PENTRU OBȚINEREA GRADULUI DIDACTIC I INTEGRATING WRITING STRATEGIES IN EFL CLASS Coordonator științific, Conf. Univ. Dr. Luminița -Elena Turcu… [620062]

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UNIVERSITATEA “ȘTEFAN CEL MARE” -SUCEAVA
FACULTATEA DE LITERE ȘI ȘTIINȚE ALE COMUNICĂRII

LUCRARE METODICO -ȘTIINȚIFICĂ
PENTRU OBȚINEREA GRADULUI DIDACTIC I

INTEGRATING WRITING STRATEGIES
IN EFL CLASS

Coordonator științific,
Conf. Univ. Dr. Luminița -Elena Turcu

Candidat: [anonimizat] (cas Lipovanu) Roxana
Școala gimnazială Valea Seaca , Jud. Iași

2018

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‘When you’re teaching kids to write, you’re teaching them to think. Writing is
the window through which all thinking starts .’
(Sheryl Block)

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CONTENTS

Introduction 5

1. General View 9
1.1. What is an EFL class? 9
1.2. The importance of teaching English in Romanian schools 11

2. Approaches to writing skills 16
2.1. Defining receptive and productive skills 16
2.2. Writing in real life 23
2.3. Writing in the classroom 25
2.4. Approaches to teaching writing through individual or group work. 28

3. All about the writing process and English language learners 29
3.1. Types of writing 29
3.1.1. Descriptive writing 29
3.1.2. Narrative writing 31
3.1.3. Persuasive writing 32
3.1.4. Expository writing 34
3.1.5. Functional writing 36
3.1.6 . Academic writing 39
3.1.7 . Creative writing 40
3.2. Reasons and principles for teaching writing 42
3.3.Parts of the writing program and process 45
3.3.1. Pre-writing 46
3.3.2. Drafting 47
3.3.3. Revising and editing 47
3.3.4. Rewriting and publishing 47

4. Methods and strategies in teaching writing 49
4.1. Traditional versus modern methods used in teaching writing 50
4.2. Strategies in teaching writing 55

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Conclusions 61

References 63

Appendix 64

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INTRODUCERE

The idea of choosing the subject for my future methodological -scientific research came
to me last year when I had the pleasure to participate at the teachers of English meeting in the
second semester at ‘N. Iorga Economical HighSchool’ in Pascani
The topic for our meeting was “Exploring and developing writing techniques and
strategies and writing management”. This topic made me think about the need for good
techniques and strategies during our guiding in the EFL class. My colleagues, the ones that
welcomed us in their school tried to define the four skills, but mostly the productive one –
writing. The topic also made me think about what I could do to motivate the pupils to be active
and creative in writing as well.
I realized that during my activity as a teacher in the last years I gave my pupils different
tasks:
– to make grammar jigsaw tables ;
– to solve exercises f ocusing on vocabulary ;
– to unscramble the words or the paragraphs of a story ;
– to solve puzzles – for ex -using numbers, food, animals, etc ;
– to fill in the gaps with words from a box to complete a text ;
– error correction in a letter to Santa for example ;
– to choos e/ circl e one o f the two suggested words ;
– to choos e the suitable adjective to complete the description ;
– to find the verbal forms of some verbs according to their written or spelling characteristics ;
– to make sentences with verbs at different tenses using adverbs and expressions of time ;
– to put the verbs in brackets into the correct tense ;
– to make questions for the underlined words ;
– to turn into plural words or sentences ;
– to comple te a text by replacing pictures with the corresponding words ;
– to listen to a song and to fill in it with the missing words on handouts ;
– to decrypt the symbols , to find the answer to the riddles .
After all this kind of exercises , I discover ed that they liked the activities and they were
eager to answer. It was dynami c and motivating and they were happy to discover that their work
will be appreciated and seen by other students. If at the beginning of the activit ies they had a
lot of questions and they were overwhelmed with their work , in the end , they had a positive
attitude towards the activity and thought it was a great challenge. They were all proud of their
work and products.

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Discovering all these I realized I have to help more my students to develop their abilities
in writing . I also want to discover how I can get over their problems during the class. Writing
is an integral part of the language and may just be one of the most valuable skills humans ever
developed.
Whereas in the early 1990s, many people wrote very little day -by-day, the advent and
popularity of e-mail, web forums, internet messenger services and text messaging has meant
that there is now a huge increase in written communication .
Writing refers to several sub skills: putting words on paper, making sentences and
linking them in paragraphs, writing poems, developing essays, and many others. Some
methodologists use the term writing to refer to word and sentence level skills and composition
to refer to the skills implied in constructing coherent texts. More often there are teachers that
prefer to use t he term writing to refer to all the language activities that result in the transfer of
thought s on paper.
However, t eaching writing is guiding the pupils in analyzing and developing their
thoughts, in shaping and organizing them into central and subordinat e ideas, in developing a
line of thought s and carrying them to the reader.
The w riting skills are closely related to the product of writing, to the piece of a written
text the learner must produce. From this point of view , we can distinguish three main typ es of
writing: functional, academic and creative.
Functional writing refers to writing tasks that have a very specific purpose behind
their production. It is the practice of expressing specific information meant to mirror real -life
scenarios such as how to make or do something, giving advice, inviting someone to something
or telling what happened in a specific situation. Memos, letters of intent, application or
complaint, manuals, recipes, adverts, forms and CVs are all pieces of writing that serve a
specific function.
Academic Writing like functional writing serves a clear purpose and function . When
composing essays, papers, general subject reports, compositions, academically focused
journals, technical reports (e.g. lab reports), theses, dissertations, the writer is striving to inform
an audience on a specific topic with a certain end or goal in mind. Academic writing has a much
more complex structure and is more intellectually rigorous than functional writing. A piece of
academic writing needs more inf ormation than simply the writer’s personal opinion so that the
students must learn how to search the topic.
Creative Writing makes it possible for students to experiment and play with the
language. It is engaging and motivating, it helps students see langu age as a communicative tool,
with the focus on meaning, not merely on a linguistic system. Short stories, poems, songs,

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drama, screenplay are all examples of creative writing tasks that can be used in a foreign
language class.
The process of approach ing to writing is ideally suited to the second language learners
since listening, speaking, and reading can be so naturally integrated with it.
Pre-writing is essential for the writer whose first language is not English. Especially
at the lower levels of proficiency, students have a limited lexicon and therefore often have
difficulty expressing their ideas. Therefore, teachers or other students may need to a ssist second
language students to generate vocabulary and grammatical structures relevant to the topic.
Models and samples are often helpful. Pre-writing is the stage in which students explore
possible topics, choose a topic, and then gather details they can include in their writing.
Examples of pre -writing activities can be free writing, visualization, brainstorming, image
streaming, cubing, free writing , lists or charts.
At the drafting stage students write their ideas down using some of the notes, lang uage,
and structures generated during the pre -writing activities. Second language students especially
need to be aware that their first draft does not have to be perfect and that the purpose of this
activity is to get words on paper . Spelling will often no t be accurate and there may be many
grammatical errors. Some students may also insert words in their native language
Students will need assistance during the revising/editing stage from teachers and from
other students. Changes in writing will need to addr ess word usage and clarification of ideas,
as well as grammatical accuracy, punctuation, spelling and capitalization. Second language
students may have difficulty in recognizing their own errors or the errors of their peers. A self –
assessment checklist may help them monitor their own writing.
It is important to note that language learners often make mistakes in vocabulary and
grammar. As they take risks and experiment, their accuracy level may be negatively affected.
It is important to realize that this is a normal part of the language development process. If too
much attention is placed on accuracy, students will not progress.
Good writing does not simply happen: it is a process that develops and strengthens over
time. Teaching and requiring good habits fro m early on in the students’ writing careers helps to
guarantee that they will have the skills necessary to write strong compositions in the future.
It would seem that writing might be easier than speaking or reading because students
are sharing their own i deas already in their heads and simply putting them on paper. However,
writing requires a lot more processing of language in order to produce a message.
First, the student must have an idea, then think of the appropriate way to say it, then
start to write it and spell it correctly, and then create another sentence to continue to
communicate the idea. If we add the students' worry that they are making huge, embarrassing

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errors or that their ideas aren't very good in the first place, then we begin to understa nd the
complexity involved in writing in a second language.
An important step in learn ing to write and develop it, it i s a good feedback in writing.
Writing feedback is not just about finding mistakes. It is about providing clear guidance for the
student' s next step. Unlike editing, feedback should give students a clear idea of how to
improve. Feedback needs to be specific and clear. Feedback is essential for both strong and
weak students .
Feedback on student ’s writing actually begins LONG before you receive a stack of
student papers ; it begins with how you design writing assignments and how you integrate them
into your course . In most cases, students reall y benefit from a thoughtful comment, something
holistic, that conveys overall success and reacts to overall argument and insights and
organization and priorities for what to work on (very difficult to convey these in marginal
comments) .
The goal of feedback is to teach skills that help students improve their writing
proficiency to the point where t hey are cognizant of what is expected of them as writers and are
able to produce it with minimal errors and maximum clarity.
Teacher and learner relationship depends on the capacities of the teacher as on the
capacities of the learner. They must interact, guide, relate and communicate in a proper dynamic
climate – the classroom – during the learning process. This relationship between the teacher and
the autonomous learner should be created in a proper learning environment in which learners
could be actively engaged in their own process of learning. Positive attitudes and good feelings
about a particular activity have a positive influence on learning.
As teachers , we should make students realize they are “fit” to learn if they get to know
their own resources a nd what kind of learners they are. The most important thing is their own
development and not competing with others. To learn a language effectively, students need to
know how to learn as well as what to learn.
Some of the teachers make the mistake of focu sing only on the writing of answers in
activities or exercises, and once in a blue moon have them write something longer. Whether it
is creative writing, academic writing, or functional writing, teach them by example first, and
then let them have free reig n in the way they express themselves in writing.

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1. General view

1.1. What is an EFL class?

When speaking about teaching English at class we should first make a difference
between an ESL class and an EFL class. This difference is made mainly by the country where
English is taught. So when speaking about an ESL (English as a Second Language) class we
should refer to the class from the countries where English is the main spoken language. The
teacher here is a native English speaker. In an ESL class , the ones that learn English are the
ones that emigrated in that country or are visiting the country , they are the non -native speakers.
So we can say that in this class we can find a lot of nationalities and the communicative language
is English. The students that come to these classes are the ones that have limited skills in English
and need them for work or just for visits.
The students that come to an ESL class need to be taught to speak need only the general
grammar rules. These students need information about the culture of the country where they
emigrated, information that can help them get along with the new society. The teacher that
teaches these classes can be the first person their students see, they understand or from whom
they ask for help in find ing a job or an accommodation.
There are also people that go to an ESL class to prepare for their exams in a university
or even in a college. These students need an intensive program in learning English, in learning
academic English mostly. But there are students that need English in their travels, so they need
general English, conversational English. And there are students that need English for business
so they go to such classes for specific vocabulary.
An EFL (English as a Foreign Language) class is the class from the country where
English is not the main spoken language. In this class , the pupils are the ones with same spoken
language, with the same culture. The teacher can be a native English speaker or a teach er from
that country. The learned English is not a necessity; it has not a practical benefit.
"ESL and EFL instructional approaches differ in significant ways. ESL is based on the
premise that English is the language of the community and the school and the students have
access to English models. EFL is usually learned in environments where the language of the
community and the school is not English. EFL teachers have the difficult task of finding access
to and providing Eng lish models for their students.. . . As the number of ESL students has

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incre ased in schools across North America, more classrooms and school have become more
like EFL than ESL environments."1
For a teacher , it is difficult to motivate an EFL class. By motivation many teachers
understand the strategies that can help students develop the English skills. So if Petri considers
that motivation is “the concept we use when we describe the forces acting on or within an
organism to initiate and direct behavior"2 and that "the concept of motivation is also used to
explain differences in the intensity of behavior and more intense behaviors are considered to be
the result of higher levels of motivation"3, Dorney considers that motivation "is abstract,
hypothetical concept that we use to explain why people think and behave as they do. It is
obvious that in this sense the term subsumes a whole range of motives -from financial incentive
such as a raise in salary to idealistic belie fs such as the desire for freedom -that have very little
in common except that they all influence behavior"4
Researchers think that there are two types of motivation: the integrative motivation and
the instrumental motivation. The first one refers to the de sire of the student to mingle with L2
speakers and almost identical with the intrinsic motivation . The second one can be compared
with the extrinsic motivation and is needed when the students use it in searching a job or when
they want to pass an examinati on. The instrumental motivation is found at those who learn a
second language. The two types of motivation do not necessarily exclude each other. But not
everyone can make a difference between the two types of motivation.
We also mentioned the intrinsic a nd the extrinsic motivations . This classification was
made by Gardner, Deci and Ryan in 1985. They considered that the students that learn for them
have an intrinsic motivation, whereas the ones that lea rn for being rewarded or for not being
punished have an extrinsic motivation. The ones with an intrinsic motivation are more likely to
be more effective learners and for them , learning can be enjoyable and with satisfactions.
In an EFL class , it is very important that the students are motivated, on this dep ending
on the success or the failure of learning. A motivated student is in most of the cases a receptive
learner , is a curious learner, is an interested learner. If a student is motivated depends in most
of the cases on the teacher’s attitude, on the teac her’s influence. For this , a teacher needs to find
new strategies, new methods, and new exercises every day, every class, all these starting from

1 Lee Gunderson, ESL (ELL) Literacy Instruction: A Guidebook to Theory and Practice , 2nd ed. Routledge,
2009
2 Petri, H. (1918). Motivation: Theory and Research . Belmont, California: Wadswoth, Inc , pg 3
3 Idem 2 , pg 4
4 Donryei, Z. (2001). Motivation to learn a Foreign/ Second Language. Teaching and Researching Motivation.
Harlow: Longman. Pp. 46 -100

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the students’ level and motivation. A lot of researchers think that learning a foreign language is
not like le arning other subjects , is more difficult.

