Tasks in Class : My 6th Discussion Forum (2)

1. From communicative language teaching (CLT) perspective, writing practice should be interactive. Discuss how English teachers can provide interactive English writing experience for students.

 If we are designing writing activities from CLT perspective, we have to check that whether they are promoting authentic and interactive use of language. It means there should be real and specific audiences which is not felt contrived. Like speaking activity, authentic writing needs real audience who can react. “Specification of an audience and purpose of a text by making the situation real” is the good way for achieving the authenticity as I mentioned. Exchanging e-mail or messages with friends or teacher, sharing acquired information, producing a class newspaper to be read by family or other classes’ friends all are good examples for the specification of an audience and purpose.

2. When we write for authentic purposes, there are always audience (except secret diaries or self-notes). Discuss types of writing activities for different audiences. First, students can write for their teacher.

 Teachers are good at checking student’s writing errors because they are expert in learner language. They also have excellent grammatical knowledge. So, writing to the teacher is going to be a good chance for the student to get appropriate feedback of their own writing. But, this can be challenging on the part of the teacher, because it is very burdensome to read and check all student’s writings. It takes lots of time and effort. Here is another disadvantage. Students will not write everything freely and openly what they really want to express because of the fear of the all-knowing teacher who can reveal their imperfect writing skills and spelling errors. Second, students can write for their peers or classmates. In this case students will feel much less fear. They are friendlier and are not in superior position. But, there writing can be full of joking and kidding.

3. How does technology help task-based writing? Discuss and write your ideas.

 Self-correcting of spelling or grammatical error was not easy until automatic correcting software was developed. Now, you can check and correct our errors in writing by ourselves without experts help. If you make a mistake, Word Processor will display red line under the mistake. Then just with one click, you can realize what was problem and correct it immediately. Also, you can write letters or messages easily with technology. You don’t have to prepare sheets of paper or pencils. You just need an e-mail address and a keyboard. SNSs like Facebook provide you numerous opportunities to have real audiences in the distant countries that we’ve never been. They can become friend and your real audience. They will respond to your message or comments. This is really good chance can’t be given without technology.