Any ideas in teaching writing?
 

Hi, guess I'm the latest newcomer here. I found eslhq very interesting. In fact, I used one or two of the strategies teaching esl students in my school suggested in this web.

Oh! I forgot to introduce myself. In short, my name is Hartini and I'm an English teacher for 12 years. Currently, I'm teaching at a primary school here in Malaysia.

Well, my problem is...I don't know how or do not have any idea to teach writing. My students- they come from rural areas, not enough exposure in the language and lack of vocabulary and reading. I want to start with something simple...like teaching them how to make simple sentences to compound and complex sentences, with illustrations of course! Hope I could get a feedback soon. Thanks, bye!:)

Re: Any ideas in teaching writing?
 

Hi Hatini,
I too am teaching in a rural area. I teach in a middle school but they have extremely basic English skills.
Do you have access to computers? You could consider having your students starting a class blog. I am thinking of doing this with mine just for a lighter activity to motivate them to write during the Winter camp. We are going to publish a classroom blog. The best writing from each day will be published and we'll take pictures too: lots and lots of pictures. Since the writing will be so few.
I think the students would enjoy seeing their work on the internet. And, their parents and friends might see it, which would give them extra incentive.

Re: Any ideas in teaching writing?
 

Welcome to ESLHQ, Hartini.

Do you incorporate writing in your classes? For example, the students work in groups to write stories or dialogues with the target language? Do you assign them homework, such as writing a diary or a page on a topic that interests them? I usually do both and have seen positive results.

If you want to incorporate writing in a larger project, have the students make videos. They need to write the scripts, practice them, act them out (with props!), video the scene, and then show the class for a critique. Everyone gets very, very involved. It's a lot of fun.

Re: Any ideas in teaching writing?
 

My students are between 10 to 12 years old. They could not even write a simple sentence. For example, when they are told to write about their choices of things or hobbies, they would end up in chunks of words such as......"I like to go a bicycle everyday because a fun a very good exercise, I. My father bicycle with I......"

These types of chunks really got me so frustrated because the fact is I drilled those simple sentences everyday. It's the same when I assigned them with homework. They do not even want to try and prefer to copy the sentences which I wrote on the board.
Can't blame them because English is not their mother tongue at home and nobody would help them with their homework.

Sometimes they could not understand what I wrote and I have to translate them in the mother tongue. :doh:

Re: Any ideas in teaching writing?
 

I just found this, I hope it helps you too.

Basic Sentence Structure and patterns for practicing English as a second language (ESL)

If the link is not visible, post a reply with your e-mail and I will send it to you.

Mandy

Re: Any ideas in teaching writing?
 

Have you tried writing a class story together? That way you can help re-frame their ideas into sentences and model how a story gets put together. I would stick with story themes that are familiar to them and discuss beginnings, story development, characters, endings etc when you feel they can cope with the concepts. Just being told to write something is actually incredibly difficult if you haven't had lots of practice; children need masses of help with ideas and lots of modelling, even when English is their first language.
regards
Rouvrou

Re: Any ideas in teaching writing?
 

Have you tried making pieces of paper with parts of a sentence, for example Tomorrow /I /am /going/ to /the /swimming pool and make them assemble the correct pieces to form a correct sentence?
Good luck