1.2. Teaching English in a Romanian EFL class

One of the most important spoken and written languages in the world is English. So it
is important for the Romanian students to learn this international language. For the students it
can be very useful to study English , it can make them be independent and connected to the
world . It can help their lives by upgrading their knowledge, helping them to increase their ways
of communication and of course their grammar. Everywhere they go in the world they can
create a good connection with the people if they can find a common language .
When we study English , it is more practical to improve the vocabulary and then t o
practice it in writing skills . Bigger the voca bulary is, more information we gather and more
solid the knowledge is. A way of learning English is by reading books, a relaxing way of our
minds after a tiring day.
English is also very much used in business. Most of the international business contracts
or transactions or emails or reports are of course written in English. When we are looking for a
job we are asked about our fluency in speaking or writing English in addition to our n ative
language. If we have a good amount of English knowledge we have a better chance to promote
in a higher position. If somebody gets interested in reading, then he is avoiding the addiction of
online games or of violent movies which are not good in the ir individual progress. When we
are using the software from a computer it is also written in English.
Many of the songs, movies or games are in English. Most of the internet is also in
English. So knowing English it can help you have a bigger access to th e needed information
and can increase your culture. Learning this language it can help us develop our thinking or
feelings, our confidence in ourselves. But learning English can be a challenge and something
that consumes your time.
If we think about the origins of this language most of us will start thinking that it has its
origins in America. But if we start to investigate we will find out that the Europeans, or better
said the English people , were those that brought technology and education in America w hen
Columbus discovered this country. So we can notice that the British English was the leading
colonial nation or the leading revolutionary nation in the 17th century and 18th century and then
later in the 19th and 20th centuries the American English was the leading ec onomic power or the
digital power. During the years , we can notice that this language was a flexible and resistant

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language , adopting words from other cultures, other languages. Over the years it became
stronger, resisting the changes, resisting its extinction. So we can distinguish some kind of
English. We have as we mentioned the British English and the Am erican English, but English
is also the native mother tongue in Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealan d, in some Caribbean
countries, in India, in Pakistan, in Singapore and in some African countries , which were British
colonies.
When we refer to teaching English in EFL class , we refer to teaching English as a
foreign language, which is more and more taug ht around the world. These students are the ones
that have as a first language a different one from each other . The teachers, that are trying to
teach English as a foreign language, teach focusing on grammar or on vocabulary using the four
skills (speaking , listening, reading and writing). All these are done to enrich the language, to
enrich the life experience. But English can be taught also in the English speaking countries,
there where are immigrants that need to be taught to communicate in English for a good
accommodation.
In Romania , English in studied in schools and colleges besides French or German or
Spanish or even Italian. English is needed more and more for finding a good job or for economic
relationships or for the external political relationshi ps. Using English as the unique way of
having a good relationship, a good communication , it means “accepting a single language that
works in the field of communication, in which case it should exceed the competitive mentality
that implies the idea of lingu istic supremacy”5. We can find English in computers’ language
and also in many security procedures , such as in that one of air control. The use of a language
is closely related to the power of the state. English is the language of the two modern hegemonic
powers, Great Britain and the U.S.A. Moreover, this power is exercised in all areas of human
life: economic, political, military, and not least cultural".6
The influence of English in public sectors started from US and Japan after the 2nd war,
when Japan wanted to recover quickly from the economical fall. So the Japanese introduced the
study of the English language in schools and colleges as a demand for conquering the American
market from outsid e and inside. Also in Romania , the developme nt of the society required the
influence of foreign languages. This started in the 19th century, but with the influence of the
French language. So, nowadays, we can find in the Romanian language approximately 25% of
the words with French origin. The resear chers agreed that this was possible due to the
similarities between the two languages, which are both considered to be of Latin origin. Slowly,
and mostly after the revolution from 1989, English was introduced in Romanian schools and

5 Beck, 2011:55
6 Held, 2004: 391

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economics. It replaced in some ways the French influence into Romania before the revolution.
After the year 2000 , we can notice that the options of Romanian pupils increased in asking to
study more English and less French or even Russian. The change to studying English was done
slowly thanks to the long process of preparing English teachers. Now Romania is the statistics
next to the other countries where English is the most studied foreign language in schools.
Statistics show that in 35 countries , English is studied by 90 %of th e pupils and in other 13
countries , English is the first language. In our country the study of a foreign language starts
from the age of 6, and from these 95% study English. Followed by French, German, Spanish or
Russian ( only 2%).
Let’s analyze the above figure (Figure 1) from the Romanian annual statistics from
2011. Here , we can notice a comparison between the percentages of pupils studying a foreign
language in the school year 2005 -2006 and 2010 -2011. So we can notice an improvement in
percentages in se condary and high school education, meanwhile for primary and vocational
education it decreased alarmingly.

Figure 1 Romanian Annual National Institute of Statistics, 2011

The same National Institute of Statistics showed in the same year 2011, the situation of
the foreign languages studied in pre – university schools. So we noticed that in 2011 the first
language studied is English followed by French, German, Russian, etc . and the second foreign
language studie d is French followed by E nglish, German, Italian and others. These can be
observed in the following figure (figure 2).

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Figure 2 National Institute of Statistics, 2011

In Romania , there is a slight problem concerning the time accorded for the pupils to
learn a foreign language. So in primary classes the number of classes is pretty low, whereas in
secondary or even high school the number of classes is higher. According to the Europe an
Commission , the number of classes per year for a primary pupil to learn a foreign language is
about 116, whereas for a high school pupil is of 695 classes per year. We can also notice that
most of the Romanian teachers when teaching a foreign language f ocus more on listening,
speaking or reading and less on writing.
The teacher has a huge role in an EFL class, a role that can be influenced by many facts
such as the historical, the social or even the affective one. Teaching a foreign language can be
influenced by the people’s attitudes, or by the approaches to the west, or by the international
requests. The teacher must know how to mix theoretical information with practical information
by finding a balance.
Before the revolution in 1989, English was se en as the connection to freedom, to
capitalism. So English was important in le arning even then and learning was considered an act
of rebellion against the communism. Trying to prevent the spread of learning English in
Romania, the authorities forced teache rs to teach Russian, mostly after the World War II. All
the efforts of the communists to stop the spreading of learning English had no success. After
1989 the wish for learning English increased, and so did the methods of teaching.

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After 2007, when Roman ia started to be a part of the European Union, the European
authorities recommended a foreign language to be introduced in school as a first language
starting from primary classes and as a second language from secondary classes. So slowly,
English began to be the most taught language by Romanian people, mainly for traveling or work
or for studying abroad or just for personal interests.
Reichelt considered in 2005 that English is used in scientific and other academic
research and to access English language movies and music, especially by young people .
Increasingly, English is also used for workplace needs ; for interacting and corresponding with
both native and non -native English speakers, especially within Europe; for travel, especially
throughout Europe; fo r correspondence with pen pals (often via e -mail) ; and for exchange
programs abroad, especially within Europe
In Romania , English is studied from preparatory class till high school, but it can be
studied in kindergarten if parents want this as an optional course. Whe n they finish primary
classes, students and their parents can choose to go to intensive classes or even to bilingual
classes, where they must give a test in order to be included. Also , when students finish high
school , they must give a language test as part of their graduation.
Thanks to the fact that students have to pass several important language tests during
their education al period, teachers must try hard to give the proper instructions and information
so that they pass the exams.

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2. Approaches to writing skills

2.1 .Defining receptive and productive skills

Speaking or writing a foreign language means interlocutors, receiving messages and
sending them. Teaching a foreign language means teaching its vocabulary and, of course , its
grammar rules. When using what we learn we mix the two elements in communication, most
of the time adapting to the situations. For getting to these, a teacher must know how to use at
the same time some skills and maybe same language sub jects, must know to teach that language
in an integrative way.
This way, we get to the division of the English skills. The specialists are putting them
into three groups: the receptive skills (reading and listening), the productive skills (writing and
speaking) and the linguistic skills (vocabulary and grammar). But a student won’t be as g ood
as he is in one of them as it is i n the other; it will be strong in some and maybe weak in the
others. For example , if someone is good in speaking he or she won’t be as good in writing.
When a student starts learning English, first of all , he listens to the message and then
reads it, and only afterward he write s it down and speaks about it. So he is first a receiver, and
then a producer of English messages. We, the te acher s, can notice that a student shows first the
receptive skills when starting to teach them mostly thanks to the movies or songs they listen or
read. This seems to be the easiest part of in learning English.
A teacher must be very careful in teaching these recept ive skills, being careful to their
application in real life. But a traditional teaching listening or reading skills means going over a
text, for example, and this is not a listening task or a reading task. The purpose of a teacher
must be to teach these skills for real world communications, so many classes should be similar
to real situations, maybe by using in listening or reading materials w ith conversations in spired
from a real life situation .
In a real conversation we need a purpose for it, we need the information or we just enjoy
it, but we don’t just listen or we don’t read. In cases like these , we concentrate on the meanings
of convers ation and not on words or grammar. We try to understand the message as a whole
and not piece by piece. In the class reading a text means reading it word for word and in most
of the cases in a loud voice. But in a real life reading , we almost never read it loud and just skim
the text, concentrating on the elements we find interesting. In class , when we try to understand
a text we extract the individual elements, meaning the vocabulary or the grammar elements,

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trying to understand them one by one. In real situations we try to understand the overall
meanings. There are not many cases when the students are encouraged to say their own ideas
and to try to predict meanings. In class students are passive receivers, but in real situations they
are active receivers.
Developing listening and reading can get through a long and rough process, so a teacher
should know how to find the right strategies to make the process easier. The teacher must find
the proper tasks to facilitate this long process, and they must be accor ding to the students’ levels
of understanding and executing. The teacher must guide and help the students in order to
facilitate the process of learning. At the begging of learning English the teacher guide s the
students towards the essential information f rom a text, and slowly while the students advance
in the process, they are guided to the interpret ing and understand a text without any help, thanks
to their independence in learning. So, a teacher is guiding students, in the process of developing
listenin g and reading, from the process of controlling the reception of a text to the process of
receipting freely the message of a text.
Some teachers consider the receptive skills as being assessed objectively, this meaning
assessing the students’ skills to dec ode a new material by the help of objective techniques such
as matching items or filling grids or continuing sentences, etc. Tasks like these can be useful
because they give a purpose to the exercise and they also involve the students in understanding
the tasks. These objective tasks also give the advantage of encouraging the students’
participation in solving the tasks and improving these skills. For the teacher these objective
tasks help him or her evaluate the students’ skills faster and more efficiently .
These objective tasks should be used in combination with the communicative tasks,
helping the students get the connection to the real life situations. The combination of the two
tasks develops students’ emotions and int elligence and their knowledge of the language and
also relating the information with their experience. The teacher’s role in the process of solving
the tasks is to be a mediator between the situations created in the text and the real life situations.
During the process of teaching the s kills, we can see that a student is for the teacher the
aim and the object of teaching at the same time. He/ She h ave the personality that must be
formed and improved, but this is a process which is difficult to do it thanks to their dynamic
personalities that react differently. Their improvement is the main reason why a teacher has this
job.
When we, the teachers, choose a text for reading into the class we must take into
consideration what language level the students have. For beginner students , we must choose
texts that are short, simple to read and to understand. For them , the texts provide specific
vocabulary and grammar so that they can form a correct pronunciation and the proper

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techniques for an active reading. For the students that are advanced in reading, the texts should
be longer with more complicated language and information. But, if a student knows the proper
reading strategies he o r she could understand better the text and can comment on the meanings
with the right attitudes and own i deas.
A teacher must always choose for reading an interesting text that can develop students’
imagination and can offer a big and challenging list of activities on it. A teacher can notice that
a text that has as a subject a known topic is more interestin g for the students than a text that has
an unknown topic. These unknown texts can be considered by students boring and are
ineffective in teaching reading. But this is not an universal rule because what is interesting for
a student is no necessary interest ing for the others.
In teaching reading a teacher must always take into consideration the other skills, so the
teaching process is integrative. The recept ion of information is always in connection with the
production of it, for example , we listen to speak and we read to write. The activities that a
teacher thinks about are using two, three or the four skills, never using just one skill.
Although some consider that the two receptive skills have a lot in common, we can
notice that they are very much differ ent. Probably more than reading a student develops better
the other receptive skill: listening. Why? Thanks to the many films and programs and songs
that are in English on TV or radio. Our students develop listening every moment through these.
Thanks to th is many teachers have the tendency not to focus on developing listening,
considering it sometimes easy or even non -important.
The teacher must consider that not all the students can be good listeners. They must
give a better thinking to forgetting to te ach listening, because listening has an important role in
language learning. If a student is sure on his or her listening abilities, he or she can become
confident in hi mself or herself. If a student d o not understand what a teacher is saying he or she
will not have the courage to say what he or she is thinking, and will become shy.
When we talk about listening we refer first to what we hear, then to what we understand
and finally to what we must respond. So we first recognize the message, entirely or part ly, the
moment when we recognize words. A big role in understanding correctly the message has the
intonation and the stress. After we recognize the message we try to interpret it, to see what the
linguistic content could be. Finally, we react to what we h ear in the same way.
Before starting to listen, students must receive additional informatio n to which they
must be careful during listening or even after. While listening, the students must look for certain
information. If we want to have a good understan ding of the text it is recommended to associate
it with visual support such as pictures or grids. We can notice that a listening activity can’t be
done without other skills; it goes hand in hand with writing or even with speaking.

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Listening activities can be done in two ways: with the people from the class such as the
teacher or the other students, and by tape and video, meaning electric helpers. These electrical
materials are very useful because they give authentic pronunciation, the voices being of nativ e
British or Americans. Sometimes the native s peakers came themselves to EFL classes to speak
or to teach. But most of the models in listening activities are the voices of the teachers. It is
important when teaching English or any other language for the te acher to speak during t he
classes the target language as much as possible. So the demands or the explanation s should be
in English.
When a teacher decides to do a lesson based on listening activities, he or she should
think of using electronic materials, and by electronic materials we refer to audio -visual
equipment. So , in most of the nowadays cases , they use the cassettes or the DVDs that came
with the textbooks. These materials are preferred by teachers thanks to the speakers from them
which can be of native speakers. It is useful for a learner to hear a native speaker; it helps them
to receive the pronunciation correctly. These native speakers are also like the students, because
they bring authentic dialogues or descriptions.
When a teacher does not use the materials from the textbooks, he or she uses materials
from the songs or films or from internet tubes such as youtube.com , which give s access to the
vocabulary, to the language. A lot of activities can be done with the help these electronic
materia ls. Some teachers think that during a listening activity they can relax, but the truth is
that they must stay focus on the activity so that the student does not get bored. For an activity
not to become boring, a teacher must find for the listening class ac tivities according to the level
and age , activities that are interesting for students, activities that can attract their attention.
Sometimes very useful are the visual materials that came along with the audio materials.
So, if someone can watch some image s or a text that are connected to the listening activity, a
student will understand better or easier what is being spoken. This , of course , will facilitate the
learning activity.
We should not forget that listening can not be taught alone. It must be integ rated with
the other s kills, with speaking or with writing. Why we the teachers use listening activities?
Listening is used to understand new words; we listen to find specific information; we listen to
check some writings.
The rece ived message by the stud ents is no t totally understood without having a reverse,
meaning a message that is produced back by the speakers. O nly when a learner produces by
themselves the learn ed message, we can say that he really understands and can speak English.
During the years the teacher can notice that there are many students that can understand a
message, but can not really have a proper conversation. So a teacher must always have activities

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that request students to take part in the lessons, activities that involve them and ac tivities that
make students express what they really think, to say their own ideas.
In a conversation we can not use the receptive skills without the productive one. So we
cannoet just listen, we must also speak, or can not just read we must first write. An swers follow
questions; solving tasks follow reading or writing. In general the linguistic skills are taught
together in activities that include at least two skills. The skills that need more concentration and
time are the productive skills, meaning speaki ng and writing. These two skills need a lot of
practice and a lot of motivation in order to be later used in conversations.
For a good conversation, students need to have the desire to participate, a desire which
comes after a good confidence in them, in their capacity of speaking and understanding. In class
the production of a conversation depends very much on the teacher’s ability to induce the right
topic, and the right communicative exercises.
In the first lessons a student must be helped to produce the right and correct message,
but then in time the student must produce it alone, without any help. They slowly pass from the
controlled and guided activities to the independent activities. At the begi nning , students have
the tendency to imitate what the teacher says or does, but in time the students get the
independence and the freedom to produce a message. At this stage the teacher has the role just
to encourage and sometimes to guide the students to participate in the conversation.
For a teacher it is easier to evaluate at the beginning of learning when he or she is
objective, but later when the students become free the evaluation become s difficult making the
teacher to evaluate in a subjective way.
During the English classes , a teacher always encourage s students to speak, repeating,
giving answers or saying opinions. Not all the time their speaking is grammar or linguistic
correct. Why students do not speak correctly? Because they have a poor vocabul ary, because
they are shy or too anxious to talk, because they do not have the nece ssary practice in
communication or just because the words are “on top of the tongue students sometimes do not
speak correctly . So a teacher must work to help and make studen ts get over these obstacle s and
to build their confidence.
If a teacher wants to have good producers , he or she should offer opportunities for the
students to participate in conversations, to offer interesting activities that could challenge their
imagina tion and give free motivation to participate in conversations, to guide them to free
opinions, to offer the right atmosphere . A speaking activity can be used before reading or
listening to a text, during reading or listening or even after reading or listen ing. Activities like
these should be different, depending on the stage of the lesson, on the age of the students or
even on the level of learning.

