How to Support our Students when Writing in English by Elaine Cockerham Director, ELC, College of Banking and Financial Studies.

Outline Why write? Problems for our students Things to consider before writing Getting ideas and how to start Support whilst writing Modelling the Process

Why Write? To communicate Permanent record More organised and formal Requirement of course or job

Problems for our Students Ideas How to start Organisation Helping without doing it for them Grammar & Spelling Understanding the PROCESS

Things to Consider Before Writing Audience/purpose Topic/title/question Length of text Time limit Preparing (gathering what you need)

How to Begin Using pictures Providing sentence starts Brainstorming

How Could You Use this?

How could you use this?

Generating Ideas Pictures as prompts Describe the picture itself What happened before/next Why did it happen? What’s the problem/solution? What would you do/have done? What’s your opinion? (more concrete, things to describe etc.)

Generating Ideas Sentence starts Example: because His car broke down before after She was happy when/while in spite of.....

Generating Ideas - Brainstorming Who? What? When? Title/Topic Key words/vocab for each category How? Where? Why?

Ideas (grouping) Sentences Paragraphs The Process Ideas (grouping) Sentences Paragraphs

Support Vocabulary lists Sentence starts Grids of sentence outlines

Outline Sentences The bar graph pie chart line graph shows compares changes in differences between the distribution of (use title or axes for details) by _______________________ in ___________________ between ________ and _________ from ____________ to ___________

Modelling the Process Whole class ideas Pair or small groups with specific tasks Whole class feedback/collation Building up slowly Providing scaffolding

An Example (part 1) Picture of a place/person Pairs to complete mindmap or grid with categories Whole class – teacher collates ideas on board (class decides what is irrelevant or off topic) T provides lists of vocab/connectors etc Groups write sentences or short paragraphs for each category.

An Example (part 2) Whole class – T collates so paragraphs are built up (1 sentence from each group?) Groups write topic sentence(s) Then editing/revising – groups swap texts? Now modelling has been seen – for home work set a mind-map task?

Describing a Person My friend (name) Character Likes and dislikes Appearance My friend (name) Key words/vocab for each category Hobbies How we first met Family

Revising and Editing Collate common mistakes give as example text to edit/correct and improve After first draft is written T gives feedback and guidance using correction symbols Students self or peer edit

Low Levels? Sentence level - words to order - Sentences lacking adjectives - Get students to list all vocab on a topic then use sentence outlines/starters to write own Paragraph level Group sentences to make paragraphs- add topic sentences Whole text Paragraphs to be ordered, add discourse markers, conjunctions etc., discard irrelevancies

Remember – it’s a process! Summary Task Generate ideas Support/scaffolding Build up the parts Edit/redraft Remember – it’s a process!

Thank you for taking part tonight. eltpn@om. britishcouncil Thank you for taking part tonight. eltpn@om.britishcouncil.org See you again next academic year?