Teaching Writing with Global Intermediate: an analysis of the features of its writing activities

Here is another coursebook recommendation report, this time written by Lucas Gontijo Silva, for the course Writing for Teachers. Do you agree with him?

1.   Introduction

Global Intermediate is the coursebook currently used in the second part of the intermediate course at Casa Thomas Jefferson, Brasília, DF. The book is filled with activities that focus on all four skills of language competence: listening, reading, speaking and writing. However, when we carefully analyse and test its use on a regular basis, we are able to confirm that some activities fall short: the ones that focus on writing.

Although the book provides extra writing lessons (pp 16, 28, 40, 52, 64, 76, 88, 100, 112 and 124), it still does not equip students with the necessary material to help them work on their writing skills within the regular lessons carried out in the course. The intermediate course at Casa Thomas Jefferson does not include those pages on its syllabus. As a result, the coursebook in question cannot be sufficient in order to meet the needs of a skills-based course that also has to focus on writing.

Effective and fruitful writing activities can be recognized in a coursebook that is meaningful for the students who make use of it, a coursebook that is genre-based, a coursebook that provides them with scaffolding and planning for writing, a coursebook that contains good models and authentic texts, and a coursebook that is furnished with follow-up activities.

2.   Background

The intermediate Course at Casa Thomas Jefferson is mostly an environment for young students that range from the age of 13 to the age of 17. The students at issue are characterized by having quite an amount of school load and some extracurricular activities. They usually demonstrate more facility with the passive skills, i.e. reading and listening. However, some of them also struggle with those skills, besides speaking and writing. They are also at a stage in which they are still forming social and academic competencies, such as punctuality, responsibility and respect. Because of that, teachers commonly have to deal with homework neglection and deviant behaviour.

Taking this audience into account, writing activities must be able to catch students’ interest and prove their relevance and immediate applicability to the students’ lives. As follows, I will point out specific criteria that should be considered while examining the quality of the writing activities of a coursebook and will also analyse Global Intermediate in view of it.

   

3.   Literature Review

Many things must be considered when we think of what makes a language teaching course good and effective. When it comes to teaching writing, there are mainly five aspects that should be considered in an EFL skills-based course: whether the approach is genre-based, the use of scaffolding, the use of follow-up activities, the presence and usage of good modelling and, finally, whether writing is meaningful and relevant to the students.

A.  An approach to genres in writing

A genre-based approach to teaching writing is essential in order to create language awareness in our students. As Reppen states (2002), after analysing different types of texts and their distinct characteristics, students are able to thrive as writers, assess their own pieces of writing, and engage in peer-feedback more productively. According to her (p. 323), through genre-guided activities, students manage to see different texts from different perspectives, taking the writers’ purposes and the readers’ needs into account.

B.  Scaffolding

Hyland (2007) affirms that scaffolding directly relates to interaction between peers, which enables them to grasp the activities better. As claimed by him (p. 158), as students interact and discuss the topic through scaffolding, they develop an independence from their teacher’s “direct instruction”. Widdowson (1978) also expresses the great value of scaffolding by describing it as a “gradual approximation”. Students, therefore, become better writers when they are “actively encouraged to follow through a series of preparatory steps” (Scrivener, 1994, p. 157) producing then the final piece of writing.

C.  Follow-up

Another important aspect about teaching writing is the implementation of follow-up activities, that is, those that are done after the students have produced their pieces of writing. The writing process is not finished, and the students are encouraged to evaluate each other’s texts. Seow (2002) affirms that that strategy is a means to stimulate a sense of responsibility in them.

D.  Meaningful writing

Hyland (2007) also explains that the genre approach helps teachers plan their classes around themes or like real-life activities. Writing in order to specifically do or achieve something is what raises students’ interest and makes them see a meaningful purpose in writing. As maintained by the professor, this approach helps students learn beyond mere abilities and competencies; it makes them assimilate contextual and social elements that involve one specific genre.

E.  Modelling

Finally, the use of good models and authentic material is another extremely important aspect in teaching writing. Students benefit from being exposed to real texts and from having authentic models that inspire and encourage them to engage in writing. According to Al Azri and Al-Rashdi (2014), authentic texts “expose students to real language”, “meet learners’ needs”, “affect learners’ motivation positively” and “present authentic information about culture”, amongst other reasons.

Conclusion

All the literature mentioned above concurs in regarding writing highly and seeing it as a fundamental part of a language course. The various elements that are necessary to compound high-quality teaching or determine a great coursebook can be easily identified when it comes to writing. Such elements must be avidly pursued in order to encourage and uphold a good practice of the teaching of writing.

4.   Analysis of Data

When we bear in mind a skills-based course, we cannot overlook the skill of writing. Successful writing relies on the fulfillment of certain criteria. Coursebooks must be carefully analysed and questioned according to these criteria so that we make sure that their use concerning writing is effective and productive in a language course.

