Foreign Language Teaching Methods: Writing

Classroom Considerations

Student-to-student learning can be greatly enhanced by collaborative writing projects. Different students bring different skills to the table and after a 10-minute writing activity, but all come away with having learned something new from their peers. Some students may be more creative, others may have a richer lexicon, some may know more about how different grammatical constructs can be used for different narrative purposes, and so on. Such collaborative tasks have the potential for truly enriching students' learning experience and should be used in language teaching frequently.

Group Work

Two main issues sometimes arise in group work. First, if a group is too large or too uneven in their proficiency, some students may end up doing all the work while others are locked out of the learning process. Second, group work may lead to off-task chatter. Both of these issues are easily pre-empted:

Potential Problem	Solution(s)
uneven proficiency	If a more proficient group gets done with the assignment faster, give them other tasks (expand the paragraph, revise the text with more sophisticated vocabulary, etc.). In groups with mixed-level proficiency, give each participant in the group a specific role (scribe, grammarian, content reviewer, etc.) to make sure nobody is left out.
large group sizes	Keep groups to 3-4 for most writing tasks.
off-task behavior	If somebody simply does not want to work, you may implement peer-review sheets where each group member grades every other group member and him-/herself based on their contribution. Make sure this grading sheet is handed out before the project so students know you are holding them accountable to equal work for equal "grade." Hold students accountable for the assignment by collecting it at the end of the activity for a class-participation or in-class quiz grade. Walk from group to group during the composition process. They may have questions for you anyway, and you can keep your antennae tuned to off-task chatter.

Plagiarism

Our assumption is that students will not cheat. On the rare occasion a student may cheat by doing any of the following:

1. copying somebody else's homework,
2. copying from a piece of literature (not kidding!),
3. using an on-line translator, or
4. submitting a text written by a native speaker.

While cheating is not acceptable, sometimes students are unaware of the differences between plagiarism, citation and paraphrasing. An isolated incident may become a learning moment. If consistent or intentional cheating takes place, however, the instructor -- within the bounds of the institution -- may ask the student to re-write the paper under supervision, give the assignment a grade of zero, or report the student to the institution's Dean of Students.

Signs that a student is not turning in his/her own work:

• A beginning or intermediate learner's writing uses language characteristic of an educated native speaker (register, grammatical accuracy, pragmatic sophistication, etc.)
• Two students submit identical (word for word) writing assignments.
• Text which searched online comes up as part of a piece of literature.
• "Funny" phrases interspersed with correct grammar may indicate an online translator.