A lesson plan for teaching academic writing
A lesson plan for teaching academic writing
Introduction
Writing good academic essay has been a challenging task for high school students. Regarding to the question how to teach writing, the process approach (Macarthur, Graham and Fitzgerald, 2006) that emerged in last century is the most effective model to instruct students on their writing. This essay mainly discusses and presents a lesson plan of a writing class which is designed for the students from high school. More specifically, the background of students, traditional and new writing process approach and the model of lesson plan would be briefly introduced at first part. It will also specify the learning objectives for the proposed writing lesson in this part. The second part displays some class activities that aim to improve students’ sub skills of academic writing. Strengths and weaknesses of the materials and tasks chosen will also be discussed in this part after each activity. The third part attempts to discuss the possible challenges and remedies in the process of implement. The last part tries to propose some possible ways to the evaluation of the lesson followed by the conclusion of the paper.
Background
The participants in our class are high school students who are above the common. As a result, the level of their English background is upper intermediate. That is to say, these students have already learned most of English grammar and structures. Although the students have learned the basic rules about writing an academic essay (e.g. the structure, the spelling, the reference style etc.), lack of practices and creativity is the most significant problem of these students, which frustrated them to write. Based on this background, process approach was implemented in our class. As Tribble(1996) demonstrates in his book, the process approach is
“an approach to the teaching of writing which stresses the creativity of the individual writer, and which pays attention to the development of good writing practices rather than the imitation of models” (p160)
The traditional way to teach writing is product approach, which focus on the “finished product” and not on the subtle processes that occur in the process of writing (Hinkel, 2002). The usage of product approach is due to some reasons, like it is easy to implement and it has been widely used already. However, with the development of process approach, product approach has been proved less practical and efficient than the former one. Comparing with the product approach that encourage students to imitate the model as close as possible, process approach focuses on the teaching during the writing process rather than before and after the writing. For a long time, people assumed that there are approximately three to five "stages" in process writing. The most popular one is 1 prewriting 2 drafting 3 revising 4 editing 5 publishing. Therefore, in our essay, activities are organized according to the first three stages: prewriting, drafting and revising. The last two stages would be discussed after the class due to time limit.
Models of lesson plan
Writing a lesson plan before the class is essential to guarantee the success of the class. This is because, for the teachers, an explicit and detailed lesson plan can help them systematically prepare the class. And for the students, a well-prepared class will be easier for them to get approach to the new knowledge. However, there is a heated debate regarding to the model of lesson plan. Many researchers have proposed different models in the past several decades. The traditional model suggested by Tyler (1949) is still very popular in modern teaching field. The model consists of four procedures, namely the specification of the objectives, the learning activities, the organization of the learning activities and the methods (Richards, 2002).This model takes classes as a means of aiming toward an educational objective. In contrast, Yinger proposed a different model, which includes ‘problem conception’, the formulation of problem and the achievement of solution, and the implementation of plan (Richard, 2002).
The proposed lesson plan in the essay follows Tyler’s model due to the following reasons. Firstly, it emphasizes the central role of learning objectives because they are the criteria which will determine the selection of the material, the content, the instruction, and even the tests and examination (Tyler, 1949). The clear statement of the learning objectives makes it easy for us to know whether we have achieved the aims and to analyze the implementation of the teaching (John, 2006). Another reason contributing to the adoption of Tyler’s model in the proposed lesson plan is because it is more predictable and controllable (Zazkis, Liljedahl& Sinclair, 2009). Each planning event in Yinger’s model is influenced by what happened previously and what will happen in the following (Richard, 2002, p31). From this perspective, the procedures in Tyler’s model are straightforward making it easy to be applied into practical teaching.
Learning objectives
Research on first and second language writing has found that students are always frustrated by seeing compositions marked up, and they rarely incorporate all our suggestions or corrections even when we ask them to rewrite (Dvorak, 1985). It is similar in Chinese high school students that they are afraid of starting and organizing the article; moreover, they are not active in incorporating teachers’ suggestions. Limited lexical resources and the misusage of grammar is another thorny problem for Chinese high school students. I believe this is largely due to the usage of the product approach that we have discussed in the background. As a result, the main learning objective of our class is to stimulate students’ interest in writing and guide their writing process. Other minor objectives includes, to improve the students’ ability to synthesize the information in academic context (which is an important sub-skill of academic writing will be discussed in later part), to produce an effective academic essay in a specific topic following the particular writing convention, to correct grammar and structure mistakes, to improve their thinking abilities and to review and correct their articles by themselves.
Activities
Prewriting
Prewriting is an important stage while applying the process approach to teach writing in class. The utilization of appropriate teaching strategies in this stage will help the students to improve the efficiency of writing in later procedures. According to Rose (1984), the writing apprehension may lead to the students’ ability to start writing. He also suggested, the best way to encourage students to be a good writer is to teach our students to become “free” writer (Rose, 1984). Therefore, in this stage, the teachers should help the students to overcome the writing apprehension by designing some activities to elicit and explore some ideas. However, the teacher should aware that, the process approach emphasizes the students ‘engagement with the writing topic while the teacher only plays a role of facilitator (Badger, 2000).
