WHAT IS WRITING?
Writing is a productive skill that consists in transmit a message by making signs on a page. There are many written text types that we use in our daily life. Each of them, since a letter until a essay has different degrees of formality, layouts, complexity of grammar and register. Writing also includes sub skills related to accuracy such us: spelling correctly, joining letters together correctly, using grammar, joining sentences and using paragraphs correctly. A piece of writing should be organized in sentences, topic sentences and paragraphs in a logical way.
Some approaches appeared through the years in writing teaching. The most common until now is the product approach which focus on the final writing. However, I would use the process writing approach, which emphasizes its attention in the writing stages. Fist the students develop ideas and organize them in the planning stage. Later they find the way the language to express them in the drafting stage. After that, they evaluate their ideas in the editing, re-drafting and proofreading stages. Some authors defers in the terminology used for the stages, but the idea is the same."We should teach unfinished writing. We work with language with the continual excitement of choosing one word instead of another, of searching for the one true word " (Murray, D. 1972)
Additionally, there are many activities that I would apply in my class to help students practice accuracy such as: labeling, sentence completion, gap- filling and so on. It is indispensable that the teacher guides and supports learners in writing process; in this way, they are going to feel self- confidence and they will improve their writing skills.
Murray, D. (1972). Teach writing as a process not product. The Leaflet, 71(3), 11-14.
http://www.fredonia.edu/faculty/english/spangler/Renewal2009-10/12_f_Murray--Teach_Writing_as_a_Process.pdf
Grossman, P. L., Valencia, S. W., Evans, K., Thompson, C., Martin, S., & Place, N. (2000). Transitions into teaching: Learning to teach writing in teacher education and beyond. Journal of Literacy Research, 32(4), 631-662.
http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/32/4/631.full.pdf
Some approaches appeared through the years in writing teaching. The most common until now is the product approach which focus on the final writing. However, I would use the process writing approach, which emphasizes its attention in the writing stages. Fist the students develop ideas and organize them in the planning stage. Later they find the way the language to express them in the drafting stage. After that, they evaluate their ideas in the editing, re-drafting and proofreading stages. Some authors defers in the terminology used for the stages, but the idea is the same."We should teach unfinished writing. We work with language with the continual excitement of choosing one word instead of another, of searching for the one true word " (Murray, D. 1972)
Additionally, there are many activities that I would apply in my class to help students practice accuracy such as: labeling, sentence completion, gap- filling and so on. It is indispensable that the teacher guides and supports learners in writing process; in this way, they are going to feel self- confidence and they will improve their writing skills.
Murray, D. (1972). Teach writing as a process not product. The Leaflet, 71(3), 11-14.
http://www.fredonia.edu/faculty/english/spangler/Renewal2009-10/12_f_Murray--Teach_Writing_as_a_Process.pdf
Grossman, P. L., Valencia, S. W., Evans, K., Thompson, C., Martin, S., & Place, N. (2000). Transitions into teaching: Learning to teach writing in teacher education and beyond. Journal of Literacy Research, 32(4), 631-662.
http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/32/4/631.full.pdf
I could not say it better, because as we know writing is a very difficult task to develop and students do it just for having a grade or just because they are obligated to do that. We must find some interesting methodology to make them to love writting.
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