Plan Before You Write: Adopting a Process Approach to Teaching Writing in an Indian ESL Classroom
Rhiddhi Saha (Asutosh College)
Niloy Mukherjee (Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College)
Rhiddhi Saha (Asutosh College)
Niloy Mukherjee (Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College)
Writing as a language skill has always been of paramount importance in the ESL context. Traditionally, much emphasis has been laid on writing and grammar in English language teaching in India. Writing classes at the school and even college and university levels have traditionally followed a behaviouristic approach: the more the students practice writing and get them checked, the better they get at it. While practice may improve writing to a certain extent, certain basic problem areas of learners remain unaddressed and the problems are often found to fossilize in this approach. This study therefore attempts to improve writing skills by explicitly teaching students to plan their write-up. The study was conducted as a part of the Certificate of Proficiency course at EFLU, Lucknow, a 4-month long part-time course. The batch comprised of mixed levels of learners ranging from intermediate to advanced. The learners were explicitly taught to brainstorm ideas in English (instead of thinking in their mother tongue and translating their thoughts as they write, a practice they earlier followed), to organize these ideas (that is, group similar ideas and assign them a label), and finally to draft a short but coherent and cohesive write-up, re-read their own write-up correcting punctuation and grammatical mistakes and improving coherence and cohesion. The learners were encouraged to devote five to ten minutes to the planning of a write-up rather than rushing to begin writing the moment they look at a topic. The explicit teaching and demonstration of this three-step method of writing in class was found to improve writing skills of the learners and also boost their own confidence in writing. The study indicates the importance of explicit teaching of planning in building effective writing skills in learners.