Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

part of the composition orally to show the method, and will
help them until the right answer is produced. Then the whole
passage may be produced orally in groups or pairs, with the
pupils correcting each other until they are sure of what they
have to write. Later, with similar exercises, pupils may be
confident enough to write without such intensive
preparation, but this should only be when the teacher knows
that they will be able to produce a confident and accurate
response. This means that the exercise may be written in one
of four ways:
1 By the whole class, with the teacher or a pupil drafting on
the blackboard.
2 In groups—each member of the group writing the agreed
version, sentence by sentence.
3 In pairs, using the same method as in groups.
4 Individually, without any consultation.
But it is worth repeating that hardly any mistakes should be
made in the final version, and the preparation should be
thorough enough to ensure this.
When the composition has been written, the process is by
no means finished. No serious writer lets his manuscript go
forward without revision, and usually he asks someone else
to comment on it. Commenting on his own and others’
writing should be an essential part of a student’s training—at
the lowest level it will equip him for the examination
situation when he has to re-read his material for errors, and
it should have greater educational benefit in encouraging co-
operation and openness in practical activities. Thus, if the
exercises are well enough prepared to allow only a limited
number of syntactic mistakes (apart from the obvious
copying and spelling ones), the students can work in groups,
pairs or individually to improve their work. In groups, a final
version (or versions as the exercises become freer) has to be
agreed upon. Pupils may start by changing books in pairs
within the group, and finish by reading accepted answers
around the group—while the others pounce on mistakes. In
pairs, the two will examine one book at a time, and the writer
will defend his answers, or adapt them if he is convinced of
his mistakes. Finally, pupils may like to check each others’

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books, without teacher help, separately, before the teacher
looks at them. All of these activities demand that the teacher
goes round the groups helping and encouraging, and of
course the teacher will still have to take in written work from
time to time to check through it. However, it should be very
clear to pupils that the purpose of this activity, and of all the
discussion, is to help them to write accurately and effectively,
and not to test what they can do. If tests of written work are
essential, they need to be administered quite separately from
this teaching procedure.
These techniques should be varied with each exercise
tried, to avoid monotony. As the class becomes confident
within each stage, new exercises within the same stage may
be worked on without oral preparation, or at great speed.
Writing may start with groups, pairs or individuals, and at
the early stages, about half an hour each might be allowed
for preparation, writing and revision/correction. Certainly
the exercise should be short enough to allow ample time for
the revision after it is written and the preparation before.
As the exercises become less and less controlled, the nature
of the revision will change, so that discussion of layout,
organisation, and criteria for what is or is not appropriate
subject matter becomes more important. An example of an
advanced, and fairly difficult, guided composition is as
follows:
Stage 34 
 
(given to the class)
A large new secondary school is to be built in this area.
Some government officials have been considering the
possibility of making this a co-educational school where
both boys and girls will be educated together. Other
government officers have opposed the plan.
Last week, a public debate on this subject was held in
the Town Hall. Speakers for both sides presented their
points of view. Below, listed in random order, are some
notes on the arguments offered by both the proposers and
the opposers.

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Writing
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Write the speech which might have been given by either
the proposer or the opposer; you will need to select
relevant material only. You may add examples of your
own to make the points clearer.
Hobbies, e.g. drama, better with both sexes.
Education given to boys and girls should be different; different
needs; girls’ subjects e.g. Health Science and Cookery not
necessary for boys.
Concentration in class difficult with mixed sexes.
Competition in class between boys and girls: higher academic
standards.
Living and working in same school a good preparation for
marriage and future life in society.
Girls just as able as boys.
Boys hate being beaten in class by girls.
Experience in other countries: students in mixed schools—
not such good results as students from single-sex schools.
School no training for life if sexes separated.
Girls: good influence on boys.
Girls as technical engineers?
Co-educational schools: boys more careful about conduct
and speech.
Most girls not good at science.
Great problems of discipline.
Outside interests of boys very different from those of girls.
Recreation, sports.
Boys dress more smartly in mixed schools. Behave better.
Administration problems; bathing, dormitories, washing
clothes.
Mixed schools: much time wasted by pupils.
More interesting and varied social life of co-educational
school.
Girls not interested in same hobbies as boys.
Sexes develop at different speeds.
Here, the same procedure as that outlined for the earlier
examples will be appropriate, but the discussion, both before
and after writing, will be far more concerned with content
and organisation than with basic errors—though of course
by now students should have been trained to pick out most of
those where they occur.

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Writing
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It will have been noticed that the sample compositions given
in this chapter show a variety of different kinds of writing:
factual as well as story-telling or narrative. If a course such as
this is developed, using material from some of the textbooks
which are available (and these procedures can be adapted to
any teaching materials), it should cover all the main types of
writing that the student may need to produce later in his career.
What happens through this methodological procedure, of
course, is that the student is exposed at the early stages to a
variety of short passages which are coherent and which
exemplify a number of types of writing. He is asked to
reconstruct these passages with the help of a number of aids,
and this process, both in language and in the ideas used, is made
explicit through the constant discussion and checking which is
carried on in the group and pair work. (That also gives a good
opportunity for fluency practice in oral English, incidentally.)
As he progresses through the course, the student becomes more
and more able to correct himself and to evaluate what he is
doing. Since the course can incorporate exercises on note-
taking and reference work (as in the example above, which
requires the pupil to understand note form) if these are
appropriate activities, it can be turned into an effective ‘study-
skills’ course for those who need such skills.