Teaching writing skills for intermediates

On the theme: “Teaching writing skills for intermediates” CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………. 3
CHAPTER I METHODS AND APPROACHES OF TEACHING WRITING FOR INTERMEDIATES.……………………................................................................
1.1 Problems of teaching writing for intermediates.............................5
1.2 Ways of developing intermediates’ level ….......…..................... 8
CHAPTER II USING ACTIVITIES AND PRACTISING IN INTERMEDIATE WRITING CLASSROOMS ...……...…………………………………………….
2.1 The use of games and activities in teaching writing……….... 12
2.2 Creating writing activities for intermediates………...…..…… 20
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………...………. 30
RESUME………………………………………………………………………... 32
THE LIST OF USED LITERATURE…………………………………………... 33

INTRODUCTION
I teach academic writing to intermediate and advanced ESL learners. Yet many of them do not know what good writing is. They do not know how to start to write, thinking that just putting ideas on paper pell mell is good enough. They need to improve their knowledge of vocabulary—using synonyms and antonyms for example.
Moreover, students often have a poor sense of sentence structure and variety. Learners may know who the latest pop stars are, but they have limited knowledge of current events or social issues in general.
Finally, learners are not always familiar with some of the purposes of writing, such as to persuade or inform readers.
Let’s move on to skill problems that many English language learners face (Fowler).
A common problem I see among learners is that they are not interested in planning. They fail to plan which effectively means that they plan to fail.
Another problem is that they do not how to revise their writing. It is like pulling teeth to get them to reflect on their writing. Another issue is that they do not know how to self regulate their ideas and actions. It is a metacognitive skill that they have perhaps never been taught.
As most teachers know, learners have limited attention spans. That is not surprising. The latest research shows that the attention span of adults is only eight seconds. As I mentioned before, many learners have either visual or motor disabilities.
Let’s have a brief look at some of the motivational issues that English language learners have (Fowler). For example, they have rarely been taught to develop writing goals. So they do not know how to achieve success. Some think that they fail to write well because they are not smart enough. They may have this erroneous self-belief that they can never succeed.
In addition, many learners are not very persistent in their attempts to write well. They are easily discouraged by constant failure
Course Objective: To teach writing skills for intermediate levels