11 Must-Use Writing Activities For Your Language Lessons. Simple ideas to help stimulate interaction and thought in all language classrooms

11 Must-Use Writing Activities For Your Language Lessons


11 Must-Use Writing Activities For Your Language Lessons. Fun Writing Activities for All Language Classrooms

11 Must-Use Writing Activities For Your Language Lessons

A list of 11 Must-Use Writing Activities For Your Language Lessons to keep your students engaged.

Writing activities can come in many different forms. For a communicative teacher, writing activities often represent a chance for students to finally show off their learning and respond to the material presented in class. Thus, writing activities are windows into a learners’ mind, giving teachers a chance to assess what students know and think (focus on meaning), as well is how well they are performing (focus on form). These two paradigms, focusing on meaning and form, fundamentally change the kinds of activities teachers create when assigning writing activities.

Those who focus on meaning are generally interested in how well their learners communicate their own ideas, and often spend time creating activities that give learners time to generate, germinate, and expand ideas. On the other hand, for the “focus on form” teacher, writing activities can represent opportunities for learners to follow particular linguistic principles. These teachers often create activities that elicit the proper use of writing conventions or grammatical rules. The activities presented here can be used for both paradigms, and often, with just a little imagination, can be used and modified in ways that can simultaneously accomplish a teacher’s requirements to pay attention to both meaning and form.

Notice that many of these activities require a teacher to think of a prompt in order to be successful. A prompt can be a question, a statement, or even a picture or object that students must respond to. Writing is often enhanced by the teacher’s ability to inspire students to want to write, which can be achieved with the quality and interest level of the prompts teachers create.

When focusing on meaning, ask questions that are all based on a similar theme. This will activate background information. For example, if the class will be talking about the beaches of Hawaii for their next lesson, try to ask 4-8 questions that will encourage students to think about Hawaii (animals, people, food, places).

When focusing on form, ask questions that will allow learners to respond to that form. For example, when teaching the past tense, ask learners to describe what they did last week, last year, over the summer, and so forth.


What we learn with pleasure we never forget.

~

Alfred Mercier

11 Must-Use Writing Activities For Your Language Lessons

What follows are a few very simple ideas to help stimulate interaction and thought in an classroom.

Workstations

Freewrites

Fast-writes

Brainstorming

Here is an example of brainstorming

Venn Diagrams

Here is an example of Venn-diagram

Unfinished Stories

Any Four Pictures Make a Story

Guesswork Dictation

Remember the Picture

Draw Your Neighborhood

Poetry Writing

11 Must-Use Writing Activities For Your Language Lessons

Here are some other writing activities you can find on Language Advisor

Writing Activities For Your Language Lessons

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