Motivating EFL high school students to write effectively

Motivating Students to Write Effective Writing Assignments in the EFL High School Classroom

Too many teachers view writing as an intrinsically tedious subject. Part of that impression may originate from reading such books as 'A guide to composition pedagogies' that, in presenting nine major pedagogies (process, expressive, rhetorical, collaborative, feminist, critical, cultural studies, community service, and basic writing) taught in colleges since the 19th century, may, whilst serving as invaluable tool for many graduate students, be, simultaneously, overwhelming.

The purpose of this essay is to indicate how English taught in an appealing, relevant, and humanistic manner can help the foreign student master it despite the fact that her surrounding language may be foreign.

Fun and games

Grammar to be mastered has to incorporate practice (Fuchs & Bunner, 2006). That can be intimidating to students of writing, but practice can be converted into fun. Raimes (1983) stimulates students to write through pictures, readings, and discussion. In a similar vein, the web site, Stickyball.com, sets about doing this by promoting itself as 'resources for the frustrated teacher'. Stickyball.com makes EFL fun by presenting games and activities to make writing more enjoyable such as interactive stories where students collaborate to write each other's stories; the lying game ('guess which statements are true and which false); writing scenarios are also an enjoyable way to get students writing; idiom worksheets (giving advice using idioms); explain the idiom (use the idiom in a dialogue and try to guess what it means). Other games include 'phonics Bingo', 'Grammar shapes', 'The bubble game' (whose intent it is to review different parts of speech such as nouns and adjectives), the lying game (where "Students take turns coming up with lies about themselves, and their classmates must guess which statements are true, and which are the lies!") interactive writing (where students cooperate in writing a part of a story); and conversation cards (where students answer the questions ion the cards, or they take turns answering one question each). The objective of Stickyball is to make EFL fun, and its activities certainly make it seem that way. They offer separate games and activities for adults and children, and act as terrific resources for the frustrated teacher.

In a similar vein, 'Daybooks' and. Or 'writer's notebook' can be less intimidating terms than 'journal' or 'diary', particularly so for young children (Urbanski, 2000). Even for teenagers and older writers, Urbanski cautions against using the term 'journal' or 'diary' which, she says, sounds too intimidating particularly since it represents the ongoing, daily task of recording daily life.

Modeling

The most important way of teaching writing to EFL students is to model to our students the fact that writing can be fun. We have to dispel that fear, and the only way we can do so is by setting ourselves as an example. As Graves (*) comments:

The teacher does not use modeling to beat the child over the head with a new skill. Rather, the teacher uses the modeling to confirm the commonality of all writers, as well as to confirm new approaches by the child in the writing process. (50).

Donald Murray's book 'Write to learn' is an excellent example for a teacher of EFL of modeling writing in action. Murray shows teachers (and, in turn, students) how to discover writing subjects through activities such as Brainstorming, Mapping, Making a Tree, Free writing, and Interviewing Yourself. Most importantly, Murray's process shows students how to absorb themselves in the activity in a fun way, thinking about what they are doing, and responding to it as they work through the exercise rather than treating it as a necessary but tedious assignment.

All students of creative writing, and, perhaps, particularly EFL students who take great care with their writing, have problems with free writing. This is, as Graves (1992), mentions is where modeling comes in too. When students notice that their teachers, although better in English than they, have similar problems (namely that free-writing comes slow and tedious to them too, with their original draft predictably chaotic and slovenly), they may feel more encouraged in their determination to produce effective assignments. Indeed Einig's (1982) study supports this assumption. Since students, particularly EFL students, struggle with their words, the first draft of their essay is inordinately precious to them and they are reluctant to eradicate any of those words and rewrite. Eing (1982) maintains that if the teacher, via her actions, shows that even she -- who is much better in her writing and level of English than they -- nonetheless, habitually rewrites, students might be more apt to do so. In a similar vein, imitation assignments can be used to teach EFL students how to write effectively. Instead of having students write test essays about the style of a particular author, have them mimic that style. To accomplish such a task will require a firm understanding of the conventions the author used and bring purpose to a discussion of those conventions (Dellinger 41). The teacher, therefore, writing an essay along with the class (and simultaneously demonstrating the techniques of free writing and reviewing) models exemplary behavior far more effectively than mere instruction can do:

Adolescents, particularly, crave sincerity and genuineness. The fact that the teacher has the same problems as they, and is with them, on their level, struggling too with the writing can be a truly comforting and stimulating situation.