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When speaking, we can have a conversation between two or more people or we can
have a monologue. The conversa tion can be considered to be an exchange of opinions between
people, exchange that can be sometimes faster. Here we have a listener and a speaker. During
the lesson an example of conversation is an activity based on questions and answers. But in a
monologu e we have just one speaker and no listener. An example of monologue during a lesson
can be considered the summarizing of a text. We can notice that the speaking activities can be
different depending on the mode.
In a conversational mode we also face the u nexpected where the change of ideas can be
fast and without any preparation. We can never imagine what the speaker will say so we can’t
prepare the answer. During this mode the teacher must stimulate all the students in the class to
participate . The students use the information from real life and can exchange roles. The
conversational mode is working very well in group or pair activities.
The pair or group activities have advantages but also disadvantages. A big disadvantage
can be the shyness of students or the lack of proper vocabulary. In these cases the students w ill
not communicate, will be afraid to say what they think in order not to say something incorrectly.
But this is an interactive way of communicating. Example of activities during the conversational
mood can be question -answer activities, role play, debates, brainstorming, improvisations, etc.
These activities offer the transfer of information between the speaker and the listener, which
must be using students’ imagination and attention .
In the other mode, the monologue or the expositional mode, the speaker must prepare
the information about a given topic and then present it in front of others. This mode is very
important. It helps students develop their speaking skill and their confidence in them. Examples
of activities in thi s mode can be: describing people, summarizing a story, a text, telling the
opinions. The speaker replies on their own ideas, because no one can interfere and redirect the
ideas. So the speaker must have a bi g pack of vocabulary, of language because his or her speech
must be long. The information the speaker gives must be interesting, coherent and well
organized so that the listener understands easy the message. Grammar must also be correct and
the message mus t be according to the topic. Fluency must not be forgotten.
The techniques used more widely during monologues are describing people or objects
or places, storytelling, commenting on a fragment or book or text, summarizing or the speech.
The students are given time to prepare the monologue or they are asked spontaneously to speak.
If they have time to prepare the monologue they develop the way they organize the speech, the
linguistic materials, and they have time to prepare themselves to speak in front of an audience.
During a monologue , a student must learn to get over the shyness, learn to control the emotions

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or even to find a way to catch the attention of the audience. Most students think it is hard to
speak spontaneously if you do not have an imaginati on or a good vocabulary.
Sometimes a monologue transforms into a discourse. When? When the speaker
addresses questions that can star t with What is a…? or Have you….? or What do you think of…?
In these cases the speaker is waiting sometimes for answers fro m the listeners. Sometimes the
dialogues transform into monologues. The teacher must try to avoid these situations in the class.
A teacher must not let a listening activity captivate the entire lesson. There must be also
activities based on other skills.
If listening or reading skills are easier to learn thanks to the materials they can rely on,
for speaking or writing skills this is more difficult because the learner must rely on his or her
own materials. This is sometimes difficult if the student does not have the proper pack of
vocabulary knowledge. In this situation the students must get help and guidance from the
teacher.
The other productive skill, writing, is used in teaching grammar or vocabulary . There
are teachers that consider writing not very important, thinking that in learning a foreign
language is more important to know to communicate, so speaking and listening are more
important. But there are teachers that consider that it is important not only to know to
communicate orally but also is imp ortant to know how to manage in writing communication.
At the beginning of learning a foreign language process students must learn step by step
to develop this productive skill. And only later they should know to write a dictation, a
composition or a summary. To develop writing skills, just like for the speaki ng skills, students
need time and a lot of work. They will learn to write from simple invitations or descriptions to
essays.
There are some differences between the two productive skills, differences that can be
seen in the aims of these skills, in the complex vocabulary , in the formality, in the time to
develop, or in the structure. We can notice that if writing can be permanent, speaking is
transitory. If in writing communication there is time to form the message, in a n orally
communication the speaker ha s a little time to develop the conversation. In writing we have the
chance to re -think or to improve the message, whereas in speaking we can not change what we
have just said. In writing the evaluation or the feedback comes later, in speaking the evaluation
and the feedback come s immediately. The details from a writing message have a little effect
than the details in a spoken message.
When teaching writing or speaking, a teacher must be very careful to the activities they
provide, activities that should be different. Teaching writing encounters some difficulties such

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as th e small proficiency of language, the unk nowing how to express correctly, the time is not
enough, the little feedback and others.
Teaching writing means not only to focus on the writing prod uct itself, but also on the
writing process. When we say the writing product we refer to the tasks given by the teacher,
and we refer to the writing process as the developing of writing and the capacity to reproduce
the message. In class the teacher must f ocus on the way that students develop writing. This can
be done by giving good writing examples or by controlling students’ activities or by assuring
the proper time to solve the tasks or by offering the positive feedback students need to be
motivated.

2.2. Writing in real life

Teaching writing is teaching the students to prepare for the everyday life writing and
for the different types of writings: stories, articles, songs, poetry, comics, blogs, internet pages,
books, web pages and others. If a stude nt realizes how many types of writing exist, he or she
will understand that people write for different reasons and at different ages. Teaching writing
is also useful to motivate students to write in new genres and to motivate them to be more
flexible in th inking.
If someone wants to write in daily life , he or she will do this for a special purpose in a
special way, but in the class writing will be done for developing skills. The teacher must show
to the students the difference between writing in class and writing in everyday life.
The reason we write in everyday life has change d very much in the last years. If at the
beginning of the twenty -century people did not use to write very much, in our days the progress
of the internet influenced the quantity of writing materials. But this progress is not sure in the
future because it can be replaced by the evolution of video and voice materials. The new
technology has ne w rules and more often abbreviations and a new lexis mostly thanks to the
desire to write quirkier and on a short space.
The why someone expresses also has changed in the last years. We can now
communicate to people from the other side of the world, and n ow we use instead of words to
express our feeling and reactions we use emoticons. Even if we can notice different ways of
writing, of communicating, people started writing very little. Now they write short messages to
friends or family. We don’t have the f eeling or the need of writing long messages . This change
of need started to influence the way writing is taught in class, now it’s a need for teaching more
other skills.

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The writing in everyday life is done with a specific importance or with a personal
importance. We are motivated to write if we write for a specific audience. We could write to a
favorite singer or author. How? On their blogs or other social networks they can be better
contacted. Also another example of writing in daily life can be the wri ting of a review of a film
or a book. In t his way we can say what we liked or not about the product. There are people that
write as a represent of different victims, victims of diffe rent abuses on human rights. The se
kinds of writings are more and more oft en found in our lives. But there are also people that like
to write stories on the internet, stories for children or even science fiction. And then these stories
are published in books. Who does not like to comment on the news or on the articles? A nd, if
we do this , why not commenting on writing? There are newspapers that have on the internet
section that allow reader to comment or to add information to the articles.
We should also mention that having good skills in writing can help us in getting a good
job, or the wished job. If someone wants a job, he or she must write curriculum vitae or a resume
or a cover letter. Writing these correctly will him/ her show the abilities they have in writing.
A lot of employers are checking the writing skills, the punc tuation or grammar mistakes. The
writing skills are checked also when the employer wants to promote the person, because in
higher position the writing skills and their qualities must increase. So if an email is send to a
business partner or client it is es sential to be written correctly. A correct writing shows the
professionalism and the attention given to details and also show s a good image of the firm.
The academic writing skills learnt at school are very well shown in everyday life
activities. In tra nsmitting a message, the listening skills are important together with the writing
skills that can transmit the correct message. For example , if a firm must transmit the insurance
policy , the message must be coherent and well written, so that the insured pe rson understands
correctly the right and obligations.
But not all the time the writing skills learned at school help us in everyday life. Everyday
writing can be more than just an academic writing. For example , if at school students receive a
long paragra ph to compose, this won’t help them very much in everyday life. About the
difference between the writing in class and writing in everyday life, Kelly Gallagher said “ If
we want our students to understand the value that writing can play in their lives, mayb e we
should consider shifting instruction away from strict adherence to traditional discourses and
begin having our students explore the reasons real writers write. When students understand the
real-world purposes for writing (instead of simply writing to meet the next school requirement)
they begin to internalize the relevance of writing, and more important, they develop an

25
understanding that wri ting is an important skill to carry into adulthood. When students begin to
understand this relevance, their writing improves.”7
So if we have to analyze Gallagher point of view we could say that if we write in real
life we do it because we have a purpose . We write to inform or to explain, we write to evaluate,
we also write to e xpress our feelings or thoughts, we write to explore, we write to analyze or
we write to find solution. And it’s easy to find a topic, but it’s difficult to decide how to explore
it.
When someone decides to write or has to write, he or she decides on the style he writes
and how much influence from school learning he or she applies. The kind of writing depends
in real life by the need, by obligation and very much by the purpose of writing.

2.3. Writing in the classroom

Even if there are a lot of reasons why writing should not be taught in class, there are
also a lot of reasons wh y it should be taught. For a lot of students writing has a big role: it is
useful for the exams, for future business or for the academic study.
Writing is used in class even from the first lessons, when students have to write down
the new vocabulary and t he basic information. Almost in each lesson students have to write
because they need to take down notes. So , it is essential for a teacher to focus on writing from
the beginning. When students write they have to concentrate, to use their mental powers. Du ring
the writing process in class students should have time to think or to reflect, and , for sure , they
need time to correct the mistakes and to improve the written message.
Using activities for a writing stage in class is useful for the teacher too. It co ols down
the class, giving a quiet class and a break for the teacher from speaking. Writing in class differs
from copying from the textbooks to guiding writing activities. When copying, student makes
use of their mental function that will remember the letter, the words, and the structure of the
text. Students can copy tables or examples or different fragments of texts from the textbook or
from the board.
Another kind of writing activity is doing an e xercise. During this stage students have to
write sentences or just words to fulfill exercises and they do not have too many options , their
creativity could not be used. During the guided writing activities, the teacher guides the students
to write control led tasks after he or she will give examples or advice or just a framework from

7 Kelly Gallagher, Teaching Adolescent Writers , 2006,

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what they have to do. But students will be able to write whatever they want during the process
of writing. Now it’s the moment to choose a topic they like, to organize the idea s the way they
like and composing a text, a message with little help from the teacher or from the other
colleagues. But they can write without any help guiding during the under guided writing
process. Now it’s the moment to write freely without even a feed back starting maybe from a
title.
Whatever stage of writing students are, they must write with accuracy and fluency. And
all the time they are not sure of what they are writing and need help they must ask the teacher
with confidence for the help. Writing activities are used in class to develop the other skills too
and to learn and develop vocabulary, grammar or communication. Many teachers tend to set a
writing task and then to leave the students the opportunity to do it by themselves, maybe as a
homework and then to collect the solved task and to mark it. These teachers think of the
importance of an individual work.
How can a student learn to be a very good writer? There are many choices, but one of
them is to be active during the class while he or she is constantly encouraged and of course
helped to follow the stages of a writing process. Another way is to try to be independent.
Teachers could do a lot of activities to stimulate the writing process. They should start
by choosing the topic or the genre; t hey should also bring ideas and discuss them; they should
help by using diagrams or notes; they could plan the organized text; they could get the feedback
on the text; they could give alternative choices or write the final version; and of course they
could give the text to an appropriate reader. All these activities can be considered to be guided
activities that follow the process of writing.
The tasks that are given today are different from the tasks that were given in the past in
teaching writing. Nowaday s it is not enough to say ’write a story about…’ and then to expect
for the writing skills to be developed. A m ore creative writing is desired because it will make
the connection to the real life writing. Students need now tasks that are relevant for their daily
life. Here are some examples of creative writing during the class : writing real mails or letters,
publishing artic les in newspapers and magazines, commenting or replyi ng to different reviews
or webs, writing questionnair es for the people on the stre et, writing different topic projects.
We can continue by giving examples of specific tasks:
• Write a short paragraph about yourself or about your friend.
• Fill in a form such as a form for a car rental.
• Write a postcard.
• Write presentation slides on the co mputer.

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• Write your point of view on a named subject.
• Write a poem.
• Describe your childhood.
• Write a letter of application for a job.
• And many others.
Let’s talk now about the way we can generate ideas in order to learn the writing process.
Brainstorming is a way of generating ideas. At this stage we can make the ideas flow. Now the
easiest or the simplest idea is taken into consideration. This is a way brainstorming can go in a
class:
• Decide on the topic and then write it in the middle of the page/ board.
• Ask students to say everything that comes to their mind, connected to the topic of course.
• Every single idea is written on the page/ board.
• Just the i deas are written.
The start wi ll probably be slow, but then the ideas will flow easily. Students will have
the opportunity to choose the liked ideas from the board and the ones that can be used in the
class. Discussions can come from the written ideas. The ideas must come from every student,
even from the shy ones or from the ones with a low level of knowledge.
Ideas can be generated from text -starts , too. These text starts are a simple way of
offering a useful work. Text -starts can come from summarizing a text, or from selecting ideas
from it, or from commenting on it. The writing skills can very well developed after using a text –
start.
Starting to write can be, for many students, a difficult thing when they see the blank
page in front of them. If the first words do not come immediately, then the writing become s
difficult. The first sentence will come harder. Fast writing means the opposite, means writing
whatever comes to your mind without thinking too much if it is correct. Then, at a second look
on the wr itten material , you may consider good only a sentence, or even only a few words. But
the fast -writing has achieved its purpose. Maybe after reading a fast -written text students may
find ideas that are not written correct, but ideas that are good and need t o be worked on. For all
these students need time, a lot of time.

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2.4. Approaches to teaching writing through individual or group work

The intention of a writer is to influence the audience in a positive way with an effective
message. The purpose must be very concise, so that it could show information that can delight
the reader and of course convince them about their point of view. The r eader must understand
or even better imagine the writer’s intentions and feelings. But this feeling must be and
otherwise, meaning that the writer must foresee the reader’s reactions.
In teaching writing, the teacher must also teach the grammar or the voc abulary, the
handwriting, the spelling, the punctuation, the italics, the coherence, the layout or the
paragraphing formulae.
In 1983, A. Raimes described several ways to a good approaching of the teaching
writing. Among these we could mention the control led-to-free approach or the paragraph
pattern approach or the communicative approach or the free -writing process or the syntax –
grammar organization approach or the process approach. For the first approach, where students
receive different sentences that th ey must change grammatically or syntactically or to combine
them, we could say that accuracy is more important than originality or even fluency. The
approach to the paragraph pattern considers more important the organization than the fluency
and the gramma r. Now scrambled paragraphs or sentences must be put in the correct order. The
communicative approach thinks is good for students to consider themselves real writers and
imagine how a real audience will react to their writings. Quantity is considered to be more
important than quality during the free -writing approach. Now the ideas are taken into
consideration and not the grammar or the spelling. So the content and the audience are the most
important during this approach. But there is an approach that makes a connection between the
purpose of writing and the correct forms of writing. This is the syntax -grammar organization
approach where grammar is also taken into consideration. The last approach, the process
approach, offers the students responsibility, inde pendence on the writing process. Now is the
moment when students work on their own ideas, which they must develop and then present to
the class, to the audience.
If the approach of teaching writing is done individually, in individual work, the devising
of tasks should be done in a group work. For a group a teacher should give students different
activities such as asking them to describe some images or to make a description starting from
some questions. Another group activity is to give students some sentenc es and to ask them to
write a narrative paragraph. Interviewing the colleague on this topic and writing down the
answers is another group or pair work activity. Or , they could discuss about the advantages or
disadvantages of a certain topic in writing .

