3 ideas to improve your next writing lesson

How many times have you skipped a writing lesson? It’s okay, you can say it. No judgement. I’ve done my fair share of skipping and neglecting writing in the past.

It doesn’t mean we need to go on like this, though. After all, if we don’t take writing seriously, how can we expect our students to do it?

Easier said than done, I know. Writing lessons tend to be time-consuming and groan-inducing. This may be because we don’t know exactly how to conduct them in a way that supports students and actually helps them to develop their writing skills.

With that in mind, I’ve selected three ideas that can help you improve your next writing lesson.

1. Help students to plan

If we understand writing as a process in the most basic terms, we know there are three stages: a beginning, a middle, and an end.

In ELT jargon, the first stage is called pre-writing, and it is the moment in which students generate ideas, select the ones they will include in the text and then make a plan, usually by outlining the text in an appropriate format. 

The procedure can be carried out in a variety of ways. You can find a range of pre-writing activities online, from brainstorming to mind maps and interviews, so students don’t feel bored of doing it the same way every time they have a written assignment. 

Planning is a crucial stage to build students’ confidence by ensuring that they know what steps to take to write the whole text. 

2. Allow time for writing in class

Students need a lot of support throughout the writing process, so it makes sense to help them once they start bringing their text to life.

More often than not, however, teachers will assign the bulk of the writing task as homework. This is understandable as it does take time to produce a complete piece of writing. 

Still, I’d argue there is no safer place for them to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

Knowing they can count on your immediate support if they feel stuck can do wonders for their motivation. 

You don’t have to do this for every writing task, but this can be particularly helpful for the first assignments of the semester.

Once they have gone through the whole process once or twice with full support, you can let them work on their own outside class hours. 

In order to foster learner autonomy, this release of control can be gradual.

Perhaps one day they are given time to prepare a good plan and write the text at home; next time they write the first paragraph in class and finish the task as homework. 

Whether they are reluctant to do it or simply experiencing difficulty getting started, allowing time for writing in class can increase the number of clear, coherent and well-structured responses you receive.    

3. Embrace the struggle

This may sound counter-intuitive, but the benefits of productive struggle have been documented by neuroscientists, so bear with me.

Generally speaking, as teachers, we are on a mission to make things easier for our students.

When they voice their concerns about a task being difficult, it may seem like we are not doing our job if we allow them to struggle a bit. 

In reality, though, challenges can promote a great deal of learning. When students do something new for the first time, the connections between the neurons in their brains are weak. If we jump in and show the way at the first sign of difficulty, we prevent them from strengthening those connections.

Selecting, organising, and presenting ideas through writing is supposed to be hard.

This doesn’t mean students are expected to suffer to develop their writing skills. However, by creating a desirable level of difficulty, we might be doing them a huge favour.

If you put any of these ideas into practice, let me know how it goes by leaving a comment below. 

Thanks for reading!