Writing and the Young EFL Learner Sarah Coutts
Phonics Systems
Jolly Phonics
Teaching a Sound Sammy the snake likes to explore. His friends say that he is silly to explore by himself because it is dangerous but Sammy doesn’t listen to them. Sammy knows what to do when he is scared. He says, “Sssss.”
Learning to Write
New Vocabulary
Moving on to Blends
What other words start with /s/?
Other Words with /s/
Developing Vocabulary
Writing is usually more intimidating for teachers than for students!
Moving on to Sentences
Human Sentences
Audience Developing a sense of audience is an essential part of communicating in writing and it is possible even at an early stage of writing.
Levelled Writing Tasks
Word Level Labels for Pictures/Diagrams Crosswords Anagrams (words with scrambled letters) Word Puzzles Picture/Word Dictionaries Charts for Surveys/Questionnaires Classifying Words into Word Families Concept/Word Webs Menus/Shopping Lists Purpose: Learning new vocabulary, handwriting and spelling
Sentence Level Purpose: Learning new vocabulary, handwriting and spelling as well as practicing new structures and functions Captions for Pictures Speech Bubbles for Characters Writing Information from Charts Writing Simple Questions Unscrambling Sentences
Text Level Purpose: Learning new vocabulary, handwriting and spelling, practicing new structures and functions as well as planning, drafting, editing and understanding layout Diaries Descriptions Advertisements/Posters Instructions Invitations Letters Poems Stories/Simple Books
Dear Diary Basic Weather: Hot, Sunny Friends: Play, Laugh Food: Delicious, Hungry Intermediate Today, the weather was hot and sunny. I played with my friends. We laughed a lot.
Alternative Gap-Fills
Invitations
Postcards
Picture Prompts
Dialogues
How can we improve this?
Comics
Short Writing Prompts Write about the best day of your life. Describe your ideal bedroom. If I were the teacher, I would…. Write about your favorite TV show.
Short Letter Prompts
Poems
Text Messages
Wanted Posters
Simple Book Reviews
Editing and Proofreading At an elementary level, students can check simple things like: Spelling Sentence Structure (i.e. Every sentence has a subject and a verb) Capital Letters (Names and at the beginning of sentences) Punctuation (Full Stops and Commas)
Spelling
Grammar
Mixed Review