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3. All about the writing process and English language learners

3.1.Types of writing

Syrene Forsman has an interesting idea about the process of teaching and learning
writing: “As teachers we can choose between (a) sentencing students to thoughtless mechanical
operations and (b) facilitating their ability to think. If students’ readiness foe more involved
thought processes is bypassed in favor of jamming more facts and figures into their heads, they
will stagnate at the lower levels of thinking. But i f students are encouraged to try a variety of
thought processes in classes, they can, regardless of their ages, develop considerable mental
power. Writing is one of the most effective ways to develop thinking.”8
No matter if we write an article, a letter, an essay or just a journal it is very important to
concentrate on the purpose of its content. And when we need to learn an activity we use
different writing tasks that can last from a few classes to an entire se mester. In this point of
view we can also add that there are also different types of writing. Knowing the different types
will help us identify and understand better what we are reading. There are four main types of
writing: descriptive, narrative, persua sive and expository . But there are critics that distinguish
another three types of writing: functional, academic and creative . This classification was made
according to the connection between the product of writing and the skills. Each type of writing
has different aims.

3.1.1. Descriptive writing
The aim of this kind of writing is helping the student who reads to visualize the text,
starting from the character and place to the event. During this type of writing the writer has an
artistic freedom. For the descriptive writing the writer is using visual aids. The descriptions are
detailed very much; they use a lot of metaphors and symbols. Reading a descriptive writing
offers the reader the feeling that he or she is there, in the message, in the picture they imagine.
A descriptive writing offers the image of a place, event, person or maybe feelings. We
can say that it offers a sensory presentation. It presents something or someone the reader could
not see for live. A descriptive writing must have four m ain characteristics: a precise language,
a figurative language, sensory details and a special order. The sensory details found in a

8 Forsman Syrene, Writing to Learn Means Learning to Think , pg 162

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descriptive writing are refereeing to the sight, smell, emotion or touch, sound and sound. The
figurative language used mus t be simile or analogies. The followed order usually is tropical,
climatic and spatial.

Task 1
How would you describe your ideal teacher? In what way did he/she influence your life?
Give arguments and examples to support your ideas.

Task 2
Describe an ideal day in your life, including a type of physical exercise that you consider
most appropriate to your personality. Give arguments and examples to support your ideas.

Task 3
Write about one famous person that you consider to have contributed to the progress of
mankind. Give arguments and examples to support your ideas.

Task 4
Write about your favorite subjects at school. Give arguments and examples to support
your ideas.

Task 5
Write about your favorite town/ village. Give arguments and examples to support your
ideas.

If a student has to describe a story with vampires he or she will not just say “The lover
was killed by her vampire”. The student will use details, descriptions to make a full sentence
and will say “The desperate red eyes vampire s unk his white teeth into the yellow skin girl
ending with her beautiful life.”
Another example of descriptive writing made by a student when describing a phone
“My phone is very light. The phone I had before had a big screen, but it was thinner. This pho ne
is made from glass, steel and aluminum. Its color is golden, but there are people that have the
same model but silver, or space gray like the company uses to call it. “So we can find here
details connected with the material, the weight and the size.
There are cases when we can find paragraphs with a lot of adjectives and not considered
a descriptive paragraph. Why? In those paragraphs you won’t find a description, but an

31
advertisement of something that should be done. We could use as an example the sam e phone
but not describing it: “After you buy a beautiful small new phone with a glass screen, you will
have to but a case. Why you don’t want to crack its new screen. It’s good to have a protection.“
After all the descriptions made by the students I can conclude that this descriptive
writing is useful for developing writing techniques. Students can use different vocabulary
connections; they can use a lot of adjectives, details; use in their descriptions the senses; they
use metaphors or comparisons to com pare different things; and they use synonyms and
antonyms. When reading their works to the class they must be fast and accurate, if not, the other
students will get bored and will lose the subject of their message.
They like this kind of workings. They li ke to express their feeling and to use a lot
adjectives in describing what they’ve seen or lived. It I important to let the students express
their feelings and not influence by telling them what you, the teacher, would have written. But
for them it is usef ul to tell what mistakes they have done in expressing, or punctuation or
grammar.

3.1.2. Narrative writing
The aim of the narrative writing type is to tell a story. The writer will put into the story
characters, places, a nd will count what they do or what is done there. The story can be written
from the point of view of the writer or from one’s character’s story. Here at this type of writing
we can include not just stories but also novellas, biographies or poetries. This type of writing
does not have only descriptions, but also dialogues, conflicts, actions, solutions.
The told story can be real or fictional, an imagination. The reader is usually captivated
by the story and is reading it willing to find what happens next or what the end is. Here is an
example of narrative type of writing. “While I was going off the train, children were laughing
and jumping near the bend. I went over a small hill down the narrow path till I saw them. There
were two girls and a boy under a t ree. They started looking at me in surprise so I smiled and
asked ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Nothing much’ answered them all in the same voice”. This is a
story told by the writer at the first person. We can find here both a dialogue and a description.
After reading a narrative writing we can easily answer the five ‘wh -‘: why, who, when,
where and how. And here we must be able to imagine the senses: see, feel, hear, smell and
touch. Through these senses a writer is better introduced to the plot of the s tory. Besides
metaphors we can find here hyperbole, personifications, onomatopoeia or alliteration.

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When a teacher asks the students to write something in a narrative type he or she may
give some clues or points of starting. For examples he or she can g ive a beginning or an end for
the story, or an image to start from or just some words to fill in the text.

Task 6
Write a story with ghosts from the Halloween night using the following words: hunted,
blood, vampire, ghost, scary.

Task 7
Write about th e happiest day in your life. Write approximately 200 words.

Task 8
Write about an experience that can start from the saying: You should be careful what
you wish for”

Task 9
Write about the dearest memory with your family.

Looking at their narrat ive writings I concluded that a good story should have a
beginning, content and an ending. All these must be written with a lot of details focusing on
the topic and with a relevant description of the topic. Most of the stories have good transistors
from o ne paragraph to the others. The ones with not logical transitions made the stories look
poor organized. The structure of the sentences is not well organized in most of the cases. We
also find a few grammatical errors. Still the choice of words is good, ade quate to the topic.
From story to story and from level to level I could notice a good progression in composing
narrative writings. The best and well written stories were marked according to the contents.

3.1.3. Persuasive writing
It is for a student t o know to write in various ways, various types. A good type of writing
good to know is persuasive writing, which is good to express their feeling and reasons of a
choice. Understanding why we write, students will understand better the persuasive writing.
Persuasive writing is the way we try to persuade someone to do or not something. Using the
persuasive writing the student must bring arguments for a decision being it for or against
something already spoken.

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But persuasive writing is often found in advertising products and it is used to convince
the customer to buy the product. For this, the writer must use a lot of examples and opinions.
Persuasive writing uses firm arguments which are very well sustained.
A teacher should use persuasive writing in teaching writing skills. This should be done
first by giving examples which will then be read and discussed. Persuasive writing can also be
done by using brainstorming useful information for the student. After a t opic is chosen by the
student, the teacher should ask the student to give reasons for choosing it. The teacher is not
accepting short answers like “because” or “just because I like it.” Students are allowed to work
together and research in finding the righ t or the acceptable answers. A goo d writer should
predict what the others, the teacher will ask about their writings, about their reasons.
In writing a persuasive message students must also include feelings in order to convince
the reader with their arg uments. The feelings that are transmitted are those of security, of love,
of health, of convenience. Emotional persuasive writings are very effective when we want to
convince the reader to buy the product or that we are right about what we said.
A good p ersuasive writing must start with a sentence about the topic. Then we must
continue with the arguments on the chosen topic, pro or contra. Then the arguments must be
developed with reasons and examples. The persuasive writing usually ends with a conclusion
of the topic.
A persuasive writing should be written in the present tense simple, using connectors of
contrast, logical, effect and of cause. During the persuasive writing we could find rhetorical
questions which have the purpose of daring the reader to come with contra -arguments on what
is being said. The verbs and the adjectives used are strong, used to convince the reader of the
message. Also the tone of the writing is important, which results from the words we choose.
The person that writes in a pers uasive way can be compared to a lawyer who pleads for his or
her case.

Task 1
Write your opinion about legalizing or not the marijuana.

Task 2
Develop the idea: to drill or not to drill?

Task 3
Write a letter to your head teacher arguing either for or against a school uniform for our
school.

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Task 4
Which advertise would you prefer: the one for a cola milkshake or the one for French
frites? Why? Which is healthier?

Task 5
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why?

After w riting and then reading persuasive writings, the students came to the conclusion
that that they should have a convincing purpose when writing this type of writing and their
writing must be concise and well organized to convince the reader. They should use subjective
verbs to have a special effect and they also use specific words for a clear image. If necessary,
repetitive words can be used. A persuasive technique is allowed to be used against the other
technique. A good persuasive writing will be successful if the writing will connect with the
reader.
A persuasive writer will have a good message if the text has a good information and
persuasion. The writer must know who the text is addressing. The message usually had
situations, a good motivation, and goo d circumstances. Students like writing in this type of
writing, because they like to convince the others about their opinions.
The students said that a good writer of a persuasive writing is the one that can anticipate
the contra -arguments and has the res ponses for this. The writer must also know how to get
sympathy from the reader or listener and to try to involve in the article without the reader realize
this.

3.1.4. Expository writing
An expository writing is a writing which is used for exposing information, for
explaining it. A newspaper or an essay or an article can be examples of expository writing nest
to textbooks or instruction manuals or encyclopedia. In this category are not inc luded the poems
or the fictions. We can consider this work, this thesis an expository writing.
An expository writing is used at school in essays, in the academic world. The parts of
an expository writing are the introduction where we can find the objectiv e of the writing; then
we have the main part where we find explanations of the objective in the introduction; and the
last is the conclusion where we find the summarizing of what was already been said.

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When a student, a writer start an expository paper, he or she thinks that the reader will
not understand what the message is about, does not know the topic of the writing. The student
then must bring a lot of information in order to make the reader understand the topic. After
reading an expository writing, the reader must have a lot of new information, new knowledge.
At school, an expository writing is trying to make the student learn researching
sentences or facts or opinions. Writing in an expository way is trying also to explain the chosen
topic. Exposi tory writings are analyzing the facts, the bases no taking into account the reader’s
feelings. In such a writing type the writer shouldn’t write as referring to the first or second
person, he or she should not personalize it. It is better just to explain the topic in general.
It is important to use the imagination in expressing the feelings and the perspective of
the topic. Its purpose is to instruct the reader and not to enjoy the reader. For a reader to
understand the expository is important to read a clear text, with clear observations and
explanations. We can include in this category term papers, essays, reposts, business letters,
cuisines, wills, stories, textbooks. Here are some examples of teacher’s requests for editing an
expository writing.

Task 1
Explain why parents are sometimes strict.

Task 2
What are the major impacts of different music genres on society?

Task 3
Where do you prefer living – in a house or an apartment? Explain.

Task 4
What are the effects of usin g drugs? Why some students use drugs? Explain the
consequences.

Task 5
Explain how the life of a teenage changes.

If we want to drop a conclusion after describing these four types of writing we can say
that now each student can find his or her best typ e of writing that suits and can help to write
more effectively and more efficient.

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Expository writing is the writing that will give the facts. Examples of such writing we
can find in articles, essays, textbooks or technical writings. Talking about descri ptive writing
we will be able to see detailed images in poems, advertisings, journals. The persuasive writing
will try to convince the reader to agree with the writer’s opinion. Such writing can be found in
reviews or job offers or editorials. And the last type of writing is the narrative writing which
helps us write a story, a fictional one maybe or a biographical one or an anecdote or in a poem.

3.1.5. Functional Writing
The writings that are made with a specific purpose are considered to be functional. In
this type of writing information is given and passed. With this occasion the writer expresses the
interest for a job, and maybe his or her qualifications or the writer w ants to express the
dissatisfaction. Not knowing to write this type of writing can affect the writer’s life, future.
Teachers should try to help students develop the functional writing skills. This is
sometimes considered dull. Teachers often confronts w ith the students’ lack of preoccupations
for learning this. This lack is noticed at older students; younger students just do it without
making questions about its necessity. So the teacher teaches this type of writing to the adults or
the high school stude nts. So teaching functional writing can be associated with the needs the
students have.
Learning to write in a functional type is learning to write a letter of complaint or intent;
a proposal; a memo; a CV; an advertisement; a report or a review. So we c an notice from the
kinds of functional writings that this type can’t be considered personal because it has no
freedom in writing, he or she must respect the rules. But sometimes the writer can be a little
creative, but not too much. Not being an essay the writer must also give a high attention to the
length of writing.
The writer must also pay attention to the person to whom the writing is addressing. For
example, if the writing is addressing to an employer looking for a job, the writing must be
formal, but if the writing is addressed to a friend then it can be written in an informal way.
Writing in a functional way does not absolve you from writing clearly and well
organized. The writer always must plan the message and must think well at the answers. T he
reader must understand easy the message. To be understood usually the message should be short
and concise. Of course the message should be relevant with useful information.

Task 1
Write to a celebrity telling why you admire their work.

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Task 2
You strongly feel about an article in SpyNews Magazine. Write a letter to the Editor of
the newspaper in which you outline your views in response to the article.

Task 3
Imagine the girl in the picture is your pen pal. Write a letter telling her about a good
book you have enjoyed recently

Task 4
Choose one of your favorite games and, for the benefit of a person who does not know
how to play it, explain the purpose and general rules of the game.

Task 5
Write a review for your school magazine of any film tha t you have enjoyed. Your review
should encourage other students to go and see it.

Task 6
Your community has been offered €100,000 euro for use on any local project. Write the
speech you would make to a meeting of your local Community Association in which you outline
the project that you think the money should be spent on.

