Teaching writing effectively in a general EFL class is not only possible but also rewarding both for learners and teachers. But for me it wasn’t always that way.
Of the four skills taught in the EFL classroom, writing was probably the one I most neglected. For years I loved the idea of teaching writing, but there seemed to be so many obstacles. I resigned myself to waiting until the day some director of studies would hand me my first specialist writing course, and hoped in the meantime that my students wouldn’t notice the suspicious absence of writing from my weekly offerings.
Course book writing activities never seemed to work for me. It didn’t matter how well the activity was presented, I would always end up with a group of learners chewing their pencils, rolling their eyes and sighing conspicuously. Writing lessons would be hastily cobbled into speaking activities, and I would resolve not to try again until I was sure the learners had forgotten their previous underwhelming experience doing writing with me. I seemed to be up against a number of factors I had no control over:
１，Learners who naturally enjoy writing seem to be a rare breed ２，An ESL learner who suffers from writer’s block is just as likely to struggle with writing in his native language. The skill of writing does not seem to correlate with one’s level in a given language: proficiency in one is no guarantee of success in the other. ３，Writing activities are often too time-consuming for the limited hours allotted to the EFL classroom. ４，Having been nursed into English teaching on the milk of the communicative method I was allergic to any activity that required long periods of silence and learners working on their own. ５，Many learners struggle with a sense of “why do I need this?” Speaking more fluently is held up as the benchmark of language-learning success, and learners can’t see how writing activities might advance that goal.