Approaches to teaching writing (Entry 8)

Six Approaches to Writing

According to Vicki Mcquitty: 6 Approaches to Writing Instruction in Elementary School

Penmanship Approach

 According to research, the best handwriting teaching takes place in brief, frequent, and structured classes (Christensen, 2009). The emphasis of lessons should be on writing quickly and naturally rather than on creating flawless letters or placing the letters precisely between the lines. Lessons should last 10 to 20 minutes each day. It is beneficial if teachers first show students how to form each letter before giving them time to practice writing individual letters, words, and lengthier texts. Both handwritten and cursive writing programs are available, and they frequently teach the letters in a certain order that has been found to aid in the development of handwriting. However, teaching children to write by hand shouldn't start until they can form letters quickly. Once their handwriting is automatic, students should practice writing for real audiences and reasons.

Rules-Based Approach

            Children are taught how to write words and sentences correctly as part of rules-based training. It involves tasks like classifying words into parts of speech, locating sentence components like subjects and predicates, learning and using subject-verb agreement and pronoun usage norms, and honing punctuation, capitalization, and spelling skills. Sentence correction is a typical exercise. Teachers give students sentences that contain grammatical problems and urge them to fix them. To practice using language, students may also compose their own creative sentences. For instance, they can be instructed to compose a sentence that properly utilizes a particular adjective or homonym. Prefixing or suffixing lists of words, linking phrases with conjunctions, and turning sentence fragments into entire sentences are other exercises.

 

Process Approach

Process writing instruction focuses on the process of composing texts. In this approach, children learn to brainstorm ideas, write rough drafts, and revise and edit those drafts. Process writing emerged in the 1970s, sparked by teachers’ growing rejection of a rules-based approach. At the same time, professional authors, such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Donald Murray (Murray, 1968), began to advocate a “workshop” approach to writing instruction that engaged students in the same writing process that published authors used. Soon thereafter, researchers began to study writers as they composed original texts (Emig, 1971; Hayes & Flower, 1980).

Genre Approach

The focus of genre-based writing training is on learning how to compose a variety of texts. The idea that writing is situational, and that what constitutes "excellent" writing relies on the context, purpose, and audience, is the foundation of the genre concept. For instance, writing an SMS to a buddy and writing an essay are two quite distinct writing tasks. The author and reader already have similar backgrounds; hence no background information is necessary for a "good" text message to effectively and casually transmit ideas.

Strategy Approach

Children who get writing education using strategy methods learn the planning, drafting, and editing techniques utilized by professional writers. These techniques are step-by-step instructions that walk students through every stage of the writing process. This method would be taught by the instructor in the following steps: 1) provide the underlying knowledge necessary for students to use the approach; 2) talk about the method and how it would enhance students' writing; 3) show the thought processes needed while putting the strategy into practice; 4) Offer assistance as students utilize the method, such as by collaborating with a partner; 5) let students use the strategy on their own.

Multimodal Approach

Writing training that uses multiple media acknowledges that modern writers use different writing styles than those of the past. We also—and possibly more frequently—compose digitally in addition to traditional, linear, paper-based texts. Digital writing involves more than just typing on a computer instead of writing by hand. Authors can become proficient in creating each of the several communication types used by digital writing. Take a look at a standard website. It may include written words, images, audio, video, and text boxes that let readers post their own ideas in addition to written words. It takes different abilities to plan and coordinate all of these diverse aspects than it does to write a novel using only words.