Chapter 6 - How do I help students improve their English writing?

The main idea from this chapter is that teachers need to give students a reason to write. For example, when a person learns to dance, they don't spend an hour learning what the left foot does, then an hour on the right foot. Students should learn to write in the context of content areas, or something that is important to them.

For example, in this chapter, the teacher used an issue of traffic around the school. The students felt so strongly that something should be done about traffic that they wrote a letter to the mayor. For the letter, the students talked about ideas and the teacher wrote them on the board. He then guided them through the process of writing a letter while modeling it himself.

When the mayor responded saying she would pass their request on to another committee, the students wrote letters to to members of that committee. The teacher let each student write in a way that was appropriate for his amount of English proficiency. Some drew pictures with labels while others wrote professional letters.

So when helping students with writing, model first! Then, allow students writing to look different at different stages. Finally, have students write about something relevant whether it is some issue close to the students or concerning the content they are learning. Make it relevant.