*WRITING READINESSEARLY WRITINGDEVELOPMENTAL WRITINGMATURE WRITING

Writing Readiness1. Penmanship2. Mechanics of Writing

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Degree of preparedness for instruction in handwriting or formal composition *

Development of psychomotor skills are needed to prepare students to perform physical act of writing .

The Following Are Needed : 1. Develop knowledge of the English Language so that pupils can understand what he/she copies & knows how to pronounce & makes sense .Cont *

2. Develop the interest to write in English.3. Recognizing that print is different than pictures & has meaning . 4. Able to discriminate between shapes, can make distinction between letters . Cont.. *

5. Develop visual memory for shapes.

6. Develop large muscles of the arm , hands & fine muscles of fore finger & thumb , control of writing tools . *

Writing Readiness during Pre-school.Whose Responsibility is it?

ActivitiesTo Create Writing Readiness.

1. Colouring Discriminate Shapes

2. Cutting, pasting, tracing & Drawing

Help to Develop Fine Motor Skills.

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3. Pick up small objects develop finger muscle strength & control

4. Sorting activities helps visual discrimination.

5. Pattern drawing finger-hand control, visual discrimination, & perception of shape.

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Provide meaningful contexts for learning the mechanics of writing.Use pupils own oral compositions for giving them insights into writing.Constantly keep the benefits of learning to write before them.Make it a practice to read to your pupils a variety of things.Develop your pupils natural curiosity and thinking skills.

Concentrate on a few difficulties faced by your pupilsProvide sufficient guidance to ensure pupils do not make errorsAlthough the practice is on a single element, it must evoke the feeling that something has been writtenThere must be a sense of purpose in practiceEnsure provision for the elements of good handwriting.

To help students master the mechanics ofwritingE.g. 1 preparing a guest list for a birthday partyE.g. 2 classification and copyingE.g. 3 crossword puzzle clothingE.g. 4 copying a poemE.g. 5 completing a dialogue

Focus on teaching the relationship between the most common phonemes of English (the sounds) and the graphemes (the letters or letter combinations) that correspond with them.Focus on teaching the most common words.Focus on developing visual memory for shapes of words.Focus on developing relevant dictionary skills.Focus on helping pupils devise ways of helping themselves to remember common but troublesome words.

Composing vs. writingProcess vs. productContrastive rhetoricDifferences between L1 and L2 writingAuthenticityThe role of the teacher

PROCESS VS PRODUCT APPROACH TO WRITING

Product approachFocus is on obtaining a finished product (e.g. a letter, story, etc.)Focus on producing error-free writing of diff. genresInvolves very little composition skills and almost every pupil produces same compositionTasks only req. pupils to write sentences e.g. from linked substitution tables, fill in the blanks etc. in which all the decisions about content, organisation have been made by the teacher

Shortcomings of this approach:

1) Pupils never get the opportunity to learn various processes that successful writers use in the production of a written document .

2) Writing skills are underplayed and writing is merely used to provide a context for practising grammar 3) SS are bored because this kind of writing is demotivating and does not cater to pupils need for self expression

Focus pupils attn on the process of writing- thinking of something to write abt., selecting what to include, giving shape to these ideas by organising them into an outline or plan, writing a draft, revising and editing the draft and producing a final version.

Tr. gives appropriate guidance at each stage in the process of evolving a text

Our Eng. Syllabus DOES not spell out in process terms.Merely itemised the kinds of written product that pupils need to learn and the social contexts within which the written product is to be set.Only a global/overall objective is stated and a list of sub-skills of writing are provide for each levelSo teachers need to work out what procedures, processes, skills and strategies the ss would need to accomplish task

Product approach- bottom-up view in which the building blocks of writing are seen to show that linguistic items and writing development is seen as block by block buildingProcess approach top-down view of writing is taken as- ss given a task to do e.g a letter to write- here, the view is that the letter-writing task will create the need for the lang. necessary to write the letter. Once ss are interested to do the task, they will learn the lang. that will enable him to say what he wants to say.

