The document discusses several approaches to teaching student writing: Process writing focuses on the writing process including generating ideas, organizing, drafting, reviewing, and rewriting. It emphasizes multiple drafts and feedback. The controlled-to-free approach starts with controlled writing to build confidence before moving to free writing. Free writing emphasizes quantity over quality through frequent low-stakes assignments to help students overcome fears of making mistakes. The paragraph pattern approach analyzes paragraph structure and organization to teach students how to write cohesive paragraphs and essays. The communicative approach stresses the purpose and audience of writing to encourage communication beyond just the teacher. It also focuses on providing feedback on content. Creative writing

1. APPROACHES TO STUDENT WRITING
Process writing: Involves generating ideas, structuring or organizing those
ideas, drafting, reviewing (checking context and content, focusing,
connections, assessing impact, etc.), evaluating. It is a cycle that helps students
write and improve their written production. While many teachers focus only
on the product of a writing assignment, within the process approach, there is
a focus on the process of writing. This means that the teacher discusses
purpose and audience with the students as well as the processes of writing.
The teacher helps students get started, using brainstorming or clustering, and
the students write various drafts. After each draft, the teacher and/or other
students give feedback about the content of the writing so that the students
can write again to improve the clarity of his or her message. In early drafts,
teachers do not make comments about grammatical correctness. Only in the
final drafts does this become an issue.
• Step one: Generating ideas
o Brainstorming
o Clustering
o Freewriting
• Step two: Organizing ideas.
o Outlining
o Clustering
• Step three: Drafting
o Putting ideas into sentences
• Step four: Reviewing
o Checking context and content, focusing, connections, assessing
impact, etc.
• Step five: Rewriting
• Step six: Editing
Teaching writing – San Juan de Pasto Dec 2010 William Sastoque V.

2. o Checking minor details like spelling, punctuation and
grammatical correctness.
The major disadvantage to process writing is the time needed. There are many
benefits, such as integrating writing with other skills/activities, more writing
practice, better final product, etc.
Controlled-to-free approach: This is based on the audio-lingual approach,
where writing was to speaking. Writing practice was used to perfect
grammatical control. This approach is appropriate for high beginner to low
intermediate students who need to develop confidence in their writing skills.
In this approach, the teacher gives the students the parts of sentences and has
them write complete sentences using the parts. They may also have students
copy sentences or short paragraphs or even manipulate sentences
grammatically. This controlled writing gives students writing practice without
making errors, so they develop confidence in themselves. Later, the teacher
has students write their own sentences based on the models already given in
the controlled phase. The first phase of controlled writing should definitely
not be used as the exclusive method for practicing writing and should be
limited in its use. Students should be encouraged to move on to creative free
writing in order to get more enjoyment out of their writing activities.
Free writing approach: this approach focuses on quantity rather than
quality. There are a lot of assignments (for example in a journal), and there is
minimal correction. The teacher emphasizes content and fluency more than
form and grammar. This approach is very affective for intermediate to
advanced students to help them overcome fears of making mistakes. The
emphasis on content and the freedom to make mistakes helps them learn to
express themselves fluently. One additional benefit is that through the
extensive practice, the students make a great deal of progress in their
grammatical control, even without the teacher’s constant feedback.
Paragraph pattern approach: in this approach, the teacher stresses
organization of paragraphs and essays rather than grammar or fluency.
Paragraphs are copied and analyzed and later imitated. For example, teacher
Teaching writing – San Juan de Pasto Dec 2010 William Sastoque V.

3. give students the sentences of a paragraph in random order, and they have to
organize them. There is work on topic sentences and the organization of the
body of a paragraph. The study of essays works similarly: teachers give
students essays to analyze and to imitate. The paragraphs of an essay are given
randomly to students, and they have to reconstruct the original essay,
analyzing and explaining the organization of the paragraphs.
Communicative approach: This approach stresses the purpose of a piece of
writing and its audience. Students think of why they are writing and who will
read it. Writing is considered to be communication, so expanding the audience
is an important factor (the audience should include more people than just the
teacher). There is also a focus on responding to other people’s writing and
making comments about content without focusing heavily on correcting
errors.
• Writing and genre. Study samples of different genres before producing
them. Students need to have knowledge of the topic, conversations and
styles of the genre, as well as the context in which it will be read and
who the reader will be. This type of “imitation” is good to get to know
how to manage a genre, and more creative writing can come later.
Creative writing: This is usually imaginative, for example, poetry, stories,
plays. Creative writing is more engaging for most students and they tent to
work harder. It tends to be based on personal experiences. We can find ways
to publish students’ creative writing, on bulletin boards, in a class newspaper,
on the internet, etc.
• Journal writing.
• Writing as a cooperative activity. Group writing activities are good once
in a while to stimulate creative and even research. Some can be games-
like activities and others can be more serious, in-depth genre studies,
for example.
• Using the computer. There are many benefits of using a computer in
writing class. Unfortunately, many teachers don’t know how to use this
resource well. It is possible to have key pals, to have chat sessions, as
well as other internet-based activities, but it is also good for doing
Teaching writing – San Juan de Pasto Dec 2010 William Sastoque V.

4. communicative activities with the word processing program. Blogs play
an important role here too.
Teaching writing – San Juan de Pasto Dec 2010 William Sastoque V.