WRITING SKILLS 

According to Hornby (2005), writing means “to make letters or numbers on a surface, especially using a pen or a pencil.” Richards & Renandya (2002) mention that writing is the most difficult skill for L2 learners, since they need to generate ideas, organize them and translate these ideas into readable text which can be very difficult for students. Spellings are one of the reasons that English learners find writing difficult. Spelling learning is difficult for students of English as the correspondence between the sound of a word and the way it is spelt is not always obvious. A single sound may have many different spellings and the same spelling may have many different sounds. Other challenges faced by English learners include coherence and cohesion of thought, logical development of an idea and Punctuation which are essential in writing.

There are many types of writing activities like Essay writing, Report writing, Letter or CV writing etc, that you will practice in your other classes of ENG-102. In the following some other writing activities have been given to develop some important writing sub-skills.  

Writing Activity 1

WRITING SUBSKILL: Parallel writing 

AIMS: - To encourage creative/guided writing with reference to model examples. 

METHODS: 

- Using a model sentence/paragraph students change: 

- grammar (noun/verb/adjective/adverb) 

- content (event/situations/description/ending) of a narration

Writing Activity 2

WRITING SUBSKILL: Describing a picture/series of pictures 

AIMS: - To further encourage creative/guided writing, but with a given situation/stories line to keep words flowing. 

METHODS: 

- Put a picture/series of pictures on the blackboard. Elicit words/structures, then ask individuals or groups to write the whole story. 

- Give each group the same picture and together they write a group story, pin on blackboard or pass around the groups to check spelling/grammar. 

- Give each group one of a series of pictures to discuss together, but write an individual story. 

Reading Activity 4

WRITING SUBSKILL: Completion 

AIMS: - Giving guided practice in writing from given clues 

METHODS: 

- Give students half sentences to finish 

- Give students a word bank to create story around (with or without a picture) 

- Give students the last paragraph of a story and ask them to create the previous events leading up to the given conclusion. 

- Give students the first paragraph of a story and ask them to complete it.

 - All these can be done: individually / in pairs/in groups - Students can compare their results by reading aloud or pinning their work up for comments and/or corrections.

Reading Activity 4

WRITING SUBSKILL: Reading to a situation 

AIM: - To encourage written responses to everyday situations. 

METHODS: 

- Listen to news item, conversation or read a newspaper/letter/invitation or watch an experiment, then: 

- write a letter (complaint / query / acceptance / refusal / thanks) 

- write a letter to a newspaper - write a report about an observation / experiment 

- students should write what they think/feel/know about the topic under discussion.