Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Suggestions for further reading
Books with useful discussion of writing skills include:
L.G.Alexander, Guided Composition in English Teaching, Longman,
1971.
J.A.Bright and G.P.McGregor, Teaching English as a Second Language,
Longman, 1970, chapter 4.
D.Byrne, Teaching Writing Skills, Longman, 1979.
Josie Levine, Developing Writing Skills, Association for the Education of
Pupils from Overseas, 1972.
Hazel McCree, From Controlled to Creative Writing, Lagos: African
Universities Press, 1969.
A.Pincas, Teaching English Writing, Macmillan, 1982.
R.White, Teaching English Writing, Heinemann, 1980.
Textbooks on composition include:
Gerald Dykstra, Richard Port, Antoinette Port, Ananse Tales, Columbia:
Teachers’ College, 1968.
T.C.Jupp and John Milne, Guided Course in English Composition,
Heinemann, 1968.
T.C.Jupp and John Milne, Guided Paragraph Writing, Heinemann, 1972.

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Writing
132
Mary S.Lawrence, Writing as a Thinking Process, Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1972.
D.H.Spencer, Guided Composition Exercises, Longman, 1967.
Further discussion on correction in groups will be found in:
C.J.Brumfit, ‘Correction of Written Work’, Modern English Teacher,
September 1977a.
On teaching script:
J.A.Bright and R.Piggott, Handwriting, A Workbook, Cambridge
University Press, 1976 (+Teacher’s Book).
Note: The 35-stage course in writing referred to on p. 126 and the ideas
for exercises are based on a scheme originally developed in Tanzania by
Ann Brumfit, and the exercises given are based on unpublished exercises
written by Tanzanian teachers of English. The basic scheme was published
in A Handbook for English Teachers, Institute of Education, University of
Dar es Salaam, 1969.

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133
Chapter 9
Errors, Correction
and Remedial Work
The last four chapters have been concerned with good
teaching and effective learning. But however good the
teaching and however effective the learning, there will
always be a place for remedial work of one kind or another
because it is beyond the capacity of a human being to absorb
perfectly and retain indefinitely everything he is presented
with. Hence, from one point of view, every learner needs
remedial teaching after the first lesson. It is unfortunately not
uncommon to find a student who is quite incapable of using
the present simple tense accurately at the end of the first year
of English, even though it has been one of the main teaching
points. Before considering what can be done about this sort
of situation, it is worth looking first at some of the possible
reasons for error.
Poor teaching is of course one culprit. But very often there
are circumstances quite beyond the teacher’s control which
produce a remedial situation. The syllabus, for example, is
usually not within the control of most ordinary teachers.
Some older courses follow a ‘linear’ progression from one
teaching point to the next. First, for instance, the present
simple tense is taught quite exhaustively. That is ‘done’, and
the class moves on, without a backward glance, to the past
simple, and so on. In this way, over the years, the syllabus
covers in some depth all the major structural points. The
difficulty is that the students get indigestion from doing too
much of one thing all together, and that once a topic is
finished, it is only incidentally referred to and practised later.

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