Прядченко
Татьяна Васильевна
Учитель
английского языка
МБОУ АСОШ
№2
My
Philosophy of Teaching Writing
I
remember the times when writing was a step-daughter of foreign language
teaching at secondary school, that is, it was not among the goals in the curriculum.
Writing was not a purpose but only a means of building vocabulary and
consolidating grammar. It was thus focused on students’ manipulating Lexis and
grammar, which was no more than written exercises for “reinforcing language
patterns” through producing “well-formed sentences”. This does not necessarily
lead to writing because “writing is more than a matter of arranging elements in
the best order”. Writing is thinking and communication. Although it cannot be
argued that literacy is very important, the core of the notion of writing is
content and expressiveness. Literacy and expressiveness can be metaphorically
looked at as a new-year tree and decorations for it. One is impossible without
the other.
At
the beginning of my professional life I never thought much about theories, I
just practiced. Sometimes I listened to my intuition, and was right. Even at
the times described above I tried to organize writing “as a way of sharing
personal meanings” using numerous texts as stimuli for students to write about
their own experiences, beliefs, interests, preferences. And it worked! Of
course I didn't have any idea that I followed the principles of “expressivism”,
for example, or any other approach.
Nowadays
writing is deservedly enjoying full rights with all the other skills. For
example, according to the federal component of educational standard, by the end
of the 9th grade a student should be able to describe phenomena, events, give
facts in a personal letter; fill in different forms; give information about
oneself; present results of a project work in a written form. If one looks at
writing through the lenses of the national exam, then only two genres are
demanded: a personal letter and an essay.
A
brief analysis of existing textbooks, recommended by the Ministry of education
for use in Russian schools, shows that there is no elaborated system of
developing the skill under discussion. In our institution we, teachers, have
learnt to write ourselves and to teach our students to write different types of
written texts thanks to piloting OUP textbooks, such as Matrix, Knockout and
others. When at our school we started using these textbooks we got acquainted
with genres, such as descriptions, emails and instant messages, postcards and
letters, narrative stories, reports and magazine interviews, as well as a
variety of exam-style essays. Unfortunately, now we can use them only as
supplementary ones, and this causes some difficulties.
I
have never made a thorough study of the situation with writing at the lessons of
Russian. On the surface it looks as if students often write so-called
expositions and summaries, compositions and essays, text analyses. But very
rarely, if ever, they are taught to write letters, applications, letters of
complaint, explanatory notes, etc. They make reports in different subjects, but
it is hardly possible to observe any systematic instruction how to do this
effectively and successfully. There may be an opportunity for senior students
to fill in this gap if the curriculum suggests certain elective courses (either
in Russian or in English), for example, “How to write Business Correspondence”.
But, on the one hand, such courses can appear if students choose the humanities
as the main subjects at high school. On the other hand, students choose from
the list of suggested courses. So, it cuts both ways. As to developing writing
skill, I am convinced that teachers of Russian, English and other subjects
should work cooperatively because it is a universal skill necessary in all the
subjects.
Our
students do not differ from others in their career preferences. Successful ones
choose economics and law faculties of universities. Up to the moment they have
not needed taking examination in English to enter these faculties. Only few
school leavers took the examination, and were successful in it. But if the
situation changes and English becomes mandatory for enrollment, there will be a
shock for some young people who neglected this subject. Personally, I have
always liked writing activity myself and wanted my students to like it as well.
Although we should admit that in real life writing occupies the fourth place
among the four communication skills after listening, speaking and reading
respectively, we cannot underestimate it as a productive activity in which one
can master critical and creative thinking. It is also one of the ways to be
prepared for effective speaking. “If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a
week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two
days; if an hour, I am ready now” (Woodrow T. Wilson). Those ‘days for
preparation’ of course include planning, writing and rewriting, peer
consultations, and so on. Mastering writing skills means that you start feeling
“what” to choose, and “when” and “how” to use such writing tools as vocabulary
and structures.
I
always thoroughly think before and after I have done something, and I am not
original here. During the course I “swallowed” so much information that I need
time to “digest”, to think it over, to get used to it, to assume. Only then I
will have the right to say that I have my philosophy, up to that moment it will
have been my practice and the “first draft”.
What
ideas have I consolidated during the course? First of all it is the conviction
that writing is the process of expressing one’s ideas “on paper”. According to
Penny Ur, “the ideas themselves should arguably be seen as the most important
aspect of the writing”. To help students to find the ideas for implementing
writing we should do a lot with them beforehand: activating their background
knowledge, reading, listening, working with samples, etc. When teachers link
new information to the student's previous knowledge, they activate the
student's interest and curiosity. Students learn more effectively when they
already know something about things to be learned, and when the information and
ideas are meaningful to them. Students’ background knowledge enables them to
connect the curriculum content to their own culture and experience, acts as
glasses through which they see and understand new information. You know,
sometimes students experience difficulties not only because tasks may be
complicated, but because of lack of topic knowledge. I myself experienced
almost a shock when
at my TOEFL exam had
to choose between the two essay themes for which I could not imagine what to
write even in Russian. Then I also realized how scary “time limits” made the
process of writing for students. Penny Ur wrote about it. I fully agree that we
should, and we definitely do train our students “to make the best possible use
of such time limitations”. Another challenge in my opinion refers to redundancy
that seems to be a Russian tradition which is not at all easy to cope with.