The proposed activity in pre-writing stages is brainstorming that can makes the writers getting started from the collection of data (Tribble, 1996). Firstly, the teacher will give a brief introduction about the writing topic. For example, the teacher can provide a lead-in story to help the students to get a basic comprehension of the writing topic. As Badger (2000) suggested, in prewriting activities the teacher should also help the students to identify some key elements for academic writing, such as the purpose of writing and the target audience. After that, the students will be divided into small groups. Each group member is encouraged to give their own interpretation about the topic without any limitations. The techniques that can be utilized in brainstorming include the questioning and the listing (Widodo, 2013). For example, the students can attempt to locate the writing topic by eliciting the answers of some related questions, or listing the examples, details, personal experience etc.
However, according to Rose (1984), a possible challenge for the activity is that the brainstorming strategy may lead to a mass of disordered ideas. Also, it may lead to the neglect of some basic academic writing skills, namely the skill of synthesizing and interpreting information from external sources (Shih, 1986). Based on the above considerations, the teacher should assume the responsibility of offering some valid input before the group discussion. For example, a selection of reading material related with the writing topic can be provided to orient the discussion. The students will be required to generate relevant ideas according to the provided background information. In addition, it is essential that the teacher should offer assistance to evaluate the consistency of the ideas with the writing topics. Otherwise, it may easily lead to the deviation from the writing topic.
Drafting
Drafting is the students’ attempt to convert the invisible ideas into concrete language. Since in academic writing, the consistency with the specific writing convention is necessary to produce an effective academic essay (Shih, 1986).As Kiniry and Strenski (1985) pointed out, the students should have the knowledge about how information is processed in academic writing, e.g. the listing, summary, comparison/ contrast, or the academic argument. Therefore, the activity designed in this stage aims to help the students to explore how ideas should be displayed in a well-organized academic essay. For example, the students will be asked to outline the logical structure of the essay when they are starting to write the first draft. By this way, it can facilitate the writing process because the students will have an explicit plan about the composition. The students will be reminded that the first draft is expected to be not perfect in terms of grammar or spelling errors improvement will be made by revision in later stage (Barnett, 1992). They should put more efforts in expressing the ideas fluently instead of being interrupted by grammar or vocabulary.
The predicted difficulty for the activity is that, the time limit for the students during writing class may put more pressure to the students, especially for students with less competitive writing skills. As Kenneth (2012) mentioned that requiring a class writing test may mean students spend less time trying out heuristic exercises, conducting extra searches for information, or taking international breaks while drafting. If students feel stressful for time, they will adopt less effective strategies to write the composition. The solution for the issue might be to free up more time for them. Academic writing is a much more complicated process than general writing because it is more cognitive demanding. From this perspective, the teacher should offer prompt assistant for the students who cannot continue writing. And positive comments are essential since they can serve as motivation for the students.
Revising
Better writers believe that writing drafts is important (Dvorak, 1986), moreover, self-revising or peer-revising of the draft is required before the teacher see it. But revising a paper is, for some students, even more difficult than writing it. Substantive revision means a writer has to re-envision the paper and make an attempt to understand the feeling of the reader. For a high school student, successful revision is difficult because they lack solid understanding of academic writing.
Thomas (2005) insisted that the writing process should include “interaction among several readers, both teachers and peers. (p35)”Based on this concept, our writing class would consist of some peer revision activities. The teacher can ask students to read each other’s papers with an eye toward argumentation (Humes, 1983). The activity designed in this stage divided into two parts. In the first part, students are asked to exchange their compositions by turns, with each composition being read by at least two students. After reading peer’s composition, students will be distributed peer review worksheets (see Appendix A) and be asked to give their understanding and comment on the paper they read. Students conclude the main idea and major supporting points of each paper, which is critical for them to get inspiration when they write articles. Inspiration from peers can help students in the stage of prewriting. In addition, students can also benefit some reading skills and strategies from the process of summarizing peer’s paper. Moreover, students are required to give comment on peer’s articles, including strengths, weakness, obscurity of expression and ambiguities. Teachers can guide and join the activities. This activity should be treated as a workshop: “students and teachers writing, reading, and discussing, and improving one another’s work” (Lindeman2001, p208).
In the second part, students read their reviews from peers and give response to the Reviewer’s Comments (see Appendix B).Students are asked to evaluate the comments they received by sorting the useful and worthless ideas and list the reasons in correspondence. Furthermore, they will make a plan step by step to revise their papers in according to the useful comments at the end.
One main purpose of this group activity, as Linda (2011) indicated, is to create a supportive and encouraging peer learning environment in which participants feel motivated and free to share and discuss writing, learn from each other and supports each other’s writing development. Group activity is more efficient than individual learning.
There are some limitations in this activity. First, it is hard to ensure the validity and reliability of peer’s comment. Therefore, teachers should engaged actively in the process of commenting and teach them how to make constructive critique of other’s article. Hope (2006) provides advices that people should always take a positive spin when critiquing. It is not effective and valid to say what doesn’t work by just proofreading a piece of work. Saying why and suggesting alternatives are important. Second, the quantity of comment is also not enough in this case. Each student can only analyze at most two articles and receive two peer’s comments which means. Third, due to time limit (30 minutes), teachers are hard to implement three parts of activity (peer review, feedback and revise) in the class. Fourth, the grammar problems that appeared in paper are hard to identify and correct by students. Teachers should emphasize more on this aspect after class.
