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Writing in my
school
There are three main issues regarding teaching and learning writing skills in
the secondary school where I am teaching: learners’ low motivation to write,
minimum interaction in writing, and poor writing skils. These lead to their lack of confidence in that
particular skill. Nevertheless, they are very motivated and actively participating
in speaking activities, as a result, their aural skills are much better than
those of written ones. Furthermore, writing on papers or handwriting activities
is the typical form of teaching and learning writing activities in most
Indonesian secondry schools. This is caused by the lack of computers in each
school which teachers and ESL learners can use for writing. In the case of the school
where I am teaching, there are only less than 20 units of computers for almost 200 hundres students, from year ten to
twelve and for teachers to use. These
computers are only used for computer lesson. Lack of teachers’, school preparedness
(Anderson, 1985. P.5) as well as
learners’ ability in making use of such a technology seem also to be the cause.
By teachers’preparedness means that they are not very familiar in using the
computers for ESL although all of them are computer literate. Even, as Dudeney (2007, p.2) observes that,
many teachers ignore their existence despite the facts that a great change in computer
use and advances spread quickly in
education world. Consequently, handwriting activities keeps existing although
students have the chance to write with computers.
However, a significant change recently has happened where
Indonesian government has allocated a huge amount, 20 %, of the national budget
to support education. With that funding, schools now can have more computers
and teachers are encouraged to optimally use the facility for the sake of
teaching learning activities. In spite of this, teachers’ awareness in using computer
for ESL classroom is still the remainding issue. Therefore, at this juncture,
this article will discuss how computers can be used for the purpose of
increasing students’ motivation and confidence, and their writing skills. These
would be done by getting them engaged in a variety of writing activities with computers, either
offline or online.
Benefits of
using computers in the ESL classroom compared to handwriting
Writing with computers would benefit both teachers and
learners. Dowling (1999,p.xi) argues that “writing with computers is of special
benefit to learners of all ages”. The reasons are, as Dowling suggests, writing with computers enables the balance
between process and product within the activities of writing. Learners are also
free to explore and develop ideas, concepts and relationship through language.
In additon, learners identified having learning difficulties, would find this
helpful because computers allows them to write freely and flexibly. This, to a
greater extent would ehance their confidence and status within their peer or
group (ibid). Reflecting from what Dowling has suggested, it is obvious that
writing with computers could be done by learners at any age of learning. They will
certainly experience the process of writing and, more importantly, gain
confidence. This, to some extent, would affect learners motivation to write.
Writing
computers or offline writing
Writing with computers can be done offline or online. By
offline means that writing process is separately done without internet
connection. Offline writing can be done through word processor, i.e. microsoft
word. Writing with word processors gives a broad range of benefits for writing.
For instance, initial “correctness” like spelling, choice of words or sentence
correction is no longer the issue (Dowling, 1999. P. xi) because in microsoft
word, a range of programs are provided to do those tasks for the learners when
writing. This will reduce learners’ burden in writing. For instance with the
spelling checkers, learners would feel confidence with their spelling (ibid.p.
xii) since the facilities, like spelling checker, can directly show which words
are misspelled along with the correct spelled words.
Writing with a
word processor
Writing can be fun in that word processor provides
facilities to joyful writing activities. Dudeny and Hockly (2007, p.15)
highlight that word processor such as microsoft word can be used in many
inventive ways by both teachers and learners. For teachers, they can use it to
prepare, create and share materials for their classes (ibid). For students,
however, it allows learners to insert pictures they like and design the lay out
of their writing in a very interesting way. Also, they can change the fonts color and
size, insert frames and explore their creatvity on their writing tasks. In addition, they
can change the text background which will make the text looks colourful or
they might want to break the text into coloumn like a magazine. By doing such
activitities, their texts may look appealing to them. With regard to this,
Dowling (1999.p.1) argues that words processor can help learners to produce “ a
professional looking” work.
Basiccaly, there are two main writing activities that
students can do on word processor like microsoft word. As Dowling (1999.
P.19-25) points outs, students can use microsoft word for individual and
collaborative writing. In this context, collaborative means students can write
in pairs, groups or write with the whole class. For individual writing, Dowling
(ibid) suggests a range of activities such as writing “ blind”, filling in
details, finding and replacing-exploring style, finding and replacing-exploring
grammar, cutting and pasting-playing with sequencing, spaced out, etc. More explanation
about all these types of activities can be seen in Dowling’s book, writing and learning with computers
(1999).
Individual
writing
As mentioned earlier, word processor facilitates teacher
and learners. For teachers, they can assign the students to compose a story or
write about their family or their pets. In designing the writing activities, it
is suggested that teachers apply the process based approach which emphasises
the idea of writing as problem solving (Dudely-Evans & John, 1998. P.117).
