The Role of Writing in Second-Language Learning
Sequence in Developing the Writing Skill
Sequence of Writing Exercises and Activities Competence—Writing Words Copying Spelling Sounds Dictation
Competence Exercises—Writing Language Forms Language Forms Simulation Exercises Productive Performance Exercises Explained Situation Sentence Completion Answering Questions Originating Questions and Answers Sustained Writing Summaries
Semi-Controlled Writing Quality Versus Quantity
Combining Language Skills
It was stated in chapter 10 that in the rush to attain speaking skills, listening comprehension often fails to receive the attention it deserves. Writing, too, is often slighted. Especially since the inception of the audio-lingual movement the oral skills have received major attention, and writing has been considered least important of the language skills. It seems somewhat strange that in the case of oral skills, less importance is attached to the receptive skill (listening), while in the other case, the written skills, less importance is accorded to the productive skill (writing). Whether or not the students need to learn how to express themselves in writing actually depends upon the individual students and their goals. As many may have opportunities to write to native speakers in the language as have the opportunity to talk to native speakers. Even if they do not need the writing skill for communicative purposes, writing is a valuable asset in the classroom as the second-language learner seeks to gain competence and to functionalize productive skills. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the writing skill and how it may help the students in learning a second language.
Writing is a recognized objective among most language teachers, and as such, it should be emphasized in the classroom. Although the development of a true literary ability in the second language is extremely unlikely at this level, a situation may arise in which there is a need to communicate a written message in that language. If so, the students should be prepared to do so.
The ability to write is recognized in society and in the schools as an important objective of language study. A method in which there was no writing practice would be suspect from the traditional point of view. Traditionally also, the students associate homework with a written assignment. Beginning students who do not have homework often get the false, but exciting, notion that a second-language class requires no preparation. Even mature students at more advanced levels tend to treat oral assignments with less respect than written ones. At times, the only successful method of eliciting outside class preparation is to assign written work for the next day.
During the following class period, these written exercises are easily and quickly corrected in class and are an important means of determining true comprehension of the structures being studied. At the same time, changing the focus of the students' attention from oral to written activities during the class period can be a welcome relief. After a few minutes the students will be
ready for some other activity, but the necessary change of momentum has by then been achieved.
Writing also helps to solidify the students' grasp of vocabulary and structure and complements the other language skills. Another factor is involved here also. Since writing and speaking are productive skills, they demand learning at a more profound level, thereby insuring greater retention of the receptive skills. One would expect that students who have spent a considerable proportion of their language-learning time in the productive skills would have a more complete knowledge of the language. Certainly, they have more facility in the performance of that knowledge.
In learning to control the use of the second-language system, learners must learn the bits and pieces of words as well as the words themselves and how the words fit together in sentences. They must, for example, learn to produce and manipulate the morphemes of the language. 1 One important characteristic of writing is that written exercises can be prepared in which the learner is asked to produce appropriate word endings or word changes according to the context of the sentence. It is the only type of practice in which the learner can realistically be asked to supply parts of words. In listening comprehension and reading, the learner must be able to recognize and comprehend the meaning carried by the morphemes, but not to produce them. In speaking, the learner must be able to produce words containing the appropriate word endings and changes, but not to produce them in isolation. Listening comprehension, reading, and speaking, then, provide valuable practice in using the morphemes in communicative situations, but how do the students concentrate on these parts of words and learn them? The most appropriate skill for such practice is cognitive writing exercises. In this sense, writing is the most valuable type of practice for developing the morpheme aspects of second-language competence.
The teacher can also use written exercises to evaluate student progress in concept acquisition as well as in writing ability. These exercises can be written so as to be easy to grade, and the results are easily interpreted by the students. Scores from such tests are tangible evidence of student achievement and are important components of the course grade. The goal in writing is twofold. The immediate goal is to develop the students' ability to write to the point at which written homework assignments can be given. Psychologically, students are more impressed by exercises that are to be written and handed in than by those that are to be "learned." Realistically, the teacher knows that writing homework exercises and other written activities help the students to acquire
’A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language. For example, in the word books, there are two morphemes: book and s. The morpheme book is a “free morpheme” in that it can stand by itself. The s is a "bound morpheme” in that it must always be joined to another morpheme.
the vocabulary and the grammar of the lesson. Practically, the students' minimum contact with the language in the classroom must be expanded as much as possible. The overall objective, of course, is to be able to write a message that a native speaker would be able to understand, just as was true in the case of speaking, this aim does not imply native speaker proficiency. However, the important criterion is that they can express their ideas in written form, however elementary the fashion.
