How to Develop Skill of Writing

Key words: writing, writing activities, Controlled, guided and free writing, Controlled guided writing,  Controlled free writing, Controlled Writing Activities, Matching beginning and ending sentences, Sequencing jumbled words, Gap-fill sentences, Changing sentences, Brainstorming, The characteristics of controlled writing

  Introduction

Writing is a very productive skill for mankind, with the help of writing we preserve the knowledge for next generation and this is why students have to actively produce language in order to write.

         Writing involves different difficult skills of language: vocabulary, spelling, grammar, word order, and logical arrangement of ideas. In the process students often make mistakes when they start to writing. These lead teachers to have a lot of marking and corrections to help the students.

Writing

Writing is a mean of preserving the knowledge people have gained through time, and to transfer it to their children.

Writing involves grammar, vocabulary, word order, spelling and logical arrangement of ideas

A step by step approach to teaching writing is to build the confidence of students.

Activities must be started with teacher-controlled, and move to lesser teacher-controlled activities; to Guided activities

 Controlled, guided and free writing

Controlled Writing Activities

Give controlled exercises to students, so that students do not make too many mistakes. Baker (2003),

Copying correct sentences:

Copying sentences help students to practice new language and is also a good way to practice writing skill.

Matching beginning and ending sentences

1. I went to the shop …    a. to ask for a favor

2. I washed my clothes… b. to buy some bread

3. I walked to my friend.. c. to go to the party

Sequencing jumbled words: In this activity, jumbled words means that the correct words are provided, but in the wrong order. put the words in the right order. Example: going-I-for-am-swimming.

The characteristics of controlled writing

1. Teacher Dominated
2. Teacher select topic
3. Teacher decides when to write
4. Teacher evaluate

5. One topic at time

6. Easy to Conduct

Guided Writing

Gap-fill sentences:

Fill the gap, where students have to think and write the words in sentences themselves.

Example: I ------- two sisters and------ brothers.

Changing sentences:

 Change the grammatical structure, or to a different tense.

Example: I like bananas, but I don’t like oranges.

My friend----------- bananas, but she--------- oranges.

Characteristics Guided Writing

1. Teacher as facilitator
2. Teacher and student select topic
3. Student revise and review; teacher check

4. More than one topic

At a time

5. Time saving

Free writing activities

         As soon the students mastered the basic skills of sentence writing, they need to progress toward free writing exercises, paragraph and essay writing. Teachers will give instructions how to organize the essays and paragraphs to improve students’ writing. 

Cheron Verster (2002) suggests the following guidelines

Explain the overall organization of an essay to students

Explain paragraph organization.

Give outlines of the easy to students

Ask students to use the outline to write their essay.

Free writing

1. Student dominated
2. Students decide when to write
3. Student check and review
4. Many topics at a time
5. No time limit

Teach students a model essay step by step. Once they learned it, ask them to write an outline of their essay keeping in view the step of writing essay:

·         Chose the topic of an essay about which the students have knowledge.

·         Extract ideas or information for a writing essay

·         Organize ideas in a logical order

·         Make sure the paragraphs are linked together well.

·         Make sure the language is accurate.

·         The language is appropriate for the purpose of the writing

·         Ask students to use their outline to write their essay.

Brainstorming: This is often a group exercise in which all the students in the class are encouraged to participate by sharing thoughts about a subject.

The term was promoted by Alex Osborn in 1953 in his book ”Applied Imagination”

Osborn claimed that brainstorming was more effective than individuals working alone in creating ideas

Brainstorming is a group or individual creativity technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for a problem by gathering a list of ideas contributed by its member(s)