Coursebooks now offer us a stunning range of worksheets and photocopiables, BUT... Imagine the photocopier breaks down / you spill coffee on the sheets you prepared / you want to do one last review but there are no more sheets available!!
There are a number of benefits to using simple writing activities to increase the use of student produced materials in class. First, we need to ask why writing is important? One reason is that it is often the "last" step of learning in terms of achievement, and therefore needs to be cultivated throughout a course.
Writing gives autonomy to students, and a degree of permanence that spoken language lacks. Further, it reinforces reading awareness – and gives empowerment to students through reading their own writing.
Finally, it allows teachers to see the degree of penetration achieved in terms of phonics, vocabulary and grammar at initial stages, then coherence and linguistic depth as students continue their studies.
But what proportion of the lesson should be spent writing?
As always, this depends on your class, BUT… setting aside 5 minutes each lesson for younger students can have a very beneficial effect, especially when supplemented with writing at home.
The following activities have all been successful in SOME of my classes! Hopefully with suitable modification they can be of benefit to yours too.
1. Colour the order
Put students in pairs and give each pair two different colour pens e.g. black and red. The black pen is for the first stroke of the word and the red pen is for the second stroke. Teacher calls out a letter (e.g. "a") and students write the letter. For "a" the 'c' shape should be black and the vertical stem should be red. If they are reversed the students likely write the letter in the wrong stroke order.
2. Show and Write
a) Using Word Cards
Tell your students to put their pencils down (hands on head if needed!!) Hold up a card showing a letter, phonic blend or word, depending on the class' current level. Students look at card for _x_ seconds then you put the card down. Now students try and write what they saw. The benefits of doing this are that students create a mental image of the letter or word shape and have to keep it in their short term memory until writing. This hopefully helps a longer term memory imprint of letters and words they are studying. Errors will usually point to ingrained errors. E.g. 'b' and 'd' mix up.
b) Using Picture Cards
As a challenge use the same process as above but show a picture card only. This requires the students to have had more time working on the target vocabulary with home study and also plenty of written practice. It's particularly useful in weeding out romaji spelling forms among students who tend to subvocalise in kana speech before writing.
c) Using CDs
A further alternative is to use a CD, such as the CD accompanying the Longman Children's Picture Dictionary. The drawback with CDs is that it is more difficult for you to grade the phonetic difficulty of the vocabulary, so you'll need to tread carefully with this one!
3. Home made Bingo
Students receive a blank Bingo grid (preferably with guidelines to help sizing/shape).
Teacher shows words from a page in the Longman Children's Picture Dictionary in random order and students choose which bingo square to write the word in.
Next the students listen to the CD and mark the words they hear in classic Bingo style.
*A simpler version is to use the phonics cards from English Land every time you review 2 units together.
4. Picture Dictionary Search
a) Letter based
Students take an alphabet letter card showing the front letter of a word. They search set pages in the Longman Children's Picture Dictionary and write any words starting with their letter.
b) Word Based
Students take a picture card, find the image in the Longman Children's Picture Dictionary, then write the word on the back of the card
c) Grammar Based
Give students a target sentence head and a page number in the Longman Children's Picture Dictionary. Students then complete a set number of example sentences.
e.g. I'd like a ..., please. –v- I'd like some ..., please. (Topic 45 )
Simon Weedon is the co-founder of 'E' English School, teaches at Meiho Junior/Senior High School. He is Coordinator of ETJ-Oita and is a monthly columnist for The Daily Yomiuri.
