Developing creative skills of pupils while teaching them writing

Developing creative skills of pupils while teaching them writing

So today I would like to share some of my experience in teaching pupils writing.

Each type of written composition, I mean an informal letter, a formal letter, an article, a review, a story, a discursive composition, a report, an email, or a transactional letter is trained separately and a whole lesson is devoted to this or that written work.

When I prepare for the lesson I look through a lot of books to choose the materials to use. The materials I choose should answer the following principles:

The materials should be learning-centered and should help the pupils to develop their own strategies for learning.

The materials should be creative.

The materials should be interesting.

The materials should be task-based, they should use purposeful tasks to motivate pupils’ learning and to make pupils see the usefulness of writing.

The materials should be practical and should deal with real-life communication tasks.

At the first lesson devoted to writing I acquaint the pupils with the way their works will be assessed and marked. I introduce the correction code with symbols for different types of errors:

Correction Code.

WW - wrong word

T - tense error

A-wrong article

Pr. - wrong preposition

WO - word order is wrong

Sp - spelling error

P - punctuation error

? - something is missing

+ -good choice

! - something is original.

Having looked through different books, I decided to choose the marking scheme:

a - the mark for fulfilling the task,

b - the mark for grammar,

с - the mark for vocabulary,

d - the mark for paragraphs,

e - the mark for linkers,

f- the mark for style.

The lowest mark is 1, and the highest mark is 5.

Why have I chosen such a scheme? When the pupils get their written compositions they clearly understand what aspect of writing process is good and what aspect they are failing and needs to be paid attention to.

The modem approach to the teaching of writing means that the teacher should show the pupils that writing is a communicative skill and it is based on three assumptions:

People write to communicate.

People write to accomplish specific purposes.

Writing is a complex process.

The first two assumptions are proved by the tasks themselves, many of them are taken from real life situations and they change with the time. Thus, this year I began to teach the pupils to write emails. (See Opportunities Pre -Intermediate and FCE Exam Practice 2008.)

The writing process can be seen in a simple way as follows:

Analysis-Brainstorming-Organising-Drafting -Revising and Editting - Final version.

And at the lessons of writing we work according to this scheme.

So the aim of the teacher is to provide the pupils with the writing skills and to form the necessary writing sub-skills. The first step is to teach pupils to read the task carefully and to analyse it. First of all they should understand the register of the task, whether it is an informal or formal letter, a report or an article, a story or a composition, a review or an email. It is advisable even to underline the key words of the task with a pencil. After that they should be able to define the target reader. The tasks - «Think about your reader and answer the following questions: Who is going to read your letter? Why are you writing?» may help the pupils to analyse the task.

The next logical step is to teach pupils to choose the most appropriate style for this or that composition. Different tasks may help to develop an appreciation of the main differences between formal and informal writing. Let’s have a look at some of them.

Task 1. Read these short texts quickly and decide whether each text is written in formal or informal language.

Task 2. Analyse the texts and read aloud the features of the texts that helped you to decide how formal or informal they were.

Task 3. Read this informal reply to a party invitation and fill in the gaps by choosing one of the phrases below.

Task 4. This is a formal letter cancelling an arrangement: Choose the appropriate word or phrase to fill the gaps.

The problem of formality and development of the skill of creating appropriate style is practiced at each lesson devoted to different text type.

The next step of our work is called «Brainstorming». What is it for? The main aim of this step is to produce ideas and clarify the aims. Even if the topic is familiar, pupils may have trouble getting started because they find it hard to assemble enough ideas, especially in a limited period of time. We usually discuss questions of the task together, I encourage them to come up with any relevant ideas and write them on the blackboard, and advise the pupils to put them down on their paper.

After Brainstorming comes the next logical step - Organisation of the ideas into paragraphs. At this stage the sub-skill of paragraph - planning is trained. This means that pupils should be taught to plan their ideas. The pupils get acquainted with 3 types of plans:

a linear plan;

a spidergraph;

a plan with headings.

Look at the tasks which can be suggested for the pupils to be done at different lessons.

Task 1 Read the following extracts from a letter. Which one is easier to read? Why? One letter is written without any paragraphs, while the other one has got paragraphs.

Task 2. Divide the following letter into paragraphs.

Task 3. Read two letters and tell the class which letter will get a higher mark. One letter has ideas clearly and logically organised in paragraphs, and the second letter has paragraphs, but the ideas in each paragraph are mixed.

When we work at paragraph-planning skills we should introduce some tasks aimed at developing skills of creating appropriate and succinct introductions and conclusions typical for different written compositions. Another important feature of an excellent written work is an appropriate topic sentence, which is logically connected with the paragraph and opens it The following exercises may be used to show the pupils the role of a topic sentence.

Task 1. Read the model text and underline a topic sentence of each paragraph.

Task 2. Match the following topic sentences to the correct set of details.

Task 3. Write three details to each of the following topic sentences.

Task 4. Write a suitable topic sentence for each of the following sets of details.

Writing is a productive skill showing how well the pupils can use vocabulary and grammar. At the State Exam, in the first task, which is a personal letter vocabulary and grammar is not assessed, but in the second task, at B-2 level pupils should show their good knowledge of grammar structures and show descriptive and varied vocabulary, as well as typical for this or that text type language. So the pupils must be taught to use specific sets of phrases typical for different written compositions.

In addition to good choice of words, pupils are taught to use a variety of connecting words or linkers to make their compositions sound more logical and persuasive. The tasks: fill in the gaps with the necessary linker or substitute the linkers with some other connectors, or connect two sentences using different linking devices may help to develop in pupils the ability to use a number of suitable connectors.

To present a successful written work, the pupils should know how to punctuate and to use abbreviations. For this purpose such tasks may be recommended as:

Task 1. Match the abbreviations with their uses.

Task 2. Match the punctuation symbols in the box with their names below.

Task 3. Are these statements about punctuation true or false?

Task 4. Correct the Punctuation.

Task 5. Rewrite the text, using correct punctuation.

As a result of our discussion at the lesson the pupils write their own compositions, sometimes in class, sometimes they do it at home. Their next step is drafting, after which comes the stage of editing the work by a pupil himself and afterwards the final version is given to the teacher for evaluation. Sometimes I practice giving the works of the pupils to other students in this group for marking and then these works are read and evaluated by me. When a pupil gets the work, he looks through it and we discuss the weak and strong aspects of the written composition.

In conclusion I would like to say that «Practice makes perfect» and the more pupils write the better works they produce.

Адрес публикации: https://www.prodlenka.org/metodicheskie-razrabotki/414437-developing-creative-skills-of-pupils-while-te