They are not simply asked to turn up at the match and play the game! These are just some of the skills needed to produce good writing: Footballers practise shooting at the goal, dribbling, tactics etc. We should not expect students to be able to write well without breaking down the skills and practising them separately. There are many skills involved in producing good compositions. Writing is a difficult skill even in our mother tongue – consider how often we have to write continuous impressive prose in our lives, especially when texting and emails encourage short abbreviated text. *Consider being selective about what you mark marking positively reducing the word count of written tasks so that students can focus on quality rather than quantity.
They may put on a show of not caring, but teens find criticism very painful and may feel great frustration in not understanding exactly how they can redress their weaknesses in writing. If our students are teenagers this is particularly difficult. It is not easy to know how to pick yourself up and start again. When it comes to motivation, students often feel a great sense of failure when they have writing returned to them covered in red ink, with each mistake highlighted. *Consider allowing students to choose their own topics to write about doing creative writing tapping into the interests of the students. While practising other skills it is possible to be genuinely communicative and even have fun, but this is rare in writing practice. How easy would we find it to write something interesting (let alone grammatically correct) on the topics given. *Consider allowing students to write compositions collaboratively in class, especially when writing long texts is new to them.
Writing a composition for homework, they often don’t know how to help themselves. In class students can find support from each other doing pair or group work and also from their teacher. For a start it is usually a solitary task, often given as homework and therefore unsupported. Students face a number of challenges producing correct and appropriate texts.
Olha Madylus, an experienced teacher and teacher trainer gives her thoughts on the first of our Solutions Speaking Challenges: ‘My students keep making the same mistakes’.Īs teachers we may despair of marking our students’ written work and writing that ‘C+ must try harder’ at the bottom of their compositions, but let’s spare a thought for those poor students, who may after all be trying as hard as they can.
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