Developing skills: speaking, listening, writing and reading.

TEACHING SPEAKING:

The reasons for speaking activities

There are a number of reasons why we ask students to do speaking activities in class.
 We want to get our students to speak so that they have to retrieve and use the language that they know.
 In genuinely COMMUNICATIVE SPEAKING ACTIVITIES we want to give the students a real desire to speak and a
communicative purpose for doing so. The content of the communication - and the achievement of the speaking
task - are as important, in a way, as the language they use.
 Speaking activities give the teacher and the students a good idea of how well everyone is doing.
We should take care to match the speaking task with the LEVEL of the students. BEGINNER students will not find it easy
to have a discussion unless it is very structured. ADVANCED students will not be motivated by simple speaking tasks.

Classroom speaking activities

 Interviews: We can use them to practice specific language items, but we can also use them for more
communicative speaking activities.
 Communication game: There are many communication games, all of which aim to get students talking as quickly
and fluently as possible.
 Discussion: Discussion range from highly formal, whole-group staged events to informal small-group interactions.
o Buzz groups: They are groups where students can quickly discuss anything from what they are going to
read about to what they want to do next. These groups are normal events in the life of a classroom.
o Sentence to discussion: We can give the students a topic - anything that people hold strong opinions
about. They have to write three sentences in favour of the topic and three sentences against the topic.
Then one student reads out a sentence and another student has to either agree or disagree. We can also
put the students into 'for and against' teams.
o Prompt cards: These are cards we can give our students, each of which contains a point of view about a
topic. Students can then have some time to thinks about what they can say to support points of view on
their cards before we start the discussion.
o Formal debate: We can decide on a motion (idea, proposition) for a debate. We divide the class into two
groups, one for the motion, one against. Each group has to prepare arguments for their position and think
of three questions for the other side. Each group then chooses someone to speak first and someone to
speak second. The others (from both groups) are the audience.
o Panel discussions: We can set up a panel discussion on just about any topic - or indeed replicate the kinds
of 'contemporary issue' panel debates that are common on television in most countries.
 Questionnaires: They are useful because they ensure that both questioner and respondent have something to say
to each other. Depending upon how tightly designed they are, they may well encourage the natural use of certain
repetitive language patterns - and thus can be situated in the middle of our communication continuum.
 Storytelling: telling stories is good for speaking, not only because it encourages the students to use a lot of
language, but also because we tell stories all the time in real life.
o Reconstructing a story: We can put the students into six groups. Each group is given one or two of a series
of pictures that tell a story. After each group has had a chance to study the pictures, we take the pictures
away. Now we form new groups of six; each of the new groups has one student from each of the original
groups. They have to tell each other what was in their pictures and try to work out a story that connects
them all.
o String things together: We can give the students pictures of any four items and ask them to work out a
story which connects them.
o What happens next?: We can show the class a film clip and stop it half way through. The students have to
imagine what happens next. When they have made their suggestions to the class, we show them the
whole video to see if they were right.
o Taking time away: A student tells a story, based on a text they have read or something that has been
discussed in class, and has a time limit. The next student has to tell the same story, but the time limit is
 shorter. Each time a new student tells the story again we take some time off so that they have to tell it
more and more quickly.
o Truth and lies: In groups of three, the students prepare three stories. One of them is true, the other two
are false. They tell their stories to the class and they have to guess which is the true story.
 Oral presentations: When students make an oral presentation, we should give them time to prepare what they
are going to say. If we want oral presentations to be successful, we need to find tasks, too, for the students who
are listening to the presentation.
o We can give the students topics to choose from and questions to guide their presentations.
o We can help the students to research their topic by finding websites and other sources for them to look
at.
o We can encourage the students to use presentation software and the internet to back up their
presentations.
o We can show the students model presentations and discuss how to introduce and develop a topic. We
can give them language for the different stages.
o We can set up poster presentation sessions. The students prepare a talk and create a poster to back it up.
Half of the class stand in front of their posters. The other half visit them one by one and listen to the
presentations. They have to report back on the two or three presentations they enjoyed the most and
why. Then the two halves of the class swap round. We can also get the students to stand in front of
pictures and describe them as if they were art gallery guides.
o We can ask the students to write at least two follow-up questions as they listen to each poster
presentation. We can choose students to summarize the presentations they have heard.
 Simulation and roleplay.
o In simulations, we give the students a chance to rehearse real-life encounters. For example, we can move
the classroom furniture so that we represent a station office with a ticket window. The students simulate
an exchange between a passenger and a travel clerk.
o In roleplay simulations, the students are given a role. Because they are playing roles rather than being
themselves, students often find roleplays very liberating. Some simulations and roleplays can involve
considerable preparation and time.