The implement of the lesson plan
The implement of this class is to display and correct the writing process of high school students.More specifically, prewriting stage aims to arouse the background knowledge about the related writing topic; drafting intends to encourage the students to produce a rough publication; the objective of activities in revising stage is to motivate students to share and discuss opinions in peer’s paper so that they will be enlightened from their advices.
The organization of these activities has been discussed above. However, there are still some difficulties in the process of implement. To begin with, it is challenging to control the time of writing class. As it is shown in Appendix C (the lesson plan), the lesson may be an intensive load to the students because there is only an hour and half to implement three to four activities including asking students to write in the class. It is difficult for the teacher to control the pace of the lesson since some fast-paced writers may finish the writing more rapidly while the slow writers are stilling struggling with it. The remedy is that ask students to strictly follow the time limit of writing part (the time of revising part should be freed up, for example, teachers can ask students to hand in the revised version in next week) and explain the activity requirements briefly and clearly.
Moreover, most students are used to write the composition directly without drafting and revising. Many students may also be leery of the process writing approach in our class, especially revising, because they perceived them as merely “extra work”. As a result, some students may take a less serious attitude to read other’s comments. As Kenneth (2013) said, changing students’ perceptions of new writing tactics will not be easy. To solve the problem, the teacher can explain why prewriting and revising are important to write a good composition. Like what Ferris and Hedgcock(2005) indicated, while peer response and teacher-student conferences can both be valuable instructional tool in a writing course, both of these activities may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable for L2 students. Teachers should take it into consideration in the implement of activities.
Evaluation of the lesson
Although a well-written lesson plan provides a theoretical framework for the lesson, the evaluation of the lesson should still be based on the realistic outcomes. One of the most straightforward criteria to assess the lesson is based on the consistency between the achieved ability of students and the learning objectives. A successful lesson should elicit the behaviors that are closed related with the learning objectives. For the proposed writing lesson, each stage is clear-cut so it is easy for the teacher to incorporate the evaluation into each procedure. For example, in prewriting stage, the teacher can examine whether the student has obtained the ability to synthesize relevant information under academic context by directly looking at the ideas he or she proposed. Or the teacher can monitor whether the students have a good understanding of writing convention in academic essay by looking at the outline they provided. More importantly, the finalized essay from the students is a direct evidence to assess the lesson. To sum up, no lesson is successful unless it correctly matches the learning objectives.
Another way to evaluate the lesson is from the perspective of classroom management that is categorized into three aspects, namely, the students’ motivation, the constraints, and new roles to the teacher (Lewis, 2002). Firstly, the involvement and the engagement of students is an essential factor to determine whether it is a successful lesson. It is especially important for a writing class when process oriented approach is applied, because the central roles of the students are highly appreciated. This writing class would be successful if students fully integrate into the class and shared their opinions with teachers and classmates. Secondly, whether the constraints are addressed in a proper way will exert great impact on the lesson. For example, for the target students in the proposed writing lesson, some students may prefer individual work to group discussion (Lewis, 2002). Under the circumstance, if the teacher does not give appropriate methods to solve the problem effectively, it may lead to the failure of the lesson. Thirdly, it is clear that the teacher play an essential role in managing a successful lesson. For example, the way the teach gives the instruction of the activities, how do they monitor the students’ performance in class are both closely related with the quality of the lesson.
Conclusion
The teaching of writing has always been a heated topic due to the complicity of writing activity in English learning. The paper is an attempt to apply the process approach into the teaching of academic writing to Chinese high school students. Unlike traditional ways of teaching writing which values more on the final product, the process approach gives the priority to the writing process. It is beneficial to the students since by using this approach, the students will not be restricted by any writing models. The students’ central role will be emphasized in writing class rather than the instruction of the teachers. It tries to help the student to overcome their fear of writing by giving them more initiative in the class .The lesson plan in the paper adopts Tyler’s model because it is more predictable and easy to apply than other models. Also, the highlighted importance of learning objectives in the model makes the assessment and the implement more straightforward. According to the principle of process approach, the paper proposes different activities in each procedure, namely prewriting, drafting, and revising. It is obvious that many group works are encouraged in the lesson plan due to the belief that the collaborative learning will be beneficial to the student. With a clear awareness about the potential challenges or limitations of the designed activities, the paper also develops some possible solutions. Regarding to the implement of the plan, the time limited will become an invisible obstacle in practical teaching. Thus, it requires the teacher to make flexible adjustment when it is required. Also, the teachers may need patience to give reasonable explanation to convince the students to cooperate with them. Although the lesson plan is an explicit instrument to guarantee the success of the lesson, the lesson should also be evaluated from more practical aspects, for example, the achieved outcomes of the students which is a direct reflection of the quality of the class. Or the classroom management from which the impact of the lesson can be observed.
Reference
Badger, R., & White, G. (2000).A process genre approach to teaching writing.ELT journal, 54(2), 153-160.
Barnett, M. A. (1989). Writing as a process. The French Review, 63(1), 31-44.
Devorak, T. (1986). “Wrting in the Foreign Language.” Listening, Reading and Writing: Analysis and Application. Ed. Barbara H. Wing. Middlebury, VT:northeast Conference
Ferris, D.R., &J.S.Hedgcock, (2005).Teaching ESL composition. 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Hinkel, E. (2002). Second language writers’ text: Linguistic and rhetoric features.Mahwah, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hope, P. (2006). How to run a successful writing group.Writer, 119(6), 32–33.