After writing such functional writings the students came to some useful conclusions.
For example when writing in class a functional writing, to a celebrity in our case, students
shoul d use fictional names and addresses. The title, the date and the address are noticed/ written
at the top of the letter. The first paragraph contains information about the reason why they
would write a letter to a star. In the second paragraph students dev eloped the reasons with
logical and clear ideas. In the next paragraph or paragraphs students tried to develop their
thoughts with relevant arguments. But there should not be too many points of view. Students
noticed that here is no need to exaggerate or t o give too many personal details. The last
paragraph is the one where the writer must thank for the time and is the shortest one.
The letters for a magazine or for an editor are almost the same as the usual letter; the
thing that differs is the layout. W riting the address or the name of the editor is optional. The
students learned that right from the beginning that they should write the article they are referring
to and its date. Then the students right their opinion about the special article they want to refer

38
or to the magazine in general. They expressed clearly their opinions pro and against the topic
they referred to. At the end of the letter the students wrote their name and under their signature.
The tone of letters like this is formal, but a little humor is allowed.
These are examples of formal letters. There are also informal letters, like that to a friend.
There are still few people nowadays that write informal letter, they prefer writing e -mails. The
tone used in informal letters is usually rel axed. In informal letter the students were allowed to
give personal details. The reader should be interested in reading an informal letter. Interesting
things should be written in an informal letter. Recent event should also be told in informal
letters. So metimes an informal letter looks like an essay.
When it comes to giving instructions, even it looks simple this kind of writing requires
well organization and planning. The instructions must be easy and basic. This writing must also
be well planned. The instructions could be numbered or bullets or just lines. To be understood
easily it is preferable for the instructions to be short and concise. Technical terms are not
allowed.
When students were asked to write a speech they were reticent at the beginning. But
then they like this task. They noticed that their speech had to take a personal note and a calm
tone. They had to organize very well the speech in order to be understood by everyone. If they
have to talk is easily than a speech, because the speech has a more formal tone and language.
The audience t o whom the speech or talk is addressing is also important. When starting to write
a speech the students found that they must address to the most important person in the audience.
Some students used rhetorical questions in writing a speech in order to invol ve the audience in
the speech. The tone in this writing must also be definite to convince the audience. The ending
of a speech should be positive and conclusive. Students should not include new ideas, new
points of view in the ending. The ending of a speec h is for consolidating the ideas mentioned
before in the speech.
Reviews were also another type of writing that brought some problems for the students.
Why? Because they considered difficult to express their feelings and emotions about the book,
the programe or the film they had to review. The quality of the report and reviews are essential
to be qualitative. In the introduction must be mentioned the topic, the title of what was being
reviewed. Then they must give details in a descriptive way. An objectiv e opinion is helpful for
the reader or the listener. There must be arguments pro and against in the review. The review
must end with a recommendation favorable or not. The review might be more helpful if it is
about something the writer likes.

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3.1.6. Ac ademic Writing

Another kind of writing that has a definite function or purpose is the academic writing.
This type refers to the intellectual writing. The tone of this writing is formal, usually referring
as the third person narration. The topic of this w riting id precise and very well analyzed before.
During this writing are developed some ideas that are considered complex by some experts.
The information introduced in such writing is organized and rigorous. The ideas must flow and
be coherent.
Usually the first paragraph of such writing includes information about the rest of the
writing. The arguments brought into the academic writing should be fair, speaking from a
personal point of view. The language should be basically, coherent. The arguments also s hould
have an investigative research based on confidentiality. Even if the tone should be personal, the
research should have an authoritative tone.
The writer should choose carefully the words. This is because words can have different
connotations and te rminology. So, the used words should be c oncrete and have a specific
meaning, and not a general one. The writer should try not to confuse the reader with the words
he or she uses. If there can not be used simple words then more explanations are needed.
The paragraphs of academic writing should be well structured. The sentences should be
clear and easy. The expressions that are vague should be avoided. Abbreviations are not
recommended, nor the contractions.
The sources should be cited and at the end of the writing there should be some
references. Footnotes should not be forgotten. All these are necessary in order not to be accused
of plagiarism. The ideas used always must be sustained by good arguments and coherent.
Academic writing has many functions; o ne of them is describing the complex ideas and making
them easy.
"The sentences in academic writing are often longer and more intricate than the
sentences in popular magazines. Academics strive to go beyond what is quick, obvious, and
general. They ask questions based on studying a subject from multiple points of view, to make
surprising connections that would not occur to someone who has not studied the subject
carefully.”9
In this type of writing, the academic writing we can include a book, or a chapt er in a
book, a dissertation, a report, a thesis like the one I’m writing, an essay, an others.

9 Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky, From Inquiry to Academic Writing: A Text and Reader ,
2nd ed. Bedford/St. Martin's. 2012

40
Task 1
You will be asked to describe some visual information (graph/table/chart/diagram), and
to present the description in your own words. You may be asked t o describe and explain data,
describe the stages of a process, how something works, or write about an object or event. You
need to write 150 words in about 20 minutes.

Task 2
Analyze the two pie charts bellow and the table about the global warming. Give details
and a full interpretation of them.

Task 3
After gathering information during their classes of History and Language, students had
to reflect on their year in History and English Language. They had to summarize on what they
had learned till that mo ment; include examples of learning or problems they encountered. Their
feeling during the year at these subjects had to be included.

Task 4
Students are presented a graph, table, map or flowchart or diagram and they need to
summarize the information, s how contrasts or compare data, identify trends that can describe
better the process. They should write approximately 200 words. The report should be finished
in 20 minutes . Students are advised to give factual data starting from the diagram presented,
and to write so that the reader can understand the trends or the factual information for the graph .

After solving tasks like this I, as a teacher, came to some conclusions. S ome students
were carefully and understood their tasks, but as usual there were students that did not
understood. Not all the information, they gave, were important or connected to the tasks. The
information and the paragraphs and good connections were use d. Most of their ideas supported
their opinions. The tasks were solved with coherence, having good structures and well prepared
conclusions.

3.1.7. Creative Writing
Speaking about creative, our minds go to fiction, poems, or letter to pen -pals. This type
is different from the functional or academic writing. Creative writing is not so restrictive as the
others and is more open. It is used in expressing feelings or opin ions. It expresses the artistic

41
side of the writer. Personal ideas are described in this type of writing. There is usually a high
connection between the writer and its creation.
Writing in a creative way means writing diaries, articles, journals or lette rs for friends,
short stories, poems, scripts, songs or even blogs. Usually the teacher shows models to students,
for a better result. Students are shown this way characteristic like the format or structure, styles
of writings. It has no strict rules of wr iting. Creative writing could be associated by students
with stimulant and amusing ways of developing writing skills into class.
Creative writing is not the type that gives information, is a type that tries to entertain or
to educate both the reader and the writer. We could classify creative writing in efficient or
inefficient, good or bad. The inefficient, bad type is the writing that does not impress the reader;
it has no influence on his/ her feelings. For the authors of stories or poems, it is easier, they
can’t be contradicted, and their works become usually bestsellers.

Task 1
Create a character that has a secret to confess but is too afraid to talk about. Write the
page pages from a diary where the character would confess, write about it.

Task 2
Where would you like to go when you want to escape from the pressure from school or
work or family? Describe this place.

Task 3
Choose one dwarf from the seven dwarfs from the fairy tale Snow White. Now re -write
the fairy tale from his point of view.

Task 4
You are walking around the city. Describe this walk: the streets, the people, the weather,
the sky, the trash, and other elements you find on your walk.

Task 5
Describe your winter holiday. What have you done? Where have you been? With who
have you been? How was the weather?

This is the most relaxing writing for the students. They enjoyed preparing and then
reading it for their colleagues. But even if it seemed easy, it gave them a lot of difficulties.

42
There were texts that lost their coheren ce during the process. The students started writing using
a time and then changed it without having any connection or being correct. There were texts
that could be seen that were done in a hurry, so they were short with no connection to the topic.
But ther e were texts that were good; respected the topic, the organization. They were good
examples for the others. The details were where to choose and well used. The students were
attracted to the text and eager to see what was going on next. Some students were convinced to
visit some of the described places or to try new things.

3.2. Reasons and principles for teaching writing
Why is important to teach writing during teaching a foreign language, in this case
English? N owadays it is important to communicate through writing thanks to the blogs or other
internet ways. Writing is important from writing the shopping list to the essays students must
do for school. It is helpful to stimulate students write in a foreign language and to let them free
their thoughts. Knowing to write correctly is important because it makes students aware of the
lexical items in a foreign language. Motivating students can develop imagination.
Harmer considered “the reasons for teaching writing to students of English as a foreign
langua ge include reinforcement, language development, learning style and, most important,
writing as a skill in its own right.”10
Now we should take each part of Harmer’s opinion and develop. If we refer to
reinforcement, then we should refer maybe to the reinfor cement of grammar and vocabulary
that the students have learned. At this stage we the teachers can notice that there are students
that can learn just in an oral way and students that need to see the written message to remember
it. Of course , writing will help the students develop the language. It helps them think about
what words or sentences t hey choose in expressing their written ides. The style of learning is
developed by listening or by thinking about what they, the students, have just learned. Writing
is one of the most important skills learned along with speaking, reading or listening. Students
need to know how to express themselves in writing, to write a letter or an email. They need to
know the punctuation and the structure of ideas, of sentences, o f paragraphs.
What are reasons for which a student can be motivated to write? Here are some examples
from the many that we can think about. A student needs to write for developing l inguistic
competences in tasks like copying samples of writings or writing language knowledge tests or

10 Harmer J. ,The Practice of English Language Teaching , 1998

43
just writing short texts. Writing is used to encourage students speak/ think fluent. Students will
practice the writing skills in exercises that ask them to choose special features from a text, or
will evaluate their attitudes and knowledge.
Before starting a writing activity, the teacher should follow find ways for motivating
students to write with enthusiasm and of course confidence. The teacher should also think how
the writing task that thought about will be influenced by real life experiences.
According to D. Bryne, the following principles should be followed when teaching
writing: a teacher should teach a student to write , a teacher should bring adequate experience
in writing, a teacher should show how writing is integra ted in the communication system, a
teacher sho uld teach how a text is written, a teacher should teach different kinds of written tex ts,
a teacher should transform the wri ting tasks into realistic tasks, a teacher should integrate the
writing tasks with the other skills, a teacher should always use different techniques and of
course an appropriate support must be brought into class.
A good and useful way to teach students to write is to encourage them to write respecting
the steps: planning, organizing, comp osing and revising. It is important for a successful writing
activity the chosen material/text to be appropriate to the level of knowledge and to the age. If a
student understands the text his or her writing will be more effective. If at the beginning of t he
teaching writing process students receive tasks to write short text, later they will have to write
longer texts, whole texts. Students must have the chance to try different forms of writings
together with the development of different skills acquisition. It is important in an activity
writing to be integrates with other skills like listening or reading. If a teacher wants a good
writing learning, he or she must vary the techniques and the activities. During a class there must
be free writing activities to gether with controlled or guided writing activities. The discussion
during a class goes to a collaborative writing. A writing process is advisable to be ended with a
revision of the written material.
A teacher is treating the entire writing activities as being creative, this need a lot of time
and feedback. With the passing of classes, a teacher goes from the person that gives tasks from
a topic to the person that does not interfere in the process of writing. A student must be aware
of the fact that what h e or she has written can be changed at the end of the process by adding
new information or by dele ting the old ones.
A writing task will be successful if it will follow the three steps: pre -writing activities,
during -writing activities and post -writing ac tivities. During the pre -writing step it is important
that the student will let the flow of ideas come. Now, from a title or from some pictures, the
student must express free about what he or she thinks the task is about. It is an active step that

44
prepares the students for the main writing step. Now are important the content, the vocabulary
or the audience. Teacher has the role just to stimulate imagination and creativity.
During a pre -writing step the teacher could use the following tasks to prepare the
students for the writing activity itself: brainstorming, planning, generating ideas, questioning,
answering questions, focusing on ideas. If during th e brainstorming the students think of ideas
about the topic in the middle of the board or paper, during the planning activity students will
think about a plan from which they can start the writing class. If we, the teachers, use the
generating ideas task we will have to group the student into six groups of discussion: the gro up
that must describe the topic, the group that must compare the topic, the grou p that will associate
the topic, the gr oup that must analyze the topic, the group that will apply the topic and the group
that will come with arguments pro and against the topic. For a good pre -writing activity th e
students could be divided into two groups: one makes questions on the topic and the others will
find the proper answers. A pre -writing activity can be based on a picture or on a song, from
which discussion can star by describing them.
Writing process wi ll continue with guided activities of writing and re -writing during the
writing step itself. Now student are encouraged to write recursively or a revision. Writing
correctly from the point of view of grammar or syntax is important. For this step in writing the
students need clear instructions and resources from which they can start their work. Examples
of activities during the writing activity itself are the self -editing or the writing drafts, or the
revision, or the description of events, or fill in exerci ses/ grids or expanding. During this step
students may use the information they have found during the pre -writing activities.
The post writing activities are the activities that will help students reflect on what they
have written. The post writing activi ties help the teacher the proper feedback of the entire
writing class. Post writing activities can be considered the reading of the written material,
adding or deleting information to it, checking the spelling or punctuation, answering to
questions on the written material or filling in with information from the text.
A collaborative writing activity is important in developing the writing skills. It will help
the organization of the message. Students could learn information from the others. The teachers
are using more often the project teams to develop writing skills.

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3.3. Parts of the writing program and process

Writing can be seen as an important part of language development and one of the most
used and developed skills. Our live goes round it. Writing is the representative system sounds
along with the other symbols such as punctuation marks.
Florian Coulmas ha s defined in 1999 the writing system as “ a set of visible tactile signs
used to represent units of language in a systematic way, with the purpose of recording messages
which can be retrieved by everyone who knows the language in question and the rules by virtue
of which its units are encoded in the writing system.”11
Each writing has visible signs except for the blind one meaning the Braille system. For
this system scientists introduced the tactile signs for the blind could read.
Steven Roger Fischer consi dered there can ot be a a writing definition that can cover
every kind of writing. He thinks that a writing system must have o certain purpose, it must have
graphic marks for electronics and must have signs for both articulated speech and for the
electronic programs . “As the most visible items of a language, scripts and orthographies are
’emotionally loaded’, indicating as they do group loyalties and identities. Rather than being
mere instruments of a practical nature, they are symbolic systems of great social significance
which may moreover, have profound effect on the social structure of a speech community.”12
Writing can also be seen as the process of capturing the thoughts and the ideas and
giving a permanent format to them. If when we speak we use the hand or other nonverbal
helpers, when writing these helpers are missing. Because we can’t have an immediate feedback
for the writing, we must be very careful when writing for the message to be clear and accurate.
If in the past teachers during the class concentrated on the final writing product, in the
present they concentrate on the message and on the content of a text. Nowadays a teacher try to
make students be focused more on the stages of writing. So all the stages of a writing activity,
pre-writing – drafting – post writing, is given a special attention with different strategies. During
a writing activity students have more time to think on their product and they have even time to
improve it. For a good product or even a good feedback it is very importa nt the revision of the
writing message. A teacher must always be careful in what a student expresses and how the
student’s background interferes.
When teaching writing, a teacher should focus on the six traits writing model. This
model is using the six qu alities that a good writer need: finding ideas, organizing them, finding
the voice, choosing the words, finding a good fluency of the sentences and finding the

11 Coulmas, Florian, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems , Oxford, 1999, pg 560
12 Coulmas, Florian, The Writing Systems of the World , Oxford, 1991

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conventions. The ideas of a text, of a message are very important; they can be considered the
heart of the text, of the message. We must find a topic that can be developed, for which we can
give details. The organization of ideas must be well done, because this is the base the main
structure of the text. A good organization means a better understand ing of the text. The words
in composing a text are important because they are the ones that help the reader to imagine the
story in his mind. Of course that when writing a text it is important a have a good fluency of
ideas, so that the reader doesn’t los e himself between ideas. The convention, meaning the
spelling or the grammar or the punctuation, is also important for transmitting the correct
message.
There are many strategies that can help a student understand and follow the right step.
For example a t eacher should give many examples that can help the student understand better.
The example can be from another student’s work or from the teacher’s example. It is advisable
to let the student time to solve the tasks, the steps in class and not at home, beca use in class the
teacher can give another example or can help or correct the mistake. The teacher should all the
time encourage the students to do more, to go behind their powers. The progress of the students
should be checked constantly by the teacher. Gi ving marks for their works also can encourage
the students and give them a good feeling. Activities that involve the writing process should be
done often and not from time to time. If a teacher doesn’t do activities that require the writing
process, the st udent will have the tendency to forget what should do and when.
The writing products are recommendable to be marked at the end of the writing process,
so that they don’t stop the students from the creativity.

