Writing

Writing

Writing in English is not easy because the pronunciation and the way in which we have to write the words are totally different. For example, the pronunciation of the word "audio" is /ˈɑː.di.oʊ/. A Spanish speaker can write "oreo" as the cookie instead of the correct spelling; this is just one example of many we can say. If your students can write in their own language, they can learn faster to write in a foreign language (if they don't have the same alphabet in both languages, it can be more difficult to learn the new one). In the classroom, we focus our attention in writing because it is the most difficult skills that students develop. The teacher has to teach a little of grammar and spelling; spelling is very difficult even for teenagers, so young learners will have to repeat each word as much as they can to memorize the way in which they have to be written.

Errors have to be gently correct because young children tend to cry easily, and we don't want to deal with that problem. If our students made a mistake, we would just tell them that it is not well written and give them the correct way to write it. Young children will learn easily if we say the things in a good form. They just need to be understood every moment, and we should make them feel comfortable with us their teachers. Reading will help students to know the "rules" of writing that's why is very important that they first learn to read and then to write correctly. We use many controlled practices with children who are starting to learn a new language; we just write on the whiteboard or show some illustrations about the topic we are teaching, and our students have to write the name of the objects or the illustrations that they see, but free practices are important too. Free practices help students to be more confident with their skills. They have a better performance in free practices because they can make mistakes without feeling bad.

Students who are beginning to learn a new language should read out loud while they are written because they need to create a relation between what they are writing and what they are saying. In that way, learning to write well is more easy for them. At the beginning, students probably can't understand why they are writing, but they are having their first experience with their writing. They are just copying what they see or what the teacher says, but with a little bit of time they'll start to understand the words they see, and they won't just write things without sense for them. Matching is a very good option to relate words and illustrations; we can do many matching practices with every topic that we have to teach. For example, if we are teaching numbers, we can search a practice with de numbers and their names in English, and students can match each number with their name. These are practices to improve our writing because we are seeing how to write well the word that we are learning.

Copying can be the tool to introduce writing to our children. As I said before children can just copy what the teacher says, but copying is just the first step to start developing their writing. We don't have to say that copying is a bad tool just because students don't know what they are writing; be sure that they'll learn in the process. An activity that we can do with our children is to write a short sentence in the whiteboard and give them some seconds to see it then we have to erase the sentence from the whiteboard, and students have to try to write it. They can commit a mistake the first time, but they just need time to memorize well the word, and with their knowledge about vocabulary they will copy the sentences without mistakes.

Fill-in exercises are very useful, but we as teacher have to create these fill-in exercises with words that the already know. We can't give them a mini paragraph with words they haven't never seen because they won't do anything. They can also be frustrated because they don't know anything about the teacher is talking, and they can start to lose the attention in the class. The activities mentioned above are controlled, buy students need to explore their writing in a freeway. They need to write what they are thinking, what they are felling, and what they are experimenting to be interested all the time because if they are just writing things without sense for them, they'll stop to practice. We have to remember that they vocabulary is limited, so the will need some help to express their feelings, but they need to write alone as much as they can.

Students can create dialogues to interact with their students. Of course, this can be very difficult for them, but we as teachers can give them short dialogues, and they can write them on their notebooks to practice their writing and then their speaking. The last that we need to know is that we have to encourage our students to start practicing their writing with all the activities that I mentioned because they need to develop a confidence with themselves when they are writing, but we don't have to insist on doing it. Students have to write when they want. That activity has to give pleasure for the students; they don't have to see it as an obligation. If they see writing as an obligation to pass the subjects or to make our teacher happy, we really fail in our labor of teaching the new language to our students. Please, we have to love teaching to make our students love every skill that they will acquire with us.