Convo | Make writing irresistible to students

One ability that we teachers quite often find tricky working on is the old school, traditional, pen and paper technique known as 'writing'. In this day and age? you may ask. Well yes, even if everyone is texting, typing and tweeting these days, the fundamentals of writing are still an essential skill for most English learners. Many will need to communicate with clients and suppliers or surprisingly enough, actually need to write research papers for university.

Why is this an issue? A lot of students find writing boring and lack the discipline to sit, think and transfer thought to paper via a ball point. We as teachers often let our students get away with what they feel comfortable with so we are guilty of making their lives easier and exam skills weaker.

Build interest

I used to hate writing but ask me my opinion on pizza with pineapple and I'll whittle on all day about food crime everywhere.

Let's say I go on one of my raving rants and while I do so, my cunning partner who knew I wouldn't be able to close my beak, records everything I say using his simple but effective mobile app. Suddenly, when I come back up for air, he interrupts my objections to having anything sweet on a pizza base (including Nutella), with the painful sound of my own barking voice. I'm gobsmacked at what I hear and sit stunned.

Now, as my partner plays back the recording, he opens up Word on his laptop and transcribes everything being blurted, morphing sound into text.

By the end of it, I see my extreme opinions in black and white on the screen before me.

You can see, the student has produced written word and it's now down to you what you want to do with it.

A) the student could proof read it for grammar, vocabulary, organisation, register, coherence etc

B) Reconstruct the document into a piece of formalised writing such as a letter of complaint, an essay debate or article etc

C) combine the two options above

Pretty cool? Your student will certainly think so. Grab this new found excitement and channel it into the correction activity.

A common reason why students aren't keen on writing is because we don't make it personal or relevant to the learner. If you don't care about something, you won't have much to say about it and a simple shrug will usually suffice.

Make it fun

Do this for everyone's sake. Activate your student by starting with dynamic vocabulary games (running dictations, word trails, speed crosswords or 'pictionary' to name a few).

Stage 2 could be a speed writing game.

Set the stage by giving you and your student characters and "text" each other using new vocabulary learnt. Fun roles could be two actors organising their weekend together, or you can allow the student to decide.

Next stage, play timed spot the difference. Two identical texts yet one has been (badly) modified with errors which the students have to find. They have to find all the mistakes within the time limit. This teaches the requirements for the formal task that you will provide later.

The 'boring' part is really driving home the criteria and what's expected in order to successfully construct whichever type of task you're doing but by this point you and your student should still have lots of energy generated from the previous games that you can push through.

The final piece to the puzzle is up to you. Time permitted, you could do a 'restricted' writing activity where only the foundations are laid before further construction at home, or simply complete a plan in note form to be developed under timed conditions for homework.

By this point you've practised most of the key components to teaching writing: vocabulary, structure, organisation and cohesion and depending on the level, you could have gone into some of the finer points for Proficient level students.

So you see, teaching writing skills can be fun and engaging for learners and teachers alike. To summarise: make it fun, make it relevant and make it snappy and eventually you'll find students smiling when you tell them it's time to practise writing.

There are many more techniques and teaching activities that you can use but these mentioned are successful strategies we have learned and used in class from experienced teacher trainers over the years. If you try them, let us know if they work for you and how you adapted the activities.

ESL training for new teachers: https://bit.ly/38kJ7Zq

Make writing irresistible to students

Updated: 08/02/2023

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Make writing irresistible to students

Updated: 08/02/2023

Ready to dive in? Start your language learning journey.

Help someone who's learning English. Share

Ready to dive in?
Start your language learning journey.