Reaching a consensus
Consensus-reaching activities work because the students have to speak in order to reach a decision.
• We can give the students a situation (such as You see a parent treating their child badly in the supermarket) and five
options about what they could do:
1) Do nothing.
2) Look at the parent and show them that you disapprove.
3) Go and speak to the parent and ask them to stop.
4) Ask the people around to help you stop the parent.
5) Call the police.
The students reach a CONSENSUS on the best option.
• We can guide the conversation by giving each student a ROLE-CARD, telling them which option they should argue for.
• Any decision-making activity is good for this kind of discussion.
• In PYRAMID DISCUSSIONS, we start by putting students in pairs to decide, for example, on five things to put in a time
capsule for future generations to find. When they have made their lists, two pairs join together to form new groups of
four. They have to negotiate their five-item lists so the new list is agreed by the group. We then join two groups of four
and the new group of eight have to negotiate their lists.

The roles of the teacher

 Prompter: we can act as helpers by offering discrete suggestions. If we do this without disrupting the discussion or
forcing students out of role, it will help with the sense of frustration that they feel when they come to a dead-end of
language or ideas.
 Participant: teachers should be good animators when asking students to produce language. Sometimes this can be
achieved by setting up an activity clearly and with enthusiasm. At other times, however, teachers may want to
participate in discussions or role-play themselves.
 Feedback provider: helpful and gentle correction may get students out of difficult misunderstandings and hesitations.
Everything depends upon our tact and the appropriacy of the feedback we give in particular situations.
When students have completed an activity, it is vital that we allow them to assess what they have done and that we tell
them what, in our opinion, went well.

Conversational strategies:
 Real talk: if students are to be involved in spontaneous face-to-face conversation outside the classroom with
competent English language speakers, they probably need to be exposed to more than just the kind of questions
that are commonly found in coursebooks. These are sometimes well formed and take no account of ellipsis, for
example.
We would not expect students to be able to use these various discourse markers or repair strategies at all levels.
On the contrary, we would expect them to develop their conversational skills as their English improves. However,
students need to be aware of what real conversation looks like and we should give them help in using some of the
more important phrases.
If we want to try to get students to use typical discourse markers and phrases, we can write them on the board.

Turning on the inner voice

In a lesson there is usually not enough time for individual students to do as much speaking as they or we would like. We
can compensate for this by getting the students to use their INNER VOICE - the voice we all use in real life when we
imagine conversations we could have or could have had. We can encourage the students to think about what they are
going to say (using their inner voice) before we ask them to speak out loud in the DISCUSSION. This will give them a
better chance of speaking success.

Principles for teaching Speaking to Teenagers

The teacher needs to find every opportunity to build real communication into the classroom since EFL contexts have a
shortage of opportunities for communication in English outside the classroom. Teacher of teenagers have to create fun
activities that are significant to the students. We should remember that our goal is to build a classroom that is English
speaking, provides plenty of opportunities for practice, and is engaging for the learners.
When designing speaking activities for teenagers, it is important to remember the following principles:
1. Use speaking activities that reflect real-life communication.
2. Use speaking activities that are developmentally appropriate.
3. Use a variety of activities to improve both accuracy and fluency.
4. Build classroom interaction by giving students plenty of opportunities to participate.
5. Keep the speaking environment active - do not correct errors explicitly.