ControlledGuidedFree WritingProduct approachProcess approach

CONTROLLED WRITINGMaximal teacher input and minimal pupil input.Using substitution table- example 1- example 2- example 3Parallel writing- example 1- example 2Question and answer techniqueFilling in the blanksDictation

Here, context and form of sentencesgenerated in the class as a pre-wrtg activityWriting from class-generated guidelines- brainstorm ideas.Picture composition with skeleton outline- use picture series and pp suggest story lineWriting from short notesDicto-comp - combines dictation and composition.

Focus on sentence building - Imperatives poster competition, e.g. Do not talk in thelibrary, Silence, Flush the toilet.- Writing is a permanent record of their thoughts - captions for pictures.Focus on paragraph writing- Unjumbling sentences to write a paragraph- Filling in linkers in a given paragraph- Using notes and picturesFocus on other building blocks- Examples of specific writing tasks.Adapted from: Chitravelu, et.al, ELT Methodology, Principles and Practice.

Is basically learner-drivenChooses what he wants to learn, when and to what level of perfectionTeacher is redundant and irrelevant

Producing a written text involves 3 broad stages :Pre-writing select topic, generate ideas, organise ideasWriting drafting, getting feedback/ conferencing, revising, editing3) Publication presentation, display

Vary acc to the phase, approach, specific aims of the lessonAt earliest levels : lesson may inv providing multiple and varied contexts for practising handwrtg and/ or spelling and teaching and creating occasions for meaningful practice in punctuation and using what lang they have for real communication

At later phases, lesson may centre on the processes inv in producing a written document e.g. a letter or a storyMay also be lessons in which specific writing skills (e.g. planning, language, organisation, etc.) may be focused onA writing lesson is not equated with a class period cos process-based lessons involve several periods.

1. Set a task (purpose, audience, genre) 2.Think abt the demands of the task (what ss need content, lang(content wds, sent pattens, cohesive devices), org skills, knowledge of conventions3. Fine tune the assignment- length approp to ss age, skills they need (content, org skills, lang)- if ss lack those, deal with the problems doing the following

- take the difficulty away, pre-teach the skill,organise help, use time mgt strategies, build in resources, demonstrate how to behave, provide useful stimuli4. Plan the structure of the lesson/workshop - time allocation for the assignment- time interval between lessons- time allocation for each phase- activities to do

We do not write in order to be understood; wewrite in order to understand. C Day Lewis

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1. Penmanship is

the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument .

the art or practice of writing by hand.

the quality or style of someone's handwriting. *

Handwriting requires the motor coordination of multiple joints in the hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder to form letters and to arrange them on the page.

Holding the pen and guiding it across paper depends mostly upon sensory information from skin, joints and muscles of the hand and this adjusts movement to changes in the friction between pen and paper. Lacquaniti F. (1989).

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With practice and familiarity, handwriting becomes highly automated using motor programs stored in motor memory . Van der Plaats RE, Van Galen GP. (1990)

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Handwriting a person's particular style of writing by pen or a pencil

Block letters > also called printing is the use of the simple letters children are taught to write when first learning

Calligraphy the art of writing itself, generally more concerned with aesthetics for decorative effect than normal handwriting.

Cursive any style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected

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Block Writing

A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z*

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The application of standard rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation and usage to the act of writing, as distinct from skills of expression

http://www.time4writing.com

Mechanics are the conventions of print that do not exist in oral language, including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraphs.

As they do not exist in oral language, students have to consciously learn how mechanics function in written language. *

For example, while speakers do not have to be conscious of the spellings of words, writers not only have to use standard spelling for each word but may even have to use different spellings for words that sound the same but have different meanings.

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The same holds true for punctuation: speakers do not have to think consciously about intonation and pauses, but writers have to decide where to use a period instead of a comma and how to indicate that they are quoting someones exact words.

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