Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Writing and ‘creating’
One possible objection to a course such as that outlined
above is that it is severely functional. While it is true that
most people learn foreign languages for functional reasons, it
may well be asked what role there is in EFL for a creative
approach to writing.
It should be said at once that the kind of scheme outlined
can be exciting, particularly when students genuinely feel
that they are progressing successfully, and also that it can
include imaginative story writing, both guided and free. At
the same time, in the early stages, there is a tendency to
emphasise accuracy at the expense of the fluency which can
add genuine pleasure to the process of composition,
particularly for the able student, in a foreign language. In
practice, it may be sensible at the early stages to divide the

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Writing
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aims, and to tell students that the purpose of the main
writing course is to develop accuracy in the first instance, but
that the teacher will be delighted to look at—for example—a
diary or anything else written solely for pleasure in English.
However, it is inadvisable to express willingness to ‘correct’
mistakes, otherwise the situation is back to that of
approaching a random mass of errors which cannot be
systematically treated, and the whole purpose of the early
controlled composition work was to avoid that. At the same
time the teacher should be willing to discuss the content of
freely written work with the students and to encourage them
in every way, but they need to be made aware that they must
have an ability to do ‘normal’ writing in English before they
can justify being experimental. The emphasis in this chapter
has been on controlling, defining and organising the writing
course. It is clearly advantageous to the teacher to know
exactly what he is doing, but even more the organisation
enables the student to see his own progress in terms of a
scheme. This builds up his confidence, and with language
teaching confidence can be enormously important.