Humes, Ann. (1983). “Research on the Composing Process.”Review of Educational Research 53(2):201–16.
John, P. D. (2006). Lesson planning and the student teacher: re‐thinking the dominant model. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(4), 483-498.
Kenneth H.K, Kyle C and Molloe J (2012). Assessing the WritingProcess: Do Writing-IntensiveFirst-Year Seminars ChangeHow Students Write?American Sociological Association 41 (1) 20-31
Kiniry, M., &Strenski, E.(1985). Sequencing expository writing: ARecursive approach. College Composition and Communication, 36,191-202.
Lewis M. (2002). Classroom management. In Richards, J. C., &Renandya, W. A. (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice. Cambridge University Press.
Linda Y. Li (2011). Supporting the thesis writing process of international research students through on ongoing writing group. Academic skills centre, university of Canberra
Lindemann, Erika. (2001). A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers.New York: Oxford University Press.
Macarthur, C. A. Graham, S. Fitzgerald, J. (2006). Handbook of Writing Research. New
York, Guilford Press
Rose, M.(1984). Writer’s block: cognitive dimension. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Richards, J. C., &Renandya, W. A. (2002).Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice. Cambridge University Press.
Shih, M. (1986). Content‐Based Approaches to Teaching Academic Writing.Tesol Quarterly, 20(4), 617-648.
Tyler, R. W. ,1949. Basic principles of curriculum and instruction.University of Chicago Press.
Thomas, P. L. 2005.Teaching Writing Primer. New York: Peter Lang.
Tribble, C, (1996). Writing, New York, Oxford University Press
Widodo. H.P.，(2013). Implementing collaborative process based writing. Research papers in language teaching and learning. Vol.4, No.1.
Zazkis, R., Liljedahl, P., & Sinclair, N. (2009). Lesson plays: Planning teaching versus teaching planning. For the Learning of Mathematics, 29(1), 40-47.
Appendix A
Writer’s Name __________________________
Reader’s Name __________________________
Peer Review Worksheet
Instructions: Read your partner’s essay through, making notes about content. You can also make marks on the draft itself. Begin by noticing the larger features of the essay and work toward smaller-scale issues. Be ready to explain your concerns about the paper directly to its author. You don’t need to do any proofreading since the draft you are reading is subject to change.
Your thesis is:
Your major supporting points are:
Strengths I saw in your essay:
Things I didn’t understand, logic I didn’t follow, parts you should think about revising for clarity or reader comprehension:
Something new I learned from your essay:
Appendix B
Writer’s Name __________________________
Reader’s Name __________________________
Writer’s Response to Reviewer’s Comments
Which of your reader’s comments are most important? Consider the large-scale issues of your essay: argument, logic, coherence, organization, persuasiveness, interest.
Which comments may have some value, but you’re not sure about them?
Which comments do you disagree with? Why?
What did you learn about your writing or about this particular paper? Strengths? Tendencies to watch out for?
What discrete steps will you take next to revise your paper? When will you work on each step? Make a concrete plan to follow for your revision process.
Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Proofreading
Appendix A and Appendix B was retrieved from https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgsi.berkeley.edu%2Fteachingguide%2Fwriting%2Fpeer-review-set.rtf&ei=hMyzUfCBLcitiAe75YGwDA&usg=AFQjCNGlEv1G1Kav5AtUwxYwFcwQ56j_Ww&sig2=Jw56NLkeGuDuaaIw1ft32g&bvm=bv.47534661,d.aGc
Appendix C
Writing class Lesson plan
Time: 13:00 to 15:00 subject: academic writing
Class: a mixture of high school high level students and university low level students
Objectives:
To teach the students some sub skills of academic writing
Prior knowledge:
Students are in the intermediate level, having ability to write a roughly university standard composition.
Materials:
1 peer review worksheet
2 writer’s response to reviewer’s comments sheet
3 draft papers
step Time Tasks (teacher) Tasks (students) Interaction purpose
1 15 min 1. Teacher gives introduction to the writing topic.
2. Teacher helps to evaluate the relevance of the ideas. Ask students to have group discussion about the topic. Students are required to freely write down any words that they can think of. (based on their experience, background knowledge etc.) T→Ss
Ss→S to activate the schema for the related topic
2 45min Teacher distributes the draft paper, and provides assistance when required. Ask the students to list the logical structure of the draft (15min).The students need to explicitly outline the function, purpose of each part of the essay. Then they need to write the first draft within 45 min. Ss→Sts Outline an explicit structure plan helps the sts to improve the writing efficiency
3 30
mins T mixes students’ composition and distributes to students randomly
T hands out worksheets (see appendix 1) to students and teaches them how to write useful feedback.
T returns the worksheet a to author and asks them to fill up worksheet b
T asks students to revise composition on the basis of worksheets.
Ss carefully read the composition they get.
Ss give feedback to the composition they read and finish the worksheet a.
Ss receive feedback and fill up worksheet b.
Ss revise and edit compositions. T←→Ss
T←→Ss
Ss←→Ss
T←→Ss Focus attention of Ss on how to judge compositions and give useful feedbacks.
