Writing is the most difficult of all the language skills. This is true for the teacher as well as the learner. It is not necessarily a requirement that, in order to be good writing teacher, one must also be a good writer (but it helps). More important for teacher is that she has a clear understanding of her role in the classroom. Considering that a learner will only be successful through years of hard work and dedication, it is clear that, even though we call ourselves teachers, we are, in fact, mere facilitators.

What does this mean? If we examine this from the point of view of the writing classroom, the teacher has the responsibility not necessarily to teach students how to write in English, but to facilitate students’ development into more effective writers of English. In other words, students may certainly learn from the teacher while they are in the classroom (this is not a bad thing), but the majority of all their language development must take place outside the confines of the formal learning environment: the real world. This type of learning is hastened by a combination of careful demonstration and judicious practice (facilitated by the teacher) of the skills of autonomous learning.

For the writer, these skills may include the many aspects of effective reading such as selecting texts, varying reading speed, skimming and scanning, evaluating and analyzing texts and synthesizing old and new information. In addition, specific writing skills such as brainstorming, planning, conducting research, drafting, revising and proofreading are paramount.

The more the teacher is able to encourage the development of these skills in the learner, the more said learner is able to read and write in English independently. And the independent learner is an effective learner.

The teacher does this by very carefully selecting and sequencing activities which allow for critical and creative thinking and model the processes of text creation used by effective writers. Each step is scaffolded by the teacher (made easier than it would otherwise be) and designed to allow learners to discover and practice the process on their own. Learners can, for example, discover the structure of a text or find its main idea. They can proofread their classmate’s writings. They can develop their own methods of planning and outlining. They can choose their topics and conduct independent research. They can correct their own language errors. All the while, the teacher stands aside, ready to help when needed and constantly monitoring her students’ progress.

While such an approach can mean that lessons and activities become more difficult for the teacher to prepare and may require extra work outside the class, what becomes clear is how much easier and more enjoyable such lessons are. Learners take control of the lesson (partially) and assume ownership of their own language development. Classroom discussion is lively and engaging. Students learn from each other. Such a classroom environment becomes more rewarding and beneficial to all involved.

This is a little video I prepared for my students, but it is relevant to anyone interested in structuring academic paragraphs.

Watch the presentation here:

Download PowerPoint here.

Download handout here.

What is the statement of purpose?

College applications are generally very dry and impersonal representations of a person’s scholastic achievements and abilities. The personal statement is designed to breathe life into an otherwise lifeless and unoriginal college application.

Basically, the statement of purpose is a way for you to put a face on your application, give it personality and allow the admissions officials to better judge your application as a whole based on what kind of person you are, not just what kind of student you are.

How important is it?

College admissions departments typically say that it is extremely rare for a statement of purpose to be the sole reason an applicant is either admitted or denied admittance to their institution. Some estimates claim that fewer than five percent of all statements of purpose play a major role in the final admittance decision.

However, that does not mean the document is unimportant. Rather, a good statement of purpose can add to and enhance an already good application. Likewise, it can make an otherwise unremarkable application a bit more enticing. Poorly done, a statement of purpose can also make a decent application look not so good. It is important to think of this step as only part of the whole. Don’t stress too much about it. But don’t be cavalier about it, either.

What do colleges look for in a statement of purpose?

Most large universities receive thousands of applications every year. And each of these contains a statement of purpose. So think about it, yours will be only one of these thousands upon thousands of statements they will have to read. If you were one of these readers, what would you look for? My guess would be that you want one that is honest, original, concise, interesting and revealing. You want it to be different. You want it to make you laugh (or at least smile). You want it to make you think. You want it to accurately describe the applicant. We are all unique. So should our writing be.

This may be surprising, but most colleges do not look for statements of purpose that list achievement after achievement and show off how smart or academically accomplished the applicant is. This may not be logical. But think about the other applicants. That is what they will be writing about, how their test scores were so high, their teachers loved them so much, their classmates looked up to them as models of achievement. Yours should stand out from these. Do not be afraid to discuss your weaknesses or your shortcomings. Do not be afraid to talk about times you have failed or made mistakes. You are not perfect. If you were, you would not need to go to college. Be honest. You are human. Let your statement of purpose reveal that.

So how do I write it?

My best piece of advice is this: Write a story about yourself. Do not worry about the structure of academic writing. There are no such rules for this kind of text. Try to think of a time in your life that revealed your true personality. Perhaps it was a difficult time with your family, or a problem with a friend. Perhaps it was the time you did very poorly at school and you had to deal with shame from your family and teachers as you tried to become a better student. It can be any difficult situation you faced, and doesn’t even have to be one where you succeeded. Failure can reveal a person’s true character sometimes better than success. Because how we deal with failure is just as important as how we deal with success. Remember this.

