The teaching and learning of writing in English as a Foreign Language
Writing Seminar Final Essay
Student: Aurimar Barrientos
Prof: Alexander Salazar
The teaching and learning of writing in English as a Foreign Language
As foreign language students we possess the capacity to learn a new language, for example English. It might be easy to speak it, read it and listen it, but what about writing? Writing might be disliked and avoided for students because it is frustrating. It is frustrating because it is unnatural. Speaking is natural and not frustrating; when we speak, our words flow out easily. We do not think about the grammatical correctness of the utterances, nor do we think about mechanics. We do not repeat utterances over and over again to check for correctness or appropriateness. Most writing, on the contrary, does not flow out smoothly or spontaneously, we are constantly checking for correctness. In order to avoid that apathy and those difficulties that embrace students when writing in English, teachers need to analyze them so they could overcome that lack of interest they have when learning the writing of English. Those difficulties are going to be exposed in this essay.
As it was stated before, the writing of English might be disliked and avoided for students, but why? They tend to be frustrated. Teachers must to take into account that most of those students still remain their mother tongue, so it could be difficult for them to produce a “good” piece of paper in a different language. In addition, students might have difficulties processing and retaining so much information at one time. When they write, they are thinking about editing and generating ideas at the same time. These are conflicting processes because they are creating and destroying everything they want to express in the piece of paper. If we, as students, can get those thoughts down on paper as they happen, before they are lost, we can possible produce a piece of writing. Although students still remains their mother tongue, they experience other
Student: Aurimar Barrientos
Prof: Alexander Salazar
The teaching and learning of writing in English as a Foreign Language
As foreign language students we possess the capacity to learn a new language, for example English. It might be easy to speak it, read it and listen it, but what about writing? Writing might be disliked and avoided for students because it is frustrating. It is frustrating because it is unnatural. Speaking is natural and not frustrating; when we speak, our words flow out easily. We do not think about the grammatical correctness of the utterances, nor do we think about mechanics. We do not repeat utterances over and over again to check for correctness or appropriateness. Most writing, on the contrary, does not flow out smoothly or spontaneously, we are constantly checking for correctness. In order to avoid that apathy and those difficulties that embrace students when writing in English, teachers need to analyze them so they could overcome that lack of interest they have when learning the writing of English. Those difficulties are going to be exposed in this essay.
As it was stated before, the writing of English might be disliked and avoided for students, but why? They tend to be frustrated. Teachers must to take into account that most of those students still remain their mother tongue, so it could be difficult for them to produce a “good” piece of paper in a different language. In addition, students might have difficulties processing and retaining so much information at one time. When they write, they are thinking about editing and generating ideas at the same time. These are conflicting processes because they are creating and destroying everything they want to express in the piece of paper. If we, as students, can get those thoughts down on paper as they happen, before they are lost, we can possible produce a piece of writing. Although students still remains their mother tongue, they experience other