Teach students how to elicit advices from feedbacks and revise compositions
WEI WEN 3412063 & TANG CHAO 3402575
Introduction
Writing good academic essay has been a challenging task for high school students. Regarding to the question how to teach writing, the process approach (Macarthur, Graham and Fitzgerald, 2006) that emerged in last century is the most effective model to instruct students on their writing. This essay mainly discusses and presents a lesson plan of a writing class which is designed for the students from high school. More specifically, the background of students, traditional and new writing process approach and the model of lesson plan would be briefly introduced at first part. It will also specify the learning objectives for the proposed writing lesson in this part. The second part displays some class activities that aim to improve students’ sub skills of academic writing. Strengths and weaknesses of the materials and tasks chosen will also be discussed in this part after each activity. The third part attempts to discuss the possible challenges and remedies in the process of implement. The last part tries to propose some possible ways to the evaluation of the lesson followed by the conclusion of the paper.
Background
The participants in our class are high school students who are above the common. As a result, the level of their English background is upper intermediate. That is to say, these students have already learned most of English grammar and structures. Although the students have learned the basic rules about writing an academic essay (e.g. the structure, the spelling, the reference style etc.), lack of practices and creativity is the most significant problem of these students, which frustrated them to write. Based on this background, process approach was implemented in our class. As Tribble(1996) demonstrates in his book, the process approach is
“an approach to the teaching of writing which stresses the creativity of the individual writer, and which pays attention to the development of good writing practices rather than the imitation of models” (p160)
The traditional way to teach writing is product approach, which focus on the “finished product” and not on the subtle processes that occur in the process of writing (Hinkel, 2002). The usage of product approach is due to some reasons, like it is easy to implement and it has been widely used already. However, with the development of process approach, product approach has been proved less practical and efficient than the former one. Comparing with the product approach that encourage students to imitate the model as close as possible, process approach focuses on the teaching during the writing process rather than before and after the writing. For a long time, people assumed that there are approximately three to five "stages" in process writing. The most popular one is 1 prewriting 2 drafting 3 revising 4 editing 5 publishing. Therefore, in our essay, activities are organized according to the first three stages: prewriting, drafting and revising. The last two stages would be discussed after the class due to time limit.
Models of lesson plan
Writing a lesson plan before the class is essential to guarantee the success of the class. This is because, for the teachers, an explicit and detailed lesson plan can help them systematically prepare the class. And for the students, a well-prepared class will be easier for them to get approach to the new knowledge. However, there is a heated debate regarding to the model of lesson plan. Many researchers have proposed different models in the past several decades. The traditional model suggested by Tyler (1949) is still very popular in modern teaching field. The model consists of four procedures, namely the specification of the objectives, the learning activities, the organization of the learning activities and the methods (Richards, 2002).This model takes classes as a means of aiming toward an educational objective. In contrast, Yinger proposed a different model, which includes ‘problem conception’, the formulation of problem and the achievement of solution, and the implementation of plan (Richard, 2002).
The proposed lesson plan in the essay follows Tyler’s model due to the following reasons. Firstly, it emphasizes the central role of learning objectives because they are the criteria which will determine the selection of the material, the content, the instruction, and even the tests and examination (Tyler, 1949). The clear statement of the learning objectives makes it easy for us to know whether we have achieved the aims and to analyze the implementation of the teaching (John, 2006). Another reason contributing to the adoption of Tyler’s model in the proposed lesson plan is because it is more predictable and controllable (Zazkis, Liljedahl& Sinclair, 2009). Each planning event in Yinger’s model is influenced by what happened previously and what will happen in the following (Richard, 2002, p31). From this perspective, the procedures in Tyler’s model are straightforward making it easy to be applied into practical teaching.
Learning objectives
Research on first and second language writing has found that students are always frustrated by seeing compositions marked up, and they rarely incorporate all our suggestions or corrections even when we ask them to rewrite (Dvorak, 1985). It is similar in Chinese high school students that they are afraid of starting and organizing the article; moreover, they are not active in incorporating teachers’ suggestions. Limited lexical resources and the misusage of grammar is another thorny problem for Chinese high school students. I believe this is largely due to the usage of the product approach that we have discussed in the background. As a result, the main learning objective of our class is to stimulate students’ interest in writing and guide their writing process. Other minor objectives includes, to improve the students’ ability to synthesize the information in academic context (which is an important sub-skill of academic writing will be discussed in later part), to produce an effective academic essay in a specific topic following the particular writing convention, to correct grammar and structure mistakes, to improve their thinking abilities and to review and correct their articles by themselves.
Activities
Prewriting
Prewriting is an important stage while applying the process approach to teach writing in class. The utilization of appropriate teaching strategies in this stage will help the students to improve the efficiency of writing in later procedures. According to Rose (1984), the writing apprehension may lead to the students’ ability to start writing. He also suggested, the best way to encourage students to be a good writer is to teach our students to become “free” writer (Rose, 1984). Therefore, in this stage, the teachers should help the students to overcome the writing apprehension by designing some activities to elicit and explore some ideas. However, the teacher should aware that, the process approach emphasizes the students ‘engagement with the writing topic while the teacher only plays a role of facilitator (Badger, 2000).
