Here is the last of three Philosophies of Teaching Writing I have chosen to share from my distance learning course for teachers of English in Russia. Well worth the read!
After having studied in this on-line course I have changed my mind concerning the teaching EFL writing in the secondary schools of Russia. The instructor of the course John Mark King has done a huge work providing the participants with the essential material and demanding us to follow the schedule. I have known a lot about teaching EFL writing, I have really widen my horizon, gained plenty of material from my colleagues from all-over the Russia, and enriched my pedagogical skills. As I have been thinking through all of my life Writing is the combination of all the language skills, the core and the main body of the tongue. My own Yakut people had no a written language till the middle of the 19-th century though, but instead they had a mighty and powerful oral creation of the Global meaning. It`s a Yakut national epic called Olonkho and which is announced the oral treasure of the Mankind by the UNESCO. But still I am sure that One who can`t write and isn`t able to express his/her inner thoughts and ideas in the written form he/she may not be called a highly-educated, civilized, intelligent and sophisticated human being who can lead a succesful and prosperous life in this incredible 21-st century of the Hightech.
I love the Nobel Prize-winning author Nadine Gordimer`s statement; who has said that all great writing is deeply personal and heartfelt. I am sure, before writing becomes visible on the paper it goes through our minds and hearts, indeed!
For years I hadn`t been thinking on the importance of teaching Writing in English. Reading, translating, listening and speaking were the basic language skills taught by most of the English teachers at the secondary schools of my region. Writing was ignored because it was not mandatory, the teachers weren`t paid for checking the written assignments and, certainly, it was not that easy to teach writing skills in English. In addition, I didn`t know how to instruct the Writing Class, design it`s syllabus, manage it`s approaches and conduct series of steps needed in the process of teaching writing. Instead, I loved writing myself. I wrote long letters in my own native Yakut language to the female-mates with whom I was in sympathy while being a teenager, I adored corresponding in Russian with my Russian and foreign friends from the Socialist countries: Poland, Hungary, and Romania. But writing well for academic purposes is difficult in a first language and more so in second one. The Yakut students meet more challenges in writing because they need to write in their third language for Russian is their second. I agree with authors who state that writing is often a discovery process that clarifies our ideas for us on the topics we put our minds to as we write and, consequently writing is a continuing process of discovering how to find the most effective language for communicating one’s thoughts and feelings. While participating this course I have perceived finally that we teachers have to do great deal of work trying to help our students to find their own voices in English that almost means the whole World and to develop the ability to communicate effectively in different contexts and with different audiences through teaching them English Writing skills.
I started to meet difficulties just right after the EGE has been established as the Russian State Exam and especially it`s writing assignments in English. To teach and then practice Free Writing which is not necessarily edited or worked on further is easy and moreover, interesting. My students are usually always inspired and intrigued by the authentic letters of their American pen-pals and write their own using the samples put in front of them. Therefore, I have been employing only three kinds of approaches focused on structure, function and creativity that means a product approach in a whole. I have never employed the Process, Content and Genre approaches because my own skills are to be improved a lot and then it is too time-consuming, difficult and painful with our limited hours of teaching English. It is absolutely unproductive if not realizable to teach academic writing in my educational environment unless the school curriculum includes some more hours to teach writing.
My general approach to teaching writing is called if to name it scientifically Product Approach. I have been employing into class the approaches relating to this type of writing activity for ages. While participating this course I have conceived that in Process Approach where the communication of the message is paramount the students can simultaneously develop their literacy skills in speaking, reading, grammar and vocabulary. Consequently, this approach enhances the overall language acquisition. Thus, I am going to implement the method of Process Approach into my English language class.
As I am teacher of the secondary school students I am not going to teach writing on purpose. My learners are of various language levels and I teach them to develop all kinds of language skills. But I wouldn`t like to say that I will continue teaching writing as used to teach it before. I will try to do my best to teach writing using the knowledge gained in the course. It`s true, learning foreign languages is not a quick and easy activity and even for motivated students, learning another language and learning to write in that language are difficult, long-term processes. For my own village students who do huge writing works both in Yakut and Russian languages, writing in English is a point of terrible frustration when I see how long it takes them to write English texts: hours to produce one page, two times as long as it takes urban students. The students living in the towns always have more opportunities to learn languages, they have more learning hours, they are able to hire private tutors and, it`s a copy-book maxim that the urban children are always more alert and active than those of the rural. But I believe in my students who are too diligent and I know when the learners` and the teacher`s goals match they always can succeed in reaching their purposes. If I start now, in 5 years I hope to improve the writing situation at least in my place. Thus, if writing is taught and used appropriately, it becomes a fine tool to help students acquire and deepen their understandings of the language they are learning, the world around them, and even themselves.