[MUSIC] Welcome back to Teach English Now. In our last video, we introduced you to who was having trouble writing about her future husband. We also introduced you to her writing tutor, the Genie. Who helped her come up with some ideas to help her get started. In this video, we want to take a few minutes to explain some of the strategies the Genie used to help begin writing. As with many other aspects of teaching language, our purpose as writing teachers, is to equip students with a set of skills they can use to write successfully in whatever language context they find themselves in. One very important set of skills your students will need is a group of strategies they can employ to help them produce better quality writing. It's a sort of toolkit, if you will, full of tools they can pull out when the need arises. Before we talk about these specific strategies, however, there are two things we need to discuss. First, I want to introduce you to the six traits of writing. The six traits refer to characteristics of quality writing that teachers look for and that are found in good writing. The six traits are Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions. Let's talk quickly about these first two traits, ideas and organization. As we said in module three, it is important to go global, or focus on the ideas and organization first, before focusing on other parts of writing. Why do I say this? Well, language teachers are notorious for focusing on grammar and conventions, on details, instead of focusing on meaning first. So be careful remember to focus on what matters most, first. Now, let's talk about another way to think of the six traits. If you remember, we also talked about breaking writing into prewriting, writing, and post writing steps. These six traits can be associated with each of the three parts of the writing process. In the prewriting phase, a writer is focused on what ideas they will share, how those ideas will be organized, and the purpose and audience for their writing. In the writing phase, a writer has to focus on the ideas, organization and voice, but also has to consider what vocabulary they want to use to best convey their message. And how their sentences fit together in the clearest way. In the post writing phase is where the writer makes revisions. Here the writer may add or change ideas, organization, and voice, as well as make changes in sentence fluency and word choice to make their message clearer and easier to understand. They will also focus on conventions, making sure they have used the correct punctuation, formatting and spelling. As we talk about specific strategies, we may refer to these six traits again. Before I give you specific strategies, one more note. I want to remind you of the importance of modelling, guided practice, and independent practice with whatever strategy you employ. In other words, if you decide to use outlining as a strategy, for example, make sure you model outlining, provide guided practice, and then finally give them time to outline on their own. So now, let's talk about prewriting strategies you can teach to your students. One of the hardest parts about writing is creating, and coming up with ideas that will be the main content of their writing. Many students struggle with writing because they just can't come up with ideas about the topic they've been assigned to write about. And the truth is, students think that ideas should just spring out of their heads, quickly and easily. But guess what? All of us need to have our minds opened, our pumps primed so to speak, and our imagination and ideas unlocked. You in a real sense are a genie working your magic to unlock student minds. So how do you do it? First, good writing is good reading. Many students lack world knowledge about the topic. They simply don't understand what nuclear energy is, for example, and thus they can't write about it. In order to help students overcome this problem, you need to help them learn how to build up their schemata about the topic. And one excellent way to do this is by reading. Once again, good writing is good reading, teach students how find to articles on the Internet or in the local library about the topic they are writing about. Students can also learn about a topic by interviewing experts, a so called expert can simply be someone that knows more about the topic than the student. This could be a classmate, a family member, a teacher, and so on. Of course, it could also refer to someone who is truly an expert on that topic. The point is to help students learn what resources are available to them and how to find what they need in order to learn about the topic they're writing about. Second, good writing is good thinking! Even though students have sufficient world knowledge about a topic, they often can't pull those ideas out of their head and narrow them down without some amount of just plain old good thinking. In this case, your job is to help students think about what they know and whittle down their ideas into something usable. This is often called brain storming. One excellent way to help students brain storm ideas is to have them simply write down everything they know about a topic. Some people call this free writing. Free writing is simply writing down information about a topic, such as, definitions, descriptions, comparisons, and so forth. This can be in the form of essays, newspaper articles, instructional texts, and many other formats. The point of free writing is to help students simply get everything they know about a topic out of their heads and down on paper so they can see it all in one place. As E.M. Forster once said, how do we know what I think until I write? In other words, good writing often comes from, well, writing. But free writing, writing without a thought of organization, writing as an act of just thinking and getting your ideas out. Isn't it weird that sometimes you might write things down and go, wow, I didn't even know I thought that. Or, I didn't realize I knew that much. That is the power of free writing. Finally, good writing is good speaking. A third strategy to help students come up with ideas is to have them share their ideas with others in a group discussion or group brainstorming session. In this sense, good writing is good speaking. In this method, you might have students complete a free write or brainstorm and then have them switch papers with one of their classmates and do a free write or brainstorm on one of the ideas in their classmates paper. Or you may ask students to find a partner and just spend five minutes talking about their topic while their partner takes notes on what they said, then they switch. Partners can also come up with additional ideas about a topic that maybe the student hadn't thought of. As we mentioned in our last module, even great writers don't just go it alone. Don't be afraid to have students work together to come up with ideas for their writing assignments. Well, I hope you find these prewriting strategies useful. There are, of course, many other strategies and methods you and your students can use to come up with interesting ideas to write about. You may want to ask your colleagues what strategies they use. Once you students have come up with their ideas, they are ready to start thinking about how to group those ideas together and organize them into a cohesive composition. In our next video, we'll get a chance to see how and the Genie organize ideas about her future husband. See you then. [MUSIC]