Students do not have to acquire as high a level of proficiency in speaking and writing as they do in listening comprehension and reading to be able to function in the language. This contention can be supported on three counts. First, the receptive skills provide the means for the students to absorb new vocabulary and structure. From this point of view, it is most important that these two skills be developed to the maximum. From this base, the students have limitless possibilities for expanding their knowledge of the language and its people. Second, the students have little control over the linguistic complexity of language which they may hear or need to read. Thus, it is most important that they be trained to anticipate complex forms which they are not able to use actively. Third, although correct speech is the goal, the native speaker can fill in the gaps and comprehend the message, //there are not too many errors. A point of incomprehensibility does, of course, exist.
The purpose of the preceding paragraph is not to deemphasize the importance of the productive skills but to stress the fact that the students can control the level of their speech and writing. Students should learn to speak and write in a manner that makes self-expression in both skills possible, but communication is possible and acceptable at a level below that of a native speaker. In the classroom, both the teacher and the students are much better satisfied if they keep in mind that the goal in the productive skills is not native speech, but the ability to communicate with a native speaker. On the other hand, the goal in listening comprehension and reading should be to comprehend native speech.
The many similarities between speaking and writing indicate that there is quite a bit of carry-over from one skill to the other. The mental processes involved in both give the students practice in going from thought to language. However, the differences are sufficiently important to require that practice be provided in each. Obviously, speech involves sound while writing does not. At the competence level, the purpose of speaking practice is to develop sound discrimination and auditory memory while writing practice stresses sound- symbol association, vocabulary, spelling, and structural forms. Speech is normally a social process carried out in the presence of other people while the written lesson may be completed alone. Speech requires almost instantaneous formulations of statements or questions followed by replies and reactions, while writing is a much slower process. In writing, the students have more time
to search for words and forms. To some students, completing written exercises presents much less threat than giving responses to oral stimuli. The last two differences, then, may cause a psychological discomfort in speaking that is not a factor in writing.
The sequence of classroom activities necessary to develop the writing skill resembles that of speaking except for the fact, of course, that the students write rather than talk. Too, writing exercises can be used to practice separate morphemic components of words. This is not the case in speaking. As in speaking, the students must first gain a certain degree of control over the underlying language competence before they can begin to move into the development of the productive performance skill of writing to communicate a message. The initial steps in the sequence are merely preparatory exercises, and the teacher should never regard them as ends in themselves. The teacher should also be aware of the fact that proper sequencing in the teaching of the productive skills cannot be ignored if the students are to develop the confidence necessary to use these skills. Unless the students are led, step by step, in activities of increasing levels of difficulty, they cannot be expected to have an active command of the material.
Attention to sequencing should begin as soon as writing is introduced, and performance skills should be actualized for each chapter as the material is being covered in class. At the end of the first chapter or unit in their text, the students should be able to express themselves orally or in written form about the topic or topics of that chapter.
Past approaches to second-language teaching have failed to develop complete sequences leading to writing. In the grammar-translation approach, the students were expected to translate complex sentences and even conversations or paragraphs from the first to the second language; however, there was little attention given to self-expression in writing. With audio-lingual materials, students were expected to leap from copying practice, sentence completion, and pattern drill practice to controlled responses in writing; however, there was still little emphasis on composing in the second language. An examination of such sequences is sufficient to explain the fact that in the past students have acquired only a quite limited facility in expressing themselves in writing. Too, some second-language educators have been guilty of wanting to wait until the next level to introduce written compositions.
Similar problems occur in teaching both speaking and writing due to the fact that both require the learners to activate their interim, incomplete
grammar system by means of performance skills that are not sufficiently developed to put into practice all the structure and vocabulary that the learners know. In the beginning, what the learners say or write will not, in all likelihood, be a true representation of the total knowledge contained in their cognitive structure. As they attempt to create language to express their thoughts, both their speech and writing will contain various inaccuracies. The functionalization of the learners' language system involves bringing the learners' performance skills into line with their competence and of bringing their competence as close to that of the native speaker as their capabilities permit. The position taken in this text is that the learner's competence and performance will not coincide with that of the native, except in rare cases. The goal is to reach the point at which unavoidable individual deviations do not prevent communication.
