changes called for by these exercises may be purely grammatical, or they may involve vocabulary items of varying length and complexity. The goal, in all cases, is to achieve a certain degree of flexibility in the usage of individual elements while retaining a clear picture of the message and purpose of ae paragraph as a whole. The models used in this section are restricted to narratives. Learners rewrite the model paragraph below according to the instructions given in each exercise. As many altered compositions as time allows are read to the class, at which time corrections or improvements will be suggested. Model

     It is a typical winter day, and Mr. Preston is taking a walk downtown. Even though the sun is shining brightly, it is bitterly cold, with a sharp wind. As he is walking along a side street, the wind suddenly blows his hat off his head and onto the roof of a nearby house. Mr. Preston is at first surprised and then quite angry. He fears that he has lost the hat forever because he is simply too old to climb houses. Since he is a reasonable man, however, he decides to forget the entire affair. Just as he is starting off again, another gust of wind blows the hat off the roof, and it lands at his feet. As he is bending over to pick it up, Mr. Preston thinks to himself, "I wish I were as lucky with things in general as I have been today with the wind."

     A.Grammatical changes. 1. Gender The model paragraph is written about Mr. Preston. Change Mr. to Mrs. and make all other necessary alterations throughout the paragraph. 2. Tense The model paragraph is written as if the author were describing an event that is taking place at this moment. Rewrite the paragraph as if the action took place yesterday.

     B.Vocabulary changes. 1. Substitution from a List . All of the items in the following list can be used as substitutes for items in the model paragraph. Take each item in the list and use it as a substitute for an item in the original. Make any other changes in the paragraph which are necessitated by the substitutes. The substitutes will be given in the list. 2. Free substitution. Learners rewrite the paragraph making any changes they wish. These may be in the nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositional phrases, or any other constructions. Substantial additions or deletions should not be attempted; the general frame of the original should be maintained.

     IV. Constructing paragraphs from cues. At this stage the students are expected to compose structured prose either with the direct aid of notes or with the indirect assistance of partial paragraphs which they are to complete. The first group of exercises under A below offers the students either a portion of completed prose as a guideline or a set of notes as an additional aid. The second group under В consists of completed sentences or short paragraphs upon which the students are expected to build. Students compose paragraphs using the cues and following the instructions provided for each exercise in sections A and В below. Completed work will be submitted to the entire class for evaluation and possible improvement.

     A. Models and notes as cues. In this exercise the first paragraph is given in its entirety as a major cue. Write a second paragraph, using the notes provided.

     Friday morning Bill Brown walked over to the university library to pick up some books. His father, who was a professor of English literature, needed them for a seminar he was giving that afternoon. On his way home Bill decided to stop and visit his good friends, Phil and Alice Cooper, whom he had not seen in a long time. The three of them sat down to talk, and after a while, Alice asked Bill if would like to join them for lunch. Naturally, Bill was delighted.

     (lunch delicious; three friends sit down; play cards; forget time; two hours later; realize the time; run home; father angry; students happy; no seminar)