by Dr Rodrigo Arellano and Gizem Sahin
Speaking purely from experience, it’s more likely that you will find students who are relatively strong at reading, listening, and speaking, than one who is stronger at writing than all the rest. The reasons would require another article to even touch upon, but they are somewhat irrelevant here as we need our students to be the best writers they can be before they enter the IELTS test centre.
Not only do many students dislike writing in general, but many students will be completely put off by the writing tasks found in the IELTS, or will be in the position of attempting such tasks for the first time in their lives, regardless of whether in L1 or in English. Candidates must summarise visual material, such as graphs and charts, in IELTS Writing Task 1, and they must develop a solid argument on a particular topic in Task 2 (Academic IELTS).
To do either well, candidates need to know what is involved in the writing of these different types of text, and so they must look at as many examples as possible. Which leads us neatly to the first of the three activities we shall be considering in this article!
Activity 1. First Read, Then Write
As Walker (2023) has pointed out, the logical division of skills between receptive and productive should be listening leading to speaking and reading leading to writing. Since writing is the productive counterpoint to reading, it makes sense to begin with a reading task.
Introduce your students to the IELTS Writing paper with examples - show them the rubric, give them a guide to how the writing is assessed, and generally provide them with a sufficiently well-written example of, say, a Part One task so that they know what they have to do, and roughly how to do it.
Look at that example in detail. Give it the whole reading analysis treatment. All of this might take one lesson and a quarter to do - the first lesson being spent on a study of the nature of the Writing paper, and on assessment criteria.
Give your students as much time to look at the model you’ve supplied, and to ask questions about how it was composed and about the language it contains.
Then take the model away, and tell your students they are going to attempt a piece of writing of their own. But give them the exact same rubric as before, and tell them that there is no such thing as cheating in this task.
In short, invite them to reconstruct the model, as well as they can remember it.
No student, unless possessed of a photographic memory, will be able to do this, so the results will not be carbon copies of the original. But by getting the students to reconstruct the model - effectively turning the reading into a kind of dictogloss - they will begin to see how the text was built, and they will start to take in some of the formulaic ideas of IELTS writing.
A good follow-up task would be to ask the students to highlight any language they think would work in other tasks of a similar nature - if they start learning these chunks now, they’ll be better placed when they sit the real exam.
Activity 2: Group Planning
It’s easy to speak. You think of what you want to say, and you start speaking. It gets harder when you have to speak on a single topic for longer, as happens in Part Two of the Speaking paper, but generally, there isn’t much need for a huge amount of planning.
Writing is not speaking.
Students often struggle to understand this point, and as a result, the texts they create are poorly structured and are too conversational in register. What is needed is better planning - planning of the structure of the text, planning of the organisation of ideas, and planning of the sophisticated lexis the student needs to make their writing really shine.
This activity will help to underline the importance of planning a piece of writing.
First, give the students the rubric. They can’t write unless they know who they are writing for and what they’re writing about, and to plan a piece of writing we need to know these details.
Give them a minute to start thinking of the ideas they want to convey in their writing, and when they have noted down a few ideas, ask them to attach some language to these ideas. If they have one idea that contradicts the next, they can start thinking of the linking words that will take the reader from one paragraph to another. At this stage, we don’t want full sentences, however. Individual words or short clauses are sufficient.
After they have made a basic plan, perhaps by drawing boxes to represent each of the paragraphs of their text, they can show their work to another student and talk through the plan. As they explain it to their partner, they should think about whether they’re making sense - if it is easy for their partner to understand the flow of the text. Perhaps the partner will express their confusion visually, with a frown, or perhaps they will ask questions. Based on such feedback, the first student can make some alterations to their plan.
Before long, each of your students will have a plan for their text, and here I recommend taking these plans and posting them somewhere in the classroom so that everyone can see what has been produced. Ask your students to look for similarities and differences, and for any ideas they wish to borrow. They will likely want to make a few more changes to their plan, which is perfectly fine.
When they are ready, you can do one of two things. If this is the first time you’re using this activity, let the students write according to their own plan; but if you’ve done this activity before, consider shuffling the plans and distributing them at random, so that each student has to write according to someone else’s plan. This would then open the door to further self-reflection and discussion activities.
(Source: Author’s students)
Activity 3: Collaborative Cohesion
This is an activity that builds on the planning work in the previous activity, and ties in with an activity that Christopher Walker relates in his Fifty Zero Preparation Games, where he calls it ‘Collaborate’ - though you might have come across it in different guises elsewhere.
First, introduce the rubric. Get the students to work with you on making a plan. I’d recommend using the whiteboard for this so that the students can refer to the plan later.
When the plan has been agreed and everyone is on the same page - so to speak! - ask the students to start writing.
Give them five or six minutes, and then tell them to stop. Move the papers one person round to the left (or right - it doesn’t matter which way the papers go provided you’re consistent about it!).
Allow the student a minute to read what’s on the page in front of them, and then they continue writing for five more minutes. Feel free to adjust the timing as appropriate, as five minutes might be too short. However, when you feel that each student has had long enough to put something down on their paper, stop them and pass the papers round once more.
Continue like this until the texts have all been written (or, as a variant approach, make every fourth writer an editor of sorts, someone who can go back through the text and make sure the cohesive devices are appropriate).
Finally, put your students into small groups; give them time to read a few of the texts that have just been created, and then ask them to reflect on how well put together each one is. What works, what doesn’t, and what can be done to make each text better?
For building an awareness of the importance of cohesive devices, I know of few better activities!
Conclusion
Many students dislike writing, but there’s no reason that they should dislike your writing lessons. There are many creative, fun activities that can bring life into the writing classroom - we’ve looked at three such activities here, but the internet abounds in others. The most important thing, though, is that the teacher should not be put off teaching writing just because their students seem not to like it. It is a major part of the exam, and any student who wishes to succeed in the IELTS will need to succeed here, too.
References
Walker, C. (2023), Reconsidering the Division, Modern English Teacher 32/4
Author Biographies
Rodrigo Arellano
EFL and Spanish language teacher from Chile who lives and works in Sydney, Australia, where he studied for his PhD in Applied and Educational Linguistics. He is passionate about TESOL teacher training and has taught and researched various language-related fields, including Second Language Acquisition, Discourse Analysis, Research Methodology, Multilingualism and Assessment.
Gizem Sahin
Experienced language educator specialising in ESL/EFL/EAP and Turkish as a heritage/second language. Proficient in face-to-face and online learning settings for diverse learners, including, young learners, adults, undergraduates and professionals. Holds qualifications in TESOL, applied linguistics, and language teaching management, alongside certifications in assessment, training design and development. Passionate about empowering ESL students and fostering cultural connections through education.