Other problems in writing relate to the affective domain of student interests and attitudes. There are several things teachers can do to alleviate these problems. First, the student's confidence and motivation must be maintained during the competence acquisition stage. Second, topics should be selected that are stimulating without being highly complex and philosophical. Ideally, the writing assignment will center around some idea of interest to the students but not encourage them to attempt to utilize complicated sentence patterns beyond their level of language learning. One type of activity, which at the moment promises to fit these qualifications, combines language expression and affective content. (Please see chapter 12, pages 347-49, for examples.)
Accepting the goal of communication in writing is especially difficult due to the fact that by tradition more is expected of written than spoken language. Writing is more carefully prepared and more highly polished. Teachers generally tolerate errors in writing more readily than errors in speaking. However, teachers should not expect most students to write polished compositions in the second language under any circumstance, since they can rarely do that in their first language. Moans of surprise and displeasure also come from the classrooms of first-language teachers as they read student compositions.
Before being introduced to writing, the students should be able to hear the sounds of the second language and to pronounce them aloud when they see them. They should have a corpus of vocabulary, and they should comprehend the grammatical structures with which they will be working as they are writing.
In the writing sequence, writing consists of the completion of exercises that teach students to (1) write the sounds they can understand, pronounce, and read; (2) master the forms of the grammar being studied; and (3) proceed to activities in which they practice combining words and grammar to express themselves in writing. Many of the exercises and activities used in developing speaking abilities are also appropriate for developing writing abilities.
Copying The first step in teaching writing is to develop the students' ability in the formation of graphemes and to acquaint them with all punctuation. 2 In the case of those languages using the Latin alphabet, few difficulties are encountered. Languages using other alphabets are, needless to say, much more difficult, and additional attention should be given to this first step in writing.
One of the recommendations of early audio-lingual proponents was to ask the students to copy each assigned line of the dialog five times. However, the results were not encouraging. Often the fifth version contained more errors than the first. Instead of improving, many students' work deteriorated during the course of what was supposed to be a learning activity. This is an example of high error rate due to low level of difficulty and its corollary, lack of sufficient challenge to stimulate student interest.
In order to avoid such errors of carelessness, teachers should watch carefully, and at the first sign that copying is not accomplishing its purpose of learning how to make the letters and to punctuate the sentences properly, they should abandon this technique. It is doubtful whether copying will hold the students' attention for more than a few weeks after writing is introduced. In fact, the teacher should consider the advisability of varying the ways of copying. One possible way is to scramble the words and ask the students to rearrange them in the proper order. Especially in those languages that have a similar alphabet many students can begin immediately to write answers to simple questions. For example, writing the answers to a question such as "Is the house big?" would provide identical practice in making the letters and punctuation but would be more stimulating than mere copying. Too, practice of this type would be more beneficial in developing competence and performance skills.
Spelling sounds The first step that students should take in learning to spell what they hear is to learn the different graphemes possible for each sound and the context in which each occurs. The teacher should isolate these graphemes and present them one at a time in the early stages of writing. Doing one of
these a day until all have been covered provides a needed preliminary to dictation and a variation from oral or reading activities. Needless to say, the students should be able to hear, pronounce, and read aloud these sounds before they are asked to write them. In fact, this activity correlates very well with practice in reading aloud.
The following are examples of sounds that have different spellings and, therefore, should be included in spelling practice. (The French words are from Reading-Writing-Spelling Manual , A-LM French Level /, 1964, p. 45.)
French | ||
i e | orange | gitan |
bonjour | dommage | gisant |
journal | gens | girafe |
German | ||
Pause | Dieb | Lippe |
Papier | er gibt | Kappe |
Professor | du lebst | Cruppe |
Spanish | ||
que | casa | culpa |
queso | cama | cuna |
quita | cosa | |
quinto | como |
Dictation The purpose of dictation practice is twofold. First, taking dictation provides additional reinforcement to the relationship between the sound and the symbol that was established in reading aloud. (The past tense was used in the preceding sentence because dictation would not precede practice reading aloud. If the students cannot look at a word and pronounce it, there is practically no chance that they will be able to spell it correctly during a dictation.) Second, the dictation, properly given, is an excellent test of the development of the students' auditory memory. In this sense, it is more a test of listening comprehension than of writing. It is a means toward an end, not a goal in itself.
