Teaching Writing

Writing should be thought of as a teachable skill, not a creative act.

The importance of models - see, for example, a timewaster's letter in this site.

The importance of typical, conventions.

Plagiarism vs. citation

Real world tasks

• • Summarise or write up a discussion e.g., about women in first and third world countries.

  • Write up some research - Wolfram Alpha

  • Writing a letter of complaint about a picture (Pic diffs)

Teaching how to structure

Preparing writing - mindmap => linearise

Collaborative writing

Co-authoring is a very real world task in itself.

Creative writing

See the poetry writing activity from Subversive.

Using ICT in teaching writing

Use of Google dox

Wiki’s

Forums

Collaborative

Use of ICT

Lexical tools - online dictionaries

web-based lexical tools, sentence length, av word length

• 1. Click here for some first thoughts about teaching writing.

  2. Click here for the things that might count as writing and writing lessons.

  3. Click here for some eminently teachable aspects of writing.

  4. Writing a response to an article.

  5. Writing a letter from a picture differences activity.

  6. The notion of text flow.

Plagiarism checkers

Article Checker

The Plagiarism Checker from the University of Maryland

I pasted this quote from a student paper into both of them, and they didn't even find that it was from a book.

over-generalisation of valid but limited insights, making exaggerating claims for the power and novelty of its doctrine, misrepresenting the currents of thought it has replaced and its serious intellectual confusion

(Swan, In: Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p. 132)

Text Flow

Every statement answers a question. Or it could. It is the response to something as language does not exist in isolation.

The lyrics to Frank Mills, a song from the musical Hair, are a good example of how this works. You can see the lyrics, listen to the song and observe this text flow here.

Lit theory – reading is a dialogue between the reader and the author/text?

Picture Books

Shaun Tan

picture book

Reviewed in NYT

His site: www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html