Writing and the Young EFL Learner

Facilitator: Sarah Coutts

Objectives: This workshop aims to:

1. provide an overview of essential points to consider when teaching

writing to elementary EFL students, and

2. provide a toolbox of activities for teachers to use from beginner to

low-intermediate students.

Why Write?

Writing helps students to solidify the grammar and vocabulary that

they are studying.

Writing lets students create their own meaning, which has longer

benefits in memory and application.

Both the students’ culture and classroom environment have a

significant impact on students’ development as writers.

Writing develops essential linguistic and critical thinking skills that

can be transferred between languages to some extent.

Where to Start?

Obviously, knowing the alphabet and basic words is an essential first step

towards being able to write longer tasks. However, this does not mean

that it’s necessary to spend several weeks on teaching the alphabet only.

It is, however, essential to ensure that students make important

distinctions in the language such as capital letters and punctuation, which

are extremely important in English.

Also, remember that the four core skills in language (reading, writing,

listening and speaking) are interdependent and should be taught as such.

After you’ve chosen a phonics system (e.g. Letterland, Jolly Phonics, Zoo

Phonics, etc.), group the sounds according to their frequency of use.

The following is one example of how to group sounds when teaching them

to new students. This does not mean that you will teach all of these letters

in one lesson, but rather that you will sequence your letters in this order1.

1 http://jollylearning.co.uk Date Accessed: 14 December 2013

Consider the following lesson to introduce new sounds/letters to students:

SAMPLE LESSON STRUCTURE

Introduction

Warm up with an alphabet song or chant that the students know well. As students learn more letters and sounds, have them make random letters with their hands or bodies. Call out letters in non-alphabetical order to test their knowledge of the alphabet and sounds.

Presentation

Introduce the sound with a short story and place a slight emphasis on the sound to be taught. For example: Sammy the snake likes to explore. His friends 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.”

Ask the students what sound they heard the most in the story. Prompt them if necessary. Have the students imitate the sound. Ask the students what Sammy says when he’s scared. Let them move like a snake while practicing the sound.

Practice

Introduce the students to other words beginning with /s/. Start by saying the words so that they learn to recognize the sound by listening before reading. For example: Teacher: Listen to these words. Do they start with

Sammy Snake? sun star sat step Teacher: Can you tell me other words that start

with Sammy Snake? Now that the students can hear the /s/ sound, it’s time to show it to them and to trace the letter. Once they have practiced tracing the sound, they need to practice writing the sound by themselves.

The

Production

After practicing writing the sound, give the students 8 – 10 pictures (of objects for which they have already learned the vocabulary) and ask them which words start with /s/ - at least half of the words should start with the letter being practiced. Also, remember that the words must start with /s/ - words that end in /s/ or have /s/ in the middle should be done as a separate exercise. Give students a worksheet with pictures of items and tell them to write the letter /s/ under each picture that starts with that sound. You can then move on to worksheets where the /s/ is left out of words like “sun.” Next, students will practice tracing then writing whole words that start with the target sound. Then progress to three word choices with a picture in which students have to identify the correct word for a particular picture. Ex. Give them a picture of the sun with the words “run,” “fun” and “sun.” Students must then identify the correct word for the picture. Move on to pattern sentences such as “I like….” and ultimately writing their own sentences.

Conclusion

As a homework task, ask students to find pictures of things that start with /s/ or have an /s/ in them. You can also assign short sentences or words. This can then be extended to them finding words based on a theme and ultimately writing sentences using their vocabulary as it increases.

Notes

Once all of the individual sounds, including vowels, have been taught and students can write short sentences like “The sun is hot.” And “The dog sits in the sun.”, move on to blends, diagraphs and diphthongs before moving on to rhyming words.

The

Alphabet Review

Write the letter in the circle that comes next. The first

one has been done for you.

d a y m

h r b v

c u w r

s j t x

q e g p

i f k

Young Writers

Asking students to write may seem more intimidating for teachers than

children. It’s true that some students will really struggle to complete

writing tasks, but it’s equally true that every child can complete these

tasks in some way if they’re given the right encouragement. How they

complete the task is less important than that they try and are encouraged

to write regardless of their ability. It’s also important that they not be

taught to fear writing.

As students progress from specific structural patterns to create sentences,

organize descriptions, and layouts of specific types of writing, it becomes

increasingly important for teachers to provide opportunities for students

to have a specific context and audience to write for. Developing a sense of

audience is an essential part of communicating in writing and it is possible

even at an early stage of writing.