At first, the students should be asked to write only language taken directly from their own text. Later, familiar vocabulary in new contexts or even unfamiliar material can be used to test whether they have really been hearing the sounds and spelling them or whether they have merely been memorizing the lines. In selecting the dictation, the teacher should choose only short sections with words containing the sounds being studied. Dictations can easily become long, drawn-out procedures if too many lines are dictated.
The teacher should be careful to read at normal speed and with the normal elisions. (Beginning teachers may profit tremendously by listening to the tape before giving the dictation!) Slowing down to the point of pronouncing each word separately negates the whole purpose of the dictation. Too, the teacher must not succumb to the pleas of some students to repeat just one more time. Phrases that are repeated over and over again are no longer tests of listening comprehension. While reading the dictation, the teacher should pay close attention to the students. By watching them, she can easily judge the length of the pauses. Obviously, she cannot wait for everyone to finish, but she can estimate the writing speed of most students in class. Except for quizzes, dictations should be graded by the students themselves.
In order to prepare for dictations, the students need to pay careful attention during the mimicry-memorization drill and reading-aloud practice. They should be encouraged to read aloud as they study for the dictation and to repeat the sentence without looking at the words. While practicing the pronunciation, they should also take special notice of all words or combinations of words that do not look the way they sound. Then, during the dictation itself, they should not be allowed to write any words until the teacher has completed the entire phrase being dictated. As soon as the teacher finishes the phrase or sentence, the students should repeat it to themselves and continue to repeat as they write.
Students who have difficulty taking dictations are often committing two serious mistakes. First, they think of a dictation as a spelling test. The teacher should make clear to them that a dictation also tests their ability to hear sounds and to hold these sounds in their minds while they are writing. Second, they begin to write before they hear all the dictated phrase. This "jumping the gun" causes them to miss much of the dictation.
As was mentioned earlier, dictation practice is a step, but only a minor one, in developing the ability to write. At the early levels of language learning, the students use dictation practice in each chapter as a means of putting the material in that chapter into writing. However, once they have had all the sounds of the language and have learned to spell them, constant attention to dictation is unnecessary and is no longer challenging to the students. Students who have no difficulty spelling what they hear should be allowed to progress to more stimulating exercises. For those who have not acquired this ability, additional practice should be provided during study time, while in the lab, or on occasions when the other students are engaged in other projects or activities. The point is that the abilities called for in dictation—sound discrimination, sound-symbol association, and auditory memory—are basic to language learning and must be developed before students can progress satisfactorily to more difficult activities.
The students should now know how to spell at least some of the sounds of the language. They should also know the vocabulary words and comprehend the concepts being studied. They are ready at this stage to practice writing the grammar forms being learned. In a sense, these written exercises may be viewed as a means of verifying comprehension and of developing the ability to produce the grammatical forms. This kind of writing practice certainly serves the function of reinforcing structural concepts. Furthermore, practice in writing verb endings, adjectival forms, etc. gives the students valuable manipulation practice. Both conceptual understanding and manipulative facility are necessary if the students are to be able to use the language. Conceptual understanding and manipulative facility entail control of morpheme components of words as well as of words and phrases. Written exercises can be utilized to confirm the first goal and develop the second better than any of the other three language skills. (This statement should not be misconstrued to mean that writing language forms is the only means of checking understanding and practicing manipulation of forms nor that such exercises are the one and only purpose of writing.)
The type of exercise in which the students write in the appropriate form may range from asking them to write crucial word endings and/or changes to entire verb forms, from isolated words to words in sentences or in narrative or conversational contexts.
Language forms In written exercises any key element in the word or in the sentence can be omitted in order to focus student attention on the particular grammar point being learned and to provide practice in gaining competence with these forms. Cognitive exercises emphasizing language forms may be similar to the following types.
