Here is another wonderful Philosophy of Teaching Writing by one of the participants of my distance learning course for teachers of English in Russia.
Nowadays, when different means of communication are becoming more and more available to ever so great number of people, the art of writing is undergoing appreciable changes. On the one hand, trying to save their time and spare their strength, people write short and impersonal messages. So, some have almost forgotten how to write long, meaningful and beautiful texts. On the other hand, thanks to the Internet everybody who wants to express their opinions and thoughts has an opportunity to do it. Not so long ago some of these people who deserved hardly to be “heard out”, now take up their pens with dogged persistence. These scribblers churn out a huge number of insipid and poorly written works. We seem to get used to this situation. Nevertheless, an ability to write properly still remains an essential skill of any educated person.
Every time I start writing I recall vividly the words from Leonid Zorin’s “The Green Note-books” – “A mediocrity falls silent facing a white sheet of paper.” Watching other people and discussing the difficulties they have with writing, I cannot help thinking that it seems truly surprising how impotent even very intelligent and eloquent people can feel facing the necessity to commit their thoughts and ideas to paper. Why do their splendid thoughts fade and where does their ability to express what they think logically and persuasively disappear when they are to perform anything in written form? There may be a great number of reasons for that and one of them is that these people might have never been taught how to write properly and have never had enough practice to become good writers. So it is perfectly clear that writing is a very challenging activity and at the same time it is a very beneficial one. People, who have highly developed writing skills, evidently have better chances to succeed in all spheres of life while those who are unable to write intelligibly, briefly and consistently might be left far behind.
At the moment I cannot point out any serious difficulties in teaching writing as I do not teach my students to write specific texts. I just give them a topic and they are free to choose the form how to fulfill the task. But if I were a teacher at school or university I would face a lot of difficulties for sure – students’ common unwillingness to develop this skill, scarcity of classes, lack of reference books with clear explanations of the differences between Russian and English systems of writing, the choice of approach in writing and lots of others, and lack of my own experience of teaching writing above all. Besides nowadays people tend to read less and this factor influence greatly their writing skills as well.
Speaking about my general approach to teaching writing, I must confess that I am still in two minds about it. I am used to product approach but now I realize that it can be hardly called up-to-date. This writing course gave me a good deal of food for thought. I need some time to think over everything I have learnt here before I can say exactly what approach would be the best for my students. But what I know for sure is that my attitude to errors correction was too serious. Grammar and spelling correctness is still very important for me but now I realize that I always underestimated the importance of content. Undoubtedly, in the first place I should have encouraged my students to create meaningful content. Focusing their attention on the necessity to write correctly, I probably deprive them the chance to think if what they write will be interesting to read.
As for my goals for the next 5 years as a teacher of writing, first of all I would like to have a chance to work with students for whom writing is a compulsory part of studying English. It would be a great opportunity for me to try everything I have learnt here, to understand my weak points and to improve my proficiency in teaching writing. One more thing which needs to be improved is certainly my own writing skills as writing is the best way to make more responsible mind and learn to make myself clear.