This document discusses principles for teaching writing to first and second language learners. It begins by defining writing and outlining the historical development of writing instruction, moving from rigid rule-based approaches to process-based and genre approaches. Key principles discussed include using meaningful input and output, focusing on language and fluency, designing appropriate tasks, emphasizing reading, and providing helpful feedback to improve writing. The conclusion advocates applying research-supported principles like these to effectively teach writing as a foreign or second language.

2. What is writing?
Writing can be defined by a series of
contrasts:
It is a physical and a mental act.
Its purpose is both to express and impress.
It is both a process and a product.

3. Background to the teaching of writing.
o At the beginning of the twentieth century, writing
instruction was based on a inflexible set of
assumptions.
• L1:
• Teacher’s role: they had to provide these rules to
students.
• Student’s role: they had to follow these rules.
• L2:
• In this period “rules of writing” were concerned
more with correctness of form over function.

4. Writing Process change
• 1911: The National Council of Teachers of English
(NCTE) was founded. They demanded a more
progressive writing instruction.
• 1960: From this year, writing instruction began to
include the entire process of writing-invention,
drafting, feedback and revision.
• Contrastive rhetoric: introduced by Robert
Kaplan, it is the study of how a person's first
language and culture influence on their writing in a
second language.

5. First language writers Second language
writers
Expressivism Students are encouraged to
write freely and personally.
For some traditional
academic settings,
personal writing is not
required.
Cognitivism Students define problems,
investigate them thoroughly,
present they arguments and
logical conclusions.
In ESL/EFL classrooms
students are
encouraged to use
brainstorming,
drafting, and
conferencing among
students and the
instructor.
Writing Across
the Curriculum
programs
(WAC)
For L1 students this program
taught them how to write in
different disciplines.
For L2 writers this
program appeared in
the form of adjunct
programs.

6. Principles for
teaching Writing.
Meaning-Focused input:
Learners bring previous knowledge
to their writing.

7. • Meaning Focused Output: the
writing should be done with the purpose of
communicating something to the reader.
• Language-focused learning:
Learners should be able to create strategies for
dealing with parts of the writing process.
• Fluency development: Learners
should increase their speed at writing.

8. Designining task
• Experience task: Teacher thinks in
a topic that students are very familiar
with.
• Shared task: Students do a
collaborative writing.

9. • Guided Task: Teacher provides
focused guidance.
• Independent task: Learners do an
autonomous work.

10. Writing acquisition
• Writing is learned by means of discover.
• Learner start to "write" by using certain
strategies for writing.
• Reading is very important in writing
learning.

11. Responding to written
work
• Motivating: Teachers have to
motivate students to improve their
attitude to writing.

12. Improving the quality of writing• Written feedback to the class:
written report with mistakes and
comments.
• Oral feedback to the whole class:
Teacher analyze an student work in front of
the class.
• Marking grammatical errors: Learner
can identify errors to avoid them.

13. Principles for teaching writing
• 1. Understand your students’ reason for
writing.
• 2. Provide many opportunities for
students to write.
• 3. Make feedback helpful and meaningful.
• 4. Clarify yourself, and for your students,
how their writing will be evaluated.

14. Types of writing tasks
• A note or formal letter.
• A summary.
• Narrative text.
• Descriptive text.
• Exposition, analysis, definition, classification.
• Argumentative.
• Literary.
• Advertisement.
• Journal writing.

15. Classroom techniques.
Writing activities encourage the idea that learning
to write is more than creating a final product.
Invention techniques:
• Brainstorming: students list all the ideas that
they can relate or think about a topic, quickly and
without much planning.
• Wordmaping: students relate ideas or words
and draw relationships among the ideas.
• Looping: students write quickly and then
summarize.
• Quickwriting: students write rapidly about a
certain topic during 10 or 15 minutes.

16. Writing:
• Drafting: organize the ideas.
• Feedback: teachers should not entail
correcting a student’s writing. Teachers should
provide students with comments that guide
them to find their mistakes and correct it by
their own.
• Revising: looking back over what has been
written. This is done to check the ideas that
have already been included to keep the
coherence.

17. Proofreading and editing: read for
mistakes in spelling, grammar, punctuation,
and so forth.
• Teachers should not correct students’ draft
by giving them all the correction, students
would feel afraid of writing if they see a large
number of errors.
• Marking using a graph: give to students
an average of their mistakes. By having this
average mark students can see if they are
improving.

18. Conclusion
• Teaching writing as a foreign or a second
language can most effectively be done
by applying a rather short list of
principles that are largely supported by
research.

19. Reference
• Nation, P. (2009). Teaching Reading and
Writing. London: Routledge.
• Nunan, D. (Ed.). (2003). Practical
English Language Teaching.
New York: Mc Graw Hill.