Elements of speaking:
If students want to be able to speak fluently in English, they need to be able to pronounce phonemes correctly,
use appropriate stress and intonation patterns and speaking connected speech. However, speakers will also need to be
able to speak in a range of different genres and situations.
There are if you conversational tragedies speakers can use:
 Conversational rules and structure: using conversational openings such as "how are you?" and closings, for
example, "well I don't want to keep you from your work…"
 Survival and repair strategies: students need to be able to use repair tragedies when listening in interactive
situations. For example, they need to be able to ask for repetition by using formulaic expressions, repeating up to
the point of conversation breakdown, etc.
 Real talk: students need to be exposed to more than just the kind of questions that are commonly found in
coursebooks in order to convey a real conversation with English Language speakers.

However, we would not expect students to be able to use these various discourse markers and repairs tragedy
at all levels. We would expect them to develop their conversational skills as their English improves.

Students and speaking:

 Students are often reluctant to speak because they are shy and are not predisposed to expressing themselves in
front of other people, especially when they are being asked to give personal information or opinions. There is also a worry
about speaking badly. We can help with:
 Preparation: rehearsing what is going to be said. In this way, the student feels secure and speaks fluently. For
example, students can record presentations they are going to make, transcribe what they are going to say, etc.
 The value of repetition: every rehearsal gives them more confidence as they are not attempting to get the words
out for the first time when they try to speak in subsequent performances.
Big groups, small groups: a lot of students do not want to participate in speaking activities because they do not like
speaking to a large group of people. We can solve this by making them interact in smaller groups, with people they are
familiar with.
 TEACHING LISTENING
The importance of listening

Listening is a vital skill in any language. During language learning it is even more important because through listening
students acquire vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.
Speaking on the telephone or listening to an audio, without seeing the person who is talking, may be difficult for many
people. However, listening skills can be trained and that is our work as Teachers of English.

Types of listening

Most of the listening that students do happens when the teacher is talking. This is known as “comprehensible input”.
Nevertheless, this is not the only source of listening input. The other main sources are:
 Recorded listening: teachers use it when they want their students to hear dialogues and monologues from
coursebooks.
 Recorded listening tracks: are a great tool to let students listen to different voices and accents. It can be listened
as many times as the students want. However, it is sometimes unnatural to have a class of 30 students listening the
same audio at the same time.
 Recorded listening gives students potential access to the whole English-speaking world.
 Although we hear recorded listening in real life (in phone messages, automated information on company phones,
on the radio, etc.), it sometimes seems unnatural to have a class of 30 people all listening to the same audio track
at the same time, especially since speaker-listener interaction is not possible.
 Live listening: it is used when the speaker (the teacher or a visitor) is in the same room that students are. It is very
useful since the students can see who is talking, observe the expressions, body language, etc. Examples of this type
are: face-to-face interviews, reading from books, poetry or drama.
o Live listening includes genres such as lectures, conversations between two teachers (which the students
watch and listen to), face-to-face interviews, readings from books, poetry, drama, etc.
o Live listening works because the students can see who is talking, observe their body language and their
facial expressions and, sometimes, interact with the speakers. When the speakers are in front of other
people, they often speak differently from the way they speak in front of a microphone.
o Live listening is more likely to expose students to speech phenomena such as hesitations, repetitions,
interruptions, etc. than some recorded listening does Intensive listening: it refers to the listening that
students do in the classroom. They listen to an audio and do different activities.
 Extensive listening: occurs when students listen outside the classroom, mainly by themselves and for pleasure.

Audio devices and who uses them

A wide range of audio devices can be used for recorded listening.

 Cassette recorders are still used in some classrooms around the world. They are extremely versatile, especially if
they have counters, which can help you find where you are on the cassette. However, cassette machines are
rapidly disappearing as newer devices take place.
 CD and DVD players are popular among teachers. These are easy to use when they have track numbers, but can
sometimes be more difficult for fast forwarding and rewinding within a track.
 Many teachers play audio from computers or the interactive whiteboard.
 Students can also practice listening in language laboratories. Sometimes the whole class listens to the same thing
at the same time, but at other times we can have different students listen to different audios.
 Many students have their own listening devices. These can be used for individual practice. Students can download
the same track, or listen to different tracks for Jigsaw Listening (each student listens to a part of a text, then they
share what they have listened and reconstruct a story).
 It is very important to try the audio devices we are going to use, so that we know how to find the track we are
looking for and so that we don´t waste time and look unprofessional.
 Although teachers usually control the audio device, we can sometimes let our students be the controllers, too.
How often should students listen?