When writing, remember that your reader will be evaluating your statement based on how it predicts your future success in and after completion of the program for which you are applying. You may not need to spell this out exactly, but what you write must reveal your personality in a way that proves you are the right candidate.

In addition, do not repeat yourself. Use simple sentences and short words. Be direct and straightforward with your language. English is a simple language, and when someone uses it to make overly complex writing with long and difficult words, it can sometimes come across as pretentious or arrogant.

Make sure you do your own writing! Do not ask a friend to write it. Do not borrow words from samples you find in books or on the Internet. If you do this, it will be obvious to the people reading your application. It is OK, however, for you to ask a friend to read your statement and make comments on it, or to ask a native speaker to check it for grammar and spelling mistakes. But it must be your own work.

If you are having trouble thinking of what to write, I suggest you sit by yourself in a quiet place and write about anything. Just pick up a pencil and begin writing. What you produce here will not be your statement of purpose, but it may help you to generate ideas. Try to write nonstop. Don’t make corrections. Don’t try to be neat. This is a kind of thinking with a pencil. And the results may surprise you. Very often, students of mine who are having trouble thinking of a topic for a writing assignment find that they get their best ideas when they do an exercise like this.

But most important: Relax! This is only one piece of the puzzle. And it’s not as monumental a piece as you think. If you are honest and you write something that is personal, it will be easier than you think. Good luck.

Download PowerPoint PDF here.

Download PowerPoint Show (with audio) here.

Format: Plenary

Time: 20 minutes

Title: “Technology and Second Language Writing: New Perspectives on Identity and Process”

Target Students: Beginner to advanced, any age group

With the advent of new technology and online resources for second language writers, educators not only must grapple with their own adaptation to the new digital landscape, but also with how best to encourage learners to use it to the fullest potential.

The current popular trend towards a combination of the guiding concepts of process and genre in the L2 writing classroom has revolutionized writing instruction in recent years. The next step may be to formally integrate the use of technology in writing instruction as a step in the writing process.

This can be in the form of requiring students to submit assignments electronically, thereby allowing the teacher to type longer and more detailed comments and return them instantly by email.

Teachers can also help students in the most effective use of the Internet as a source of information for writing assignments, allowing for classroom time in which students explore and evaluate different kinds of online sources from news feeders to Wikipedia.

But assignment requirements can also encourage students to utilize software that provides assistance in such areas as word collocation, grammar and lexical density. Indeed, technology may completely alter the way in which teachers give students feedback on their writing assignments.

This plenary presentation will explore new opportunities for technology-assisted L2 writing development and how teachers can themselves become effective purveyors of technology in the writing classroom.

Each summarizing workshop is about one hour. See below for details of each session.

Download PowerPoint and handouts here.

Session 1: Reading Strategies for Summarizing
In this workshop, participants will explore various approaches to reading which enhance students’ skills in summarizing. The workshop will focus on basic pre- during- and post-reading strategies that improve overall reading comprehension and enable students to identify the following: 1) organizational patterns, 2) main ideas and 3) the most important details in a text, all of which are invaluable for paraphrasing and constructing summaries. We will also look at the value of extended reading and student-selected texts in enhancing students’ global reading skills.

Session 2: Writing Strategies for Summarizing
In part two of this workshop series, teachers will look at approaches to writing in the English language classroom which promote the development of summarizing skills. We will discuss the currently popular process/genre model of teaching writing and how it applies to paraphrasing and summarizing. Teachers will discuss the value of modeling and scaffolding the skills of effective writing as a means of increasing a student’s overall independence as a learner and his fluency in constructing identity through academic writing. We will also look at the role digital writing plays in the writing classroom and how teachers can take advantage of their students’ already high level of electronic fluency.

Session 3: Building Summarizing Lessons and Tasks
In this final workshop, teachers will use the concepts explored in the previous two sessions to decide how best to put together tasks and lessons which will help improve students’ skills and promote their autonomy. The focus will be on task-based instruction combined with pair and group work to foster a community of learners in the classroom. This community, through the integration of skills, constructs its own meaning and relies on each other and themselves for their continued development and emergence as independent learners. We will look at such summarizing-specific aspects as selecting texts, building and sequencing tasks and developing scoring rubrics for assessment.

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.

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.

This was written by a participant of mine in an online distance course, Teaching EFL Writing. It is one of three examples I will choose to share with the public as examples of quality teacher development and professional reflection.

