Writing Techniques for Adult ESL Students
Pre-Writing Strategies Help Organize Thoughts before Essay Writing
Dec 19, 2008
English of second language students often feel inhibited by writing English and end up comparing themselves with their native speaking English peers. For this reason alone, teachers prefer to use brainstorming techniques (otherwise known as list making) to help students with breaking some of the preconceived notions about their writing.
When enough classroom time is devoted to explaining the stages of the writing process and the importance of brainstorming, students feel more confident to write a paragraph, let alone a paper, which often makes them feel uneasy.
Brainstorming Techniques
Brainstorming is probably the most effective of all the writing techniques because it helps ESL students think through their topics without having them judge what they write. With brainstorming, students simply write items up, one after another, without worrying about putting them in any special order. Encourage students to accumulate as many details as they can think of.
Other Pre-writing Strategies
Another pre-writing strategy teachers can use with their ESL students is freewriting. For instance, you can tell them to write whatever comes into their mind. Tell them to write for ten minutes on topic X without stopping and worrying about spelling, grammar and the like, which is often very hard for them to do at first. Explain to them that writing is also figuring out what you want to say, which should have all of their attention at this early stage of the writing process.
Another prewriting technique which is equally successful is questioning using words such as: what, when, where, why, and how. You can start the writing lesson by explaining to your students that questioning means generating details about their topic by writing a series of questions and answers about it.
After students freewrite, ask them to make up a list of details. This helps them with categorizing later on their information and how they want to arrange their paragraphs. One detail often leads to another as students expand their list. Slowly but surely, they are surprised to find more supporting material emerging that they can use to develop their papers. By the time they have finished their list, they are ready to plan an outline of their paragraphs and to write their first drafts.
In short, prewriting stategies should act as confidence builders which ESL students can use as they begin to write about their topics and plan their thoughts. Always encourage your students to look for a point they can make, and make sure they have enough details to support it.
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