The proposed activity in pre-writing stages is brainstorming that can makes the writers getting started from the collection of data (Tribble, 1996). Firstly, the teacher will give a brief introduction about the writing topic. For example, the teacher can provide a lead-in story to help the students to get a basic comprehension of the writing topic. As Badger (2000) suggested, in prewriting activities the teacher should also help the students to identify some key elements for academic writing, such as the purpose of writing and the target audience. After that, the students will be divided into small groups. Each group member is encouraged to give their own interpretation about the topic without any limitations. The techniques that can be utilized in brainstorming include the questioning and the listing (Widodo, 2013). For example, the students can attempt to locate the writing topic by eliciting the answers of some related questions, or listing the examples, details, personal experience etc.
However, according to Rose (1984), a possible challenge for the activity is that the brainstorming strategy may lead to a mass of disordered ideas. Also, it may lead to the neglect of some basic academic writing skills, namely the skill of synthesizing and interpreting information from external sources (Shih, 1986). Based on the above considerations, the teacher should assume the responsibility of offering some valid input before the group discussion. For example, a selection of reading material related with the writing topic can be provided to orient the discussion. The students will be required to generate relevant ideas according to the provided background information. In addition, it is essential that the teacher should offer assistance to evaluate the consistency of the ideas with the writing topics. Otherwise, it may easily lead to the deviation from the writing topic.
Drafting
Drafting is the students’ attempt to convert the invisible ideas into concrete language. Since in academic writing, the consistency with the specific writing convention is necessary to produce an effective academic essay (Shih, 1986).As Kiniry and Strenski (1985) pointed out, the students should have the knowledge about how information is processed in academic writing, e.g. the listing, summary, comparison/ contrast, or the academic argument. Therefore, the activity designed in this stage aims to help the students to explore how ideas should be displayed in a well-organized academic essay. For example, the students will be asked to outline the logical structure of the essay when they are starting to write the first draft. By this way, it can facilitate the writing process because the students will have an explicit plan about the composition. The students will be reminded that the first draft is expected to be not perfect in terms of grammar or spelling errors improvement will be made by revision in later stage (Barnett, 1992). They should put more efforts in expressing the ideas fluently instead of being interrupted by grammar or vocabulary.
The predicted difficulty for the activity is that, the time limit for the students during writing class may put more pressure to the students, especially for students with less competitive writing skills. As Kenneth (2012) mentioned that requiring a class writing test may mean students spend less time trying out heuristic exercises, conducting extra searches for information, or taking international breaks while drafting. If students feel stressful for time, they will adopt less effective strategies to write the composition. The solution for the issue might be to free up more time for them. Academic writing is a much more complicated process than general writing because it is more cognitive demanding. From this perspective, the teacher should offer prompt assistant for the students who cannot continue writing. And positive comments are essential since they can serve as motivation for the students.
Revising
Better writers believe that writing drafts is important (Dvorak, 1986), moreover, self-revising or peer-revising of the draft is required before the teacher see it. But revising a paper is, for some students, even more difficult than writing it. Substantive revision means a writer has to re-envision the paper and make an attempt to understand the feeling of the reader. For a high school student, successful revision is difficult because they lack solid understanding of academic writing.
Thomas (2005) insisted that the writing process should include “interaction among several readers, both teachers and peers. (p35)”Based on this concept, our writing class would consist of some peer revision activities. The teacher can ask students to read each other’s papers with an eye toward argumentation (Humes, 1983). The activity designed in this stage divided into two parts. In the first part, students are asked to exchange their compositions by turns, with each composition being read by at least two students. After reading peer’s composition, students will be distributed peer review worksheets (see Appendix A) and be asked to give their understanding and comment on the paper they read. Students conclude the main idea and major supporting points of each paper, which is critical for them to get inspiration when they write articles. Inspiration from peers can help students in the stage of prewriting. In addition, students can also benefit some reading skills and strategies from the process of summarizing peer’s paper. Moreover, students are required to give comment on peer’s articles, including strengths, weakness, obscurity of expression and ambiguities. Teachers can guide and join the activities. This activity should be treated as a workshop: “students and teachers writing, reading, and discussing, and improving one another’s work” (Lindeman2001, p208).
In the second part, students read their reviews from peers and give response to the Reviewer’s Comments (see Appendix B).Students are asked to evaluate the comments they received by sorting the useful and worthless ideas and list the reasons in correspondence. Furthermore, they will make a plan step by step to revise their papers in according to the useful comments at the end.
One main purpose of this group activity, as Linda (2011) indicated, is to create a supportive and encouraging peer learning environment in which participants feel motivated and free to share and discuss writing, learn from each other and supports each other’s writing development. Group activity is more efficient than individual learning.
There are some limitations in this activity. First, it is hard to ensure the validity and reliability of peer’s comment. Therefore, teachers should engaged actively in the process of commenting and teach them how to make constructive critique of other’s article. Hope (2006) provides advices that people should always take a positive spin when critiquing. It is not effective and valid to say what doesn’t work by just proofreading a piece of work. Saying why and suggesting alternatives are important. Second, the quantity of comment is also not enough in this case. Each student can only analyze at most two articles and receive two peer’s comments which means. Third, due to time limit (30 minutes), teachers are hard to implement three parts of activity (peer review, feedback and revise) in the class. Fourth, the grammar problems that appeared in paper are hard to identify and correct by students. Teachers should emphasize more on this aspect after class.