In real life, students often only listen to something once and they need to practise that skill. We can make sure that our
students are given "one-listening" tasks to help them get used to this. These are often GIST (listening for general
understanding) or SCANNING-type tasks (listening for specific information).
A language class is not, however, like the outside-the-class real world. In intensive listening, we want to give our students
chances to listen more than once so that they get the maximum benefit from what they are hearing. "When they listen
for the second or third time, they can focus on different things, such as sounds, intonation or stress or the way speakers
use certain words or grammar.

Prediction

It's important to give the students a chance to predict what they are going to hear. This allows them to get ready and
remember what they know about the topic. And this knowledge is called schemata.

Before listening
 Students can look at the question which accompanies an audio recording. They have to predict what the answer
will be.
 Students can see a picture or pictures related to the SITUATION or topic of the listening and they have to predict
what they will hear.
 We can give the students words/phrases from the audio and ask them to guess what it will be about.
 We can play the audio recording but tell the students not listening for meaning. Instead, we can ask them to tell
us about any other information, what they have understood, for instance, the location, the relation between the
speakers, etc… Using this, they predict the context of what they will hear when they listen for a second time.

Listening tasks
If we are organizing live listening, we can teach the students to be good listeners. They do this by showing their agreement,
and by asking questions when something is not clear.
 Each student can be given a bingo card with, say, 12 words from a listening text on it. Each card has different words.
The students cross out their words when they hear them. And then, find who crossed out all the words.
 We can ask different students to read different texts aloud (or tell different stories) all at the same time. Other
students have to try to listen to just one of the speakers and write down what they say.
 We can play an audio track (or tell a story), but keep stopping. Each time, the students have to say what they think is
going to happen next. Then we continue and they see if their predictions are right.
 The students can listen to a series of mini interviews on a topic, such as favorite hobbies. They have to match the
speakers to different hobbies (football, reading books, playing chess, going to the cinema, playing music, etc.).
 The students listen to a news broadcast and have to list the 5 topics they hear.
 The students listen to picture description and have to choose which one of four pictures is being talked about .
 The students listen and put a sequence of pictures in the right order
 The students listen to an interview or a conversation and have to fill in a form, chart or graph with the info they hear.

Listening again

 We can ask the students to listen again and do a variety of tasks, after they have listened for the first time.
 They would try to identify more detailed information (names, facts, numbers, times and dates) or transfer the
information in the audio recording to a different genre.
 We can ask them to retell it as if they were one of the people in it or to act out the roles of people from the original
audio recording.
 They can also have to draw/design storyboards showing the scene and the camera angle for the speakers they have
just heard. Then they film the scene with video cameras or their mobile phones.

Listening again: language matters

 Students can also listen (again) in order to study language.
 They are given a section of the written transcript with blanks in it. They have to complete the blanks and then listen
again to check if they were correct.
 We give the students a worksheet with excerpts from the listening. They do a language exercise. They then have to
use the language in sentences of their own.
 When the students have listened to a dialogue, the teacher displays it on the board. The students read it aloud. Then
the teacher starts to remove words and phrases one by one. Each time, the students have to continue speaking the
dialogue. By the end of this disappearing dialogue activity, they can do the whole thing from memory.

Extensive listening

It means listening for pleasure, usually outside the classroom.

 We can encourage our students to listen extensively by talking about the advantages of listening in this way and
showing them where they can find material.
 Extensive listening is most successful if the students choose what they want to listen to and the level they feel
comfortable listening at.
 We can ask our students to keep a record of what they have listened to, including language that they have found
interesting.
 Students can download podcasts from English-language-learning sites.
 Students can listen to English-speaking radio online.
 Students can access the wide range of freely available video clips on sites such as YouTube.
 Students can listen to audio recordings of books.

