By Enrique Rojas R.
The
idea in this particular series of articles is to deal with those things that
are necessary for students to know but, for a variety of reasons (call them
school programs, syllabus, time constraints or whatever) teachers neglect to
address. The conundrum is that this article deals with teaching writing and the
author believes that we language instructors really do not teach our students
how to write. That makes it an arduous task to pinpoint what is not being
imparted.
For
the wide majority of the textbooks our students use their approach to teaching
writing consists on presenting a model of a piece of writing, for instance an
email. Then they try to familiarize the students with its parts, strategy,
register and wording, perhaps teach some useful vocabulary and then ask the
students to produce something similar.
This
helps the learners become familiar with different formats and types of
communication but it is a long way away from teaching them how to put the words
together to communicate, to transmit, to inform, to instruct, to provoke, to
excite, to convince, etc., in a meaningful, pleasing or unpleasing, emphatic,
authoritative, suggestive or any other way.
The
classical strategy to give students a topic and tell them to write about it
does not do it even if we carefully correct their mistakes. It is necessary to
show them the route and not just redirect them when they go astray.
Fortunately
there are some educators who teach writing as a process, and this is much more
useful. It involves pre-writing, drafting, revising, rewriting, evaluating or
proofreading and publishing. They are going in the right direction.
You
have to keep in mind that you are never going to write acceptably without an appropriate
knowledge of grammar, so the instruction of it should go in parallel. Then an
able handling of collocations is a must together with familiarity and dexterity
in the use of discourse markers, transitions, connectors and the like.
Another
point that is absolutely basic but we usually take for granted is punctuation.
The result is that a very large number of learners ignore how to use those ‘strange
symbols.’
The
Spanish syntax possesses extraordinary flexibility. You can vary the order of
the sentence elements in a countless number of ways. When Spanish speakers speak
or especially write in English try to exercise the same capacity but the
possibilities are much more restricted. We must teach them to widely use the subject / verb /complement structure
and leave for later the specific occasions in which we are allowed to subvert
that sequence.
And
these things are just the most basic bits of wisdom we should give our students
on the matter. From then we should move on to things that are still fundamental
but that hardly anybody teaches like topic sentences, thesis statements the
three or the five paragraphs compositions, the cyclical structure in which the
conclusion reinforces the introduction, paraphrasing and many other important
things, that the limitation of space forestalls
further expansion.
Now is your turn:
Ask the question to yourself and respond sincerely: Do I really teach my
students how to write?
BIODATA
Graduated in Journalism at the PUCP, Peru, Enrique Rojas R. holds a MA in Journalism and MA in Inter American History from Southern Illinois University, USA; an MA in Literature from University of the Americas, Puebla, Mexico, all the coursework for a MA in TEFL at Universidad de Piura, Peru and BA in Education from Universidad Federico Villarreal. He has also obtained Certificates of Proficiency in English both from Cambridge University and the University of Michigan and the Diploma for EFL Teachers from Universidad del Pacifico. He is an Oral Examiner for the Cambridge University exams and has been awarded the title Expert in E-Learning from Asociacion Educativa del Mediterraneo and Universidad Marcelino Champagnat. He has worked as a professor in universities in Peru, Mexico and the United States; as a newscaster and a producer in radio and television stations in the United States and Mexico, and as a writer and editor in daily newspapers of the same countries. He has been in the staff of CIDUP for 19 years teaching English and Spanish specializing in International Exams, English for Business, ESP and Teacher Training. He has been a speaker in every Congress of English for Special Purposes organized by Centro de Idiomas de la U.P. He is also a member of its Research Area.