MORPHEME COMPONENTS
In the following sentences the ending on the verb that indicates the
person performing the action has been omitted. Write in the appropriate
person ending. If no ending is required, write an X in the blank.
1. Mi amigo y yo nos ve_cada dia.
2. Maria no habla_mucho en clase.
3. ^Tienes_tu un examen manana?
4. Los otros comen_en casa.
VERB FORMS IN I SO LA TION
Write the forms of the verb that go with the subject.
A. je (manger, habiter, demander, fumer, jouer)
2. Tu (ecouter, raconter, visiter)
3. Jacques (jouer, aimer, travailler)
VERB FORMS IN SENTENCES
Complete the following sentences with the appropriate possessive to refer to the person indicated in the sentence.
1. Judy cut_finger.
2. We rented_apartment.
3. They painted_room.
4. He sold_car.
OBJECT PRONOUNS IN REALISTIC CONTEXT
Answer the following questions as in the model.
Model: Siehst du die Sterne? ja, ich sehe s/e.
1. Isst du Fleisch?
2. Liest du Bucher?
3. Siehst du Johann?
4. Kennst du Maria?
(Ja, ich esse es.) (Ja, ich lese sie.) (Ja, ich sehe ihn.) (Ja, ich kenne sie.)
VERB FORMS IN CONVERSATIONAL CONTEXT
Complete the following dialog with the appropriate forms of the verb to
be.
Bob: How_you today?
Bill: I__tired and sleepy.
Bob: What have you_doing?
Bill: My cousin ___visiting us, and he, Jim, and I have ___
having parties.
Bob: Where_he now?
Bill: He and Jim__home taking a nap.
Exercises and directions in which successful completion is dependent upon knowledge of grammatical terminology rather than the ability to produce forms should be avoided. For example: "Give the first-person singular of the following infinitives," or "Complete the following sentences with the present perfect tense, passive voice of the verbs given in parentheses."
Obviously, the students are not communicating as they complete the preceding kinds of exercises. As the research of Hosenfeld (1973) on learner strategies so vividly points out, students may be resorting to various tricks and shortcuts to arrive at the correct answers rather than learning both the forms of
the words and the contexts in which they occur (see chapter 4, page 89). Too, this type of exercise does not force the same thought processes that might well be expected to take place in the generation of a sentence to communicate. Nor do some of them entail the expression of meaning, the key element in communication. However, given the proper teacher-prepared introduction to the exercises and the prerequisite student comprehension of the concepts involved prior to undertaking the exercise, all should be meaningful from a grammatical point of view.
Simulation exercises Some exercises have been developed that seem to more nearly duplicate the mental processes involved in sentence production. In this type of exercise, students are still not communicating, but they process mentally most of the sentence elements. The purpose is to get the students to string together words and to put them into sentences as well as to give the appropriate forms of the words themselves. The following exercises require the students to pay attention to all the components of the sentence.
DEHYDRATED SENTENCES
Using the indicated words, plus any necessary additions, write a complete sentence. Do not change the order of the words.
1. boy/go/home/school
2. I/be/there/nine
3. students/eat/cafeteria
4. we/travel/car
SENTENCE PATTERNS
Using the words given in each column, write eight sentences of the same pattern as the model. Each word must be used at least once.
Pattern: | subject | verb | verb complement |
The dog | wags | his tail. | |
The teacher | know | cookies | |
My friends | see | the Jones | |
1 | read | signs | |
You | bring | many books | |
Betty and 1 | them | ||
Jerry |
Normally, writing practice is assigned as a homework activity. Since the students will be completing the drills or exercises on their own, it is essential that they be prepared for what they have been asked to do. The teacher should
preview the assignment carefully in class, giving several examples of the structure involved. Then he should give a few sentences in which the class as a whole is expected to demonstrate their comprehension of what they are to do. Perhaps the first two or three sentences in each exercise can be done in class, just to be sure that they have indeed understood. An adequate preview of homework exercises enables the students to complete their task much more quickly and efficiently. Otherwise, they are often frustrated doing the homework as they search for answers; and if they decide upon incorrect forms, they must unlearn in class the next day as well as learn the correct answers.
