Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

TESOL Writing

2.2.4   Writing in TESOL Situations

There are a number of differences between learning to write in mother tongue and learning to write in any other language.  Donn Byrne (1979) discusses the problems involved and how they are related to the tasks we assign to the learners.

a.         Types of Tasks

The learners when they learn to write in their – mother – tongue, usually have a command of the spoken language.  Though they have to learn to form the letters and so on and very few of them really become proficient in writing, they still have the advantage of having a fairly good knowledge of the language.  They might also have been exposed to the written form through having been read to in their mother – tongue.  In a foreign or second language classroom the learners have very little knowledge at their disposal.  At the same time they are more mature than they were when they learnt to write in their mother – tongue.  They are also conscious of the limitations which the language imposes on the expression of their ideas.

According to Donn Byrne (1979) it is important to consider the learners’ problem of having more ideas than what they can successfully express.

“To resolve this problem it will be necessary to strike some sort of balance which prevents them from going beyond their linguistic attainment in the foreign language and provides them with writing activities which satisfy them on an intellectual level.”     (Donn Byrne, 79:6)

As Donn Byrne rightly points out, in a classroom situation writing gets relegated to the level of exercises partly because it is treated as a compendium to the lesson rather than as a worthwhile learning activity.  He offers the following guidelines for a writing programme :

$              The learners have to be taught how to write.

$              The learners have to be exposed to the written form of the language and to appropriate varieties.

$              The learners have to be shown how writing functions as a system of communication.

$              The learners have to be taught how to write texts - that is, they need to practise the devices of written language and see the purpose of what they are writing .

$              The learners have to be taught how to write different kinds of tests.

$              The learners have to be set realistic writing tasks.

$              The learners have to be supported in their writing tasks.

$              The learners’ efforts need to be viewed sympathetically.

The main activities suggested by Donn Byrne for the early stages are dialogue writing and letter – writing.  According to him letter – writing has many advantages and it fulfils a main purpose of teaching writing.  He also discusses a number of meaningful copying activities and free writing activities, which can be easily carried out in class so as to make the learners understand that

“..... effective communication can take place through the medium of writing.”  (Donn Byrne, 79:49)

It is important to select suitable tasks which create a need to communicate through the medium of writing.  But selecting the tasks alone is not enough to develop the writing skill of the learners.  It is also necessary to think of effective procedures which help the learners to attempt the tasks with confidence and learn to write to the best of their ability.  Especially the variety of procedures that can be used effectively in TESOL situations need to be discussed.

b.         Variety of Procedures

Different approaches employ various procedures to teach writing.  For example, sentence practice, grammar, punctuation and spelling or vocabulary may be taught in some instructions.  Some others may involve the learning of rules and the correction of incorrect sentence.  According to D’ Hare (1973) practice in sentence combining with or without grammar instruction increases the stylistic maturity of many learners and also increases the scores they receive in tests of composition.  But according to Alley (1976) instruction in grammar separated from the actual writing, revision and editing of learners compositions has little effect on writing performance.

According to Donn Byrne (1979) the graphalogical resources orthography, punctuation and other devices used to convey patterns of meaning – should  be assessed in terms of their value as part of the resources of the written form of the language and their relative importance in a writing programme.  He emphasises on the communicative value of the written text and hence is against adopting a normative attitude towards these features.  Even punctuation should not be taught mechanically, as something to be added after the writing task is completed.  Learners should realise the importance of the punctuation mark as an essential part of the written system.  Hence instead of giving the learners rigid rules it would be better to encourage them to consider the effect on the reader if, for example, sentence or paragraph boundaries are not marked.  This way the communicative value of punctuation can be demonstrated.

Another procedure of writing instruction emphasises the practice of paragraph structures or essay structures following a particular format.  The format could be, cause effect, classification, narration etc.  Recent approaches suggest that learners should study the rhetorical devices, which are essential to produce a text in which the sentences are organised into a coherent whole, in such a way that they fulfil the writers’ communicative purpose.  The devices may be logical, grammatical or lexical.  Logical devices include words or phrases, which indicate meaning relationships between or within sentences.  The rhetorical devices help the writer organise his ideas properly so that the reader is able to follow him from one sentence to another.  Even if the learners are familiar with these devices they will still have to learn to use them in writing.  Therefore the writing programme requires an extensive understanding of these resources and considerable practice in using them in appropriate forms of written expression.

To familiarise the learners with the devices, which are needed for effective communication, adequate exposure to the language through the medium of writing is necessary.  True understanding of a text depends on an appreciation of the devices, which the writer has employed in order to convey his meaning through the medium of writing.  Hence Donn Byrne (1979) suggests exposure to good models of written work as the first step to teach writing.  According to him this exposure is as important as listening is to speech.  He suggests that learners should be made to understand that writing has a communicative purpose.  This understanding will come to them when they learn to find out the resources of the written language that are used to get the message across.