Using video

A video is an extremely useful resource for listening, especially now that we can share videos on sites such as YouTube.
But students can also watch video clips from DVDs, computers or mobile devices and IWBS, for example.
 We can play the students a video and then stop it so they have to guess what happens next. When they have discussed
their predictions, we show them the end of the video.
 We can play a video with the sound turned down. The students have to guess what the people are saying and/or
what background sounds they will hear.
 We can play a video so the students hear the sound but they don't see the picture. They have to say what is going on.
 Students can be given a list of the verbs or nouns from a video clip. They have to watch the clip and put them in the
right order.
 After the students have watched a video clip for the first or second time, we can give them the transcript (if it is short
enough) with blanks. they have to try to fill in the blanks before they watch again.
 Developing reading skills:

(Video) Pre-reading activities: Before students read, preview the material. An important part of pre-reading activities is
to activate students' prior knowledge and to encourage prediction of what's coming.
An example of pre-reading activities would be, for instance, asking students questions that are going to help
introduce the topic. The purpose of this exercise is to kind of hook the students, to get them engaged in the topic, to
relate to the topic to their own lives, and to generate some of the vocabulary that's going to be needed.
There are many different ways to teach reading. Students can read silently and underline words they don't
understand; then discuss those words altogether and give definitions.
Another way is for the teacher to play an audiotape and have students follow along.
They can also listen and repeat, repeating chunks of the reading exercise.
As soon as the students finish reading, it is useful to do a comprehension check. There are different ways to check
comprehension, one way is to ask questions. Building up to a sequence of questions, perhaps ending in the wh- questions.
By asking these simple questions, we get to gauge how much of the reading the students were able to process the
first time they went to through the text.

We can divide reading into extensive reading and intensive reading.

Extensive reading:
Reading at the appropriate level is one of the best ways for students to get comprehensible input. The more
comprehensible input they receive, the better their English gets. Students will get the most benefit from extensive
reading if they read at an appropriate level. If the text is too difficult, it will be more like work than pleasure. If it is too
easy, it may not be very engaging.
We need to encourage our students to read on their own so that they can keep learning and acquiring language
even when there is no lesson and no teacher to help them. Students will get most benefit from reading texts that they
themselves want to read. Different students have different interests: this means that they should, if possible, read
different books.
Many publishers offer graded readers, sometimes called learner literature; these range in level from beginner to
advanced. Where possible, we should have a collection of books (or texts) that individual students can choose from.
We can give students time to read in lessons - say ten or 15 minutes a week. Some teachers (and schools) have
DEAR (drop everything and read) moments to encourage this.
We can ask our students to tell other students about what they have been reading. They can do this orally, or they
can fill in fairly simple report forms. Students can also, of course, fill in worksheets with language exercises based on a
book, but they should only do this after they have read the book, usually as homework.

Intensive reading:
We often get students to read intensively in class. This means that they will look at a short reading text and do
various exercises based on it.
Good reading exercises help students with top-down processing (getting a general idea of meaning) and bottom-
up processing (understanding individual words, phrases and text construction).
Intensive reading is often used to train students in different reading skills, such as:
 Reading for gist (getting the general meaning from a text) → SKIMMING. We often ask students to read a text
quickly (skimming over its surface) and get the main idea(s) first, before we ask them to read for more detailed
information.
 Reading for specific information (looking for particular things) → SCANNING - because the eye is searching around
just for the special information that we want - a bit like a computer scanning for only the information it needs.

Although we use intensive reading for showing vocabulary and grammar in context, we should never forget that
the best response to any text is to ask whether or not the students like the text and why. This makes them think about
the content and the language and encourages them to re-use both.
 What texts should we give students for intensive reading? → We should give our students texts that are
appropriate for their level. We need to give them material on a variety of topics and let them read in a variety of genres
(stories, advertisements, reports, poems, newspaper articles, etc.).

