Metodología para el aprendizaje de la expresión escrita en lengua inglesa en bachillerato

Abstract

Writing has been a neglected area of English language teaching for some years. It is a language skill which is very difficult to acquire. Learning to write in English, when is not your first language, has its own problems. It presents difficulties to the teaching profession as well.

For this reason, the aim of this study has been to find a methodology for teaching writing in order to help our students with their written texts, by developing proper writing strategies.

The experience took place in a Spanish Secondary School with students in their second year of Bachillerato. They studied a number of text types, which follow different types of organization. Therefore, they practised the four mayor styles; that is, descriptive, narrative, expository and argumentative texts, which have different disciplines with different criteria and intentions.

It is important to point out that students were taught to write through a process of writing with a number of operations going on simultaneously.

A relevant aspect of the experience was the use of a making code (set of symbols) for correcting written texts providing a responsible learning process to our students. This marking code let the students know the strengths as well as the weaknesses with the aim of helping them write more effectively in the future. The positive approach to writing is very important; if the only feedback they receive is negative, they may become discouraged. Students need positive feedback on the way their writing is improving.

As a result, writing becomes an ongoing process of discovery. The text can be viewed by the teacher not a as a final product but as the raw material that the student is in the process of shaping