3.3.1 Pre -writing
Teaching writing means dev eloping imagination and creativity. When we teach writing
in the class we need to follow a series of steps that can lead us to a correct teaching and learning.
The steps that should be followed in a writing activity are pre -writing, drafting, revising and
editing, rewriting and publishing.
The first step, pre -writing, is used by the teacher to prepare the students for the writing
itself, to stimulate their creativity. During this step the student tries to find the idea of the topic,
might find ideas from t heir real life, from their daily activities. Starting from these the student
must now build the message around the found ideas. The building is often made with the help
of brainstorming. This is the step when you also must organize your ideas and choose th e
best to tell the best way your message.

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3.3.2. Drafting
If for the pre -writing step the students could work together, in groups or alone to find
the ideas, for the next step, drafting, students should work alone just giving them some
suggestions. Dur ing the drafting step, students start to put the ideas into paragraphs, start to give
explanations for the ideas. Additional ideas may come during this step to fulfill the message.
During this step the writer has a big role, he is important, spelling or gr ammar are not very
important now. The purpose of the step is the concentration of students to put ideas on paper
without any distraction.

3.3.3. Revising and editing
Let’s go to the next step of the writing process, that of revising and editing. Now it is
the moment for the students to look back on what they have written and check it. They must
check at this step the correct spelling and the correct grammar or punctuation. They can add
information or delete. Student should try to read the message loud for themselves or for the
others, reading aloud can help them find mistakes. Students can be critics for them or for the
others. Also the teacher can correct the mistakes if any. We can say that this can be considered
one of the most important steps in th e writing process that takes the longest time.

3.3.4. Rewriting and publishing
The final product of the writing is during the rewriting step. Here must be included the
new changes and suggestions. Teacher can offer to the students the last suggestions that can be
included in the final draft.
And the final step for a right writing p rocess is publishing the message, the material.
They now can read their works to the colleagues and to the teacher. Students should be
encouraged to publish their revised works in the school magazines or on the websites or on
bulletin boards. A good feedb ack from the audience outside their desk or even their class can
give confidence to the students to write again and makes them feel important. It is time for the
students to celebrate their success.
Students will use what they have learnt during the writ ing process later when they are
adults. But for a good and successful writing process it is advisable for the parents to know how
it works and what it is about. Parents are the one that also can help at home the students during
one of the steps. Reading to the children or letting them to make different lists or letters will
help later the students to have a rich imagination. So teachers must always be helped in their
work of teaching by parents. Parents’ help is essential for a good development of the brain .

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All these steps take a long of time, so students need time to finish a work, a writing
process. Usually students tend to hurry up, to finish quickly their tasks. But for teacher teaching
writing during a process like this is difficult and needs patience so that each student understands
each step. It is difficult and because no teacher can say that the solving of one step is correct or
not, because there are no correct answers.

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4. Methods and strategies in teaching writing

The teaching methods (from Greek “odos”=way, road and “metha”=towards) represents
the ways used in schools by teachers to help the students discover the life, the nature, the world.
They are always ways which help forming and developing the principles, the student s’ capacity
to act on nature, on using the products of knowing to transform the exterior in inner facilities,
forming the character and developing his or her personality.
We don’t have to forget that the pedagogical efficiency, the teaching result s depend on
the chosen me thods of the teacher. Some well -known researchers, like Jean Piaget, J. S. Bruner,
David P. Ausbel or Ioan Cerghit, have shown the importance of methods in teaching. These put
an accent on intelligence of the teacher in choosing th e best wit hin the methods for each moment
of the lesson, showing that by using different methods in the same moment of the lesson, they
can get different results in preparing the students. Ioan Cerghit thought that the teaching
methods are referring both t o the special conditions when the teacher’s interfere is looking for
a change in forming the student, but also to the student’s effort to integrate into the learning
process, gathering knowledge and forming practical or intellectual attitudes.
Any pedago gical method is coming from gathering a lot of factors, which takes us to
the strong idea that education will always be an art: “the art of adapting, to a precise institution,
the general indications presented in the text of specialty.”13
The literature can also offer a more explicit opinion about the same notion. In Vaid eanu’
s opinion, the method is “ the way or the working modality:
– Selected by the teacher and applied in lessons and extrascholary activities with the
help of the students and for their b enefit ;
– Which supposes cooperation between the teacher and the students and their
participation in finding solutions;
– Which is used as choices and/ or selected procedures, combined and used depending
on the level and needs or students’ interests with the purpose of every day
assimilation of knowledge , and living the values, assimilating the creative spirit;
– Which allows the teacher to manifest as a competent bearer of the educational
content and as organizer of the teaching -learning process, he can play th e role of
animator , assessor guide, teaching being a hypothesis of learning.”14

13 Ioan Cerg hit, Metode de invatamant (Teaching Methods ). Editura Didactica si Pedagogica, Bucuresti, 1997
14 Gheorghe Vaideanu, Tehnologia procesului educational in Pedagogie, ghid pentru profesori , vol 2, editura
Universitatii Al I Cuza, Iasi, pg 3 -4

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The didactic procedures are components of the method, which depend on the action’s
execution, and are limited techniques which serve as instruments of the method.15 The method
is a correlative assembly of procedures considered to be the best for a given learning situation.
Another term for method is didactic technology. In a new way “educational technology
means a systematic way of projecting, fulfillment and assessment of the entire process of
teaching – learning, in the terms of specific objectives, based on research of the learning and
human communication and using a combination of human and nonhuman media for obtaining
an efficient training.16
For the didactic technology, an important role has the didactic strategy. This notion, in
Nicola’s opinion can be defined as an assembly of procedures through which we can find the
cooperation between the teachers and the students for teaching and learning of a big volume of
information , of forming some customs and competences, of developing the human
personality.”17
The educational practice shows that no method can be used as a prescription, but as an
assembly of procedures, actions and operations, which are structured depending on some
factors, in a group of activities. We must notice that these methods are subjected to a process
of reevaluation for assuring the higher degree of effectiveness. All the teaching methods,
traditional or modern, must be used so that the didactic activity proposed by the teacher can
obtain maximum efficiency and the students assimilate the new knowledge for to apply later in
different contexts.

4.1. Traditional versus modern methods used in teaching writing

Traditional methods are hetero -structural methods which have in common the idea that
teaching means transmitting a volume of knowle dge from a knower, the teacher, to a n uncover,
the student. These methods can be optimized, rebuilt. We don’t propose to give up completely
to these, because they still offer pedagogical authentically virtues: consistent international
luggage, structural m ethods of information and a better control of the time. From these used
traditional methods used in everyday lesson we can mention the exercise, the exposition, the
conversation, the explication, the work with the textbook, the reading.

15 Ioan Jinga, Io an Negre , Predarea si invatarea eficienta, Revista de Pedagogie , 1982, p 258
16 C.N. Block, Probleme de tehnologie didactica , editura Didactica si Pedagogica, Bucuresti, 1977, p 18
17 I Nicola,P Puscas, V Marcu , Didactica -tearie a instruirii institutionaliza ta, editura imprimeriei de vest,
Oradea, 1999, p 52

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Traditional methods can be described as methods where the interaction in the class is
dominated by the teacher. The activities in the class are teacher -centered, the teacher being the
one that has the information to transmit and the students are the receivers of information. We
can say that the information is poured from a recipient to another.
Scrivener said that “being in a class in the presence of a teacher and listening attentively
is […] enough to ensure that learning will take place”18 In conclusion, traditional methods are
based on the teacher, for the students is enough if they listen to the teacher and are preset into
the class. These are enough for the students to have a good packet of knowledge.
Like other functions in life, let’s say sleeping o r eating, education is also a part of it. It
is so old and formed so many people till our days. But it has changed during the years just like
the technologies around us. Now the digital methods are replacing the traditional ones. We can
say that there were fewer the methods used in the past to teach a foreign language. Among these
we can mention the lectures instructions, the translation method, the seatwork, the observation.
The Lectures Instruction is the method that bases on the class’s activity under the
direct su pervision of the teacher. The teacher has the role to guide in every moment the student.
Students are asked to read and to fill in exercises very carefully.
The Seatwork is the method that uses the tests as method of evaluating mostly. The t est
is given to the entire class, so all the students have the same test. Usually texts have exercises
from the textbooks or other books relevant to the topic of the test .
The observation is the method used by teachers to notice what students have written and
learned.
Teaching is a very old technique, used first many years ago. This is expected to be done
when the person is very young, no matter the sex of the person. Usually the education is formal,
meaning the students and the teacher. The critics consider that formal education and traditional
methods are the ones that help students receive and have the needed amount of knowledge they
need to succeed in life. Traditional methods have the tendency to be boring and to lose students’
concentration. Now adays students and teachers prefer modern methods because they are
interactive and of course fun.
But even if there are many teachers and critics that contest these traditional methods
old-fashioned , these traditional methods can’ t be exclu ded from every day teaching. If so,
teaching will not be so effective anymore. It is advisable to mix the traditional methods with
the modern methods. This way the classes will be funnier, more interactive and more effective.
Students will enjoy better learning and the a cquisition of new knowledge.

18 Scrivener, 2005

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If a teacher wants to apply a traditional method he or she will rely on the textbook. But
if the teacher wants to use a modern method he or she will rely on hand -on papers. Traditionally
a class starts from parts and goes to a whole task, but the modern way suggests the vice versa
meaning from the whole to the parts of the tasks. During traditional methods learning and
evaluation are done separately, the modern methods combine the learning with the evaluation,
which are done through portfolios for example.
For a good learning, teaching it is advisable for a teacher to combine the two: the
tradition with the modern. The diversity of methods is helpful for all the students, giving the
opportunity for each students, good or bad, to get the information. During a class a teacher
should follow the steps: questions, explains, models, checks and if necessary demonstrates.
Applying a traditional method a teacher limits the imagination of the students, their creativity.
But, applying a modern method will help students develop their imagination, will make them
involve in the learning process. Traditional methods focus on individual works, whereas
modern methods focus on group and pair work.
Some of the modern methods that can help a student get a good writing are
brainstorming, the free writing, the idea webbing , flow Charting, journalistic questions or the
double/ triple actions.
Brainstorming is one of the most popular metho ds. During this method students have
to fill in as many examples as they can remember starting from a topic. I usually apply this
method during the group activities or mostly during the activities with the whole class. When a
student says one idea, the oth ers come with other similar ideas. Students should be let to use
their imagination freely. Anything is accepted during this method, just to have something in
common with the topic. It is good for students to be challenged.
Example of Brainstorming:

FAMILY
Together
Father Uncle Home
Brother
Sister Aunt Help
Mother
Love Protection

If brainstorming is a group activity, free writing is an individual work. This method is
also known as the stream of conscious. During this methods students have to let their ideas flow

53
on the paper. Also all the ideas are accepted, there a re no limits. Applying this methods students
cannot stop until they finish the ideas. It can happen that they start from a topic and finish with
another idea. It is important for students to know that grammar or spelling are not important
during this activ ity. This activity must have a limit of time. After finishing the activity, students
are asked to read it again and correct the evident mistakes.
Example of Free Writing: CHRISTMAS
Flow Charting is the method that help students identify the connection between ideas.
A flow chart shows the connection between a cause and an effect of a topic. On the right of the
topic are written the causes and on the left the effects can be written. In a flow charting students
can use all kind of symbols, but the most us ed are the rectangles.
Example of a Flow Charting:

Idea webbing also known as cluster mapping is the method that gets out and then
connects the ideas . The writing looks like a spider with many legs: a circle in the middle of the
page with a lot of arrows around. At the end of each arrow is another circle where the stu dents
have to put an idea or question connected to the topic. From the formed circles students can
draw other arrows with the answers, which are subtopics.
Example of idea webbing:

The double/ triple entry method is almost similar to the brainstorming method. This
method it is usually used to compare two or more topics. This is a method used during the pre -Boredom
Parental example
Medical need Drug Abuse Homelessness
Loss of jobs
Isolation at school
Where
When Holidays Who
with
Accomodation

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writing stage and asks the students to make two or more columns, according to the number of
topics. At the end of the writing activity students should understand the topic better through
comparison or contrast with others. The method can be applied as assessment and it requires
investigation, research.
Example of Double/Triple entry: When speaking about components of cars and
motorbikes:
Cars Motorbikes Both

Another used method in teaching writing is Journalistic Questions. This method is used
to structure the topic. It usually starts from the WH – questions: what, who, when, where, how
or how. To find more about the topic the teacher asks questions that starts with one of these
words. The number of questions is nor restricte d. The method can be applied either in an
individual task or during a group task. The teacher uses this method in in pre -writing method,
preparing the writing activity. After the students answer the questions they read the answers
trying to organize them f or the writing activity that will start then. This method is very useful
when the students prepare a project or when they are making researches on a specific topic or
maybe when they evaluate a finished paper. The mos t used questions are:
Who is or might be involved?
What will happen?
Where will the action take place?
When will the action happen?
How will it happen?
Why will it happen?
What will be the best title?
Other two good methods for getting a good writing are the game and the competition
methods. W e all noticed that students, no matter the age, like to play. A good game for teaching
writing is the word game, which uses the vocabulary that the students have. Games such as
scrabble or housie are used just to check the words the young know and to devel op the
vocabulary. Other word games can be considered the dictation through competition, anagrams
or even hangman.
No matter if a teacher choose to use only one or more methods, traditional or modern,
he or she should be sure that it is the best one and t he writing will be very good, will be

55
successful. It is advisable for teachers to use these methods during the pre -writing stage,
preparing the students for a better writing and giving them the confidence they need. Using
one of these methods during the p re-writing activities will help the students to get an organized
writing, which will be better appreciated.

4.2.Strategies in teaching writing

Writing is a complex process , it is a continuity a listening or reading . If a student can
write a few words, a sentence , this doesn’t mean he or she can really write. In fact, it is a writing,
but not a good writing. For a good writing students must be taught. In general, students prefer
to speak and not to write English, so sometimes they are better in speaking than in writing. But
for having a good English students need to know both to speak and to write in English. Having
good skills in writing is very important when they want to find a job, it is a great advantage.
Usually a student that learns a new language has problems in writing. For solving these
problems the students need the teacher to have good techniques for solving them. A student
with a writing problem is the student that doesn’t respect special rules, he or she sees the writing
just as a generation of ideas. But in learning a new language, the writing must be very very
good so that that the student must be understood from the very first moment. A good teacher is
a teacher that can transform a simple student into a strategic writer. ‘Strategic writers are those
who are able to use writing strategies in different writing situations or those who are able to
change writing strategies from theoretical part into practical one’19 Because writing is important
in learning a new language the student must see the writing also as a product and as a process.
A good teacher must know how to teach writing together with its rules, its ways of
making a conversation and the way of developing the writing skills. Writing was seen by
Calhoun and Hale in 2003 as a mental act ivity which produces and controls the writing. The
researchers showed that a student must be strategic in writing, in building paragraphs, texts.
According to El -Koumy ‘a strategy is a plan selected deliberat ely by the writer to accomplish
a particular goa l or to complete a given task.’20 In preparing a good strategy for the writing the
teacher is trying to get an independent writing, a good autonomy in the students’ writing.

19 Abdel -Hack, Iman Mohamed (2002 ). The effectiveness of a task -based learning approach on EFL students'
writing production. Occasional papers in the Language Education Center for Developing of English Language
Teaching "CDELT" , no.34, 193 -231.
20 El-Koumy, Abdel -Salam. (1991). Comparing the effectiveness of three strategies to teaching composition:
Guided, free and guided -Free. Menoufia University.