Miscellaneous Strategies

In order to stimulate writings, several approaches are needed:

a. The effective teacher stays abreast of new cutting edge research in a field that instructs students how to write

b. The effective teacher abundantly uses positive reinforcement and encouragement

c. Most of all, the expert teacher provides the students with meaningful and relevant situations that encourage them to want to write.

EFL students particularly are strained in their endeavor to ensure that each and every consonant is clear and well written. Students must be assured that mistakes are common in writing, and, in fact, are to be encouraged, for writing is, by necessity, an act in progress and every good writer has to err and rewrite in order for his or her work to be as polished as possible. More so, that there is no thing as a perfect work of writing since writing is a work in process.

Also, as per Romano's advice, we have to get out of the student's way. Encourage them to be creative, to use their own voice, and not to constrain their writing with a rigid corrective ness. Let the students lead us and we listen to them in empathetic response, somewhat like Rogerian humanism where in Roger's humanistic mode of education, the instructor allows the students to be themselves, he accords them full dignity, listens to them intentionally, and fully believes -- thus enabling them to believe -- in their boundless potential for development (see also Raimes (1983) for techniques in how to do this).

Whilst on the subject of humanistic education, listening is essential in motivating the EFL student with his writing assignments. Aside from the students feeling that the teacher cares about him and that he is being heard, listening provides another three aspects according to Graves (*). Firstly, when the student talks, he learns. When the student talks, we learn, and finally when the student talks the teacher can help. An additional point may be that when the student talks, the class can, invariably learn too.

Simple, Practical, and Relevant

Learning should be simplified and on the student's level as Fuchs and Bonner (2006) show when they load their text with oversimplified charts and abundant examples of conditionals. The Writer's Harbrace Handbook, structured for teaching ESL, is a perfect example of this in its style of combining exercises with clear examples and explanations of grammar, usage, and writing, supplementing the information and exercises found in the handbook. Students of English, they believe, need to be taught step-by-step and in a simplified manner lest they feel overwhelmed and easily discouraged. Mastering the initial steps and reinforcing their achievement via exercises will inject them with the necessary positive reinforcement to incrementally achieve consequent steps, imbuing them not only with a positive feeling for the language, but contributing to their success.

The teaching should be relevant too. This was Kenji and Kitao's (2001) purpose in advocating that students in countries where English is a foreign language often do not have the opportunities to speak English on a day-by-day manner, and the Internet can, therefore, be instrumentally used to transmitting the language. One way of doing this is by giving students the opportunity of creating their own web pages. Subjects can vary according to their interests, their hobbies, or some exploratory research that they are engaged in. Interacting with the English language, in this way, in an ongoing absorption in selecting the English-based information, gathering it, reading it, recreating it in their own words, describing and explaining it and then communicating their procedures and results to class mates can be a constructive experience.

In a similar way, Walvoord (1982) suggests that students use class-discussions as a tool for mastering English. Debates can be formulated for and against with evidence presented that supports one side or the other. First written down, these arguments can then be presented in written and oral forms, thereby reinforcing English usage in two forms: written and oral (Walvoord, 1982). Further strategies for converting the teaching into a relevant exercise are by having students summarize and critique articles and drafts (Walvoord, 1982), and by using dyadic writing (both English and student's language side-by-side on the same page) as a useful study for both teaching and research of English (Aghbar and Alam, 1992). This can be done in various venues: visual aids, such as TV programs movies, documentaries; written texts such as books, or audio material.

Both the Interchange Student's Book 2 (Richards, Hull, & Proctor, 2008) and Grammar Dimensions: Teacher's Edition (Sadlier et al., 2000), for instance, masters all three of these perquisites by employing a simplistic, attractive, and consistent approach, and by integrating its exercise and content into everyday usage.

Conclusion

Writing can be fun, and, if taught in the right way, can certainly internalize English as an enjoyable and stimulating language. Students, when shown the extended value that mastering writing can provide them with since writing is essential in every subject area, will be more motivated to master the subject (Howie, 1984). In "A guidebook for teaching writing in content areas,' Howie demonstrates how a quick, exploratory, and creative style of writing can help students relate to the content style of the material in a fresh, engaging, immediate manner, thereby building connections, reflecting on, and retaining their learning.