The implement of the lesson plan
The implement of this class is to display and correct the writing process of high school students.More specifically, prewriting stage aims to arouse the background knowledge about the related writing topic; drafting intends to encourage the students to produce a rough publication; the objective of activities in revising stage is to motivate students to share and discuss opinions in peer’s paper so that they will be enlightened from their advices.
The organization of these activities has been discussed above. However, there are still some difficulties in the process of implement. To begin with, it is challenging to control the time of writing class. As it is shown in Appendix C (the lesson plan), the lesson may be an intensive load to the students because there is only an hour and half to implement three to four activities including asking students to write in the class. It is difficult for the teacher to control the pace of the lesson since some fast-paced writers may finish the writing more rapidly while the slow writers are stilling struggling with it. The remedy is that ask students to strictly follow the time limit of writing part (the time of revising part should be freed up, for example, teachers can ask students to hand in the revised version in next week) and explain the activity requirements briefly and clearly.
Moreover, most students are used to write the composition directly without drafting and revising. Many students may also be leery of the process writing approach in our class, especially revising, because they perceived them as merely “extra work”. As a result, some students may take a less serious attitude to read other’s comments. As Kenneth (2013) said, changing students’ perceptions of new writing tactics will not be easy. To solve the problem, the teacher can explain why prewriting and revising are important to write a good composition. Like what Ferris and Hedgcock(2005) indicated, while peer response and teacher-student conferences can both be valuable instructional tool in a writing course, both of these activities may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable for L2 students. Teachers should take it into consideration in the implement of activities.
Evaluation of the lesson
Although a well-written lesson plan provides a theoretical framework for the lesson, the evaluation of the lesson should still be based on the realistic outcomes. One of the most straightforward criteria to assess the lesson is based on the consistency between the achieved ability of students and the learning objectives. A successful lesson should elicit the behaviors that are closed related with the learning objectives. For the proposed writing lesson, each stage is clear-cut so it is easy for the teacher to incorporate the evaluation into each procedure. For example, in prewriting stage, the teacher can examine whether the student has obtained the ability to synthesize relevant information under academic context by directly looking at the ideas he or she proposed. Or the teacher can monitor whether the students have a good understanding of writing convention in academic essay by looking at the outline they provided. More importantly, the finalized essay from the students is a direct evidence to assess the lesson. To sum up, no lesson is successful unless it correctly matches the learning objectives.
Another way to evaluate the lesson is from the perspective of classroom management that is categorized into three aspects, namely, the students’ motivation, the constraints, and new roles to the teacher (Lewis, 2002). Firstly, the involvement and the engagement of students is an essential factor to determine whether it is a successful lesson. It is especially important for a writing class when process oriented approach is applied, because the central roles of the students are highly appreciated. This writing class would be successful if students fully integrate into the class and shared their opinions with teachers and classmates. Secondly, whether the constraints are addressed in a proper way will exert great impact on the lesson. For example, for the target students in the proposed writing lesson, some students may prefer individual work to group discussion (Lewis, 2002). Under the circumstance, if the teacher does not give appropriate methods to solve the problem effectively, it may lead to the failure of the lesson. Thirdly, it is clear that the teacher play an essential role in managing a successful lesson. For example, the way the teach gives the instruction of the activities, how do they monitor the students’ performance in class are both closely related with the quality of the lesson.
Conclusion
The teaching of writing has always been a heated topic due to the complicity of writing activity in English learning. The paper is an attempt to apply the process approach into the teaching of academic writing to Chinese high school students. Unlike traditional ways of teaching writing which values more on the final product, the process approach gives the priority to the writing process. It is beneficial to the students since by using this approach, the students will not be restricted by any writing models. The students’ central role will be emphasized in writing class rather than the instruction of the teachers. It tries to help the student to overcome their fear of writing by giving them more initiative in the class .The lesson plan in the paper adopts Tyler’s model because it is more predictable and easy to apply than other models. Also, the highlighted importance of learning objectives in the model makes the assessment and the implement more straightforward. According to the principle of process approach, the paper proposes different activities in each procedure, namely prewriting, drafting, and revising. It is obvious that many group works are encouraged in the lesson plan due to the belief that the collaborative learning will be beneficial to the student. With a clear awareness about the potential challenges or limitations of the designed activities, the paper also develops some possible solutions. Regarding to the implement of the plan, the time limited will become an invisible obstacle in practical teaching. Thus, it requires the teacher to make flexible adjustment when it is required. Also, the teachers may need patience to give reasonable explanation to convince the students to cooperate with them. Although the lesson plan is an explicit instrument to guarantee the success of the lesson, the lesson should also be evaluated from more practical aspects, for example, the achieved outcomes of the students which is a direct reflection of the quality of the class. Or the classroom management from which the impact of the lesson can be observed.
Reference
Badger, R., & White, G. (2000).A process genre approach to teaching writing.ELT journal, 54(2), 153-160.
Barnett, M. A. (1989). Writing as a process. The French Review, 63(1), 31-44.
Devorak, T. (1986). “Wrting in the Foreign Language.” Listening, Reading and Writing: Analysis and Application. Ed. Barbara H. Wing. Middlebury, VT:northeast Conference
Ferris, D.R., &J.S.Hedgcock, (2005).Teaching ESL composition. 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
Hinkel, E. (2002). Second language writers’ text: Linguistic and rhetoric features.Mahwah, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hope, P. (2006). How to run a successful writing group.Writer, 119(6), 32–33.