What to do before students read a text:

It helps if we give the students a chance to think about what they are going to read. That's why we give them
prediction activities so that they are thinking about the topic and getting their brains ready for reading with the knowledge
they have about the genre or the topic of the text.
We can tell the students what the topic of the text is and ask them to guess what they will find in it. Sometimes
they can form buzz groups to do this. (Buzz group: a cooperative learning technique consisting in the formation of small
discussion groups with the objective of developing a specific task).
We can ask them to read some questions about a text before they read the text itself. They should try to guess
the answers, and then read the text to see if their guesses are correct.
We can tell the students what the text is going to be about and ask them to fill in a chart.
We can show the students any pictures which accompany the text (or headlines, captions, etc.) and get them to
guess what will be in the text.
We can display part of a text and ask the students to predict what comes next. They then read the next section
of the text to confirm their predictions before predicting what comes after that.

Reading activities:
They are designed so that the students get a general understanding of the text first. Here are some examples:
 The students read the text and then tell each other if they liked it and why (or what they agreed with or didn't
agree with). This kind of gist reading exercise -makes them think about meaning in general, and invites them to
engage emotionally with the text.
 The text is presented as a reading puzzle. We cut it up and give the students the different paragraphs in random
order. They have to work out how to put the text back into the correct order.
 We can ask students to transfer information from texts to graphs, charts or other graphics.
 We can ask students to answer gist questions about the text; for example: Which of the following topics are
mentioned in the text? Tick the boxes; Choose a title for the text; etc.
 At higher levels, many teachers help their students to get used to reading test exercises, such as multiple-choice
questions - and other question types.

Teaching reading:

Responding to a text:
When the students have read a text in class, we can ask them to respond to it in various ways. They may answer
questions or discuss whether they liked the text or not.
Before we ask individuals in the class to give us their responses to questions, it is a good idea to let them compare
answers in pairs or small groups. This is good for cooperation and helps to reduce any tension that the students may be
feeling.

More comprehension:
When the students have read a text for the first time (for general comprehension), we often ask them to read it
again and look for more (detailed) information. This allows them to absorb more information and language and helps to
ensure that they have really understood what they have read.
 We can get the students to look for details using wh-questions.
 We can ask the students to give more detailed answers to questions such as: In your own words how would you
describe ...? about characters, places, ideas or things.
 Different students can be asked to find out detailed information about different people or things in the text.
 We can ask the students to find sentences in the text which either confirm or contradict different statements that
we give them.
Language questions:
We often ask students to look at a text to find out things about words and phrases. For example:
 Find a word or phrase in the text that means... (Vocabulary).
 Explain the meaning of the phrases in blue. (Vocabulary).
 Match the words in blue (in the text) with the following meanings... (Vocabulary).
 Look at the text. Find comparative forms of the following adjectives… (Grammar).
 Read the text again. How many different ways of referring to the future can you find? (Grammar).
 Find six verbs in the text. (Grammar).

Follow-up tasks:
When the students have read a text and done the exercises that go with it, we will often want them to do some
kind of follow-up tasks, using the topic of the text or exploiting some of the language in it. For example:
 Students can roleplay a situation leading from the text.
 The students can do more research (in the library or on the internet) about the topic of the text.
 Developing writing skills:

 Consider how to make activities as meaningful as possible.

 Identify context, purpose and audience before students begin the task.
 Consider topics your learners enjoy.
 Writing sometimes needs a lot of planning, and sometimes none at all.
 Learners need opportunities to write freely without worrying about accuracy.
 Writing can be varied - there are many different kinds of writing.
 To develop fluency in writing the writer has to concentrate and practise the various skills as follows

Writing accurately:
When writing is done concisely, it means the most effective words are being used. Writers often fill sentences
with words that are poor choices and can be removed or replaced. By getting feedback, editing and revisiting their
writing after a day or two, learners can develop skills to notice words that shouldn’t be in t he text.