56
The teacher must always find the right strategy to change the students’ attitudes, to
change their attitude from a passive one into an active, positive one. Sometimes or in most of
the cases this is a difficult work from the teacher but it is not impossibl e. For most of the EFL
students learning to write is very difficult. My conclusion is that this process is difficult due to
lot of factors, such as the students’ lack of practice, or the limited vocabulary, or not knowing
the topic, or their negative attit ude towards the skill. Most of the teacher, while checking the
writing, tend to check rigorous the grammar or the spelling, and a lot of students are scared of
this so they do not concentrate on the topic, on the idea of the writing. The teacher often give
the students the chance to check and correct their writing or give them feedback in English. We,
the teachers, can notice that the students have a poor writing thanks to their negative attitudes
toward writing. Some students have bad opinion on them, on t heir writing thanks to the
teacher’s feedback and sometimes they consider themselves incompetent. So the teachers must
find the right, the proper strategy for each student, for each level to develop the writing skills.
When teaching students to write we, t he teachers, must find the right strategy to do this.
And this must be done taking into consideration some ingredients such as the level or the age
of the student. A good strategy is a strategy that can help the student get over his difficulties in
writing . The teacher can identify the proper strategy for teaching writing after reading the paper
of the students and finding which are the student’s difficulties in writing a good paper.
Another strat egy in teaching students to write is by showing them a sample of the
writing. I’ve tried to do apply this method in front of my classes on papers or on projectors. So,
I started a composition, for example, and while I was speaking I was writing also my thoughts.
During this I asked students to interfere and to contr ibute to my writing. But most of the times
I asked them just to copy it in their notebooks or to write their own writings which should be
similar to what I have just done. In this way I noticed that most of the students prefer to write a
new work starting from my sample or continuing it.
But there are also students that prefer to write their own composition, to express their
own ideas in their own way. Sometime these are the best compositions. From my experience I
can say that these students need assistanc e, guidance to have a better writing. This assistance is
easily given when the writing is done in pair or group working or better in individual writing.
When we have a pair or group working we can give a different theme to each pair or group. The
assistanc e is also given according to the level of the pair or group, more or less help. Even if
there is no theme for a writing, the teacher’s assistance can be asked even for the simple tasks
such as copying a text or sample, in fill -in exercises or rephrases, an d so on. The teacher should
give these assistances during all the classes to ensure that the students have a proper and correct
writing.

57
All these assistances and models must be used to lead the students towards an
independent writing. But to get to an ind ependent writing a student needs a lot of repetition, a
lot of practice and of course a good assistance and guiding. I noticed that the students remember
and have a better writing if the teaching was done in a repeatedly way, in an easy way, without
the te acher trying to suffocate him or her with a different task, a different writing each time and
every time more and more difficult. A student appreciates better a simple task and a thing that
was done many times.
From my experien ce I noticed that a teacher canno t apply the same strategy on the same
level or on the same task. The teacher must always look for proper strategy a ll the time, must
identify the right strategy for a good writing process. But in general a teacher if wants to get a
good writing must g ive the good model, then must ask the students to practice on the model and
of course asks the students to rep eat the writing till they get the best independent writing.
Still, when a student has to focus too much on the punctuation or on the grammar he or
she will forget about the idea of the writing, his or her creativity will remain behind or will be
forgotten. So a good strategy in the case when creativity is important is to asks students write
as fast they can, letting their creativity, their imaginati on flow. We must accentuate to the
students that spelling is not very important in this exercise. These are the writings that have to
develop from a given topic, or the writings that have to start from a beginning or an ending. For
these tasks students get a limit of time , let’s say 5 or 10 minutes.

Example no 1
Write your opinion about the school you learn at or about the educational system in
general.

Example no 2
Write about your relation with your family.

Example no 3
Write about your summer holiday.

In these cases students have to let their imagination come, the ideas to flow to be written
as quickly as they can. The purpose of these tasks is to have something done, written. Always
it is a good idea to let students think for a minute or two before t hey start writing. When the
time is up the students have a draft and not the final writing. The teacher should let the students
another few minutes so that they can check the spelling or the grammar. This is the revision

58
process of the writing. And then th e students can present their writings to the teacher or to the
other students.
A good strategy that I use sometimes to make the students remind a good writing is
making them to underline the model I gave to them. This is useful for the students that have a
good visual memory. For them it is a good way to remember how they can write correct a
sentence, paragraph, respecting the rule, the sample that I gave them. It is also useful for all the
students when they don’t remember a special rule or what they have to do next, and looking
back they can see it easily.
Sometimes the students inhibit themselves or get scared to write when they receive an
empty paper. This can be their nightmare. So the teacher should give the students templates to
facilitate the student s writing. So the teacher should write a question from which a student start
the work or models can be given. For an EFL student the most used templates are resumes or
CVs.

Example no 1
Starting from the text you have just read describe your friend.

Example no 2
In no more than 12 lines tell me what happened to Pilgrim the horse in the text you have
just read ‘ The horse W hisperer ’ by Nicholas Evans.

To have a good writing the student must be taught to be careful at the content of the
writing. They mu st always take into consideration to whom they address, to what kind of reader
and that the writing is not for themselves, but for a reader, for someone to read the text. Before
starting to write the student must think what a reader expects to find in his or her work, what
kind of questions the reader can address to the writer. Like when the student writes an email
inviting colleagues to a party or an event , he or she can expect the receiver to ask for more
details about the theme or about the place of the event.
Still the teacher should give the students to write about topics they know about, that are
not too difficult about, that are according to their level of knowledge. A student doesn’t have to
know to write all types of writing, just the ones they need .
For getting a good writing the students don’t use just the strategies that the teacher show
them but also their own strategies. For forming their own strategies in writing a student must
have behind a background experience in writing or a good instructi on. Sometimes the students
don’t take into consideration their experience or the instruction they receive in writing, but their

59
own competence to get a good writing. This competence could have been taken from their
Romanian writing strategies or from their day by day way of learning a new knowledge.
Asking the students what could be their strategies to get a good, a correct writing I got
different answers. Among the most used strategies for getting a good writing I noticed that the
students use synonyms, m eaning if the students don’t know the exact word they have to use in
English they try to find one that is similar in meaning to the one they need. There are students
that think about the purpose of their writing or about the person that will read it, so th ey are
more careful to the writing’s content and to what they want to express through it. There are
students that want to tell a lot of ideas through their writings, but not knowing how to express
them they simplify what they want to write in order to get a better writing. When students want
to be sure they have a good writing with connected ideas, paragraphs, they stop after each
paragraph to re -read it and to check if they are well expre ssed and maybe to find new ideas .
If the s trategies mentioned above c an be indicated by a teache r, For example, t here are
also strategies that students use without taking into consideration the teacher’s instruction or
strategy. There are students that, in their wish to get a correct writing, they use the native
language – Romanian – to solve the task and then have it translated literally into English. In fact,
we can consider that using Romanian in an EFL writing could start from ‘the idea of abandoning
the native tongue is too stressful to many learners, who need a sense of security in the
experience of learning a foreign language”21
Therefore, students should form their proper writing strategies in order to make them
more secure on what they are writing. But in most of the cases they do not. This can be thanks
to their lack of certitude on what they know or write. But students should be all the time aware
of how useful the use of their native language can be in learning how to write correct. Me, as a
teacher, I have tried in many cases to make the students use English instead of their native
language. But i n many cases I failed. Even if I give the instructions in English in many cases I
get answer S in Romanian, and then give it in English. So, many students have developed the
strategy to answer or to write first in their nativ e language and then in English.
Some students are applying the strategy to re -read what they have already written and
then not to be happy with what they have. So, they start from the beginning, changing their
initial ideas and writing new ideas, differe nt ideas this time. Or, there are students that prefer
from the beginning to write more than one draft, and just after they are sure or they like what
they have written they hand the final paper. But, there are students that prefer not to read what
they ha ve written and to give the papers as they are, without checking them. These students are

21 Galina, K. (2009 ). Role of moth er tongue in learning English for specific purposes . ESP World , 8(1-2),

60
sure on what they have written or they are not very sure but do not want to change the initial
ideas. So, they hand the papers as they are.
We can say that the writing strategy is connected with the ‘writers’ purposeful
interaction with print, with fellow readers and writers, and with literate communities of
practice’22 Still the teacher should be the one that can help the students develop their writing
skills. The teacher should know what is the best strategy for doing this according to the students’
needs. Also, the students must know how to develop and use their own s trategies. By using
different strategies the EFL writings become complex and dynamic. There should always be a
connection between the teacher’s strategies and the student’s strategies.

22 Ferris, D., & Hedgcock, J. (2005). Teaching ESL composition . New York, NY: Taylor & Francis Group.

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CONCLUSIONS

Writing is one of the most important skills students learn in school. But it is also one of
the most important characteristics of human being. Everywhere we look , everywhere we go we
see writing s: on advertisements, on shops, on cars, on paper or not, on the phone or on
television, on the internet. When we want to communicate with someone long distance, we use
the phone or we write a letter or a message. If in the past people used to write on paper a lot,
nowadays this method is used not so often. Now we use modern technology to comm unicate
and to send messages.
In the class , for my students writing has another meaning: i t is used to put new words
on paper, to put down sentences and latter to link them, to develop the skill of making poems
and essays. My students use w riting in clas s to put down or let’s say to transfer the knowledge,
the new information, the language activities or the thoughts on paper. I think that t eaching
writing means the ability of a teacher to guide and to develop the skill of the students to put
down nice com position, their thoughts or their opinion.
To get a good writing I tried to make t he students and me, why not, respect the stages
of a wr iting activity: the pre -writing , the process of writing and the post -writing activities ; or
like critics like to divid e: pre-writing, drafting, revising or editing. I noticed that p re-writing
activities are very useful to prepare the students for what they are going to do next during the
class. This is the stage that helps students gather information on a specific topic. Activities that
can be done during this stage are free -writing or brainstorming or journalism or investigation
or image streaming or lists or clustering. At the drafting stage of the lesson I ask students to
develop their ideas sta rting from the informatio n they have just collected. This stage can be
done under my surveillance , the teacher , or alone. But at the revising stage they have been
assisted by me or by other students. Grammar problems or punctuation or spelling are watched
careful and corrected.
The strategies that I use to teach writing differ from class to class, from student to
student, from level to level. Of course every learner will make mistakes; it is useful f or some of
the students to learn from their mistakes. When a student makes mistak es I try not to accentuate
the mistakes because the students might get afraid to write and will not progress.
Good writing does not just happen. It is a process that lasts years and that needs patience.
Good strategies are needed for a good learning and c onfidence in what they are doing. Good
strategies will help students develop correct the skills and will help them later in life.

62
To get a good writing I have to apply the proper strategy, different each time. As I
showed a good strategy cannot be taught just after reading a book. To apply a correct strategy
means a lot of work to know when to use it. To get a good writing we must trust the students’
capacity in writing. We, the teachers must have patience till the student will be able to write
freely wit hout any help. To get a good writing we, the teacher must identify first the proper
strategy, them give a good model, sample to the students, then help them write without any
guidance and repeat the writing till we get an independent work, writing. The tea cher chooses
the strategy according to what he or she wants to get from the student’s writing.
Having patience and applying the right strategy we can get a student that gets over his
or hers difficulties in writing, over his or her fears, becoming strong er. Giving a sample of
writing helps a lot the student to have confidence and try to write a similar task. Repeating
writing after a model will get later an independent good writing. We must teach students to
write without our help or with a little help fr om other colleagues. It is useful to teach a student
write in different forms, being individual, or pair work or group work. The teacher’s assistance
is useful to check if the student understood the task and how to apply it. We see that a student
can get a good independent writing we can say that our work as teachers was done.
During my research I tried to describe which are the most important types of writing or
which are the steps for teaching writing. I also tried to identify the most used methods,
traditional or modern , and which are the most adequate strategies in teaching writing. I also
gave some examples of writing.
For a good writing repetition is very important and patience. Organization of ideas is
also important. But a writing is not ready if it is not checked and corrected. To get a good
writing and to be sure that the strategy was good the teacher should connect the writing to the
student’s real life, experience.
We can say that teaching writing is a complex, but simple process. It depends o n the
teacher’s ability to do it, to involve the students in it and of course the ability to transform
teaching into a little game that students cannot notice. But, teaching writing cannot be done
without teaching reading or teaching speaking.
We can conc lude that there are many ways of writing but also many ways for teaching
writing, just like the researchers Perl and Wilson said in 1996.

63
REFERENCES

Allen, V.F. (1983), Techniques in Teaching Vocabulary . Oxford: Oxford University Press
Balan Rada & co. (2003 ), In-Service Distance Training Course for Teachers of English ,
Polirom
Baker Joanna and Westrup Heather, The English Language Teacher’s Handbook , Creative
Print, 2000
Bello, T. (1997), Improving ESL Learners' Writing Skills . ERIC Digest. ERIC I dentifier:
ED409746
Benson, P. (2001). Teaching and Researching Autonomy in Language Learning . Harlow:
Longman/Pearson Education
Broughton Geoffrey – Teaching English as Foreign Language , Routledge, 19993
Byrne,D. Teaching Writing Skills
Carter James –Creating Writers, Routledge Press, 2006
Cremin, Teresa, (2009), Teaching English Creatively, New York, Routledge
Cushing Sara – Assessing Writing , Cambridge, 2002
Dean Curry – Kaleidoscope – EFL Activities in speaking and writing , Materials Branch, 1994
Davis Jonson – Effective Academic Writing , Oxford University Press, 2006
Forsman D – Writing to learn means learning to think
Hadfield, Jill and Charles, (2008), Introduction to Teaching English , Oxford, Oxford University
Press
Harmer, J., The Practice of Eng lish Language Teaching , 1998
Hedge, T. (1988). Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hughes, Glyn S. (2003), A Handbook of Classroom English , Oxford University Press
I.S.P. Nation – Teaching ESL and EFL Reading and writing , 2009
Jozsef, Horvath (2001) Advanced Writing In English as a Foreign Language , Agora Nyomda,
Pecs
Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Centre. (2004). Priority: Literacy – Best practices in
teaching writing. Accessed March 4, 2008 from
Monagham,Connie ( 2007) The effective Strategies in Teaching Writing
Pogrow Stanley – Teaching Content Outrageously. How to captivate all students and accelerate
learning, 2008
Raimes, A. (1983) Techniques in Teaching Writing, OUP

64
Rao Z. (2007) Training in Brainstorming and Developing Writing Skills, in ELT Journal 2007,
Oxford University Press
Vizental, Adriana (2003), Strategies of Teaching and Testing English as a Foreign Language,
ed Polirom
Zemach Dorothy – Academic Writing, from paragraph to writing , Macmillan Press, 2010
www.coerll.utexas.edu/meth ods, Foreign Language Teaching Methods
https://busyteacher.org/

65

APPENDIX
LESSON PLAN
Date:
Teacher: Lipovanu Roxana
School: Scoala Gimnaziala Valea Seaca – Structura Contesti
Grade: 3rd- L1
Level: beginners
Number of hours per week: 2
Number of pupils: 25
Textbook : Fairyland 3B, Express Publishing
Type of lesson: Vocabulary and grammar
Topic: My new clothes
Function: new vocabulary and present continuous
Methods: conversation, explanation, dialogue, exercise,
Skills: list ening, speaking, writing, reading
Class management: individual work, pair work, whole class
Time: 50 minutes
Aims of lesson:
– To talk about clothes
– To remember verb To Be
– To describe actions happening now

