Enhancing Writing Skills: Techniques and Ideas for Students
Educational Resources: Drawing
While dictation is a typical exercise for spelling, and multiplication and division for calculation, writing is a comprehensive activity of expression. Its open, divergent, and adaptive nature makes it one of the best practices for written language. In fact, most of us learned to write by creating weekly essays on varied topics, which were then corrected by the teacher. This common practice is being challenged by new methodologies and the communicative approach, which focuses on language use and the needs of students.
What is said in real life is not written in essays. The single text type that exists in school presents different communication characteristics from social texts that we usually produce. Here are the differences between communicative texts and school writing:
Communicative Texts
(letters, notes, resumes, notices, reports, and announcements):
- Have a fixed structure, search, and even phraseology.
- The recipient is explicit, varied, and determines a particular degree of formality in each case.
- The theme of the text is real or probable, according to the function of communication.
School Writing
- Free structure, registration, and phraseology.
- The receiver is implicit, and the brands are varied. There is no degree of formality.
- Absolute freedom of subjects.
Communicative texts emphasize the communicative function of language: the interrelation between sender and receiver and the achievement of real purposes. In contrast, school writing is a school exercise with limitations that requires more creativity and a better ability to refine and order ideas.
Language is a vehicle for students to think about a subject and learn about it. This communicative practice prepares them for real life and teaches them to use written language in common situations. However, school writing makes it possible to learn to use language to study any subject, i.e., it teaches them to learn.
Proposed: One of the major concerns of teachers and students in writing is finding motivating themes or ideas that encourage writing. Here are some ideas to encourage students to write:
- Technical 1 + 1 = 1: Imagine a new object, concept, or being from the sum of two unrelated things, and describe it in a piece of writing.
- Words, Phrases, and Writing: Prepare an essay step by step by making a list of words, then a set of sentences with those words, and finally ordering the sentences to form a text.
- Stories to Manipulate: Continue or remake a story that has already started. Find a beginning to an end, rewrite the same story, and so on.
- Metaphors: Describe an object, person, or any subject using metaphors and comparisons with things known and close to the student. It can also be written as a personification.
- The 5 Questions: Prepare a text based on five basic questions about any fact: what, when, who, why, and where. You can invent a story.
- Reviews of a Famous Phrase: Offer a personal point of view. This is a more thoughtful proposal.
- Pictures and Images: Use them as a source of inspiration.
- Real or Credible Texts: Create real communication situations for students. The fact that a real reader will read what they write encourages them to write and do better.