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
- Teacher Dominated
- Teacher select topic
- Teacher decides when to write
- 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
- Teacher as facilitator
- Teacher and student select topic
- 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
- Student dominated
- Students decide when to write
- Student check and review
- Many topics at a time
- 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)