A similar analysis of written work used to be carried out with the help of classical texts as far back as 4th century BC (See 2.2.3. a).  But the type of analysis suggested by Donn Byrne is slightly different.  The classical analysis looked into the various rhetorical effects, which went into the making of an excellent oratory. The modern analysis tries to find out what is the message conveyed, to whom is it addressed, and how the contact with the reader is established and maintained.

2.2.5   Stages of Instruction

Though there has been a lot of controversy about how writing should be taught, instructions in writing include four stages, generally.

a.         Pre-writing

b.         Composition

c.         Revising

d.         Editing

Pre-writing includes all the activities which precede the actual writing of the first draft of a composition.  Composing includes all the activities related to the production of the draft.  Revising includes the activities involved in reordering or modifying a composition between the first and the final draft.  Editing includes the activities concerned with the production of a final copy.

a.         Pre-writing

Pre-writing is more or less synonymous with invention, being the act of discover of at least two things:

?       What is to be said and

?       The ways by which it might be organised and displayed.

Pre-writing generally refers to mental activities but it may also refer to a number of things like - discussion, outlining and note making.

Teaching pre-writing

A number of pedagogical approaches have been advanced for the teaching of pre-writing.  The most classical is the discussion of arguments and strategies of argument as well as logical analysis of the topic.

Alternative models of topic analysis include problem solving, dramatism and tagmemics (Young, 1976).  All the approaches to teaching pre-writing agree on one point – learners (together with the teacher or separately) should analyse the assignments in terms of three main points: (a) Content, (b) purpose, and (c) the intended or target reader of the composition.  Approaches differ in the importance they give to one of these three aspects of an assignment.  For example, problem-solving approaches stress originally over conventional or appropriate ways of handling the assignments. (See 2.2.3 e).  Some other approaches emphasis the role and the personal involvement of the writer in the assignment as opposed to the analysis of the audience and what will interest the reader ( See 2.2.3.d).

Most of these approaches agree on the point that much work should be done before writing begins. But recent approaches suggest that invention occurs within the act of writing.  For example, Macrorie (1970) discusses an approach wherein learners are allowed to put the pen to paper and let the ideas flow freely.  So their first draft is filled with ideas in the order in which it comes to their mind.  Later it is analysed and revised in order to produce a finished product.

Britten (1975) also supports the importance of “expressive” writing particularly for younger learners.  Expressive writing is defined as writing in which the writer seeks to explore his or her own ideas about a topic with little regard to others as audience.  These approaches have their own merit, but learners with limited knowledge of the language, who have little experience in free writing, find it difficult to express their ideas freely.  Hence a number of attempts have been made to gradually lead the leaner from guided compositions to free writing. These approaches think it important to isolate various difficulties involved in the production of a text and present them gradually in a systematic way,  in the pre-writing stage.

Alexander (1971) devised a scheme where the learners were gradually led to write free compositions in six stages.  He started with the organisation of compound sentences and complex sentences and followed it up with connecting notes and then finally writing notes for free composition.  Moody (1974) discusses the types of writing tasks assigned by teachers who followed the ‘grammar translation method’ or the ‘direct method’.  Here the learners were assigned a task like, ‘My Family’.  They are made to write guided compositions in the beginning.  Later the control was reduced by forcing the learners to make meaningful choices.  The learners’ contribution in these approaches is very slight.

Arapoff (1968) and Lawrence (1975) considered writing as a thinking process. They attempted to construct rhetorical frames for guided writing.  For the most part all these writing activities were very much on the level of exercises, focussing on the paragraph as the unit of expression.  Spencer (1967) also suggests a number of exercises, which gradually lead the learner to writing free compositions.

Having discussed the first stage of writing instruction, in some detail,  we need to look into the other stages like-composition, revising and editing.

b.         Composition

A number of studies have been carried out to understand the various factors involved in composing and their pedagogical implications.  Emig (1971), Graves (1975), Britten (1975), Flower (1979), Hayes (1979) and Lindell (1974) have conducted studies involving learners of various ages as they are engaged in writing a composition.  Most of these studies have either interrupted the composer in the act of writing or have transcribed the composer’s comments while writing.

The results of these studies are as follows:

$               The Composing process is complex.

$               Pre-writing and revision are not necessarily separated in sequence from actual writing.

$               The writer is simultaneously concerned with the content (what is said) and the form of style (how it is said) in the composition.

$               Writing improves if there is feedback during the course of writing rather after it.  

