WRITING PROCESS

• Writing As a Product
  This model sees writing as static, as an object that can be broken down and analyzed. Anyone who thinks deeply about writing does this almost automatically, and it helps us understand and deal with the complex interrelationships of a text. BUT the danger is that we will try to advise students about every aspect of a text all at once, and less important aspects of a piece of writing may assume more importance than more critical elements. Also, the student will be overwhelmed with all the bits and pieces he/she must address. Finally, it ignores the fact that the reader's impression of a piece of writing is of the WHOLE text, not just selected elements.

• Writing as a Process
  This model views writing as ongoing, either in a linear progression or in a circular (recursive) fashion. There are several altlernatives:

-          The stage-model theory. This viewpoints sees the writing process as a series of distinct, ssequential steps: planning, prewriting, drafting, revising. It does not view the writing process as something that circles back on itself--that is, that one revises as one drafts, or that you have to stop in the middle of drafting and rethink your plan. It's a good model for structuring writing assignments and tutorials at the Writing Center (in other words, it fits into the constraints of time that institutions force on us), but it may not be an accurate reflection of what happens when people write.

-          The recursive-cognitive process model. Based on the work of Emig, Flowers, Hayes, Britton, and others, this model argues that the writing process is recursive (stages are constantly re-visited) and that it is rooted in the psychological environment of the writer, as well as the communication situation at hand. While adopting the basic tripartite structure of the stage-model theory (planning, translating [drafting], reviewing [revising]), this model places that structure in the context of the rhetorical situation and the memory and thinking patterns of the writer. How does this impact tutoring? First, while we generally tackle invention, global revision, and local revision in that order, we may have to backtrack (or look forward) to other stages during a tutorial. Second, we should question the client about the "environment" of the assignment: previous assignments, what was discussed in class, the expectations of the teacher, etc. Third, we need to plumb/query the student's recollection and organization of knowledge about the topic, and try to get him/her to see where and how to use those memories and ideas in the text.

-          The conversation or social constructionist model. This model argues that a writer is actually tapping into a whole social context when he/she writes--that he/she is responding to a multitude of voices and other texts when she/he writes. In other words, writing is part of a wider dialogue. A piece of writing then is constructed socially, as part of social communication. This has less immediate apparent implications for tutoring, but it does have a few implications. First, we need to look at a student's paper as part of scholarly commentary on a particular topic. This means understanding, if only broadly, some of themajor issues and writers on that topic is essential to a successful paper. If content/authority is thin, the paper will not succeed. Second, again, papers need to be seen within the social and intellectual context of the class in which they were assigned--the topic of the class, the sequence of writing assignments, the instructions and expectations of the instructor, etc. Third, the writer's task is difficult, because he/she has to find his/her own voice but still synthesize many others.

Source:

http://sun.iwu.edu/~writcent/writing_processes.htm

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING

Many beginners shy away from creating language, preferring instead to concentrate on listening and reading, those aspects which are centred on understanding other people's language. But writing and speaking help everyone to get better at the language and understanding how it works. Not until you have put the skills into practice in writing and speaking yourself can you truly appreciate how the language works.

Speaking

Making your first foray into speaking a foreign language and holding a full conversation with a fluent or native speaker are two very different things. But there is only one way to get from one to the other and that is to practice. Speaking will be most people's first proper chance to create language of their own - whether they are babies learning their first language or adults learning a brand new foreign language. It is speaking which paves the way for you to create more language in the form of writing. Speaking allows you to make mistakes which writing does not. In speaking, no one will know if you do not know how to spell a word or if you confuse two similar sounding words. These problems need to be ironed out when writing but at least you will have had practice in creating your own language by that time.

Writing

Putting pen to paper forces you to iron out the grammatical and spelling mistakes which may have gone unnoticed when speaking. And of course, writing also gives you chance to check and check again before anyone reads it - a luxury not available with speaking. It means you can re read what you have written and pick up on any mistakes. You can ask others to check it for you before it reaches its final destination. But this process of checking and double checking will also make your speaking improve because you will be able to visualise the words as you are saying them and see where they would go if you were writing it down.

