TARGETING SOME PROBLEMS IN TEACHING WRITING

By DAO NGUYEN ANH DUC

INTRODUCTION
Yesterday I had some free time so I tried doing some small calculations. Can you guess what I was
trying to figure out?

1 x 27 x 6 x 2 = 324

4 x 20 x 5 x 1 = 400

120 hrs

To tell the truth, I can’t say I love teaching writing but I can’t stop teaching writing as it is part of
our job, right? I myself have encountered lots of problems in teaching this skill. How about you?

I dare not say that I have found out the solutions to the problems above. Today I just want to share
with you some ideas, maybe not very new to some of you, which have worked quite well in my
classes.

BODY
Whenever I talk to my colleagues at VUS about our difficulties in teaching writing, we always
mention two things:
Our students do not have enough ideas to write; they can’t develop the topic.
We are fed up with marking the papers.
Therefore, I have tried to tackle the two issues in a number of ways.
Let’s look at the first issue.

A – STUDENTS’ LACK OF IDEAS TO WRITE

1. Reasons:
Can you think of some reasons why our students say they do not have any ideas to write?

 Poor background knowledge

 Example of difficult topic questions:

 Which country or culture has made the most significant contributions throughout history?
Include examples to support your opinion.
 Express your opinion about one type of non-conventional medical treatment.
 Write a definition essay on the dominant religion in your country, or a religion or general
philosophy of life you follow or are familiar with.
 Write an argumentative essay either for or against censorship in the media and the arts.

 Lack of interest  Lack of motivation

 Example of inappropriate topics

 Discuss whether it is possible for people to create utopias where they can live in freedom,
justice, peace and harmony.
 What role do you think women should have in your country’s military?

 Laziness
Two days ago I had a writing class in which I gave my students the topic as follow:
Write an article about the best / worst travel experience you’ve ever had.
I asked my students to write the first draft of the short article in 20 minutes. Ten minutes later, I
went around the room to see how they were going on. I noticed one student who was just sitting and
staring at his note, on which there was only one line. I asked him why he didn’t do the task and the
answer was “I have never traveled anywhere.” Would you believe him?

2. Suggestions:
Here are some activities I often use in my class, which I believe many of you have already used.

 Group brainstorming
Topic:
Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the use of the RFID chips on people.
Two groups, one working on the ideas for and the other on the ideas against the use of the
technology. We just needed 7 minutes to have two lists with 7 items on each for students to choose.
 Using guiding questions or charts
When I worked with my students at the Uni. of Pedagogy, we had to work on the six types of
essays, being the Comparison – Contrast, Process, Definition, Classification, Cause-Effect and
Argumentative Essays. I found it difficult for my students to find the appropriate ideas for each type
of essay, so what I did was trying to give them some guiding questions or a chart.
Actually students may know a lot of things about the topic but they don’t where to begin. So they
need something to “ignite” their brain engine, or some “scaffolding”.

Definition
- How does the dictionary define ____?
- What do I mean by ____?
- What group of things does ____ belong to?
- How is ____ different from other things?
- What parts can ____ be divided into?
- Does ____ mean something now that it didn't years ago? If so, what?
- What other words mean about the same as ____?
- What are some concrete examples of ____?
  Alternative tasks with various inputs  motivating tasks to encourage students to
think
Use of pictures / word cues in narrative: A holiday to remember (adapted from Reward Pre-Inter
Resource Pack)
Put students into groups of 3 or 4.
Place 7 sets of pictures on the table:
1. Companion
2. Means of transport
 3. Destination
4. Accommodation
5. Weather
6. Activities
7. Problems / incidents
The leader of each group choose one card from each set.
Students work in groups to write their stories.
Pictures can be replaced by word cues

Story in a bag
Groups of 4/5
Give each group a paper bag.
Groups to select 5 diverse and unrelated objects to put in the bag. Example: a postcard, a can-
opener, a candle, a mask, a teddy bear
Teacher collects the bags and distributes them again among groups.
Students work in groups to write a story about the items in the bag.