In the initial stages of writing, a sense of audience can be created by

encouraging students to write sentences that other student have to

decide are true/false or guess the answers to. Older or more confident

students can be encouraged to experiment with different text types, such

as:

A Day in a Caveman’s Life Letters

Advertisements Menus

Autobiographies My New Jellybean

Birthday Cards Opinions

Cartoons and Comics Personal Ads

Crosswords Picture Prompts

Daily Routines Poems

Descriptions Postcards

Dialogues Potions and Spells

Directions Puzzles

Emails Ransom Notes

Extraordinary Jobs SMSes

Finish the Story Stories from the Past

Fortune Telling Story Frames

Gap Fills (Mad Libs) Thank You Notes

Instructions Tongue Twisters

Invitations Wanted Posters

Modelling Writing Examples for Students

Regardless of the style of writing you plan to do with your students, it’s

essential to provide them with several examples of the structure of the

target writing. Provide them with an outline of the structural components

and practice, as a class, identifying the structural components of each text.

Once you’ve done this, consider writing a text together as a class – or in

groups – for the students to practice further – especially if the students

have basic to intermediate language skills. Even advanced or more

proficient students may need more modelling than anticipated.

Writing Activities

Writing activities can be divided into those which are guided and tend to

encourage some form of copying, and those that are a little freer and

encourage more creativity. Guided copying is often used to practice

handwriting, spelling and new grammatical constructions. The support

frameworks you choose give learners guidance on producing written work

within clearly defined constraints. The use of a substitution chart, for

example, can provide a simple sentence pattern such as Jack likes hot

dogs, but Jane likes hamburgers. Students then adapt this sentence using

information on the chart provided.

To keep students motivated, make sure you adjust the practice level of the

writing tasks. Freer tasks not only encourage creativity, but help students

to develop independence while practicing planning, organizing ideas and

understanding text types. Guided writing activities are a necessary

foundation for more creative writing and help students to develop

confidence in their skills. Examples of writing activities at word-, sentence-

and text-level are provided in the following table.

Purpose

Wo

rd-l

eve

l

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

Learning new

vocabulary,

handwriting and

spelling

Sen

ten

ce-l

eve

l Captions for Pictures

Speech Bubbles for Characters

Writing Information from Charts

Writing Simple Questions

Unscrambling Sentences

All of the above and

practicing new

structures and

functions

The

Purpose Te

xt-l

eve

l

Diaries

Descriptions

Advertisements

Instructions

Invitations

Letters

Posters

Poems

Stories/Simple Books

All of the above and

planning, drafting,

editing and

understanding layout

Examples of Short Writing Activities

Dear Diary

The easiest of these to implement, at almost any level, is diary writing. It is a good

idea to provide students at all levels with some prompts. At a basic level, such

prompts would include gap fills that require students to fill in just a word or two.

Students could also be asked to write two to three words that describe a given

topic. For example: friends, weekend, holidays, weather, etc.

Depending on the proficiency of the students, you can build up to daily entries of

two to five short sentences. Encourage students to write about their daily lives as

these are usually things about which they would actually want to talk with native

speakers.

Weather: Hot, Sunny Friends: Play, Laugh Food: Delicious, Hungry

Today, the weather was hot

and sunny.

I played with my friends.

We laughed a lot.

Tomorrow, we’ll go to a movie.

Consider giving students a set journal format with space to draw a picture and

write beneath it. This provides the opportunity for students who are already

confident in their language skills to write as much as they want even if they do not

draw a picture, while less confident students can draw a picture and simply label

the items in the picture.

Examples of Diary Prompts

Basic

Give students a word/theme and ask

them to write three to five (3-5) words

related to the given word.

Intermediate

Intermediate students can be given a word or

theme on which to write three to five (3-5)

sentences. The sentences can be simple and

short. As their writing improves, or for more

proficient students, you can increase the

difficulty of the topics given.

Name: ________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

This activity can also be expanded by telling students to choose a celebrity and

pretend that they are the celebrity. They then need to write their diary entries

from the point of view of the celebrity.

Gap-Fills

Rhyming Pairs

Comics/Cartoons

Comics are easy to do with low level and high level students because they require

very little writing. www.makebeliefcomix.com is a good site on which students can

make their own comic strips. It provides numerous templates for students to

choose or teachers can create a template and print it for students to do in class.

Either way, this is a fun activity that allows students to be creative while practicing

English writing. Here’s an example of an activity for students.

My New Jellybean

You are asked to create a new jellybean for your local candy store. What flavor is

your new jellybean? What does it look like? How does it taste?

What kind of ingredients do you add to the recipe to

make it?

Write about your jellybean. Remember to

include adjectives and pay attention to your

spelling and your grammar.

Picture Prompts

There are several ways in which pictures can be used to prompt both creative and

more serious writing in the language classroom. For example:

① Print out about 30 pieces of clip art or gather a number of images together.

The number will vary depending on the number of students.

② The students select three images each.

③ The students write a story that connects the images together.

