Activities for teaching writing

Approach: Genre-based approach

Assumption: Language as a resource for making meanings, and so started looking at whole
stretches of discourse in context rather than looking at isolated chunks to uncover a
set of rules. So far, so familiar. Their claim, however, is that all extended discourse
can be categorised into just seven basic types.

Method: Curriculum Cycle

Building Knowledge of the field

Activity 1: Ask students questions related to the text type that is intended to teach in order to
discuss and/or brainstorm. For example, What is report (for instance)? Why people
write report? Who will read the reports? Who writes the reports? Where can you
find the reports? Then teacher can discuss with the class about the nature of the
report.

Exploring Genre

Activity 2: Give the students a model text. Divide the class into groups. Ask students to analyze
how the text is organized. Teacher can give guided questions:
Read the model text and discuss the following questions in your group.
- Does the paragraphs are divided?
- Does it have introduction, body and conclusion?
- What does introduction tell you?
- What does the body tell you about?
- What does the conclusion tell you about?
Then, teacher can discuss with the whole class about the questions. Finally, teacher
explains the organization of the text explicitly.
Activity 3: Teacher asks students to analyze the language features of the text. Teacher gives
guided questions:
Read the model text again and find out the answer of following questions in your
group.
- In what tense the text is written?
- How sentences are constructed?
- Underline nouns in the model text? What kind of nouns are they?
- Underline verbs in the model text? What kind of verbs are they?
- How the sentences are connected?
Then, teacher can discuss with the whole class about the questions. Finally, teacher
explains the language features of the text explicitly.
Activity 4: Teacher gives another model text, which may be written by one of the former
students. Divide the class into pairs and ask them to compare and contrast between
the two texts. Give the Venn diagram and ask students to fill the similarities and
differences in it.
Activity 5: Teacher gives a text in which the paragraphs are not divided. Ask students to guess
where the paragraph breaks should be in pairs.
Activity 6: Teacher gives a text written by one of the former students, with errors in terms of
organization and language features, such as tense, sentence structures and spelling.
Ask students to guess the errors and correct them.


Joint Construction

Activity7: Teacher sets a topic to write. Get students to brainstorm as much ideas as they can,
in groups/ in pairs. Or get students to list down the words related to the topic as
many as they can. Here teacher sets time before students carry out the task.
Or teacher can give some times to collect information and tell the sources where
students can get information about the topic, such as the title of the book, the
article, the website, etc.
Teacher ask each groups or pairs about the information, idea, or words, which they
got from brainstorming, making list, or research. Teacher writes down all the words
come from the students.
Activity 8: Divide the class into groups and get them to discuss which information or ideas
should be in introduction, body and conclusion. Then teacher gives a graphic
organizer to each group and get them to fill the result of the discussion in it. After
that, stick the graphic organizers on the wall of the class. Ask all students to move
around the class and read the graphic organizers and vote the best one. Finally,
teacher asks students why they think particular graphic organizer is the best and why
others are not the best and how they can be improved.
Activity 9: Based on the outline from the best graphic organizer, teacher and the whole class
compose the text together.
After composing the text, teacher and the class read it, and find out the way to
improve it.

Individual construction and publishing

Activity 10: Ask each student to choose a topic to write similar text. Give times for them to
collect the information and ideas. When they are ready, give the graphic organizer
and get them to write outline in it. Then, based on the outline, ask them to write the
first draft. When they finish, let them exchange their draft and ask them to do peer
assessment based on the checklist from teacher. The first assessment must focus on
the organization of the text. Based on the comment and feedback from the peer
assessment, get the students to write another draft. After that, ask the students to
exchange the draft with their neighbour and do peer-assessment again. At this time,
the assessment must focus on the language features of the text. Then ask the
students to write their final draft and submit to the teacher. Or they can stick their
work on the wall.