Ideas from
Jeremy Harmer’s “How to teach writing”
Building
confidence and enthusiasm
Students’
disincentives to writing:
- Anxieties
about their handwriting, spelling or their ability to construct sentences and
paragraphs
- Inability
to complete writing tasks successfully
- Students rarely write even in their own language
- Fear
that they have ‘nothing to say’
- Unwillingness
to invest time and effort
In order to
build the writing habit, making students feel comfortable as writers in English
and so gaining their willing participation in more creative or extended
activities, we should chose the right kinds of activities (both in challenge
and level) and provide them with enough language and information to complete
the tasks successfully.
Choosing
writing tasks and activities
Characteristics
of writing tasks:
- Appealing
- Relevance
according to age, interests and level
- Motivating
- Engaging, which involves students not only intellectually but emotionally.
Different
students react differently to different stimuli. To encourage students to write
we can provide:
Music
for auditory learners
Pictures for visual learners
Writing
on the board or swapping papers for kinaesthetic students
What
students need
Information
& task information: students need to have the necessary information to
complete the task and understand clearly what they have to do.
Language:
Providing students with the language (phrases, parts of sentences or
words) they need to complete a specific
task.
Ideas:
Being able, as a teacher, to offer an idea or two to students for a writing
task. The amount of information we provide depends on how much help or
stimulation each student needs.
Patterns
& schemes: Giving students a pattern or a scheme to follow may help them
when they are running out of ideas, since a pattern can give them the support
they need .
There are
two areas of habit building: Instant writing & collaborative
writing which we will discuss about in future posts.
Question: How do you feel about the writing skill? As a teacher? As a writer? How do you motivate your students to write?
