Effective Ways to Improve Students’ Writing Motivation in Junior High School
Yang Minyi (Joyce)
- Abstract
Writing competence is considered as the most difficult output ability for an ESL learner to master, especially for Junior high school students in China. Because of lack of English exposure, and the exam oriented background, many Chinese students don’t know how to write in English for communication. After studying ESL in UCI and observing the local English classes in middle schools, the author adopts some methods in writing classes to motivate students to write. This paper tries to offers valuable suggestions for Chinese English teachers when considering affective variables in Chinese context. Writing Motivation is said to be intrinsic and extrinsic, especially intrinsic motivation plays an increasingly important role in students writing in class or after class. With the hope of this awareness, it will help Chinese English teacher to decide better language learning tasks, and help students achieve better performances’ in writing.
II.Theoretical back ground
- Definition of writing
Writing is a method of representing language in visual or tactile form. Writing systems use sets of symbols to represent the sounds of speech, and may also have symbols for such things as punctuation and numerals.
In A History of Writing,Steven Roger Fischerstates that a 'complete writing' system should fullfill all the following criteria:
▲it must have as its purpose communication;
▲it must consist of artificial graphic marks on a durable or electronic surface;
▲it must use marks that relate conventionally to articulate speech (the systematic arrangement of significant vocal sounds) or electronic programing in such a way that communication is achieved.
Writing systems are both functional, providing a visual way to represent language, and also symbolic, in that they represent cultures and peoples. InThe writing systems of the world, Florian Coulmas describes them as follows:
As the most visible items of a language, scripts and orthographies are “emotionally loaded”, indicating as they do group loyalties and identities. Rather than being mere instruments of a practical nature, they are symbolic systems of great social significance which may, moreover, have profound effect on the social structure of a speech community.
- Definition of writing motivation
Writing motivation is one's activation or energizing to give more effort to writing activity. It focuses on one’s appraisal of the relationship between writing activity and writing outcome. Like reading motivation.Writing motivation is said to be intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic writing motivation comes from within. It includes one's desire to make archive (documentation), to express emotions (emotional expression), to satisfy creation urge (creativity) and to develop mastery over writing (achievement). Extrinsic writing motivation is for satisfying others. It includes one's desire to write to be loved (affiliation), to be recognized by others (recognition) and to avoid punishment. Writing activity includes memory retrieval, goal setting, planning, problem solving and evaluation. According to the above analyzing, teachers should avoid extraneous reinforcement for writing. Do not do anything so that students can relate that his writing performance is related to the outcome of praise, recognition and love of others. Rather develop his mind set so that student can relate the writing outcome with his level of changes in writing competency, in expressing emotions, making documents and in creative productions.
3. Motivation to write occurs at three levels:
- Specific level – focusing on the processes between goal setting and writing sentences;
- Intermediate level – focusing on the processes between goal setting and writing scenes;
- General level – focusing on overall structure of a piece of writing;
III. Contrast writing teaching situation between China and USA
In China, teaching center on exam preparation because it is the exams on which parents hope their children will excel. Parents seek out schools where test results are good and the attending students enter believing that the school will enable them to pass the entrance exam to their favorite high schools or universities.Getting high marks in exams is a ruler to judge a student’s English level and the teacher’s teaching ability.
The exam emphasis naturally leads to a reliance on memorization. The Chinese English teachers conclude the templates of some model essays for students to imitate or recite. In the TOEFL writing essays, some phrases like “Every coin has two sides.” and “double edge sword” are over used. This phenomenon is the sequel of Chinese English writing teaching. Many Chinese students lose their interest and ability in English writing because they lack of interaction in authentic English circumstance.
Though both teachers and students make painstaking efforts in writing practice, the outcome of English writing is still most diffcult to control and predict. Traditionally,English writing class is under the total control of teachers.It often begins with the insruction lecture on writing skill or a comment on the works of students. Then the teacher will give the assignment and ask the students to pactice.In this kind of situation,teachers have undoubted authority and student often rely on teachers to give them instruction,correction even outline sometimes.Many teachers have tried to make English writing teaching more interesting by various ways and even borrowing some good ideas from the teaching of reading and speaking.But in fact, many students still consider English writing class is tedious, monotony and mechanic.
