Approaches to Teaching Writing
Before diving into teaching an ESL writing course, it is important to consider your approach. Why do your students need to write? What kinds of writing skills do they need to develop? How can you teach them these skills? How will you assess their writing?
Methods
Although there are many approaches to teaching writing, I chose to include only a few of the ones I consider most relevant in modern classrooms:
Expressive Writing: This method focuses on student creativity. Writing is seen as an expression of inner thoughts and personal experiences. Teachers who use this approach often see themselves as a guide who helps students discover how to write. Assignments are usually free-writing exercises and writing journals. Teachers don’t dwell on grammar errors and embrace diversions from the norm as creative. While fun, this approach is not applicable in all classrooms. It does not prepare students for real-world writing tasks. However, this therapeutic method is wonderful for a class with refugees who are often dealing with trauma and anxiety.
Process Writing: This approach is the most widely practiced in both L1 and L2 classrooms. It focuses on writing as a process rather than a product—
Prewriting 🡪 Drafting 🡪 Responding 🡪 Revising 🡪 Editing 🡪 Publishing 🡪 Repeat
Classes often incorporate lots of opportunities for peer and teacher feedback. Teachers usually grade assignments in stages to recognize student progress and attempts at revision and often meet one-on-one with students to provide intermediate feedback.
Content Focus: This is applicable in a class that teaches specific content, not just language. For example, an ESL class may teach English through history, literature, or politics. Reading and writing are interconnected since students are expected to conduct and report on their own research. This approach is not feasible if students are not proficient readers.
Genre: This method is my favorite! Writing is driven by purpose which determines the approach needed. Every project is a real-world communicative task—writing a resumé, an email, a joke, a blog post, an argumentative essay, a persuasive letter… To teach students how to write in these genres, teachers follow the teaching-learning cycle:
Set Context 🡪 Model and Deconstruct 🡪 Joint Construction 🡪 Independent Construction
Teachers help students identify patterns and expectations of various genres and then support students in their own efforts to replicate genres. Teachers using this approach need to be careful to teach voice, choice and variation so students do not simply regurgitate models.
