One of the most successful and interesting methods of learning to write is called «Forming and running a Writing Improvement Group». It helps students to improve each other’s assignment, essay and report writing skills. There is nothing shameful about admitting a need to improve your writing skills or style.
A teacher needs at least three or four people to form an effective writing improvement group. T he most difficult task with any self-help group is keeping it together. I t is important that the group remains at around three or four members. A ny more than this number and the practical procedures involved become excessively time consuming.
A ny less and the benefits of having a variety of opinions and personal experience is lost. A ll the members of the group read each other’s written work and comment on its strengths and weaknesses. S ome teachers may feel that the logic of forming groups of individuals who are aware of their own weaknesses as writers, and then expecting them to be able to help each other, is flawed. S uch an opinion is itself based on the faulty premise that weak writers are incapable of identifying weaknesses in the writing of others.
I t is always easier to spot weaknesses in other people’s work than it is in your own. Moreover, we all have different weaknesses, and by working in a group, each individual’s strengths cover the weaknesses of the others.
T he group should meet at least once a fortnight. E ach member submits a piece of written work the week before the meeting. T hus, for a four-member group, copies are made of the four pieces of work and distributed to each of the group members for reading prior to the meeting. D
uring the meeting the teacher takes it in turns to tell each member in turn about the strengths and weaknesses of their work. 15 minutes is enough time for three people to express their opinions to a fourth. Thus with four members, each meeting will take approximately an hour.
It is important to keep five minutes available at the end of each meeting to briefly review how the meeting went, to encourage the discussion of any ideas that members have for making it more effective in future and to agree the time and date of the next meeting .
Before starting creative writing it is useful to make some pre-writing activities. They can be very interesting and useful, they help writers to concentrate.
F or example the teacher can give each student any book or magazine in English to use. T he teacher should have a selection also, in order to model the process. T he students should open their book or magazine at any page and choose a word at random — the first word that jumps off the page at them — and record this as Word #1; close the book. T he process should be continued until each student has four words recorded.
T hen the writers focus for about one minute on each word separately, and list all their thoughts, ideas and associations that the word generates. T hen they begin to make connections among the four words and their lists of personal associations by writing phrases, sentences, and ideas that demonstrate a relationship among the words. This activity should take 5−10 minutes .
The following activity takes 5−8 minutes. The teacher should prepare the students for free writing by explaining that they should write whatever thoughts enter their head from the moment that the teacher says «go» to the moment he or she says «stop», even if it means writing and rewriting «I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write». When the pen or pencil hits the paper it does not stop for pauses, erasures, or corrections. Eventually, most students begin to focus and the writing flows.
Students then have the opportunity to develop these pre-writing ideas further or save them for another day .
I t is very interesting and amusing creative writing using comics. T he teacher asks students to name their favorite comic strips and describe what they like best about the characters in the strips. I t is important to remember that comics are not just for kids. T he teacher should explain that the «bubbles» in comic strips take the place of quotation marks.
I t is a good idea to have students create their own character to be introduced as a newcomer to their favorite comic strip. T he teacher should begin by having each student draw a picture of the new character and write a description of the character’s personality. N
ext students draw their own three-frame comic strip, using both new and regular characters. S tudents might want to refer back to recent comic strips for ideas, or they can design their comic strips to pickup where today’s strip left off. T hey should write the dialogue in bubbles above the characters' heads.
In the end all the finished strips are compiled together for a class «funny pages».
Comics often contain unfamiliar words. Weekly vocabulary lists will be a lot more fun when students develop their own lists of new words, using comic strips as sources (Serial and adventure strips are especially good for this activity) .
S enior students can control themselves their process of writing. T hey are able to set a goal and to reach it. T
o improve their writing abilities the students can make some activities. F or example they can record a couple of minutes of a radio talk show (or, if you can keep yourself from peeking at the screen, the audio from a television talk show). A
fter replaying the recording they should write down the dialogue. I t is useful to add narrative descriptions of the speakers and their actions. It is important to use as much of the speaker’s grammar and «speaking style» as possible.
A nother useful activity is creating of a diary. N ot an ordinary diary, just pure fiction.
T he students should start out by thinking of a character. T his character might be a star in one of the stories they are currently writing, or they might just appear for this exercise. O
nce you have an idea of who your character is, purchase a diary or journal that is exactly what the character would want to write in. Then, they should spend about 10 minutes every day writing in the diary about the character’s life, or their thoughts.
Good writing practice can be done when a student sit down in a familiar place with your notebook and pen, takes a quick look around him, and then start to describe the place he or she is in. The trick is the following: the student cannot use one of his senses. For example, he can use your sense of smell, sound, touch, and taste — but not sight. He has 200 words with the help of which he should describe this place as clearly as if he did use the sense he was not using. After he has gotten used to doing this exercise, it interesting to try performing it in a place that he is not familiar with .
CONCLUSION
Writing skills help the learner gain independence, fluency, comprehensibility and creativity in writing. If learners have mastered these skills, they will be able to write so that not only they can understand what they have written, but other speakers of that language can read and follow it too.
In the result of the conducted research we can make the following conclusions:
The teacher should develop students' writing abilities from the very beginning of their study. He should choose necessary activities and exercises according to the level of his students' knowledge and according to their age.
He should do his best to make his classes interesting and informative because writing is often one of the most difficult and least attractive activities for students.
It is necessary for the teacher to use communicative approach at the lessons because it gives the students an opportunity to implement their knowledge into practice.
Definitely the question of forming and development of writing skills is still open and acquires further investigations. New methodic and approaches constantly appear. They should be explored and estimated and in the case of successful results they can be implemented into practice. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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