Irina Lebedeva is a teacher at Moscow State University and was relatively new to teaching writing at the beginning of this course. Her Philosophy of Teaching Writing is below:

If you look through a program book of any recent conference devoted to implementing teaching methods, you’ll be amazed at how many presentations are actually devoted to teaching and learning writing. Moreover, most of the presentations or workshops given by English Language Specialists (judging by my own experience) are devoted to mastering this language skill. This fuss over teaching writing has always surprised me, a vocabulary teacher. I, to tell the truth, used to consider teaching writing to be a piece of cake. I used to think that writing was a sort of inane talent which can be developed but not taught. I used to consider teaching writing unimportant. Due to this, my way of teaching writing mainly consisted of giving students the tasks to write a personal letter, an autobiography or a composition on some topic as a means of checking the vocabulary they’ve acquired rather than actually teaching writing itself.

My philosophy of writing has changed dramatically since I started practicing teaching the subject and even more so after this very course and all the blog posts from its participants. First of all, I do not underestimate teaching writing any more. On the contrary, I believe it to be even more challenging than teaching speaking. On the one hand, writing is speaking, only with text. On the other hand, writing has conventions quite unlike those in speaking. Therefore, this subject requires a very knowledgeable facilitator who should be aware of all aspects of writing at different levels starting with how collocations work on a sentence level, then topic sentences and arguments on a paragraph level and thesis statement on essay level. The instructor must be at home with such writing knowledge as content, system, process, genre and context; must always self-reflect on types of tasks (pedagogical vs. real-world) and activities s/he uses; must possess critical thinking and good analytical skills; must be creative and encouraging, and open-minded, and courageous to move on by trial and error. Yes, one must be all this in order to be a competent teacher of writing.

Second of all, I no longer consider that one doesn’t necessarily have to be gifted to write well. After all, my aim as a teacher is not only to “create” Nabokovs or McEwans (though in the long run that would not be that bad), but to “produce” confident, coherent users of written English who will be able to get grants and score high on international tests, and enter universities abroad because of their essays; who will secure a good job by writing a proper cover letter and a CV; will get promoted due to their business plans and get recognized owing to proper written scientific reports, papers and articles, and after that will be respected in their field of knowledge for their reviews of other people’s works. I believe now that kind of writing can be learnt.
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Third of all, I’m sure now that teaching must be taught as an independent course for a year at least and it should go hand in hand with reading. The fact that writing is the last skill that people acquire in their mother tongue proves it to be the hardest to master. Learning how to write in a second or foreign language becomes an even harder task and should be allotted a proper amount of curriculum time. Also, writing is mostly acquired via reading because written texts serve as a perfect example of genres, styles and so on, and for that reason, good readers traditionally turn into confident writers.

I have not taught writing as a separate course for quite a period of time. I have never taught writing using genre approach; I was supposed to teach it this year (I got scared and applied for the course), but I will be assigned to do it next term (thanks to the course. I am not scared anymore). The number of problems that I face concerning teaching writing has increased after taking the course. Many of them deal with the fact that there are so many things that I do not know about teaching writing and writing itself (but now I know where to look for the answers and how to get about teaching genre writing). Some of them deal with lack of time for proper preparation. Also, I am very strict with myself and expect too much too soon; I often feel that I’m not knowledgeable enough, or not creative enough, or haven’t given the proper consideration while creating tasks, though this is not necessarily the case.

My approach to teaching writing is changing at the moment. I’ve started using Ning.com as a means for teaching writing and peer review. By the way, thanks to this course I put into practice a peer review first time and I did that through Ning, and quite successfully. I’m using more authentic material in the classroom, especially more videos which I upload on the Ning. I’m using new strategy of commenting on students’ works and I’m being more creative as a teacher.

My 5-year goals are to implement everything that I’ve learned in the ‘Teaching EFL Writing’ course in the classroom, thus finding my own way of teaching writing and creating my own syllabus of ‘Reading and Writing’ course in the long run. I’m going to make several presentations on what I’ve learnt during the course and how I am using this knowledge. I hope to continue cooperation with John Mark King in the next course to ‘cement’ what I’ve learnt and to give me a boost towards further self-development as a writing teacher as well as a teacher in general.

John Mark King, thank you for the course. What’s more, thank you for a wonderful and rare opportunity to be a writer. I’ve truly enjoyed creating ‘My Philosophy of Writing’. We teachers seldom have a chance to write about ourselves apart from scientific papers.

Attached below is a PDF version of a PowerPoint presentation I wrote to give English teachers an overview of the current guiding principles and approaches to teaching writing in the language classroom. I also touch on benefits of teaching writing and some of the difficulties faced by non-native English speaking teachers who teach writing.

Download PDF here.