Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition
part of the composition orally to show the method, and will
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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’ Writing 128 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. Writing 129 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. Writing 130 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. Download 0.82 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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