great tips for teaching writing to language learners
If you’re a teacher of language, it’s your job to bridge this gap, not only helping your students to write great sentences, but also organizing their thoughts into complete letters, essays, papers, or even books. In fact, they use different parts of the brain so it’s not uncommon to meet dazzling conversationalists who can barely compose an intelligible email. .It’s amazing how often speaking ability doesn’t translate to writing ability with foreign language learners. Never fear, because Open Equal Free’s Literacy Resources and Ed Tips are here to help! In this article, we’ll give you a bird’s eye view of teaching writing: how to help your students get past their fears, organize their ideas, and communicate effectively.don't lose focos, write for a reason!
Why do we write? To communicate ideas, of course! This is perhaps one of the most important rules for teaching writing. The more you have your students write to communicate an idea effectively to another person, the better.Sure, that person can be you, but why not to another student, or better yet, a whole group of them?
Instead of having a student write a biography she quietly turns in, why not have her write a biography of a famous person without stating the name? Then, have her read the biography out loud to the class. If the class can guess who the bio is about, the student did a good job. If the class can’t guess who they’ve written about, she needs to get back to work!
Not only do students immediately know whether they’ve succeeded or not, but they also understand why they’ve failed, and the reason they’ve failed goes straight to the heart of writing: They didn’t get their ideas across to their readers.This can work with almost any writing assignment.
Instead of making the goal to “get an A,” the goal becomes to “use your writing to communicate an idea effectively.”
Instead of having a student write a biography she quietly turns in, why not have her write a biography of a famous person without stating the name? Then, have her read the biography out loud to the class. If the class can guess who the bio is about, the student did a good job. If the class can’t guess who they’ve written about, she needs to get back to work!
Not only do students immediately know whether they’ve succeeded or not, but they also understand why they’ve failed, and the reason they’ve failed goes straight to the heart of writing: They didn’t get their ideas across to their readers.This can work with almost any writing assignment.
Instead of making the goal to “get an A,” the goal becomes to “use your writing to communicate an idea effectively.”
BUILD STRONG WRITERS don't expect to birth them
What many teachers are unable to accept is that sometimes you can’t take your students from zero to two without that crucial step in the middle..Most teachers know that you can’t take your students from zero to sixty without some steps in between. It’s one of the oldest plays in the teacher book: Scaffolding.
The write thing Project 365(2) Day 12Whenever your students are having difficulty with anything, the best thing you can do is stop, rewind, and break the lesson into smaller pieces.
First of all, think long and hard about what you’re teaching. Are you teaching writing? Writing and vocab? Writing, vocab, and grammar? Even if you are teaching multiple things, or expect your students to negotiate multiple new language concepts, the trick is to walk them through them so that they’re only tackling one at a time.
For example, let’s say you want them to write a restaurant review. If you try to get a bunch of beginning language learners to not only organize their thoughts, but also generate vocabulary and decide what tenses and phrasing are appropriate for a review article all at once, you’re likely setting them up for failure. Break it down!
Like all scaffolding, how many of these steps you’ll have to do depends on the level of your students and what your objectives for the lesson are, but, here are some bites you can help them take during your lesson:
The write thing Project 365(2) Day 12Whenever your students are having difficulty with anything, the best thing you can do is stop, rewind, and break the lesson into smaller pieces.
First of all, think long and hard about what you’re teaching. Are you teaching writing? Writing and vocab? Writing, vocab, and grammar? Even if you are teaching multiple things, or expect your students to negotiate multiple new language concepts, the trick is to walk them through them so that they’re only tackling one at a time.
For example, let’s say you want them to write a restaurant review. If you try to get a bunch of beginning language learners to not only organize their thoughts, but also generate vocabulary and decide what tenses and phrasing are appropriate for a review article all at once, you’re likely setting them up for failure. Break it down!
Like all scaffolding, how many of these steps you’ll have to do depends on the level of your students and what your objectives for the lesson are, but, here are some bites you can help them take during your lesson:
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