Chain stories  show products

1. Explain the task. Each turn should take 5-7 minutes.
2. Give each student a sheet of paper and ask them to write down the name of a person on the
top.
3. Ask students to write a short paragraph to describe the character’s family background.
4. Ask students to give their papers to the one behind them. The new students will write
another paragraph to describe the character’s career.
5. Ask students to give their papers to the person on their right. The new ones will write one
paragraph to describe an incident happening to the character one day.
6. Ask students to give their papers to the ones behind them. The new ones write the last
paragraph to describe how the character deals with the problem and what he learns from it.
7. Students get their story back.
Another use: ask students to edit the stories after the activities in class.--> collection

 Group / pair writing

Advantages:
Rich sources of information/materials
Objective feedback
Revising and editing available
Increased cooperation
“Also, like other group tasks, collaborative writing has the potential to be far superior to individual
writing, because the weaknesses and inadequacies of individuals are caught by one another, while
all the strengths of the individuals are pooled.”
(From [Link] )

Disadvantages:
Time consuming
Noise

B – ASSESSMENT
The longer the course lasts, the more we “suffer”, right as the number of papers to be marked just
increases. There are various reasons why teacher don’t like marking writing, such as…
1. Reasons for dislike:
 Time consumption
 Size of classes
  Number of assignments
 Quality of writing
 Types of error to be corrected
 Students’ feedback / attitudes
 etc.

2. Suggested ideas:
ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT:

Alternative assessment methods work well in learner-centered classrooms

because

They are based on the idea that students can evaluate their own learning and
learn from the evaluation process.

These methods give learners opportunities to reflect on both their linguistic

development and their learning processes (what helps them learn and what
might help them learn better).

Alternative assessment thus gives instructors a way to connect assessment

with review of learning strategies.

[Link]
Alternative assessments generally meet the following criteria:

 Focus is on documenting individual student growth over time, rather than comparing students with one

another.

 Emphasis is on students' strengths (what they know), rather than weaknesses (what they don't know).

 Consideration is given to the learning styles, language proficiencies, cultural and educational backgrounds,

and grade levels of students.

Although there is no single definition of alternative assessment, the main goal is to "gather evidence about how

students are approaching, processing, and completing real-life tasks in a particular domain" (Huerta-Macias, 1995, p.

9).

 Alternative assessment:
In the practical situations of my classes, I haven’t had the condition to apply things alternatives like
portfolios, journals. However, what I have very often used is “alternative feedback perspectives”,
being self-assessment, peer-assessment and a combination of peer assessment and student-teacher
conference.
 Peer-assessment  The use of checklist ( 2 examples from Word Pass)

The reasons why I choose peer assessment are as follows:

Provide personal feedback for each student
Involve students in the assessment process
Foster students’ reflection on the learning processs that are going on
Encourage student cooperation
Some disadvantages:
Scoring relatively subjactive
Scores may be particularly unreliable in high-stakes sistuations
Interpersonal problems may develop among students
(New ways of classroom assessment)

Checklists can be useful for classroom assessment because they are easy to
construct and use, and they align closely with tasks. At the same time, they
are limited in that they do not provide an assessment of the relative quality of
a student's performance on a particular task.

 Peer assessment combined with teacher assessment (Peer and teacher)

To minimize the problems related to unreliable scores and mostly to satisfy students’ demand for
the teacher’s reactions and feedback.
3. Demonstration:
The steps:
Explain the task and requirements
Explain the criteria in the form
Students do the task, teacher writes the main criteria on the board to remind them
Students exchange writing and evaluate each other
Students discuss with partners about their comments
Students discuss with teacher about their writing and their partner’s comments
Students edit their work. (if possible)

Task: Paragraph writing with a focus on time expressions  Describe the procedures
(Explain task and criteria, write on board, student write, exchange, peer edit / evaluate, pair
discussion, teacher – student conference)

4. Implications

In order to prepare students for the use of alternative assessments, Students have
to see the benefits of peer assessment
 allow time to teach them how to use them  Students understand what they are
going to do.

 Their evaluation criteria and standards are known to the student 

students know what they are going to be assessed

Students’ discussion  increase communication and cooperation

Teacher-student conference  solve problems, revise the evaluation task, enhance the reliability of
the assessment process They involve interaction between assessor (instructor,
peers, self) and person assessed
 Timing: carefully planned

Checklist: besides Yes / No, ask students to do some other things: underline/circle the features (see
examples), focus on the items taught in the lesson, don’t overload students with lost of items to be
checked
Why?
Check the writing
Check the eveluation process

References

Huerta-Macias, A. (1995). Alternative assessment: Responses to commonly asked questions. TESOL Journal, 5, 8-10.

[Link]