This week, I chose the article from Parentology (parenting for the digital age), a website dedicated to parenting tips. The author, Lisa Collum, wrote “5 Tips to Improve Your Child’s Wring Skill” and that stood out to me because we discussed writing as one of the foundational skills for language learning a few weeks ago. The steps are straightforward enough that they can be applied to any writing situation for any age group (I would recommend middle school and high school) and can most certainly be adapted for language learners.
Now, as a native born English speaker, I obviously grew up learning English in school and learning in the traditional manner, mostly pencil and paper or in a computer lab (none of this one-to-one, everyone gets a laptop, sad, I know). So reading these five steps it made sense to me and made me feel nostalgic for learning English (not my favorite, hence the math). Although I am grown now and I am “no longer” learning English I found that, as I was reflecting on my own process of writing, I am still following some of these steps.
The five steps are:
1. Planning
2. Simple Introduction and Conclusion
3. Structure
4. Practice Makes Perfect
5. Keep It Fun
I think these five steps really break down a writing assignment and it is broad enough that it isn’t going to bog you do with the semantics of sentence structure (it doesn’t focus on grammar, which is a totally different discussion all together). Following these steps has the potential to turn a student who is struggling and discouraged into a strong writer; and the same goes for a language learner who is working on writing in their non-native language.
I also feel that this process can be really helpful in all sorts of writing based activities. In class, we’ve discussed a wide array of digital activities that can be done (besides the straightforward writing of an essay) to assess learners writing and language capabilities. Having students create videos of themselves or digital stories are both great ways to assess writing in addition to speaking or even listening. These types of assignments can really hit home the “keep it fun” piece as well.
Collum, L. (2021, March 23). 5 tips to improve your CHILD'S writing skill. Retrieved March 24, 2021, from https://parentology.com/5-tips-to-improve-your-childs-writing-skill/