A.  Meaningful material

The age group that uses the book and the interests that surround students’ lives should be taken into account when taking a close look at the coursebook. Global Intermediate has, therefore, proven to be a book directed towards an older audience. Many teachers at the school have stated that when they go through some lessons, such as Unit 3, part 2 and Unit 5, part 2, the students tend to react in the same way, with lack of enthusiasm and boredom. This is so because young teenagers do not naturally have interest in energy sources or government collocations (the central topics of the lessons mentioned above). When it comes to the writing activities, this reality aggravates the problem, since students do not have a sufficient stimulus to engage in the writing tasks. Assignments such as writing a comment on an online science magazine can be difficult and uninteresting for students at that age.

B.  Genre-based material

Another aspect that should be appraised is whether the coursebook makes use of genre-oriented tasks. Whether the activities within the lessons provide students with contextualized tasks in which they can see the purpose of writing is extremely important. When students are told to write solely to improve their writing skills, the activity has an end in itself and becomes pointless from their perspective. There has to be a purpose in writing that relates directly to students’ lives and interests, and genre-based writing lessons are those which deliver the context and the sense of reality that students need.

The writing tasks in Global Intermediate, however, do not comprehend this strategy. The lesson tasks usually involve forming questions, writing lists or a general comment or paragraph about something. That means that students are not guided on how to write authentic texts that are used in specific contexts.

C.  Scaffolding and Planning

Good writing lessons also include scaffolding and planning. In other words, the lessons have to naturally welcome students into the writing task, rather than surprise them with an assignment that they are not ready to do. The activities must be conducted in a way that the students are gradually prepared for the assignment, and that is why instructions regarding planning must also be part of the lesson.

Unfortunately, the lessons in Global Intermediate do not bring scaffolding and planning strategies before the writing tasks. The instructions just usually tell students to write a piece of writing after they have discussed something that relates to the lesson, which is not the necessary process that students have to go through so as to produce a text with quality. Good scaffolding involves guiding students with regard to the context, the purpose, the content and the form of the text, to put it briefly. Also, the students are not given any orientation concerning outlining, map-minding or other planning strategies.

D.  Modelling with authentic texts

Since the writing tasks mostly orientate students to write a comment or a paragraph, a lack of modelling with authentic texts can be spotted in Global Intermediate as well. Although students are provided with catchy images and appealing layouts in the reading activities that usually precede the ones on writing, they still do not have great models for their own pieces of writing (predominantly comments and paragraphs). After having read texts that somehow relate to the lessons, the students are not encouraged to produce something similar to the only model that has been given in the lesson.

E.  Follow-up Activities

Finally, an effective coursebook that helps students work on their writing skills must contain at least one effectual follow-up activity through which pupils can give and get valuable peer-feedback. That is so because, otherwise, the writing section of coursebooks will always end up becoming homework assignments or assessments and students will never have the chance to actually exchange knowledge and ideas with their peers. The activities that focus on writing need to be made an essential part of the course and must be regarded by teachers and students as highly as the others that emphasize different skills. The writing activities within the lessons in Global Intermediate only instruct students to read their compositions to each other and then say whether they agree with their peers. That is not enough for the aim of developing students’ writing skills and language awareness.

5.   Outcomes

Although Global Intermediate does have a section entirely dedicated to writing after each unit, it does not have writing activities within the lessons. Since the course carried out at Casa Thomas Jefferson does not include such sections, it does not provide students with effective and productive activities concerning the skill of writing. It definitely lacks high-quality scaffolding and planning exercises, as well as follow-up activities. It also does not contain meaningful and appealing writing tasks when we consider the specific audience that makes use of it. Finally, modelling and authentic texts are not always present as well, which makes the students confused and unprepared to produce the pieces of writing that are suggested through the lessons.

Therefore, looking only and closely at its writing activities, I recommend the discontinuation of Global Intermediate as the coursebook for the intermediate course at Casa Thomas Jefferson.

References

Al Azri, R. and Al-Rashdi, M. (2014). The Effect of Using Authentic Materials in Teaching. International Journal of Science and Technology Research, 3(10), pp. 249-254.

Hyland, Ken. (2007) Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 148–164

Reppen, R. (2002). A Genre-Based Approach to Content Writing Instruction. In J. Richards & W. Renandya (Eds.). Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice (pp. 321-327). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Scrivener, Jim. (1994). Learning Teaching. The Teacher Development Series Editor: Adrian Underhill. Oxford, UK: Heinemann.

Seow, A. (2002). The writing process and process writing. In J. C. Richards & W. A. Renandya (Eds.). Methodology in language teaching: An anthology of current practice (pp. 315-320). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Widdowson, H. (1978). Teaching language as communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.