Teaching Writing

Matt Altstiel
5/2/07
TESL 3001

Teaching Writing

Personal journal entries were one of the writing strategies introduced a long time ago at MLC training. However, they didn’t really go over guidelines for assigning journal entries, time limits or ways to clearly connect reading and writing. When I introduced the concept of writing journals, the students kind of groaned and didn’t seem too into it, but they did put forth some effort. I assigned ten minutes each class period for the students to write about anything they wanted to, essentially free form. I would then give students feedback commenting on both content and form, sure that the students would pick up my subliminal recasts and error correction. While I noticed students noticeably relax when writing, it appeared in their writing it was seen as slack off time since the quality of the writing never really improved.

The class lesson emphasizing teaching writing and also the Brown chapter made some concepts clear to me that I later implemented in the second go around at CLUES. For one, while I provided error correction, I did not provide authentic, non-textbook reading examples frequently enough. Secondly, the reading examples were not geared towards my Latino student body, and therefore not all that interesting or relevant. Thirdly, I did not give them enough time or the idea to brainstorm ideas before writing. Error correction helped, but in the additional journal entries I should have them rewrite their entry correctly as a revision. Fourthly, I did not balance the process and product and like the previous concept, they did not receive composition training. Finally, I did not connect reading and writing well enough. Although it might have made them somewhat self-conscious to show other students their writing, it could have intrinsically motivated them after receiving praise from their peers.

Knowing this, I took cues from the lesson plan and had them initiate a photo-project / story. The idea was to keep it relevant to their cultural background and also to their home in the Twin Cities. Therefore, I had them take pictures or get pictures for the first week and begin writing the second week about their homeland and what they would do there. Using the pictures as a cue and the overarching theme of continuation of the project, students were much more eager to write. Rather than having the average journal length be four sentence, the average length was an almost half a page! Students like the idea of building into something, especially something they can show off to their fellow students and families. This new direction incorporating the above concepts from Brown and from class yielded immediate results.