Teaching writing in English Lessons Objectives

Teaching writing in English Lessons
Objectives:
By the end of the session participants will:

• 
  be able to define what makes a good writing task
  
• 
  have experienced a good writing task
  

PLAN:

1. 
   What is writing?
   
2. 
   Writing as a communicative skill
   
3. 
   The importance of writing
   
4. 
   The stages in writing activity
   

Due to the globalization in the twenty-first century, drastic changes have taken place in the field of communication. As language is the main tool for communication, humans learn it in order to communicate with the other people. Therefore, people learn a language, especially; all the skills involved in it to communicate well and maintain good relationship with their fellow beings in the society. In order to attain their aims, objectives and goals, human beings try to learn a language and the skills involved in it.
What is writing?
Writing is a process, from gathering ideas through to checking what has been written. It is also a product, a text.
According to Hedge, writing helps the learners to consolidate their knowledge, revise and remember the new items of language. At the same time, it allows them to see their progress in a materialized form and opens a direct access to the teacher’s feedback. The teacher is able to monitor and diagnose difficulties easily.
The skills-based approach views writing as a collection of separate skills, including letter formation, spelling, punctuation, grammar, organization, and the the like. This approach also views writing as a product-oriented task. In this respect, McLaughlin state that writing, like many other complex tasks, requires ''learners organize a set of related subtasks and their components''. In contrast, the whole-language approach views writing as a meaning-making process which is governed by purpose and audience rather than by compositional rules.
From the author's point of view, a thorough definition of writing should involve both skills and meaning. This is precisely the perspective taken by Krashen who states:
Writing competence is necessary, but is not sufficient. Writers who are competent, who have acquired the code, may still be unable to display their competence because of inefficient composing processes. Efficient composing processes, writing ''performance", can be developed via sheer practice as well as instruction.