Essay On The Importance Of Writing In ELT

● Drawing conclusions

1.6. The status of writing in ELT For some time, under the influence of the audio-lingual approach to language teaching, it has been conventional wisdom to regard speech as being of primary importance, with writing being placed a poor second. Indeed, writing was regarded as being a somewhat inferior form of the language, a pale imitation of speech. When zealously applied, this viewpoint has had a number of unfortunate consequences for the learner. To begin with, the learner was often denied the support of the written language during the early phases of learning. This could be very frustrating to a literate adult, used to learning from written sources. Secondly, the learner who wished to acquire a reading and a writing control of the language had to proceed through a lot of spoken practice before getting down to the written form. Thirdly, writing practice, when it was introduced, tended to be an extension of spoken practice even though, as it is quite obvious when we think of it, we do not often write exactly what we say. It would be foolhardy to claim that we have now reached an age of enlightenment and that we now know exactly how to teach writing. It would be true to say, however, that writing is no longer relegated to second place. Instead, writing

Process writing, in contrast, requires that a degree of analysis be undertaken. After the students have written their work, it needs to be revised and evaluated. Learners who are unused to process writing will view revision as a sign of failure if handled poorly by the teacher. As with revision, evaluation is often viewed negatively, mostly due to the traditional technique of merely highlighting the errors in a learner’s work. The teacher’s task is to provide evaluation that will lead the learners into reflecting on their work. (Simpson