EN4312

Teaching Writing Skills

(2002-2003)

Prepared by Becky Kwan

BATESL, Department of English & Communication

EN4312 Teaching Writing Skills

The Course Outline

(2002-2003)

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The course

EN4312 is an integrated course on teaching methodology, which comprises the four components of Teaching Writing Skills, Teaching reading skills, Teaching Listening Skills and Teaching Speaking Skills.

Aims of the writing skills component:

The component of Teaching Writing Skills aims to familiarize you with some major approaches to teaching writing and equip you with some basic practical skills to teach writing to secondary school students in Hong Kong.

Objectives

In this component you will learn four major approaches to writing:

  • the genre approach
  • the product approach
  • the process approach
  • the skills-based approach

In particular, you will learn

  • the theoretical assumptions of the approaches
  • some common pedagogical procedures adopted in the approaches
  • the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches
  • how to adapt and integrate the approaches for use in local school settings

Assessment

Assessment will be 100% based on coursework, which consists of

  • a writing teaching packet (group & individual work; 40%)
  • a grading report (individual work; 45%)
  • in-class participation (15%)

Coursework Instructions

The Teaching Packet (group work)

  1. Form a group of size of no more than 4.
  2. Produce an integrated teaching packet suitable for use in a series of 6 lessons (approximately 40 minutes per lesson) for a specified form (or a particular group) of secondary school students in Hong Kong. The target readers of the packet are teachers teaching students of a similar background.
  3. The packet should aim at instructing the teacher on how to coach students through different essential stages which lead to the completion of a complete written product (e.g., a survey report, a travel brochure, a short story, etc.).
  4. The packet should consist of two parts: a student booklet and a teacher’s guide. (See below for more instructions)
  5. It would be most ideal if the packet (or parts of it) could be tried out in at least one member’s practice teaching though this is not a must.

The Student Booklet (10%)

The booklet should include the instructions of the target writing task (e.g., a survey report), all necessary notes, input materials, language exercises, learning tasks and their instructions, which aim to facilitate the completion of the final written product. The booklet will be assessed in the following areas:

Content
  • Relevancy to the completion of the final product
  • Originality and creativity
  • Clarity (to students)
  • Organization and coherence

Language use

  • Style
  • Accuracy

The Teacher’s Guide (30%)

Supply the following information in the guide:

  1. level of students the packet targets at(e.g., the form of the students and the banding of the school)
  2. a brief mention of the students’ socio-economic background
  3. the aims of the packet
  4. a brief description of the final written product which the students will need to produce for assessment purpose. It must be a product that the intended students are able to handle both cognitively and linguistically. You should aim at creating a writing task which has never been tried out before. (Read Unit 1 and in particular Task 7)
  5. some sub-products and processes(if there is any) which lead to the completion of the final written product
  6. the teaching approaches and the procedures involved
  7. justifications for the approaches and procedures
  8. caveats for executing the packet effectively

For the writing style and rhetorical structure of the guide, consult teacher’s guides, prefaces, editor’s notes or introductory chapters of resource books such as Great Ideas, Headway and others.

The following areas of your Teacher’s Guide will be assessed:

Content
  • (Refer to items a-h above)
  • Creativity and originality
  • Clarity
  • Effectiveness and helpfulness
  • Organization & Coherence
Language use
  • Style
  • Accuracy
  • Effectiveness

The booklet should span no more than 6 pages. The Teacher’s Guide should span no more than 8 pages.

The Grading Report (Individual work)

Based on what you have learned in this course, grade three pieces of work written by local secondary students. The three pieces should reflect three different levels of writing proficiency (note that it is not general language proficiency). The three pieces should be collected from the same class or form and must be from the same writing assignment.

Sources of work:

  • the assignments you collected during your Practice Teaching OR
  • the assignments you collected from your Co-operating teacher.

The report should specify:

  1. Relevant background of the students (levels, school, gender, etc.);
  2. Topic of the assignment;
  3. Type of writing (i.e., genre) involved;
  4. Focuses of teaching / learning for the assignment;
  5. The expected outcome and the actual outcome you observed (e.g., the students’ cognitive and linguistic abilities as reflected in the products, and whether the students were able to handle the task successfully and why);
  6. The theories and principles you adhered to when you graded the assignments;
  7. Some comments for the student (write them on the students’ work);
  8. A brief description how the task would be presented, facilitated and taught next time you teach the task again;
  9. A brief description of at least 3 major types of errors committed by the students or one of them, sources of the errors and some possible post-writing remedial treatment for one type of error out of the three. Justify your speculation of sources of the errors;
  10. The grade you awarded to the work and an explanation for the grade;
  11. An in-depth self-reflection on one to two aspects of your own process of learning to grade written work.

The main text of the report should not exceed 15 pages. Appendix the graded work and other less important details, e.g., the assignment instruction sheets, activity sheets, etc.

The report will be assessed in the following areas:

Content

  • (Items a-k)
  • Organization & coherence
  • Depth (not breadth) of your self-reflection (don’t praise yourself all the time. This is not meant to be a self-promotion. Be sincere and reflective.)

Language use

  • Style
  • Accuracy

References:

There will be no fixed textbook for this course. However, you may consult the following sources for various types of input:

Journals

English Language Teaching Journal, System, Issues in Writing, Journal of Second Language Writing, Reading and Writing

Books on writing pedagogies (theories/practices)

Bridley, S. 1994. Teaching English. London: Routledge.

Jolly, D. 1984. Writing tasks: an authentic task approach to individual writing needs. Teacher’s book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leo, R & Murphy, S. 1988. Designing writing tasks for the assessment of writing. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.

Mcdonough, J. & Shaw, C. 1993. Materials and Methods in ELT. Oxford: Blackwell.

Neman, Beth. 1995. Teaching Students to Write. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Petraglia, J.(ed.) 1995. Reconceiving writing, rethinking writing instruction. Mahway, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Tribble, C. 1996. Writing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. [A highly recommended book, whose theories and principles will be discussed in this course.]

Books on teaching ideas / resources:

Beazley, M & Marr, G. 1993. The writer’s handbook: teacher resource book.

Kress, J.E. 1993. The ESL teacher’s book of lists. West Nyack, N.Y.: Centre for Applied Research in Education.

White, R.V. (ed.) 1995. New Ways in Teaching Writing. Alexandria, Va.: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. [A very resourceful book to keep on your book shelf, highly recommended for those who feel themselves not creative enough.]

Marland, B. 1998. Lessons from nothing : activities for language teaching with limited time and resources. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Also, surf the Net for useful websites.

Instructional Schedule

Week 1 /
  • Course introduction
  • Introduction to the teaching of writing
  • 4 approaches to teaching writing

Weeks 2 – 3 /
  • The genre approach: What genres to teach, what to focus on and how to present essential knowledge of a genre

Week 4 /
  • The process & skills-based approach: the what and the why; helping students to get started

Week 5 /
  • The process & skills-based approach: training & facilitating students to revise, edit and proofread their work

Week 6 /
  • Feedback: Responding to / grading ideas, coherence and organization

Week 7 /
  • Reading Week

Week 8 /
  • Feedback: Responding to students’ errors & remedial teaching / grading students’ accuracy
  • Teaching packet due (Friday)

Weeks 9-13 /
  • Practice Teaching; classes cancelled

Week 15 /
  • Grading Report due (Monday)

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