Having acquired a knowledge of the grammatical forms in the chapter and a facility in manipulating them, the students are ready for the crucial step in the sequence. At this point they must begin to attach meaning to these forms in order to communicate. This step is a difficult one because psychologically the load on the mental processes is suddenly doubled. Therefore, initial "real" language writing should be as simple as possible. At first, the students are limited to one-sentence answers. Later, they begin to put sentences together into sustained sequences of expression.
The teacher may be surprised to find that his students who had almost perfect control of the structures during prior writing practice begin at this stage to revert to "thoughtless" errors they should not be making. This rash of mistakes is not atypical, and if considered from the viewpoint of the mental load involved, quite to be expected. Therefore, the teacher should refrain from the urge to chastise the students and, instead, give them simple exercises to perform until they are more accustomed to expressing themselves in writing.
In the following exercises the students' internal mental processes are actively involved as they attempt to send a message via their newly acquired, yet incomplete, language system and developing performance skills. As the students progress and as their internalized language system becomes more firmly and more completely established, the need to practice the receptive skills prior to the productive becomes less and less pronounced.
Explained situation In this exercise a situation is described and the students are asked to give an appropriate question or statement.
Give an appropriate question to fit the following situations.
1. You see your brother leaving the house and you are interested in his destination. You ask, __?
2. You call a friend whom you have not seen for some time and you are
interested in her activities. You ask, __?
3. Father sees his young daughter with something in her hand and he is
concerned. He asks, ____?
4. You have just been introduced to a person your own age. You say,
Sentence completion This kind of exercise gives the students the opportunity to express their own ideas.
Complete the following sentences truthfully.
1. I see _
2. I hear _
3. I smell_
4. I feel_
This same type of exercise can be combined with values situations.
Complete the following sentences using the appropriate form of the verb
to like.
1. After school my friends and I_
2. On weekends I_
3. During vacation my dad_
Sentence completion exercises can be extremely interesting. First, the students are writing about something that relates to their lives and which they can visualize in their minds. Therefore, the exercise is meaningful as well as expressing meaning. Second, doing this exercise in class provides a great deal of variety and gives the students an opportunity to find out more about their classmates. Too, the format of the exercise gives them a chance to create language to talk about things important to them.
Answering questions Students can be asked to write answers to questions based on the content of listening comprehension or reading passages, or they can be given personalized questions to answer. Questions over the content of the readings are easiest in that the answers (or a form of the answers) are contained in the readings. Answering questions over listening passages is slightly more difficult, and the students should have the opportunity to listen to the material until they are able to answer the questions. Personalized questions are the most difficult in that the answers involve transfer of
knowledge and may include structures and vocabulary that do not come directly from the material being studied. However, relating the content of the material to the students and demonstrating to them that they can use what they have been learning to write about themselves is an extremely important aspect of each learning sequence and should not be omitted. As is true with speaking, teachers should keep in mind that the questions themselves are of varying levels of difficulty, from the simplest level, "Is john going?" to "How are you going?" to the most difficult, "Why are you going?" In this fashion, all students will have some questions that stimulate their best efforts.
Originating questions and answers Practice in writing simple sentences need not be limited to responses to questions. The students may also be asked to write their own questions that they then ask the other students in class. The content and difficulty level of these questions can be limited in the same way the teachers limit their questions. First, they ask questions over the reading or dialog, and later, they should be expected to ask each other personalized questions using content words from the reading. One-sentence descriptions of persons, places, or events in the reading vary the procedure of asking questions. Also, the teachers can use lists of relevant vocabulary or visuals to cue sentence writing. They can ask the students to write sentences using teacher-selected words or to describe some aspect of teacher-chosen pictures. For variety, lists of vocabulary can be assigned to be completed as questions. These questions in turn become the basis for the following day's oral practice.
After the students have learned to write sentences to express meaning, they should be given the opportunity to take the next step in the sequence— combining these sentences into paragraph form.
Summaries One of the best ways to give the students practice in writing a series of sentences is to ask them to write a summary of the reading or the dialog. Students who have prepared the lesson should know the vocabulary necessary to write a resume without too much difficulty, thus developing performance skills and confidence at the same time. From the beginning of the course the students should be led to expect this activity for each chapter. The teacher can point out the importance of this activity and emphasize the fact that unless they can do it they have not really learned the material. Variety can be added by rewriting dialogs as narratives and vice versa.
