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There are two major ways to teach your students writing - through a product approach or a process approach. The product approach has traditionally been used in the writing classroom for decades. The teacher would present a model text to students, e.g. a well-written essay, and would highlight features of the essay that make it exemplary, such as organization of paragraphs, phrases used to introduce ideas, open / closing formulae, etc. Students will then learn those essay features by heart and will try to reproduce them by writing multiple essays in the same format. Can you recognize your own writing lessons here?
An alternative and, arguably, more effective way of teaching writing is by introducing your students to the process approach in which writing is seen as a language development activity. Instead of focusing exclusively on memorizing and producing written texts, it promotes the development of skills which make one a good writer: the ability to brainstorm and develop ideas, organize writing effectively, edit and rewrite to improve the quality of a written piece.
Below you will find links to a range of process writing activities to try with your students.
1. Plan
2. Organize
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Your writing task
A fantastic resource from LearnEnglish by the British Council which teaches students the organization of different writing genres, including case study, survey, essay and report. In the 'essay structure' section you will find the structure of 6 main academic essay types explained, together with 8 online tasks for further practice.
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Teach English Writing – Inquiry Approach to Thinking and Writing
A lesson plan to encourage students' critical thinking and logical writing skills that can assist with better essay organisation.
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Essay outline
A worksheet with a generic essay outline. Use it with your students for them to remember to support and exemplify their ideas.
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Helping students organise argument essays
Ideas to improve students' writing by better organizing their argumentative essays.
3. Write
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Improve paragraph writing
A learner-centered activity to improve students' writing at a paragraph level.
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Academic writing
The paragraph writing section of this useful writing resource contains a multitude of activities to improve writing at a paragraph level: writing relevant and exciting topic sentences, developing a paragraph by writing support sentences and introducing examples, etc.
4. Evaluate and Revise
The process approach is by no means a quick fix which you can apply a couple of weeks before your students take the IELTS exam. Instead, it's an extensive effort of turning your students into better writers, developing a skill which can be useful in any situation, not only in the test room. Knowing the basics of the process approach to writing, your students will become more independent and confident language users. They will be able to cope independently and efficiently with any writing situation that presents itself in their future academic or everyday life.
Further reading about the process approach:
Read this article by Vanessa Steele Product and process writing: A comparison to learn more about the product versus process approach. It will also help you choose which approach to use in each particular teaching situation.
This article by Graham Stanley Approaches to process writing gives a detailed description of the process approach with practical classroom ideas for every stage, including planning, writing, evaluating and editing.
Submitted by Olena Rossi, British Council language assessment consultant
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