How to Improve Writing Skill (For Non Native Speaker)

When the students without adequate preparation in the spoken language are required to write English, their efforts are plagued by various problems, especially those having to do with;1, article placement, 2. Agreement and 3 Sub-ordinations

Although these are grammatical problems but these may be solved through correct approach the grammar with the help of a true grammarian. But the most widely known and used method of teaching writing skill is guided writing or controlled writing and composition.

Controlled exercises in writing are used in the universities in two forms. One of these forms concerns writing correct and appropriate English sentences. But the best way to learn to control sentence-pattern is to manipulate little pieces of sentences and paragraphs can be manipulated.

The second form of controlled writing is guided composition concerns the structure of paragraphs and longer units of writing. Here William C. Pack says, “Learning to write is the same thing as learning to think. If the students can learn to organize thoughts and ideas in the same way as the native speaker thinks, they will be able to write English properly very soon.”

According to Thomas Mason, the best way to learn writing skill is the language experience approach. It is a teaching composition at the intermediate level for those who have completed the course of controlled writing composition and our concerns is what happens after the course.

Children often learn to read and write in their own language with the help of these approach and ESL students have been taught by this method to read at the basic code cracking level. This experience approach bases on the belief that learning writing must relate to the learners’ experience. The learners’ experiences tell them how to deal with different situation of practical life. The words, any learner uses in his conversation with the help of a teacher improve his writing his skill soon.

But some teachers of composition may assume that students are naturally eager to learn how to write. I say, paper writing is one of the most upsetting and frustrating task than all other human activities. It is also a fact that some find writing a release or an act of creation and self-expression.

For other people writing can provide emotional relief, egoistic satisfaction stating their ideas in articles and books. But reading and writing develop together. But I belief, if we tap internal sources and experiences of the students and according to those source and experiences we guide the students they will learn soon writing skill.

Thus the more personal and experience based top will be, the better the learning climate in term of individually motivation. But there are many kinds of writing individually and collectively.

Kinds of Writing

1. Personal Writing
2. Descriptive Writing
3. Expository Writing
4. Persuasive Writing
5. Critical Writing

Further personal writing may be divided into four kinds; 1, autobiographical writing, 2. Autobiographical anecdote, 3 Personal essay and Journal

Actually writing is a mechanical mental process, the knowledge of alphabets m especially, pronunciation and grammar. So writing is a most important social instrument of communication throughout the world. But control is equated quality and freedom with quality of writing. The teacher who wants his students to produce good quality of writing with is a dilemma. But follow these steps to improve writing skill in the class.

1. Motivation

Students discover that a particular linguistic structure or a set of vocabulary forms is required in order to carry a class room task.

2. Attention

Having to carry out a task, motivate the students to listen for the linguistic form requires accomplishing task.

3. Use

The students must use the linguistic forms immediately in the task at home.

4. Development of Linguistic Specific Abilities

By virtue of their using the linguistic forms immediately in a task, the students have time and opportunities to develop whatever language specific abilities are necessary in order to internalize the new linguistic forms.

And the concept of task plays an important role in the teaching methodology developed under the functional approach, the nature of task must be made clear to the students.

Tasks have four characteristics. Tasks have;

1. A product is an end result
2. A specific audience towards which the product is directed
3. A Function
4. A Linguistic Focus

For this purpose the students are motivated to give attention to the new structure modeled by the teacher. The tasks provide immediate opportunities to use this structure in the classroom.

1. The Products

The products must be put in the context of all possible reading and writing process and productions and writing process and along with it the must provide the knowledge of English alphabets so that the students could know how to spell a words in the class under the teacher’s guidance.

2. Knowledge of the Phoneme

Each English student must teach how to decode and encode the English phoneme in the context of sequence of letters.

3. Knowledge of Daily Language

We must encourage the students to read newspapers, editorial and journals and business letters at home daily to improve their reading and writing skill.

4. Knowledge of Paragraphs

We must give the students the knowledge of paragraphs, descriptive paragraphs and grammar paragraphs so that they could write something on them at their home in extra time.

2. The Specific Audience

The second characteristic of a task is that the resultant product is directed to a specific audience; to himself, friends, and classmates. Thus they will enjoy reading and writing in the classmates according to their will and wishes.

3. The Function

The function may be cognitive, effective or both. But there are seven major kinds of language. 1. Directing, 2, Reporting on Present and Past Experiences, 3, Self-maintaining, 4, Logical Writing, 5, Predicting, 6, Projecting and 7, Imaginary.

4. The Linguistic Focus

The fourth characteristic of a task is that it has a linguistic-form focus. The focus may be a new sentence structure, new vocabulary, idioms, a paragraph, punctuation or any other linguistic concept.

Besides, sentence combining exercise from easy to difficult depending on the structure being taught, the nature of instruction to combine the sentences, the number of sentences to be combined and the number of possible selection. For example:

1. The woman speaks English fluently.
2. The woman got a job as a translator.

Answers in combined sentence

Ans. The woman who speaks English got a job as a translator.

To sum up, sentence combining is an approach to the teaching of writing which has been very successful with native speakers of English language. But I think it will be prove very effective in teaching English grammar and writing to the EFL students of various classes for writing –proficiency.

It is the best way to teach writing skill and the students come to know how sentences work and taking them from the syntax-units to the combining of these units into complex sentences. Sentence-Combing practice, not only the students gives practice in using a range of syntactic structure, but also leads to overall improvement in terms of such things as grammatical correctness, sentence-variety and organization and cohesion.