Louanne Piccolo is a native English speaker living in France who is also an English language teacher. As a regular reader and contributor to our blog, she’s written an article that’s brimming with activities to help incorporate extensive reading into your classroom!
What is extensive writing and why should my learners do it?
Extensive writing is when learners do a large quantity of informal writing on a wide range of topics and in various styles, and they do so for pleasure. Intensive writing, in which learners have to be careful of their grammar and of making mistakes, is different. Most classroom writing activities are intensive: teachers set a task with grammar structures and topics that learners must use and then grade afterwards. With extensive writing, there is less emphasis on accuracy and grammar and more on fluency and expression. So, it’s important not to concentrate on errors but to focus on what the learner is saying… and that’s what this blog post is all about!
Writing a journal
Journals are an excellent way for learners to express their ideas and feelings freely. They can write for as long as they have something to say and on a wide range of topics. Extensive writing is informal, so it’s wise to keep the rules of journal writing to a minimum. You can ask your students to use a different exercise book to their class book or have them make their own. Allocate a time for journal writing that suits your schedule. Learners could write in their journals when they’ve finished their classwork, at the end of every lesson or for homework.
Encourage lower level learners to write at least five lines and more experienced learners to write as much as they can. Remember, extensive writing is a stress-free and fun exercise. It focuses on communicating as many ideas as possible!
Collect the journals at the end of every week, read them and leave a comment to show that you’ve read and understood the new entry.
What should learners write about?
Although learners may want to write about topics of their choice, it might be a good idea to give them a list of topics to choose from. Students who have little experience doing extensive journal writing often just list what they do daily, which is both boring to read and write.
Ideas that will encourage learners to write about what they think and feel:
- What I did at the weekend
- My family
- When I was a child
- My favourite birthday present
- Last night I dreamt about…
Should I correct the journals?
Some teachers may feel uncomfortable because they’re not correcting grammar and spelling, but it’s important to remember that extensive writing does not focus on accuracy. As soon as learners start worrying about tenses or sentence structure, they stop writing freely. If you want them to write confidently and experiment with new language and ideas, don’t take a red pen to their journals. It would also take a long time to read and correct all the journals every week and most teachers just don’t have the time.
You might want to point out if a student has spelt a word incorrectly in more than one entry, mistakenly used one word for another (making it difficult to understand the text) or used the wrong form of a word frequently. The best response to journal entries are personal comments. Students enjoy the feedback and it can even lead to a dialogue between you and them. Comments can be encouraging or playful. You can also give advice and agree or disagree with something the learner feels strongly about. Journal writing develops the relationship between you and your students as you gradually learn more about them through their writing, and they learn more about you through your comments.
Some examples:
- Well done on your driving test!
- I’ve been to that city! I also loved the cathedral. Did you take the guided tour?
- What happened afterwards?
- I’m also afraid of heights. I’ll never go bungy jumping.
- You’re lucky. I’ve always wanted to do that.
- That would have made me angry too.
Extensive writing will help learners to organise their thinking, express their opinions and develop their fluency in a natural context (without worrying about details). Over time, their English comprehension and use will improve, as will their self-confidence.
What other activities can you think of for extensive writing?
If you enjoyed Louanne’s post, you might also like her blog about encouraging learning through the use of technology in the classroom.