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Breaking the Writing Barrier
Breaking the Writing Barrier: Introdution As its subtitle suggests, this teacher resource book was written with a specific context in mind: adolescent ESL students in a North American middle or high school. How-ever, virtually all the activities can be used easily and successfully with adult students in Adult Basic Education programs or community colleges--and, for that matter, in a wide variety of contexts. Although the emphasis is on students for whom English is a second language or students who have limited proficiency in English, the activities can very easily be applied to mixed classes where the students are both second-language learners and native-language learners. The activities also have been used successfully with classes of native speakers of English. As any North American middle or high school teacher knows, developing the writing skills of teenagers is one of the great challenges of contemporary education. In an age when students spend much of their language time in the passive-receptive mode of watching television or surfing the Internet, writing English is a seriously neglected skill. Even the interactive opportunities of using email, informal as it is, bring new challenges to the teaching and learning of effective writing. The activities in this book were developed by teachers in a high school in the state of California. Again, as every teacher knows, every teaching/learning context has its own requirements, limitations, and advantages, and any collection of techniques and activities must be modified to fit the specific circumstances. However, these tech niques and activities can be easily adapted to a wide variety of teaching/learning situations in North America. At the same time, writers around the world, whether in California, Japan, Mexico City, or London, face similar obstacles and problems in the development of their writing skills. Teachers of English to speakers of other languages, especially teachers of adolescents and adults, will find that the collection of activities in this book can be easily adapted and applied in the global English-learning community from Abu Dhabito Zambia. This book is divided into seven parts. The first four parts in particular should be sequenced in the order in which they are presented. In other words, it is recommended that that the teacher proceed in general from Part One through Part Four, although some mixing of activities in the first four parts is quite possible. · Part One is designed to get students off to a good start and to establish a comfortable, noncompetitive atmosphere that will foster the development of the more challenging activities and skills of the following parts. · Part Two involves the student in short, non-threatening, and enjoyable activities that will ensure early and relatively easy feelings of success for the learner. ·Part Three gets students involved in longer projects chat
are interesting and enjoyable and that also result in finshed products
the students can be proud of and share with others. ·Part Four connects the students to writing from the world around
them, ranging from newspapers to poetry, and encourages them to use
their writing for effective self-expression and real communication. The last three parts all deal with the process of writing. The activities
in these parts can be applied, in general, throughout the sequence of
work in the first four parts. ·Part Five focuses on revising, an absolutely necessary procedure
that all writers must follow in order to develop their power and skill
in communicating with the written word. · Part Six deals with a challenging issue faced by every language
teacher--the hows, whens, and wheres of correction, and the ensuing
interaction of the teacher and the student for the ultimate goal of
change that results in learning. ·Part Seven, finally, is intended as a resource for the teacher
to use to ensure that longer writing projects stay alive and well and
arrive at a successful conclusion. Throughout the seven parts, there are more than thirty copyables that can be freely reproduced and used as handouts.
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