There
are different approaches to L2 writing teaching, but I agree with K. Hyland
that “it is necessary to look beyond a single approach”. Together with Hyland I
believe in “a mixture of more than one approach” because “A synthesis of
different writing orientations therefore means taking the best of existing
approaches and using them to more fully understand writing and learning to
write”. In my opinion it is textbooks’ authors’ task to organize writing
sections so that “the strengths of one approach might complement the weaknesses
of another”. And students and teachers will be grateful to them for great
results achieved in the teaching-learning process. I am personally impressed by
task based instruction. We live in the time when education is focused on
learner who can educate oneself, develop oneself with the help of different
sources, teacher being among those sources. A student becomes the subject of
the process. The role of a teacher is that of an organizer, designer, monitor,
facilitator, not knowledge transmitter as it was for a long time. When
following the principles of task based instruction writing tasks are organized
so that going through them in detail students are becoming fully aware of why
they are writing and who they are writing to; they follow the structured
outline they are provided with. But without focusing on content one can get a
simple reproduction of “foreign” ideas. To get their own ideas students should
and do read much, conduct research, compare and contrast, find examples, etc.
Some activities lead students into the main writing task by focusing on
relevant grammar and vocabulary, and ways of organizing information. Rubrics
and peer review worksheets help learners in self- and peer checking. Students
must be taught how to organize the text, edit it, check, and so on.
To
my colleagues who choose task based instruction I would strongly recommend to
read and re-read attentively the articles on lesson planning because they show
the corner-stones of a lesson plan: goal – objectives – materials – procedures
– assessment – extra-class/home work. They also state the guidelines for lesson
planning: how to begin planning; how to sequence, pace, and time; how to predict
the difficulties students can face; how to individualize tasks; etc. The
articles are dramatically useful for novice teachers. But experienced teachers
will also benefit from them.
It
can’t be argued that a teacher must be at least a little better than students
in what s/he is going to teach. Information technology is so quickly taking
root in our life that it is rather difficult for people of my generation to
catch up with the changes. But I try to do my best. I can help my
students in conducting their search for necessary topics on Google and
Wikipedia because I can do it more or less all right. The question of
reliability of information is very important; we are learning to assess and
evaluate it together, to distinguish between facts and opinions.
Modern
approaches to teaching languages and the Russian language in particular, demand
that the assessment process of writing should be individualized. One says about
the importance and necessity of teacher writing feedback on what students have
created, or it is better to say, have been creating, because writing is a
process not only to create a final “product”, but also to draft, revise, edit.
For me as a language teacher this is a challenging point not because I cannot
do or do not like doing it, but because of that notorious shortage of time.
Nevertheless I am going to develop my skill in writing commentaries combining
praise, criticism and suggestions. As to the present-day teaching situation
with checking and correcting students’ writings in English, the general
practice is to correct every mistake with almost no comments. But I personally
do not find any use in such corrections. I don’t correct spelling and grammar
mistakes, but underline them giving students a chance to work with spelling and
grammar materials and make “discoveries”. I organize face-to-face talks or
sometimes group discussions about the ways to improve the content. I guess teacher’s
choice depends on his/her experience as a student: s/he repeats methods used by
his/her teacher. I was and am lucky to have perfect teachers.
A
person can’t be taught, s/he can only learn. So the role of motivation is
enormous. Very up-to-date is the technology of portfolio as a method of
assessment of students’ achievements. This method is to help students to be
aware of their progress, and it can help teachers create a situation of success
for every learner. Of course I will try to find the ways of challenging
students to write in the genres apart of personal letters and essays. And
constant dropping wears away a stone. I also need my own practicing in writing
texts of different genres. You never know what you can do until you try. Maybe
one day
I will write something worthy.
In
Russia, we are going to have a new format of testing teacher qualification.
One of the aspects is his/her communicative competence which can be revealed in
how the teacher prepares his/her students for conscious listening, speaking,
reading and writing through working with texts of different types and genres.
Not of minor importance is his/her ability to choose texts and tasks according
to students’ interests. So, some ideas about materials evaluation will
positively affect my future teaching.
I
would like to conclude with the proposition that thinking over “My Philosophy
of Teaching Writing” was a kind of professional reflection which showed where I
was, where I am, and where I am going to be as a teacher.
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