                                              (Zoollner    1969)

A number of factors of composition have been identified and the fact is established that feedback during writing is more effective than correcting the mistakes after the activity is completed.  But the pedagogical means of providing feedback to learners have not been developed.  It is still not clear how much intervention by the teacher is beneficial to learners.  Don Byrne (1979) also suggests that learners should be supported in their writing tasks.  But too much intervention may curb their flow of ideas or spontaneity in free expression. Because of these problems in most cases instruction focuses on pre-writing and revision.

c & d      Revising and Editing

PERC Communications, New York, a communications firm conducts in-house courses on effective writing and speaking for businesses and other associations.

Ms. Reimold, its President, provides guidelines and hints on writing for effective communication.

According to Ms. Reimold (1987)             

“As far as the West is from the East..... so far should the act of writing be from that of editing.  They are distinct, independent activities, performed; it seems, by different halves of the brain.  Writing is putting your thought into words.  Editing is making the verbal expression palatable and understandable to the people who will read it.”  (The Hindu, Focus When you sit down to write May 31 1987)

In his book `Writing with Power` Peter Elbow says that the writer should write his first draft for at least ten minutes without stopping just to separate the producing from the revision process.

Much of the direct instruction in writing in classrooms takes place in revising and editing.  The instruction usually focuses on the following two aspects:

1.   Development and organisation of ideas

2.   Style, form and mechanics

The first part deals with the content of the text while the second it concerned with the language aspect.  The first aspect mainly takes into account what is written while the second aspect looks into how it is written.

Moira Chummed (1986) in his article “Evaluating Composition with large classes”  (ELT Vol. 40 Jan.86) offers a number of suggestions for editing and revising learners’ compositions.  He suggests techniques for dealing with sentence, paragraph and composition level errors, which he has tried out at the secondary school level at Africa.

The process of instruction could be of two types.  In cases where the teacher is in control all the time, whatever is written by the learners is checked by the teacher, suggestions are made for revising the written work.  In some cases learners are asked to work in groups or pairs to discuss whatever is written. They discuss about development and organisations of ideas as well as style, form and mechanics like spelling and punctuation. They help each other in revising and editing the compositions.

The two types of approach for instructions in revising and editing could be fruitfully combined.  Learners could be asked to work in groups to correct each other’s mistakes and the teacher could offer help whenever necessary.  This way the teacher stays in control but does not interfere too much.  It is also better to make the learners aware of the mistakes and how they hinder communication.

Having discussed about the instructions in writing it would be useful to think about the implications that can be drawn for the present study.

 2.2.6     Implications for TESOL Situations

The discussions about the types of themes used from the ancient days to the present, and the types of writing activities suitable to the learners who are non-native speakers of English are helpful in drawing implications for the types of tasks that can be tried out in the present experiment.  The discussions on the various approaches to teaching writing and the variety of procedures that can be adopted in TESOL situations help us draw implications for the teaching of writing.

The following are the implications drawn for material preparation as well as techniques of teaching writing:

1.  $     Learners should be engaged in meaningful writing activities.  They should not be asked to write anything mechanically.

2.  $     Learners  should  be  made  aware  of   the   communicative   purpose   of             writing.  They should be helped to think about the reader and the message they want to convey and choose their language appropriately.

3.  $     A letter given in the textbook could be used as a model (appendix 5).    Learners could work in groups, discuss and decide how to write a reply to this letter.  As suggested by Donn Byrne the linking and sequencing devices could be introduced using this informal letter.  Various other aspects like, the lay out of a letter, modes of address and certain opening and closing formulas could also be discussed.

4.  $     Other writing activities could be selected keeping in mind the composition topics suggested by the syllabuses presently in use in Gujarat    (Appendix 2).

5.  $     In keeping with the discussions undertaken in this chapter, learners could be given a choice as to what they want to write about and how they want to write it.  They need to be shown models of coherent pieces of writing and made aware of the need to have and introduction and conclusion and the need to have an properly organise their sentences and link them so as to write a unified paragraph.

6.  $     An electric approach to the teaching of writing needs to be evolved keeping in mind the needs of the learners in Gujarat.  The present approach used in most of the schools in Gujarat is the fixed product approach (See 2.2.2).  This approach gives importance to specific types of writing  (letter or essay) and emphasises the importance of grammatical accuracy and the mechanics of writing like handwriting, spelling and punctuation.  To make the learners pay more attention to what is appropriate in a given situation, a combination of fixed product, variable product and phase instruction needs to be thought of             (See 2.2.2).

7.  $      Learners could be asked to work in groups, discuss a topic, take notes of what points they want to include in a write up, write individual compositions developing the points they have noted down and then work again in groups for revising and editing their written work.

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