1. LEARNING TO LEARN
TRAINING PROGRAM
LEVEL 7
Writing

2. OBJECTIVES
To help you realize the place of
Writing in the process of learning a
language and the skills involved in it.
To make you aware of the different
strategies that may be used to
practice Writing.

3. Activity
 They say that good listeners become
good speakers, and good readers
become good writers.
 Explain how this works, how is this
possible and/or logical?
 Think about a few specific things that you
could probably improve in your writing by
working on your reading. Ask around: your
classmates, teachers, tutors, other people.

4. Discuss the following:
 Writing is a complex skill.
 It involves many different aspects.
 When you write in your own language you
are not always aware of all the things your
mind considers in order to produce a
piece of writing.
 When you write in a different language
you have to make a conscious effort to
prepare, oversee and evaluate what you
are writing.

5. Activity
 How many
different things
can you think of
that are involved
in producing a
piece of writing?
 What are the CLEAR, FLUENT
AND EFFECTIVE
COMMUNICATION
aspects your OF IDEAS
mind considers
every time you
write
something?

6. Compare your answers and discuss:
SYNTAX CONTENT
Sentence structure, Relevance,
Sentence boundaries, Clarity
Stylistic choices, etc. Originality,
Logic, etc.
GRAMMAR
Rules for verbs, THE WRITER’S
Agreement, PROCESS
Articles, Getting ideas,
Pronouns, etc. Getting started,
Writing drafts,
CLEAR, FLUENT
MECHANICS Revising
AND EFFECTIVE
Handwriting, COMMUNICATION
Spelling, OF IDEAS AUDIENCE
Punctuation, etc. The reader(s)
ORGANIZATION
Paragraphs,
Topic and support, PURPOSE
WORD
Cohesion and unity The reason for writing
CHOICE
Vocabulary,
Idiom, tone

7. Think about this:
 Ifthere are so many aspects to consider
how do we ever write anything?
 We can write because we follow steps in a
process and we do it in stages.
 Good writing is basically done following
three easy steps:
 Pre-writing
 Writing
 Post-writing

8. The writing process
PRE-WRITING
Thinking Discussing Free-writing Gathering Organizing
WRITING
Organizing Writing Editing
POST-WRITING
Editing Proofreading

9. Activity
 How many of these aspects in the three
basic steps do you already follow?
 Which ones do you think you could
incorporate to your writing process next
time you write something?
 Re-write something you had already
written, this time follow all the steps in the
process. Compare it to the previous text.
How are they different?

10. Think about this:
 Nobody was born knowing how to write.
 You have probably been writing in your
own language for a long time, and that still
does not guarantee that you are good at
writing.
 People need practice to become good at
something: including writing.
 One way to practice writing is to do writing
practice in stages.

11. Stages in writing practice
 Think about they way you started
producing pieces of writing in your own
language, what were the first things that
you did? Then what? And now?
 The stages go from:
 Copying,
 Controlled writing,
 Guided writing, to
 Free writing.

12. Activity:
 To improve your writing skills practice
activities for each one of the four different
stages.
 Little by little upgrade the level of difficulty
of the activities you use and practice,
practice, practice.
 Next you will find some suggestions for
activities you can do for each stage.

13. Writing activities by stages
Copying Controlled Guided writing Free writing
writing
•Straight copying. •Dictation. •Stimulus- •From situations
•Copying with •Writing from response, from provided.
sentence grammar practice. pictures, stories, •From opinion.
combination. •Cloze summaries comics, etc. •From fact or
•Copying with from readings. •Following fiction.
some •Question models. •From a title.
transformation of sequences that •From a provided
the information. result in outline.
summary. •From a provided
•Parallel writing. situation.
•From oral cues
provided.