From Letters to Essays: Using Recursive Dialogue to Scaffold Academic Writing

By Eda Baki Zengin

In today’s ELT bazaar, content is apparently king. Go on social media and the algorithm will soon catch hold of you, feeding you endless short videos about the latest teaching novelty. I bookmark some, nod my head at others, but never really return to any of them. I notice eventually that I am in a committed relationship with the basics.

During a reflective moment thinking about these “basics”, I recalled a conference I had attended back in my early teaching years. There, I had the great opportunity to watch Mario Rinvolucri, may he rest in peace, demonstrate his letters to learners, and unfold the lesson through words shared. Almost like a splash of inspirational light, a “Dogme moment” shone through: what if the lesson doesn’t start with the coursebook, but with a letter? A letter for my Gen Z learners!

It was for my first class after a one-month term break, which in my EFL context is always a struggle when trying to tune learners back to English. Sensing the unwillingness of this group to engage with a generic “tell me about your holiday,” I decided to go with a solo writing task where they would feel secure remembering what they did and organizing their own narrative. I had no intention of leading them to a pre-selected language point. Instead, I wanted to create space for meaningful engagement and then respond, as naturally as possible, to the language and ideas that emerged. At the time, I just thought I was surviving Monday morning, but looking back, I realize I was acting on a Dogme mindset. My lesson aligned with the approach to a larger extent: materials-light and conversation-driven – in this case a written correspondence (Meddings & Thornbury, 2009).

So, I wrote this letter to my learners about my break, finishing it with a request to write a reply.

Putting on some soft music, I watched all my learners fully engaged in their compositions – a great welcoming-back hour for a teacher! I left the class with a stack of human narratives. Beyond the page, some of my students were even more committed, coming to me to share anecdotes or to show me a photo or three on their phone. I knew it then: the idea of a letter was great, but not enough to complete the Dogme moment.

These narratives demanded my human attention. I found myself in a “conflict between two of our functions as teachers: language instruction versus support and encouragement of learning” (Ur, 2012, p.162). To honour the latter, my usual “super error-catching corrector lens” had to be firmly shut.

That decision allowed a genuine connection, which paved the way for this letter to unfold into a recursive dialogue, changing genres and upscaling the style.

Most learners logically wrote about a place visited, a movie seen, or a meal tasted. I asked them to describe “it” a bit in detail – not because I wanted them to perform a descriptive paragraph, but because I was seriously curious about their “it” (creating a genuine task for an outcome). For example, one of my learners wrote about attending a semazen (whirling dervishes) show and how it made her feel. Having always wanted to attend such a ritual myself, I responded with sincerity:

“You have had a lovely term break! I’ve always wondered about that ‘semazen’ thing! Tell me more about that event—explain what it is, what happens, and what the atmosphere is like.”

The next day, new posts arrived on my desk from every single learner. The one who wrote about the “semazen” beautifully described the experience and even asked if I wanted to know anything else, which showed how much she was enjoying this individualised dialogue.

What began as a simple personal narrative gradually became an exercise in academic register. Tricia Hedge (2005) characterizes “writing as a recursive activity in which the writer moves backwards and forwards between drafting and revising, with stages of replanning in between” (p. 52). While Hedge typically refers to the evolution of a single text, my experience followed a slightly different path. I used our back-and-forth communication as the literal “replanning stage,” guiding my learners toward a formal academic style by asking them to expand on a theme from their own composition, supported by two specific reasons and explanations.

For instance, I requested my “semazen” learner to articulate the importance of visiting museums for young people. She went on to write her best analytical piece of the term, purely because it was an extension of her own lived experience rather than an artificial writing prompt appearing at the end of a textbook unit, the content of which is so often alien to an EFL learner.

By engaging in a live, recursive written dialogue with me, they used their concrete memories to ground the abstract academic arguments. These personal recollections acted like the scaffolding of a building; crucial during the replanning stage, yet completely invisible once the formal academic structure was complete.

However, the true power of this approach lies in the learner’s own realization of how the style and register change across different texts. I did not provide heavy top-down language or structural blueprints as I would if I were explicitly teaching this as part of a rigid curriculum. Instead, I gave them “opportunities to practice various forms and functions of writing and within these to develop different skills involved in producing written texts” (Hedge, 2005, p.11). You can visually trace the linguistic evolution: shifting from a casual narrative letter into a descriptive paragraph that attempted to paint a vivid image for the reader and finally elevating that expression into a structured academic text.

As you reflect on this process, you may recognize echoes of similar methods you have encountered or implemented in your own teaching journey. For me, Dogme always felt like a high-end brand for an exclusive club; even if you can afford to buy it, you’re left feeling like, ‘There’s no place I can wear this to.’ Yet, here I was, stepping right into it, using bits and pieces from my own story, ‘to experience another way of being a language teacher’ (Meddings and Thornbury, 2009, p. 21).”

Here is the blueprint of what I did, so you can do it too:

Step 1: Write a letter/postcard (about your weekend, recent trip, something funny happened on your way to class) ending with an open-ended question like, “How about you?”

Step 2: Share your letter with the learners. Play soft music in the background to establish a comfortable, focused atmosphere. Once the writing is over, continue with your daily plan. Your learners have hopefully tuned into English through their own efforts – no Monday trauma here!

Step 3: Read, and respond directly to what you read. Select a thread to pull on: a place (describe more); a movie or a book (simple review) + respond to what you have read. Do not correct structural errors but focus entirely on the content.

Step 4: Deliver your response. You can set a strict reply date, but I preferred to let the communication flow naturally. I told them this was an ongoing conversation between us and they could drop their replies on my desk anytime during the week.

Step 5: When new posts arrive, look for the bridge to academic writing, or better: a text with an academic train of thought, like how we need to explain our statements, the logical way to organize. Use their personal interests to prompt essay-level text types.

In short, then: start with an idea, and return to it as often as you can, for as many repetitions and recursions as you need, to help your students discover what they are capable of in written English!

This hands-on learning experience also resonated with my own rediscovery that personal letters can build significant rapport and foster deep, individualized interactions. Returning to this “basic” technique was a rewarding experience for me.

References

Hedge, T. (2005). Writing (2nd ed.). Oxford Resource Books for Teachers. Oxford University Press.

Meddings, L., & Thornbury, S. (2009). Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language Teaching. Delta Publishing.

Rinvolucri, M. (2005). Grammar is too serious to be fun. Lecture delivered at TOBB University, Ankara. For more on humanized language teaching, visit https://hlt.digital .

Ur, P. (2012). A Course in English Language Teaching (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

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