The process of writing:

Planning stage:
We think about what we want to write and, where appropriate, make notes. We also think about the audience
we are writing for. We can then start the first draft (the first attempt) of what we want to write. We review what we have
drafted and edit it before writing the final version.
Planning carefully helps learners arrange text in a logical sequence. The beginning should feel like the start of a
text that gets readers interested. Each ‘piece’ of text should lead naturally into the next one. The end should feel like it
finishes it all.
The writing process does not go in only one direction. For example, sometimes we plan what we are going to
write, but after we have drafted it we go back and plan all over again.
We can encourage our students to think carefully about writing by having them plan what they are going to say.
We can encourage the students to review and edit what they have written before they produce a final version.
This is important for exam training. Students need to check through their answers before they hand them in.
When the students have written a first draft, we can look at their work and respond to what they have done,
making suggestions about the content, their use of English and whether or not their writing is coherent. We can become
a kind of editor.

Spontaneous writing:
We can ask our students to write things instantly (without worrying too much) For example, to write an ‘instant
sentence’, or to give them a simple sentence they have to expand.
We can also give students in pairs a time limit. Student A suggests ideas and Student B has to write as quickly as
possible.
We can ask the students to write an 'instant sentence' about someone in the class (or someone well known). The
students pass their sentences round the class. Can they identify the people in the sentences?

Encouraging writing:
Many students don’t enjoy writing very much and so the teacher’s task is to make them comfortable and enthusiastic
about it.

Students writing together:

Collaborative writing activities aim at combining the pedagogical effects derived from the activity of writing per
se, and the ones associated with the task of learning in a collaborative setting.
Collaborative writing encompasses a wide range of activities:
• Learners can co-construct a written text
• Cooperate by contributing different sections of the draft
• Read and comment constructively the text written by their peers.
 There are a number of activities which provoke collaborative writing.
 We can get the students to write a sentence and pass it on to another student, folding the paper first so that the
next student cannot see what the person before them has written. When the activity is finished, the paper is
straightened out and the students can see the whole story.
 The students sit in a story circle and each has a blank sheet of paper. We dictate a sentence, such as: “When he
opened his eyes that morning, he did not know where he was.” We then ask them to write the next sentence in
the story. When they have written the sentence, they all pass their papers (in the same direction) to the person
next to them. Each student now writes a sentence for the story they have in front of them (which is not the one
they started out with). For each new sentence, they pass the papers to the person next to them again. When the
papers get back to the original writers, they have to write a conclusion.
 We can give the students the first and last lines of a story. In groups, they have to write what comes between
them.

Pictures and writing:

 We can give the students a series of holiday postcard pictures. They have to write imaginary messages, such as
Today the snow was really beautiful.
 We give the students famous portraits. They have to write a diary entry for each one.

Music and writing:

There are various activities which use music (without words) to stimulate writing.
 We can play any music which has a strong feel (sad, happy, dance-like, etc.) and ask the students to write words
that come into their minds while they hear it.
 We can play music and ask the students to write down what they think the composer is describing.

Preparing for writing:

Before we ask our students to do any substantial writing, we need to encourage them to start planning what they
are going to write.
 We can ask the students to group their ideas in a logical sequence.
 We can give them a checklist to think about as they start (and continue) to write and review their work.

Portfolio writing:
We can ask our students to keep a portfolio (a collection) of their writing. At the end of a semester or a year, we
(and they) can use this as part of their final assessment.
Portfolios can also contain the students' poetry, emails, letters, cards and any other kind of writing they wish to
do.
Writing journals:
We can encourage our students to write journals in which they talk about the things that interest them most.
It is a good idea to encourage students to write journals because they can use them to reflect on what they are
learning - and the more writing they do the better.
Journals are a good place for teacher-student dialogue. We can find out what our students are thinking, and
encourage them to use writing for real communication.
When we respond to journals; we should always focus on the content of what the students write before
correcting mistakes.

Blogs, wikis and contacts:

We can get our students to write blogs. We can tell them how often they should post a message on their blog. We
can set a time limit of, say, a month or two months for them to keep blogging. If we don't do this, they may well lose
interest.
We will encourage our students to comment on each other's blog posts.
We can get the students to build up a wiki with their writings, pictures, audio or video clips.