In American ESL writing class, most American English teachers assign writing task for communication purpose. Students recognize that they are writing for authentic purposes and readers—when their writing is not simply a school exercise, when their writing is like that done in the “real world,” when their writing will “go public” in some way—they likely will be more engaged as writers. Though teachers must prepare students for high-stakes assessment, students should perceive that the reason for doing the writing is more powerful than merely to prepare for the test or to receive a grade.
Whenever possible, teachers provide opportunities for publishing—posting student work on the wall, sharing finished writing with the class, mailing letters to intended audiences, doing presentations for peers or for parents and families, creating a class publication, posting writing on the Web, etc.
III. How to solve the problem
- Pre-writingmotivation
For students
Pre-writing tasks review and build students' knowledge of relevant vocabulary, relevant grammar points and, most importantly, students' background knowledge, since that is what really generates thoughtful and interesting written work. Pre-writing tasks are a crucial element of successful writing instruction.Provide the basic knowledge for students to write
The following diagram shows what writers have to deal with as they produce a piece of writing: (From Ann Raimes’ Book)
In order to build up the students’ confidence to write, English teacher may stress the following points before students begin to write.
(1)Understand sentence structure. Chinese students will need to learn and understand sentence structure once they have mastered forming words. Sentence structure is the order in which words or parts of speech go, the sequences in which they are used. Understanding sentence structure will be necessary if they are to form written sentences which sound correct. Often people will have difficulty writing naturally like this, even if they speak correctly.
(2)Teach proper grammar. Teaching proper grammar will be absolutely essential to your students’ learning to write sentences which can be understood and sound natural. Tense is a key concept to understanding how to form proper sentences. Your students should learn and practice creating sentences which take place in the past, present, and future. This will teach them how words must be changed in order to indicate time. This is a complex skill and is often not truly mastered until much later.
Conjugation and declension are other important skills. Conjugation is how verbs change, depending on how they interact with the other words in the sentence. For example, in English we say “I jump” but we also say “she jumped”. Nouns can go through a similar process, called declension, but it is nonexistent in English.
(3) Don’t forget punctuation. A difficult skill to master, the use of proper punctuation will be vital to creating well constructed sentences. Later in life, proper punctuation is often seen as a mark of intelligence and education, so building your students’ skills in this area will be very important for opening up opportunities for them in the future.
(4) Focus on the simplest skills. When teaching literacy to students it is important to focus on building the simplest skills first. Emphasize the fundamental building blocks discussed above, as having a thorough understanding of these concepts and skills will give your students a solid foundation on which to build future reading and writing skills.
(5) Teach the elements of storytelling. Students will need to learn the basic elements of storytelling. This will give them the tools they need later in life in order to analyze the things they read. Elements of storytelling include beginning, middle and end, crisis or climax, and character. These are most easily taught to children when done in tandem with reading a book aloud over the course of a few weeks. This gives you the opportunity to discuss and analyze the text, so that they can see how these ideas work in practice. Solidify these skills by having them write stories of their own.
For teachers
Choosing classroom techniques is the day-to-day business of every writing teacher. Any decision the teachers make is a decision about a teaching technique. In Ann RaimesTechniques in teaching writing, she suggests that examining some basic questions in mind will help us sort out which ones suit our class, our student level, and the approach that underlies our own curriculum and our own teaching. In order to build up the concept of writing, these questions can be a help the teacher to in making their daily decision of what to do in the class.
Question 1 How can writing help my students learn their second language better?
Finding and communicating ideas is not encouraged by the typical textbook task of writing about a subject in class or at home and then handing in the finished composition to a teacher who points out the errors. There is a better way. Instead we can take the same textbook topic but build in class activities that will help prepare students for the assignment and give them the opportunity to speak, listen to, read, and write the new language in the process of making and communicating their meaning.
Question 2 How can I find enough topics?
Good topics are not always plentiful. One useful source that often overlooked is the students themselves and their interest. We find out about these from class discussion, from questionnaires, or when we ask the students to write daily notes or to do ten-minute in class free writing. Wherever we originally get a topic-from students, from a book, or from our own invention-the first thing we should consider is not which one assignment will be best but how many assignments we can develop so that our students can explore the subjects as fully as possible. A reading passage, a controlled composition, a sentence-combining exercise, scrambled sentences to organize into a paragraph, a dictation, a lectured, role-playing activities, a passage to copy, a letter to write, a form to fill out, or a graph to interpret-all of these can emerge from the same topic instead of one being about space travel and another about John and Mary’s picnic. As the students do the task we assign, they thus learn both about the new language and about the subject the language is dealing with. So for us , finding enough topics means finding a few excellent topics of interest to students and building a whole series of assignments around them.
