Reading and writing

Introduction

“When we see something wrong with a piece of writing work, we must first try to decide whether it is an error or a mistake”. Donn Byrne.

 

In written tasks, English teachers must be aware of the importance that correcting mistakes has as well as the importance of providing constant, accurate and timely feedback. Byrne (1991) states that in practice, we cannot expect our students to correct all the mistakes by themselves; however, we must pay attention to what we teach and in the way we teach it, so that mistakes could not be a really common factor.

Although I cannot provide evidence of what many English students have commented me, I can say that they normally gain confidence when teachers show a friendly attitude to help them to solve their doubts. On the other hand, many students feel frustrated to fail and also quit English courses because teachers’ attitude is not totally covering a friendlier and closer role to lead and track them in language skills including, of course, writing.

I have always said that there is some difference between teaching English at language schools where small groups are formed and teaching at large sized classes in which the teacher normally need not only attitude but also energy and endurance to walk around the isles of the chairs to detect written mistakes and provide timely help and explanation.

 

Correction procedures by Byrne and my teaching experience.

a) Correct all the mistakes. It is the traditional approach with two special characteristics according to the author; time-consuming for the teacher and despondency for the students. Well, of course that all kind of correction absorbs time in major grade for any of the two roles; the teacher or the student. However, it is important to create the adequate conditions in classroom so that teachers can avoid the negative implications that the approach itself may involve.

b) Correct mistakes selectively. Using this approach, the teacher only selects mistakes in certain areas of the writing piece. It cannot be considered time consuming for the teacher at all, but sometimes remedial classes or extra help will complete the task in the classroom. Again students must be encouraged by providing real examples of the most common mistakes according to the topic or linguistic elements that are touched, so we may avoid constant mistakes.

c) Indicate mistakes so that the students can correct them. In my opinion this approach is more complete and let students analyze the mistake that they produced. Teachers underline written mistakes and marked them with symbols based on the type of mistake that students can understand easily. Table of symbols is shown in annex 1. The activity of correction can be developed under different dynamics. I personally prefer pair work and small groups.

d) Let the students identify and correct their own mistakes. Byrne mentions that this approach can occasionally be accepted with certain enjoyment on the students’ side; however, I think that the teacher should be attentive to the development of the correction stage. In my opinion, the lack of attention on the teachers’ side may lead the activity to become a boring one especially in large groups.

e) Explain a mistake. It consists in writing a comment in the margin or at the end of a piece of written work. I agree with Byrne when he mentions that this kind of approach is useful for drawing attention to recurrent mistakes. I like this kind of approach and I use it with large and small groups as well as in individual writing lessons. Students have to send me their written work in word presentation via mail so that I can explain the mistakes. Then I ask the rewrite their works.

f) Indicate to the students that they should consult you about a mistake. Very often the students suggest the correction when their attention has been drawn to a mistake. My learning process taught me that teachers hardly ever have time to go deeply into mistake explanation. This situation made me feel interested in providing help whenever students need it. Additionally, the teacher’s role is an important part for the writing process.

g) Use the mistake as a basis for remedial teaching. Individual remedial work is set if most of the students made common mistakes. Although remedial teaching for correcting mistakes is interesting and attractive, I think that experience should prevent the mistakes that have been detected in prior courses. Anyway, we should use this program to design accurate correction.

Conclusion

The different procedures are important because they all provide correction by using some strategies designed for specific moments. Based on my teaching experience, I prefer to provide feedback openly; this is, I normally write on the board the mistake and we together change it for what is correct using the pertinent attitude to facilitate comprehension. All the approaches seen here complement my work and role as an English teacher.

Finally, and to the question; do you think that detailed teacher correction of written work is effective? I am sure that it is effective, but depends a lot on the way the teacher approximates the correction to the students. We need to have a positive attitude to them and above all have vocation to teach so that our students feel real support.

Annexes

Annex 1: Extract of the table of written mistake correction provided by Byrne (1991).