Semi-controlled writing The next step is semi-controlled writing, in which the students are given written, oral, or visual guides to assist them in composing as well as to provide ideas to stimulate their thinking. By following
the guidelines, the students can compose a short paragraph. For example, students who are finishing a chapter on telling time might write a short description of their daily schedule by answering the following questions: "What time do you get up?" "What time do you eat breakfast?" "When do you leave home?" "What time do you get to school?" "When do you eat lunch?" "When are classes over?" "What time do you get home?" "What time do you have dinner?" "What time do you go to bed?" More talented students can, within the limits of their language background, easily expand on these questions and write more complete versions of their daily activities.
All students who are progressing well in the course should achieve the ability to write short, guided paragraphs on topics related to the content of the chapter before they proceed to the material of the next chapter. Each chunk of material needs to be digested, absorbed, and applied in its entirety before the students are ready to continue. Failure to attain this achievement level for each chapter only prolongs the development of the writing skill and makes its attainment more difficult. There are no shortcuts, and delays only add to the burden.
At the most advanced level, the students write free compositions on selected topics. Naturally, the selected topics should be in line with the students' language ability and the extent of their vocabulary knowledge. The guidelines are omitted, however, to permit them more freedom in organizing their own paragraphs. Writing at this level is more difficult in the sense that the students must draw upon their total knowledge of language rather than their familiarity with just one chapter. In this sense, free compositions serve as excellent practice in review and consolidation of knowledge. In assigning these compositions, the teacher should be careful to select topics that are interesting but simple, especially at the elementary levels. If he chooses topics requiring complex thoughts, the students are likely to attempt to write at a level consistent with their thoughts in the first language, and they are not ready to do so in the second language.
This incongruity between thought patterns in the first language and second-language ability should be pointed out to the students. The teacher should caution them to try to keep their compositions within the boundaries of language with which they are familiar. The implication here is that they should not write with dictionary in hand; nor should they write their composition in the first language and then attempt to translate it to the second language. If the students must use a dictionary occasionally, they should use one of the phrase and sentence dictionaries that are available. 3
378 Part Two: Practice
As most former students fully realize, nothing is more deadening to the creative thought processes than to be forced to write on an uninteresting topic. Writing that is satisfactory to both teacher and students is the product of working with a stimulating idea. The teacher should not hesitate to solicit suggestions from the students. Nor should she be averse at this stage to allowing students to write on topics of their own choosing. Insisting that everyone write on the same topic is indefensible from anyone's point of view. The purpose of this kind of writing is to express thoughts in the second language. If the interest is not there, the thoughts will not be there either. And if the thoughts are not there, the writing exercise designed to practice converting thoughts to language has practically no chance of being a successful activity in either the cognitive or the affective domains.
Quality versus quantity Unfortunately for the teacher, written compositions must be graded—or must they? In a study by Briere (1966) at UCLA, the results indicated otherwise. In this study, foreign students learning to write compositions in English were divided into two groups. One group followed the traditional procedure of careful preparation of compositions followed by a detailed analysis of their errors. The other group concentrated on quantity rather than quality. They were supposed to write as much as they could without paying special attention to language forms. At the end of the study, not only could the latter group write more, they could compose with fewer errors.
The study in the preceding paragraph was described not to convince the teacher that errors are unimportant but to suggest that practice in going from thought to expression in the second language is more important than concentrating on grammatical forms. No one learns to write without making errors. Students who have a genuine desire to learn to write in a second language are often discouraged from continuing their interest by the teacher's insistence upon unattainable standards. At the stage of expression the message is more important than the code, and the students should be encouraged to practice self-expression while concentrating on the total structure rather than on the building blocks of language.
To reinforce this objective and to stress the importance of writing as opposed to overconcern with correctness of language, the teacher can periodically give the students five minutes in which to write about some topic related to the textual materials. He should explain to them that the idea is to write as much as they can without recourse to the text or the dictionary. During the exercise, the teacher can circulate around the class to read and comment on what the students are writing. (This is also an excellent way of learning more about the students themselves.) Just as is true in the case of assigned
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compositions, he should remember to emphasize facility in expression rather than focusing on errors. The students should be urged to remember how much they can write in five minutes in order to be aware of their increasing facility to express themselves in writing.