Writing skills
We asked publishers to send us sample books that they have published in the past 12 months that are aimed at helping students develop their writing skills. These are our first impressions of the books we received.
It's
always nice to discover a new publishing company at "First Impressions".
Helbling Languages describe themselves as "the new publishing house
with great ideas and excellent materials". Their new title, Creative
Writing, is due to be published in January 2007 and is part of
their Resourceful Teacher series.
The book contains more than 80 ready-to-teach lessons for beginner- to advanced-level students. It is divided into sections that include "Getting Going", "Writing from Your Partner's Content", "Group Writing", "Writing in Role" and "Intrapersonal Writing".
Unlike the other books reviewed in this issue, Creative Writing is all about encouraging students to express themselves rather than looking at the nuts and bolts of how to write. The book is full of ideas designed to inspire your students and give them a reason to write. It is up to you, the teacher, to feed in specific language work.
A lot of the writing activities take place during class time in spite of the fact that, according to the authors, some teachers feel uneasy doing writing in class because they feel they are getting students to do what they could be doing at home. The authors argue that good teaching is taking place when students are fully occupied processing the target language and calling on the teacher when they need help.
Many
of the suggested activities are great fun, although some include instructions
that may feel a bit too offbeat for some teachers: "When you have
found your partner, sit down with him/her in silence for 30 seconds.
Then go back to your own seat and write not more than one page about
how your partner was when he/she was a young child." However, the
activities can be easily adapted for more traditional classes.
Initially we were sent a proof copy of the book that didn't include the cover pages crediting the authors. However, it wasn't long before we identified the style of our old friend Mario Rinvolucri, who wrote the book together with Christine Frank, a teacher and teacher trainer based in Germany.
We all agreed with Mario and Christine when they wrote, "A firm principle behind this book is that the writer must always have a reader - and, moreover, a reader who is interested in content, not just form." But we weren't so sure we agreed with them when they went on to say, "We feel that, especially for younger people, there should be as short a gap as possible between the act of writing and its being read. When writing is set as homework, there can be a two- or three-day gap between the writing and the reading, and this, in many cases, greatly detracts from the writing experience - when you cook a soufflé, people need to eat it straight out of the oven!"
We accept that we live in a world of instant messaging and emails that are answered almost instantaneously, but what about the traditional letter? Sometimes the expectation of receiving a response can be increased when there is a space of time between the writing and the response.
Creative
Writing is a book for teachers and a useful resource for any staff
room. The next two books we looked at were designed to be used by students
as course books. Writing in Paragraphs and Academic
Writing are two new titles from Macmillan. Writing in Paragraphs,
by Dorothy Zemach and Carlos Islam, takes pre-intermediate students
from sentence formation to paragraph writing through a process approach.
The book points out that writing is hard to master in both a first language and a second language. The aim of the book is to help students analyse model paragraphs and then start to find ideas, put those ideas into sentences, and organise those sentences into paragraphs. According to the publisher, this not only develops students' paragraph-writing skills but also encourages them to become independent and creative writers.
Writing
in Paragraphs leads on to Academic Writing, by Dorothy Zemach
and Lisa Rumisek. This course takes intermediate-level students from
paragraph structuring to essay writing, again through a process approach.
It teaches learners how to order and link paragraphs into cohesive and
coherent essays, and how to create the various paragraph types that
are used in writing assignments. Academic Writing includes work
on how to generate ideas, organise material, and draft, review and revise
written work. The back of each book contains peer review forms and a
grammar reference section.
We liked both of these books very much. They're both methodical in their approach, and all the tasks are well staged. They include work on brainstorming and writing around the topic which can help students generate ideas for their writing and make the writing lessons more communicative.
Both books exist in British English and American English editions. Like many of the books we looked at, they seem most suited to students (and teachers) who are studying (or going to study) a particular subject that requires them to be able to write well in English.
Garnet
Education has an interesting series of books out called Skills
in English, by Terry Phillips. A four-level, skills-based course
designed to prepare students for studies in English at higher education,
Skills in English introduces the skills needed to understand
talks and lectures in English. The publisher says it's ideal for students
preparing for skills-based examinations such as IELTS.
Each of the four skills has its own book at each level of the course. This means that you can focus on one particular skill, such as writing, or use all four skills books together to create a complete course. The unit themes are shared across the four books so that you can move from one book to another and not lose focus of the common unit theme.
It's an interesting idea, which is probably why it was "Highly Commended" in the Duke of Edinburgh's English-Speaking Union English Language Award. However, there is so much packed into each book that it's hard to imagine how anyone could get through all four books on a course.
We focused on the writing books that have a very clear structure. Each unit consists of four lessons: vocabulary; writing; checking skills / learning new skills; applying skills.
The pages are quite dense and the rubrics and layout are sometimes confusing. However, it is very thorough, the exercises are multi-layered and cognitively-engaging, and the texts are interesting. The methodology feels modern, and we liked the fact that the Book Map includes an input text type as well as an output text type - a nice idea.
The publisher says that Skills in English is not designed for use by one specific institution or country. However, it does feel as if it was originally written for a Middle Eastern market, and there are some texts that teachers in some other parts of the world might find rather surprising. One text from a parenting magazine, for example, looks at role models and includes the following passage: "Teach your teenager to admire good role models, for example, religious leaders. If she admires bad role models, like rock stars, she may copy their behaviour."
As often seems to be the case with "First Impressions", the books we looked at cater for a wide range of teaching situations in different countries. We hope that one of these books will be relevant for your situation if writing is an area you want to develop with your students.
You will find links to publishers mentioned in this article below.