 

SYMBOL         MEANING                                       EXAMPLE

 

S                      Incorrect spelling                          S         S

                                                                            I recieve jour letter

 

 

W.O.                Wrong word order                       W.O.

                                                                           We know well this city.

 

 

T                      Wrong tense                                   T

                                                                           If it will come, it will be too late

 

Bibliography

Byrne, D. (1991). Teaching Writing Skills. Hong Kong: Longman.

 

 

Writing process on the basis of the role of the teacher and the purpose for writing.

Introduction

The different purposes that students follow for writing in L2 are supported by the general and specific goals of an English course which forms part of the pedagogic planning as described by Tribble (1996). Unchained from the writer’s purposes, we can say that a person focuses his purposes on situations among we find; telling a story, expressing feelings, describing an object, making a technical concept understandable, etc. In order to reach these aspects, the teacher’s role has to do with his own professional capacity to lead students and track their activities.

 

Writing process on the basis of the role of the teacher and the purpose for writing.

In the pedagogic planning as seen before, the writing process demands more attention by the teachers to reach the students’ purposes mentioned above. The individual effort of every L2 teacher plays a very important role to cover the students’ difficulties that affect them in learning how to write the English language. L2 teachers will also decide what kind of guidance is necessary to promote students’ confidence on their goal to lay out their ideas more clearly.

As a form of guidance in the writing process, which is considered a basic but important role of the L2 teachers, Byrne (1991) states that on a linguistic level, the ability to write a text is by using a text as the basic format for practice in the early stages. In my opinion, this way of eliciting students’ writing develops confidence and ability to use and reinforce structures that can be used and easily understood in higher levels of writing competence. This way, the writing texts can become more meaningful for the students whose attention to writing will become more and more important.

Writing, according to Byrne (1991), tends to be relegated to the level of exercises because it is more treated as a compendium of the lesson and not as a worthwhile learning activity. L2 teachers are required to inspire students’ writing so that it could be considered as a relevant activity that gives enormous advantages to reach the goal of mastering the language in a more natural sequence of the learning process. Additionally to the mention above, writing can become more effective if the attention put on the process is tracked and stimulated constantly.

On the other hand, Tribble (1996) also states that not all language learning activities lead students to write more effectively; however, it would have a great value to consider that the writing  process needs to be feed of four relevant types of knowledge that the same author mentions. They are the content knowledge, the contest knowledge, the language system knowledge, and the writing process knowledge so that they can contribute to complete a successful writer.

We must also remember that people learn to speak at least one language fluently as stated by Tribble (1996); however, this condition is not applicable to the writing process in which people almost always require certain level of instruction. The last situation let us think of the importance of continuous learning and practice of elements in the different stages that help writers to improve the writing ability. Among these stages we find; prewriting, writing, revising, editing and finally publishing if it is possible.

Teachers must understand that for many of our L2 students, the writing process is not at all clear even after the classroom instruction. In my opinion, this could be one of the reasons that oblige us to maintain purposeful and accurate steps students should take in order to successfully complete their writing tasks. I also believe that if our students learn to use a systematic track of the writing process, they will become more successful and motivation for writing may become part of their lives.

Conclusion

A L2 teacher plays different roles during the writing process the attitude and aptitude seem to be a relevant characteristic of the teachers so that they could help their students to achieve writing tasks in order to improve their capacity of writing. We can list the following actions for achieving the writing process: promote and encourage real writing tasks in the classroom, plan sufficient time for writing activities, give real importance to the writing tasks, use the different focuses on writing, use the different stages and strategies for writing, display finish tasks in the wall, in the class book or even in the school bulletin board, etc.

Bibliography

Byrne, D. (1991) Teaching Writing Skills. Hong Kong: Longman.

Tribble, C. (1996). Writing. Hong Kong: OUP.

Purposes for writing extraído el 27 de Mayo del 2014 desde http://www.pflugervilleisd.net/curriculum/ela/grade6/documents/PurposesforWriting.pdf

The writing Process extraído el 28 de Mayo del 2014 desde http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/1/1/