Creating your own language is exciting and fun - and is the one surefire way of making sure that you are making progress in the language of your choice. Speaking the language is one of the best ways of improving your language skills, as when you have a conversation with people they will correct you if you are wrong and also speak back to you in language that you can pick up and re-use yourself. Writing ensures you can make sure your language is correct before moving on.

Of course, the two facets must be paired with reading and listening to gain a full appreciation and skill in the language you have chosen. Only when all four aspects are worked at will you become fluent in the language. But the more you practise one the more the others improve. With regards to the close relationship between writing and speaking this counts double. One will help the other to improve, pulling up your overall standard.

Source:
http://www.languagetutoring.co.uk/writing-and-speaking-the-relationship.html

ASSESSING WRITING

What does mean to assess writing?

Assessment is the gathering of information about student learning. It can be used for formative purposes−−to adjust instruction−−or summative purposes: to render a judgment about the quality of student work. It is a key instructional activity, and teachers engage in it every day in a variety of informal and formal ways.

Assessment of student writing is a process. Assessment of student writing and performance in the class should occur at many different stages throughout the course and could come in many different forms. At various points in the assessment process, teachers usually take on different roles such as motivator, collaborator, critic, evaluator, etc., (see Brooke Horvath for more on these roles) and give different types of response.

One of the major purposes of writing assessment is to provide feedback to students. We know that feedback is crucial to writing development. The 2004 Harvard Study of Writing concluded, "Feedback emerged as the hero and the anti-hero of our study−powerful enough to convince students that they could or couldn't do the work in a given field, to push them toward or away from selecting their majors, and contributed, more than any other single factor, to students' sense of academic belonging or alienation".

 Source:
http://www.unl.edu/writing/assessing-student-writing

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: RESPONSIVE AND EXTENSIVE WRITING

Paraphrasing

The initial step in teaching paraphrasing is to ensure that learners understand the importance of paraphrasing: to say something in ones own words, to avoid plagiarizing, to offer some variety in expression. With those possible motivations and purposes in mind, the test designer needs to elicit a paraphrase of a sentence or paragraph, usually not more.

Guided Question and Answer

Another lower-order task in this type of writing, which has the pedagogical benefit of guiding a learner without dictating the form of the output, is a guided question-and-answer form at in which the test administrator poses a series of questions that essentially serve as an outline of the emergent written text. In the writing of a narrative that the teacher has already covered in a class discussion, the following kind* of questions might be posed to stimulate a sequence of sentences.

Guided Questions

1. Where did this story take place? (setting)

2. Who were the people in the story? [characters]

3. What happened first? And then? And then? [sequence of events!

4. Why did__________________do__________________? (reasons, causes]

5. What did__________________think about__________________?

7. [opinion]

8. What happened at the end? [climax]

9. What is the moral of this story? [evaluation]

Paragraph Construction Tasks

The participation of reading performance is inevitable in writing effective paragraphs. To a great extent, writing is the art of emulating what one reads. You read an effective paragraph; you analyze the ingredients of its success; you emulate it. Assessment of paragraph development takes on a number of different forms:

1.        Topic sentence writing.

Assessment there of consists of

·                      # specifying the writing of a topic sentence,

·                     #scoring points for its presence or absence, and

·                     #scoring and/or commenting on its effectiveness in stating the topic.

2. Topic development within a paragraph.

Because paragraphs are intended to provide a reader with "clusters" of meaningful, connected thoughts or ideas, another stage of assessment is development of an idea within a paragraph. Four criteria are commonly applied to assess the quality of a paragraph:

·                  #the clarity of expression of ideas

·                  #the logic of the sequence and connections

·                  # the cohesiveness or unity of the paragraph

·                 #the overall effectiveness or impact of the paragraph as a whole.

3. Development of main and supporting ideas across paragraphs.

As writers string two or more paragraphs to gether in a longer text (and as we move up the continuum from responsive to extensive writing), the writer attempts to articulate a thesis or main idea with clearly stated supporting ideas. These elements can be considered in evaluating a multi-paragraph essay:

·                  addressing the topic, main idea, or principal purpose

·                -addressing the topic, main idea, or principal purpose 

·                -organizing and developing supporting ideas

·                -using appropriate details to undergird supporting ideas

·                -showing facility and fluency in the use of language

·                 -demonstrating syntactic variety.

 

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