Question 3 Who will read what my students write?
For each writing task, we should specify one or more of the following readers:
(1)The teacher, helping in the process by reading and commenting on drafts and not correcting errors until a predetermined time.
(2)One other student in the class, exchanging a draft with the writer and commenting on the draft he reads
(3)A group of students in the class, reading a draft of listening to it read aloud and commenting on it
(4)A real outside audience: such a reader is addressed by, for example letter to a student travel organization, a class magazine of student writing, writing samples displayed on a bulletin board, a letter to a pen pal, or a description of a national custom for a school in another country.
(5)An imaginary outside audience: with this type of reader, students engage in a simulation game, a role-playing activity in writing. Pretending that they are in a specific situation, they write for a specific reader, as in:” You are a landscape architect. Write a description for the city council of how you will design the new city park” In most cases, the real reader will, of course, be the students or the teacher. As readers they, too, can role-play and respond to the piece of writing as a member of the city council might respond.
(6)The student himself, writing a poem, a few notes, or a draft for his eye alone.
2．Motivation in the class
Teaching techniques
(1)Create an open environment for discussion and help about writing. When students are able to ask for help and opinions of their classmates or teacher it eliminates some of the fears of writing. Approach writing as something fun and useful in their lives to ease any apprehension.
（2）Give students time for free writing. This is a great assignment when students have been working hard on more structured assignments such as essays or research papers. Allowing them time to write freely in journals or oncomputershelps them to release stress and temporarily abandon structure.
（3）Teachstudents to focus their energies on writing their story creatively without worrying about perfect form. Discuss the importance of character and plot first and then follow with lessons on structure and form. When giving creative writing assignments make them specific to keep students from feeling overwhelmed.
(4)Inspire students to write by incorporating reading. Have them choose their favorite story genre and then create their own version. If they like comic books or mysteries, have them study and read those and put together their own characters and story in that genre.
(5)Have students write as a form of expression. You can use lead questions or have them write poetry to tap into some inner emotion. This helps them to connect writing with something deeper and allows them to let go of any negative ideas they may hold about writing.
Activities to Encourage Writing
Encouraging students to write can be frustrating. Manystudentsare not confident about their writing skills, and some might refuse to write. Activities should be fun and allow students use their creativity. Have them write often to establish a writing habit. The more experience a child gains during these writing activities, the more comfortable they will become as writers.
(1)Writing Prompts
No matter the age of the students, writing prompts can spark creativity. These can be printable worksheets that you pass out in class or read aloud. Writing prompts can complete the sentence style or even add what happens next in a story that students have read. Make it fun and let the creativity flow. Let youngerstudentsdraw a picture along with their sentences and give them a chance to explain their writings. Don't focus on spelling; focus on ideas.
(2)Journals
Writing confidence often increases as students gain experience. Journals are a great way for students to get experience and to establish writing habits. Use the journal to reflect on recent field trips. Use pictures for recent assignments or topics to create new journal entries. For example, if you are studying the Revolutionary War, show a picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware River and have them write about that. It's not important what material you choose to be the focus of journal entries, as long as it engages your students.
(3)Games
For those students who are reluctant to write, make writing a game. The key is to focus on the game aspect and not the writing. Play games such as "Fortunately/Unfortunately," which you begin by saying something a statement: "Fortunately, I won the lottery." Then, have students write an accompanying "Unfortunately" sentence. This will generate lots of giggles, because some students will give silly responses. Or have your students write the new rules of the world if they were president. Read them aloud. Repeat these games from time to time.
(4) Lists
Writing activities can be far more than formal sentence structure and spelling. Have your students create lists of anything -- what they want to be when they grow up, places they want to see, things they like to get at the grocery store. Provide calendars, and have the students write down important dates, including birthdays, holidays and special schools observances, such as the 100th day of school or the last day ofclass. Pair students up with partners and have them together write down homework assignments in the planner and what topics were covered in class that day.