Humes, Ann. (1983). “Research on the Composing Process.”Review of Educational Research 53(2):201–16.
John, P. D. (2006). Lesson planning and the student teacher: re‐thinking the dominant model. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(4), 483-498.
Kenneth H.K, Kyle C and Molloe J (2012). Assessing the WritingProcess: Do Writing-IntensiveFirst-Year Seminars ChangeHow Students Write?American Sociological Association 41 (1) 20-31
Kiniry, M., &Strenski, E.(1985). Sequencing expository writing: ARecursive approach. College Composition and Communication, 36,191-202.
Lewis M. (2002). Classroom management. In Richards, J. C., &Renandya, W. A. (Eds.), Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice. Cambridge University Press.
Linda Y. Li (2011). Supporting the thesis writing process of international research students through on ongoing writing group. Academic skills centre, university of Canberra
Lindemann, Erika. (2001). A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers.New York: Oxford University Press.
Macarthur, C. A. Graham, S. Fitzgerald, J. (2006). Handbook of Writing Research. New
York, Guilford Press
Rose, M.(1984). Writer’s block: cognitive dimension. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Richards, J. C., &Renandya, W. A. (2002).Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice. Cambridge University Press.
Shih, M. (1986). Content‐Based Approaches to Teaching Academic Writing.Tesol Quarterly, 20(4), 617-648.
Tyler, R. W. ,1949. Basic principles of curriculum and instruction.University of Chicago Press.
Thomas, P. L. 2005.Teaching Writing Primer. New York: Peter Lang.
Tribble, C, (1996). Writing, New York, Oxford University Press
Widodo. H.P.，(2013). Implementing collaborative process based writing. Research papers in language teaching and learning. Vol.4, No.1.
Zazkis, R., Liljedahl, P., & Sinclair, N. (2009). Lesson plays: Planning teaching versus teaching planning. For the Learning of Mathematics, 29(1), 40-47.
Appendix A
Writer’s Name __________________________
Reader’s Name __________________________
Peer Review Worksheet
Instructions: Read your partner’s essay through, making notes about content. You can also make marks on the draft itself. Begin by noticing the larger features of the essay and work toward smaller-scale issues. Be ready to explain your concerns about the paper directly to its author. You don’t need to do any proofreading since the draft you are reading is subject to change.
Your thesis is:
Your major supporting points are:
Strengths I saw in your essay:
Things I didn’t understand, logic I didn’t follow, parts you should think about revising for clarity or reader comprehension:
Something new I learned from your essay:
Appendix B
Writer’s Name __________________________
Reader’s Name __________________________
Writer’s Response to Reviewer’s Comments
Which of your reader’s comments are most important? Consider the large-scale issues of your essay: argument, logic, coherence, organization, persuasiveness, interest.
Which comments may have some value, but you’re not sure about them?
Which comments do you disagree with? Why?
What did you learn about your writing or about this particular paper? Strengths? Tendencies to watch out for?
What discrete steps will you take next to revise your paper? When will you work on each step? Make a concrete plan to follow for your revision process.
Issue 1
Issue 2
Issue 3
Issue 4
Proofreading
Appendix A and Appendix B was retrieved from https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgsi.berkeley.edu%2Fteachingguide%2Fwriting%2Fpeer-review-set.rtf&ei=hMyzUfCBLcitiAe75YGwDA&usg=AFQjCNGlEv1G1Kav5AtUwxYwFcwQ56j_Ww&sig2=Jw56NLkeGuDuaaIw1ft32g&bvm=bv.47534661,d.aGc
Appendix C
Writing class Lesson plan
Time: 13:00 to 15:00 subject: academic writing
Class: a mixture of high school high level students and university low level students
Objectives:
To teach the students some sub skills of academic writing
Prior knowledge:
Students are in the intermediate level, having ability to write a roughly university standard composition.
Materials:
1 peer review worksheet
2 writer’s response to reviewer’s comments sheet
3 draft papers
step Time Tasks (teacher) Tasks (students) Interaction purpose
1 15 min 1. Teacher gives introduction to the writing topic.
2. Teacher helps to evaluate the relevance of the ideas. Ask students to have group discussion about the topic. Students are required to freely write down any words that they can think of. (based on their experience, background knowledge etc.) T→Ss
Ss→S to activate the schema for the related topic
2 45min Teacher distributes the draft paper, and provides assistance when required. Ask the students to list the logical structure of the draft (15min).The students need to explicitly outline the function, purpose of each part of the essay. Then they need to write the first draft within 45 min. Ss→Sts Outline an explicit structure plan helps the sts to improve the writing efficiency
3 30
mins T mixes students’ composition and distributes to students randomly
T hands out worksheets (see appendix 1) to students and teaches them how to write useful feedback.
T returns the worksheet a to author and asks them to fill up worksheet b
T asks students to revise composition on the basis of worksheets.
Ss carefully read the composition they get.
Ss give feedback to the composition they read and finish the worksheet a.
Ss receive feedback and fill up worksheet b.
Ss revise and edit compositions. T←→Ss
T←→Ss
Ss←→Ss
T←→Ss Focus attention of Ss on how to judge compositions and give useful feedbacks.
Teach students how to elicit advices from feedbacks and revise compositions
WEI WEN 3412063 & TANG CHAO 3402575