In this approach there is a range of steps that a learner has to go through
before coming at the writing product.
Robinson (1991, in Dudely-Evans
& John, 1998. P.117) reviews the thinking stages of writing within this
approach which starts with draft 1,
revision, input, draft 2, feedback, and draft 3. All these processes will keep
continuing until the learners arrive at their writing final products. This approach certainly needs time
investment from both teachers and learners.
To make individual writing more attractive, there is a
variety of activities that teachers can get their students to do. Dudely-Evans
& John (1998. P. 21) suggest that students can use word processor for
creative writing. By creative writing means that students can add sound,
pictures or videos to support their writing. For instance, they might want to write
about their family. On their text, they can insert their family photos. With
the same text, they can also change the colour for the names of their parents
and their siblings. Adding to that, the can insert frame for their text which
would make their family description looks more personalized and interesting. Overall,
all the facilities in word processor will allow the learners to develop their
creativity as well as encourage them to produce more writing.
Not only for the purpose of building students’ creativity
in writing can be achieved through this program, it also allows the learners to
practice language and develop their vocabulary. For instance, learners can
practice fill in the gap activities, sentence reordering, adding titles to
paragraphs, and soon (Dudely-Evans & John, 1998. P.22). These activities
are made possible because word proccesor allows the learner to undo and redo
along with copying and pasting more easily and less time consuming (ibid).
Furthermore, with the thesaurus, they can find the synonym or antonyms of
certain words. This would enrich their vocabulary although they might have a
problem with the right word choice.
Collaborative
writing
As well as promoting individual learning activities,
words processor also allow a range of
collaborative writing activities, either paired and grouped work or whole class
activities. For instance, they can write a dialogue, stories, or the other
types of text. They can also practice to be editors (Dowling, 1999, p.28). In
this sense, they can proofread, edit or change some parts of their friends’
work by using track change (Dudely-Evans & John, 1998. P.19). More
importantly, they can work together to write for presentation (ibid, p. 25) or for
assessment purposes ((Dowling, 1999, p.29).
These activities will not only enable them to communicate their ideas
and improve their writing skill from their peers’ feedback, but these also
could increase their confidence and motivation to write in English.
Writing with computers (online)
After feeling confident with writing with computer, students,
afterwards, can be encouraged to write on a more interesting phase, that is to
write on the internet or online. Linda (2000) believes that “when computers and Internet technology are
integrated into regular instruction, they can become an effective tool to
facilitate language learning” (para. 17). By writing, posting or publishing their written work on
the internet, ESL learners would certainly increase their motivation in
writing. However, prior to do such online writing, teachers should be aware of
students’ background skills or familiarity with the internet. In other words,
teachers need to identify what the learners have been able to do and what they cannot
do. Teachers’ awareness with these issue would enable them to plan some initial
activities like introducing the learners with emails, wesbsites, blogs,
wikipedias, etc..These activities can be done along with the writing process.
Final thought
The advances of computer technology, like word
processors, have made writing process more easily in some respects. Not only
allowing the students to write individually, by employing process based
approach, it also promotes collaborative writing activities. Students with less
interest in writing could be encouraged to write with computers as the
facilities in word processors allow them to write freely and explore their
creatvity. It also allows them to personalize their writing and make them look
appealing. This will certainly increase their motivation. More importanly,
writing with computers can enhance their confidence, which is a good starting
poin to write on a higher stage that is to write on online pages, like weblogs
or websites. However, apart from those benefits, teachers should be aware of
some challenges they might encounter before or during the implementation of such
a program, for intance the limited of access to computers and school unpreparadness
to support such learning activities.
References
Anderson, J. (1985). Computers in the language classroom. pp.5. Australian
reading association. Perth, West Australia.
Dowling, C. (1999) Writing and
Learning with Computers. pp.xi,xii,1,19-26,28,29. Acer Press.Victoria,
Australia.
Dudeny, G. & Hockly, N. (2007). How
to teach english with technology. pp.
15,19,25,28,29,117. Pearson Longman, England.
Dudeney, G (2007) The internet and
the language classroom. A practical guide for teachers. 2nd edition.
Thornburry (ed). pp.2. Cambridge University Press.
Linda, T
(2000). Benefits and challenges in using computers and the
internet with adult English learners. Retrieved on 14
September 2013, from http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/usetech.html
Images : retrieved on 20 September 2013, from
http:// www.google.com
Video : retrieved on 20 September 2013, from
http:// www.youtobe.com
