IDT1415 CW Entry 18 - Collaborative Writing and Editing

I really liked the idea of Freewriting as presented in this week's materials and developed by Elbow (1998, 2000). I think that this kind of writing would be beneficial for our students as most of them (97%) are on exam preparation courses which are demanding and to  a certain extent a little prescriptive as there is a very clear path to follow.  Freewriting would provide some freedom from the set writing techniques and a good opportunity to explore language from a different angle. In my current context, both private and public freewriting would be possible, but I would argue that public writing would be a much better approach as Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that learning requires social interaction and collaboration. Students would be more motivated to pay more attention to their writing as it would be read by others and this along with the possibility of integrating media so that their 'active learning experience ... is social, participatory and supported by rich media' (Mcloughlin & Lee 2008) as I argued in a blog post here.

The editing strategies suggested in the Thinking Writing materials for this week are also interesting both in terms of their applicability to my own story and in the classroom. However, I believe that for these strategies to be implemented in my context they would need some adaptation as our students as stated above mainly follow exam prep courses and so the changes to the Upper Main Suite exams, FCE and CAE, introduced this year means these strategies come in handy as all students are now required to write an essay as one of the 2 writing tasks.  I believe that some of the strategies listed are more challenging than others and this added to the fact that our students are still language learners at different levels means that they would have to be carefully selected and possibly diluted.  For instance, I could use the following strategies with a group of First Certificate students who have lessons twice a week for 1 hour and 45 minutes each time.

• Underline all the verbs you use - as they are familiar with this type of identification task. I think it would be beneficial for them to make them think and assess whether the verbs or other parts of speech do what they are intended to do as this will raise their level of awareness. However, I believe they would need a lot of support in the few lessons as the weaker students may not be able to 'see' how these parts of speech work as a whole. I would use it with both First and Advanced students, and possibly with lower main suite, Preliminary students.

• Summarising the main ideas - I believe this would be a very useful exercise as my Italian students tend to have difficulty summarising. As a lower order thinking skill, summarising requires students to be able to understand the text to be able to identify the main points and so writing the main ideas on the side of the paragraph would help them visually. Again, I would also model for and do this activity with the students so as to build their confidence. I could use this strategy both with my First and Advanced students, and possibly with Preliminary students. However, I can see the activity taking a lot longer in the initial stages because of their lower ability.

• Sentences of increasing length - I think this activity would really stretch my Advanced students and so I would be willing to try it out with then.  On the other hand, I think that it would not be appropriate for my First students as it may be too much of a stretch if not adapted somehow e.g. sentences an x number of specific cohesive devices or parts of speech. I would only use it with lower levels like Preliminary by using phrases carefully designed by me so as to show them how it works in a controlled environment and scaffolding guided experimentation.

The remaining three strategies (negative summary, a piece of writing in your field that you admire, and common patterns) would be used with advanced classes with examples in class and most of the work done for homework so as to maximise their speaking in class.

So what about your context? Which strategies could you implement?

References

Elbow, P. 1998. Writing without Teachers, 2^nd edition, New York: Oxford University Press (1^st edition 1971). [online] Last accessed 1 April 2015 at: moodle.nottingham.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=1421309

Elbow, P. 2000. Everyone Can Write New York: Oxford University Press. [online] Last accessed 1 April 2015 at: moodle.nottingham.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=1421309

Lave, J. and Wenger, E. 1991. Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: Cambridge

                 University Press.

Mcloughlin, C. & Lee, M.J.W., 2008. Future Learning Landscapes : Transforming Pedagogy through Social     Software. Innovate, 5(4).