欣蓉的教學網誌

The speech focused more on the writing part. In fact, the most important thing in taking the writing test is to read the instructions carefully before generating ideas. According to Mr. Chang, if students can follow the instructions exactly, they can get at least B (the highest is A⁺ and the lowest is C^-. This is true of English. Besides, Mr. Chang reminded the students to write neatly. This is also the same with English.

Mr. Chang’s speech is of great help to the students.

This afternoon, Prof. Ho-ping Feng gave a speech on "Teaching EFL Writing to Senior High School Students in Taiwan: Theories and Practices." It’s a very well-organzied and informative speech.

Most important of all, she provided some sequencing activities for developing students’ writing competence as follows:

Freshman year in high school:

1. Controlled exercises–sentence making (words, patterns)

2. Translation

3. Journal

4. Summary/Response/Reflection

Sophomore year

1. Controlled exercises–sentence making (words, patterns)

2. Translation

3. Journal

4. Summary/Response/Reflection

5. Picture wriitng

Junior year (Senior year?)

1. Picture writing

2. Exposition description

3. Description

4. Argumentation

5. The strategies for making transition between two genres.

Also, she gave some suggestions on providing feedback:

1. Controlled exercises: Accuracy is focused.

2. Journal/Response: Fluency is focused. Teachers don’t need to correct grammatical errors; instead, they just give response. By doing so, they can lower students’ anxiety and thus encourage the students to write more.

3. Focused feedback: When giving feedback, teachers just make some selective error corrections, for example, the verb tense.

4. Teacher-led discussion of the common mistakes.

Ms. Feng emphasized the importance of giving positive/encouraging feedback and comments.