ENGLISH TIPS FOR WRITING

Developing Writing Skills in Spanish, 2011

Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto

Iberica, 2012

Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto

Ana Virginia Ariza M. Holds B. Ed. In Philology and Languages, English-Spanish from Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1987, and a B.A. in Pedagogy of Language at Universidad El Bosque, 2001. Curently she works at I.E.D. República del Ecuador. This article has not been published in any publication nor has been offered for publication elsewhere. Writing is a challenge for everyone, but teaching writing skills in a foreign language is even more challenging. With this report I intend to share an experience about the use of some strategies of the process oriented approach with which I guided 9th graders at República del Ecuador school in 2004. This was a group of low-achiever teenagers whose writing was the least developed of the skills. Connecting ideas and getting coherence in a text was a daunting task for them. It was not really very difficult to guide the learners to write. The best products were those in which pictures were involved. In general they showed great interest and better outcomes resulted from pictures than from words. The simpler the task was given, the better written productions were gotten. The teacher’s role was essentially of a model and a facilitator. Key words: Process-writing approach, writing skills, facilitator Escribir es un reto para todos, pero enseñar habilidades de escritura en una lengua extranjera es un reto aún mayor. Con este informe pretendo compartir una experiencia acerca del uso de algunas estrategias de la escritura orientada por procesos, con la cual ayudé a guiar a estudiantes de noveno grado de la I.E.D. República del Ecuador en 2004. Este era un grupo de adolescentes con bajo nivel de Inglés cuya habilidad de producción escrita era la menos desarrollada. Conectar ideas y dar coherencia a un texto era para ellos una tarea dantesca. Realmente no fue difícil guiar a los estudiantes hacia la escritura. En general, los estudiantes mostraron gran interés; hubo mejores producciones a partir de imágenes que de palabras. Tanto más simple se mostrara la actividad, mejores resultados. El papel del profesor fue esencialmente de modelo y facilitador. Palabras claves: Enfoque de escritura por procesos, habilidades de escritura, facilitador.

Issues in Applied Linguistics, 2006

Nucleo, 2012

QuaderniCIRD, 2013

The aim of this paper is threefold. First, a diachronic development of ESL (English as a Second Language) composition theory from the 1950s to the 1990s will be outlined. Second, the organising principles relevant to ESL composition theory will be analysed. Third, a survey of the material used in my English classes and a presentation of the introductory unit on writing skills will be given. Finally, some tentative conclusions derived from my students’ compositions will be drawn.

Iberica, 2012

Developing Writing Skills in Spanish is the most recent book in a series published by Routledge press which includes Developing Writing Skills in French, Developing Writing Skills in German, Developing Writing Skills in Italian and Developing Writing Skills in Chinese. It is not clear which philosophy of learning unifies all these texts, besides the fact that the most recent texts offer a variety of samples of the written language.