④ You can modify this recipe by adding rules – the story must be about you or

the story must be circular (the last picture must be connected back to the

first picture), etc.

⑤ To mix things up you can set a time limit of perhaps 10 minutes. After 10

minutes, the students trade pictures to the left and write a new story with

a new set of pictures.

You can also tell students to bring in a photograph or pictures of their own from

which to write a short descriptive paragraph or story. Alternatively, place pictures

around the classroom and tell students to choose their favorite picture on which

to base their writing. Here are some possibilities:

Poetry

There are many different types of poems. While some of these are more formal

and rigid in their structure, others are fun and good for EFL students. Of course,

these are just a few examples of the options available. For example:

Acrostic Limerick

Haiku 20-20 Poem

Couplet Persona Poem

Diamante Free Form

Acrostic

An acrostic poem is a type of poetry where the first, last or other letters in a line

spell out a particular word or phrase. The most common and simple form of an

acrostic poem is where the first letters of each line spell out the word or phrase.

However, this type of poem can also use the end of the lines or even the middle as

illustrated below.

The great thing about this type of poem is that the writer can choose any word.

The length of the word is irrelevant because the writer is still challenged to create

images and poetry using the letters in the word. Therefore, the poem can be

based on a simple word like sun or mom, or longer single words like baseball or

amusement park. The options are endless.

Using the beginning of lines2

2 http://mrswarnerarlington.weebly.com/poetry.html Date Accessed: 23 November 2014

Haiku

A haiku is a Japanese poem of 17 syllables that are divided into three lines of five,

seven, and five. Traditionally, they evoke images of the natural world, but anything

can be used as the topic of a haiku. They’re more challenging to write than they

may seem (because of the syllable count), but they can produce some interesting

work from students.

The 5-7-5 rule is no longer strictly as strictly followed in haiku writing as it

previously was although this is still commonly the rule taught in English lesson.

Here are some examples3 of student haikus4:

3 www.poemhunter.com Date Accessed: 23 November 2014

4 www.mrswarnerarlington.weebly.com/poetry.html Date Accessed: 23 November 2014

Couplets

Couplets are among the easiest type of poetry to write since they consist of only

two lines as the name suggests. However, the end words of each line of the

couplet have to rhyme. For this reason, couplets are good for lower level students

and practicing rhyming words5.

The rabbits danced away the night,

Then disappeared at morning’s light.

Diamante

Although Diamante poems use very simple language, they can be a bit misleading

in their simplicity. This type of poem has very strict rules for each line, but it’s an

excellent way to practice descriptions, reinforce parts of speech, practice

opposites and contrasting, use gerunds, or encourage writing with simple

vocabulary.

5 www.mrswarnerarlington.weebly.com/poetry.html Date Accessed: 23 November 2014

As its name suggests, Diamante is a diamond-shaped poem made up of seven

lines as follows6:

Line 1: noun or subject (one word)

Line 2: two adjectives to describe the subject in line 1

Line 3: three words ending in –ing relating to the subject

Line 4: two words describing the subject and two words describing the opposite

Line 5: three words ending in –ing relating to the opposite

Line 6: two words describing the opposite of the subject

Line 7: opposite subject (one word)

Limerick

A limerick is a humorous poem with five lines that always have the same rhyme

and meter patterns. Lines one, two, and five share the same rhyme, and lines

three and four share a rhyme. Here are some examples7 of limericks8.

6 www.mrswarnerarlington.weebly.com/poetry.html Date Accessed: 23 November 2014

7 Ibid.

8 http://missalike.weebly.com/1/category/poetry/1.html Date Accessed: 23 November 2014

Postcards Postcards can be done with any level of students. The amount writing is entirely up to the teacher, which makes this a very versatile writing activity in the EFL classroom. You can present the task in a couple of different ways, such as the ideas below or the addendum at the end of this chapter.

Text Messages (SMSes)

The language in this exercise can be very informal because text language uses

emoticons, abbreviations, and follows very basic grammar rules. Essentially, as

long as students are communicating – in other words, another person can read

and understand the message – it is acceptable.

Re-write the above text message using correct grammar and spelling.

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

Wanted Posters

Editing and Proofreading

Editing and proofreading are as much a part of learning to write as

grammar and sentence structure. It’s a good habit for students to get

used to proofreading and editing their work from their first writing task.

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)

These are basic but essential points in writing that should be reinforced

in every writing task so that students can develop this crucial habit in

writing.

Editing can also be practiced as a separate task. Scholastic’s Funny Fairy

Tale Proofreading by Justin McCory Martin is a fun book of editing

samples at a variety of levels. Some examples of this book have been

provided on the following pages.

Spelling: Signs, Signs, Signs

Grammar: The Queen’s County Fair

Mixed Review: Wanted by the FBI