What makes writing a challenging skill to teach?
Should we push our students to use their productive skills before enhancing their receptive ones?
7 answers from our tutors
Best answer
Writing is a challenging skill to teach because it involves multiple complex processes such as generating ideas and arranging them logically, choosing the appropriate vocabulary and grammar as well as conveying the intended message to the reader efficiently. Additionally writing proficiency requires extensive practice and feedback which can be time-consuming and difficult. Writing instruction also requires deep understanding of the cognitive and socio-cultural factors that influence writing development.
- BlakeTEFL, IELTS & certified English teacher - Great communication & conversation
Students feel a lack of interest in writing because they need to know many aspects in order to produce a good piece of work. The students need to know punctuation, grammar, vocabulary, and speaking sentence structure in order to write a good piece of writing.
Practice makes perfect.
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It is challenging because firstly you need to teach a student the spelling because a student can not write without knowing a spelling
- John Kenmuir(AKA John Connor) Cambridge certified teacher since 1998, former IELTS speaking examiner
I would suggest that the best path to writing (production) is to practice reading (reception). Not just to learn vocabulary and grammar, but also to enhance knowledge of other subjects that are interesting. It's expected that students will make mistakes as they learn, especially about items that aren't familiar. However, the more they read, the more familiar those items will become until, finally, they're completely familiar and the student is more likely to not make those mistakes anymore.
Writing is like public speaking, for some it comes easy and for other's not so easy. That being said, i would say it probly better to start out with using the skills that they already know first and then to help them along the way as time goes on. A little encouragement goes a long way. To see where the child or person is at forst gives them a chance to show off and to ask questions about how they are doing and how they can improve. Giving them the self esteem to want to do better and the clearance to know that they can do better,
I believe we all know that writing entitles punctuation, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and sentence structure. So I think students should receive first before showing their productive skills.