Materials:
– Textbooks and notebooks
– Computer, CD and projector
– worksheet
Interaction:
– Teacher -whole class, Teacher – Student, Student – Student, Student -Teacher

Vocabulary:
– Clothes

66

Stages of the lesson
1. Warm -up: Time: 2’
Activity: Greetings, introductory conversation
Setting the right atmosphere
Interaction: T→Ss, frontal

2. Revision of the previous learned vocabulary Time: 6’
Activity: The T cheeks homework . Then Ss are asked to tell things they can do or can’t.
Interaction: T↔Ss; Ss –T

3. Introduction o f the new topic Time: 8’
Activity: The T writes the title on the board, then asks the Ss to identify the clothes
from the book and to write them in their notebooks.
Interaction: T↔Ss

4. Practice: Time: 10′
Activity: The T asks the Ss to liste n to the tape and to follow the text. The T asks Ss to
read the lesson and to take the unknown words from text. Then the T asks the Ss to
watch the video of the lesson
Interaction: T↔Ps,

5. New grammar Time: 15′
Activity: The T asks the Ss when the a ctions from the text are happening. Ss respond.
The T writes on the board a sentence or two from the text and explains what tense it is
and when it is used, then how it is formed. Ss are asked to remember the verb To Be –
affirmative and negative. The T men tions that this tense is happening now, today, at the
moment of speaking. The T also explains the short forms of this tense. Ss are asked to
read the examples in the grammar box.
Interaction: T↔Ss; Ss –T

6. Consolidation Time: 7’
Activity: The T gives the Ss a worksheet on Present Continuous. Ss solve the tasks.
Interaction: T↔Ss; Ss –T

67
7. Homework assignment and assessment Time: 2′
Activity: The T gives pupils homework exercise 3/pg 21. The T marks the most active
students.
Interaction: T→Ss, frontal

68
LESSON PLAN

Teacher: Lipovanu Roxana
Date:
School : Valea Seaca
Form: 7th
Level: pre- intermediate
Textbook : Snapshot
Lesson topic unit 2 – Over three hours late
Vocabulary: words related to informal letters
Grammar: past- revision
Type of lesson : teaching new items
Skills: speaking, reading, writing
Objectives:
A)Cognitive: -to use past simple properly, according to grammatical rules;
– to use adequate linkers in order to join events;
– to distinguish a formal letter from an informal one;
– to write informal letters
B) Affective – to create a warm, friendly atm osphere in order to offer the background for easy
conversation between teacher and students;
– to make students confident in themselves when speaking a foreign language;
Interaction: – T-Ss, Ss -T; IW; PW; GW
Teaching techniques: con versation, dialogue, exercises , observation
Methods of teaching: communicative approach
Teaching aids: blackboard, coloured chalk, handouts
Time: 50 minutes
Assumptions: – the students know past tense simple;
-the students remember th e linkers first of all, then, etc

69
Stages of the lesson

Lesson
stage Teacher’s
activity
Students’
activity
Inter –

action
Skills
Evaluati
on
1 Cheking
Attendance
2 min -T.checks attendance -Ss answer T- Ss speaking

2 Warm up
1 min T asks the Ss how
they are, etc -Ss answer T-Ss speaking
3. Checking
homework
4min T checks their
homework and help
them correct the
mistakes Ss correct the
mistakes if
necessary T- Ss
Ss- T speaking
4 Checking
previous
knowledge
3 min Teacher asks Ss to
give examples of
sentences in the past
tense( S1 gives an
ex. of an affirmative
sentence, S2 asks a
question) -Ss do
accordingly T- Ss
PW speaking Oral
evaluatio
n
5. Announcing
objectives

1 min T will tell the Ss that
they will learn how
to write an informal
letter; short dialogue
on letters( T asks Ss
if they like writing
letters or receiving
letters) Ss listen to the
T T- Ss speaking
6 Introducing
of the new
material

3min

5min

10 min T tells Ss to open
their books ( page
17) and asks Ss to
select the items
specific to formal/
informal letters

T gives Ss handouts
with informal letters
; the sentences are
jumbled ; T explains
Ss to arrange them
correctly( in the
logical order)

T gives Ss other
handouts and
explains Ss they
have to fill in the
blanks with the
appropriate words ; -Ss write two
lists ( formal
letters/
informal
letters)

Ss do as
required;

Ss read the
letter and fill
in with words
related to
informal
letters; T-Ss
IW

Ss- T

T- Ss
PW

T- Ss
GW writing

speaking

reading
writing

writing

Verbal
appreciat
ion

–
systemati
c

observati
on

–
systemati
c
observati
on

70
7 Acquiring
performanc
e

11 min T divides the class
into two groups
.
Both have to write a
short informal letter
using the appropriate
structures and also
linking words( first,
then, before that..).

Situation1 -(
team A)You
are Romanian
students, last
year you
visited a school
in London.You
made friends
there. Write to
them saying
how much you
enjoyed it.

Situation 2(
team B)
You are
English
students.Last
year, a group of
Romanian
students visited
your
school,you
made friends
then. Write a
reply to their
letter. T- Ss

GW writing oral
evaluatio
n

–
systemati
c

observati
on
8.
Feed – back

6 min

– T asks Ss to give a
few examples of
structures used in
informal letters – Ss give a few
examples; Ts- Ss speaking -verbal
appreciat
ion

9. Transfer –
homework
4 min -T asks Ss to have a
look on the internet
in order to find funny
informal letters and
to select the best one. Ss write their
task; T- Ss
Ss- T speaking

71

LESSON PLAN

Name : Lipovanu Roxana
Date:
School : Contesti
Class : 8th
Level : Upper Intermediate
Textbook : High Flyer, Longman
Unit 14, Lesson : Just the job
Number of Ss : 17
Lesson Aims :
• to create interest in the topic of the lesson
• to listen and match the conversations with the jobs
• to read a text and write notes in the chart
• to read a text and write a short paragraph about a person
Materials : coursebook, board, flip chart, notebooks, casse tte recorder

Stages of the lesson:

Activity 1, Warm up
Aim: to create interest in the topic of the lesson
Procedure:
T divides the class into two teams: A and B. Ss have two minutes to write down as many
occupations as they can think of. Then, T aks a representative of each group to come to the
board and write down as many occupations as possible in three minutes. T corrects the lists
with the help of the class, ticking each correct occupation. T counts up the number of points
for each team and congratu lates the winners.
T tells SS to look at page 58 of the unit 3 and asks them which of these jobs they would
like to do the most. T aks Ss to number them in order of preference. T tells Ss. to think for a
moment about the reasons for their order. Then, T asks a few Ss to tell the class about their
preferences.
Interaction: T -C, S-S
Timing: 5 min.

72
Activity 2
Aim: to listen and match the conversations with the jobs
Procedure: Pre -listening
Before Ss look at the information in the skills box, T asks them what they do when they join
a group of friends who are already chatting. They don’t know what their friends are talking
about. T asks them if they interrupt and simply ask what the topic of the conversation is. T lets
Ss discuss this in pairs for a short while before conducting whole -class feedback. T listens to
them, comments on Ss’s suggestions and elicits or leads them to the two suggestions in the
box: try to guess the topic from key words; try to deduce what was said before.
While -listening: T tells Ss they are going to put the listening skills into practice. They are
going to listen to extracts from six conversations which they have to match with the jobs in
exercise 1. T elicits some key words which might suggest which occupation is being talked
about in each case.
Post-listening: T plays the tape and takes feedback. T asks Ss to tell him/her the words which
gave them the answers. Then, T tells Ss to listen again and asks them how they think the
conversation started. For each one, Ss write one or two questions that the people were probably
asked first. T plays each conversation and pauses for SS to write down the questions. T takes
feedback accepting a variet y of answers as long as they match the beginning of the
conversation.
Interaction: T -C, S-S
Timing: 10 min.

Activity 3
Aim: to read a text and write notes in the chart
Pre-reading: T asks Ss what the boy in the photograph does. T writes Modelling on the flip
chart as well as the three subheadings in the chart. T asks Ss what it is like to be a model. T
writes down key words fo r their suggestions.
While -reading: T tells Ss to read the article and correct and add to the answers on the flip chart
according to the text.
Post-reading: T tells Ss to read the summary of the text. T tells them that there are six pieces
of information which are wrong. T explains them that correcting the mistakes might not simply
be a matter of changing a few words, but rewriting the whole sentences.
Interaction: T -C, S-S, S-T
Timing: 15 min.

73
Activity 4
Aim: to read a text and write a short paragraph about a person
Pre-reading: T tells Ss that they are detectives. T aks them to look at the picture of the tomb
and guess about the person’s life. If Ss don’t appear to have very many ideas, T puts them in
pairs.
While -reading: When Ss start to run out of ideas, T tells them to read the text and check their
guesses in ex. 9.
Post-reading: T takes feedback. A few Ss give one of their deductions. T asks them which line
in the text confirmed or rejected their deduction. For each fact about the person’s life T elicits
how Matthew knows this to be true (e.g. rich -jewels). If necessary, T clarifies the new words
when she gives feedback. T tells Ss to look at the pictu re in the text and label the numbered
parts with words form the text.
T asks SS to work in pairs and write a short paragraph about the person in the tomb.
Meanwhile, T circulates quickly, pointing to any mistakes she finds or congratulating Ss on
correct p aragraphs. When Ss appear to have finished, T stops the activity and nominates a few
pairs to read their paragraphs.
Interaction: T -C, S-S, S-T
Timing: 20 min.

Homework: T tells Ss to write a story which must end with the words: ”They decided to be
more careful next time.” Write your story (120 -180 words).

74

WOORKSHEET 1 Grade 7th

Informal letters

Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words in order to complete the letter.

343 Flower Street, London
_______________________
_________ Andi,

Thanks for the present s, I love them!
I think you ________on holiday , too. I hope you had a good ________in Romania.
We _________ there last year, it was fantastic!First, we_________Peles Castle, which
impressed me so much!_____________we went to the s easide but the weather was quite bad,
so we had to go to a different place. ________ we chose a nice village in Transylvania, it was
so very different from our villages, we really enjoyed it!
We had traditional food which was very tasty! ___________ we vi sited Bucharest which was
very crowded at that time. But , there were some nice places, too.We ____________dinner in
a nice Italian restaurant, I had a delicious pizza there!
Well, that is all for now.
___________________
______________ _____, Jenny
–

75
WORKSHEET 2
The sentences in the letter below are all jumbled. Arrange them in the logical order and
rewrite the letter.

Write soon, Rebeca
On Friday I’ ll go shopping. It’ll be a short holiday , but I’m sure it’s going to be very nice
. The town is great and the people are very friendly. I know that on Thursday I’ll see the
best animated film – Pocahontas( I have the tickets). I’ m having a s ix day holiday in London.
On Wednesday I’ll see some museums. Tomorrow is Monday and I’ll see the Changing of
Guard at Buckingham Palace. My holiday will finish on Saturday when I’ll kiss my friends
good bye and I’ll come to Romania. The day after tomorrow I’ll go to the Tower of London.
Dear Jane,
Bye!

Dear Jane,

I’m having a six day holiday in London.
________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________ ____________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
____________________________ ____________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________ ____

76

77

The tree with wishes

Writing cards

78

PROJECTS on a chosen country

79

Find the message

Other projects

80

Find the words

Take out from the text the unknown words

Some Phrasal verbs

81

Begginers’ vocabulary

82

Poems

Saint Patrick’s Day activities

83

Students on work

84
Topic: What is school for you?
Student Alupei Costina
Teacher: Ungureanu Roxana

My opinion about school.
"School" is a simple word with so many meanings. A n 8 year old child would say that
school is the place where you learn how to read and write, a 10 year old would say that school
is the place you learn about everything, and me, a 14 year old girl, say that school is not an
actual place, is a second home, with a second family.
For me, school is the basis of our own person, is the way you find ourselves, and the
way we become who we really are. A nd, the most important thing you learn in school is not
about numb ers and letters, is about how you learn to face your life with the problems you will
get it.
In the middle school, I consider that this place is where you learn so many incredible
things, I was captured by the lessons in the literature class, a bout the things nature is capable
of, about the numbers and how to play with them.
Now, I am in Eighth Grade, I am a year apart from highschool, which is absolutly
terrifying for me; just think about it: new people, new teacher s, new school, everythi ng is new
for everyone, so I'm trying to enjoy the time I have le ft with my classmates because, honestly,
my classmates are my family. Not my friends, not my second family, but my family. The've
been in my life for so long that I could not be more grateful for them, and I don’t really know
how I am gonna get through the emotionally pain when I will see that everyone will take a
different path from the one I know . The fact that I won't see them around everyday, I won't hear
the laugh ts, I won't hug them with all my love and happiness makes my heart cry with
nonexistent tears, but that's okay, I will cry for that.

85
School taught me about people and how to choose them carefully, because not everyone
with a big smile on the face has a big heart full of kindness. Your friends are showing you who
you are, and I'm happy to say that my friends are some very smart, kind and beautiful people,
who helped me through my hard times. Everyone has bad days, important is to know how to
get over them because they won't stay right over your shoulder for the rest of your life, of
course, if you don't let them.
When you got the paper with your school program, they show you when you have
math, science or sports, but never a heartbreak, a new friendship or a lesson itself. Why? This
things I'm pretty sure that I experienced in school, so if they were going to show me in time, I
think I could be prepared for them. But they didn't, and I wasn't ready for them, so I felt like I
was hit by a truck of emotions when things happened.
However, I never get over a da y without a lesson that I learn , in class or in my friends ’
group. S o, now I see that everyday school has t aught another unique thing, so now I know what
is school for: to find oursel ves and who we really are.
Now, I am just preparing for the future, a mysterious, unknown, scary future, and I'm
pretty sure that school prepared me for what is next, and I am ready!

86
Writing Skills Questionnaire
Taken from Yamika Valley College

Attitudes toward Writing Yes Sometimes No
Do you enjoy writing? _____ _____ _____
In general do you trust yourself as a person who
can find good words and ideas and perceptions? _____ _____ _____
Do you think of yourself as a writer? _____ _____ _____

Generating Ideas

On a topic of interest to you, can you generate lots
of ideas and words fairly quickly and freely —not be stuck? _____ _____ ____ _
On a topic that doesn’t much interest you (perhaps
an assigned topic), can you generate lots of ideas and words
fairly quickly and freely —not be stuck? _____ _____ _____
Can you come up with ideas or insights you’d not
thought of before ? _____ _____ _____

Revising

Can you revise in the sense of “resee” —to rethink
and change your mind about major things you have said? _____ _____ _____
Can you find a main point in a mess of your
disorganized writing? _____ _____ _____
Can you find a new shape in a piece of your writing
which you had previously organized? _____ _____ _____
Can you find problems in your reasoning or logic and
straighten them out? _____ _____ _____
Can you w rite your sentences so they are clear to
readers on first reading? _____ _____ _____
Can you make your sentences lively?
Can you give them a human voice? _____ _____ _____
Can you adjust something you’ve written to fit the
needs of p articular readers? _____ _____ _____

Editing

Can you get rid of most mistakes in grammar,
spelling, punctuation, and so on, so readers would not be
put off? _____ _____ _____
Can you get rid of virtually all such mistakes? _____ _____ _____

The Writing Centers at YVC * Grandview L101 * Yakima G125 * www.yvcc.edu/owl