teaching methods of essay writing

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Four Strategies for Effective Writing Instruction

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(This is the first post in a two-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is the single most effective instructional strategy you have used to teach writing?

Teaching and learning good writing can be a challenge to educators and students alike.

The topic is no stranger to this column—you can see many previous related posts at Writing Instruction .

But I don’t think any of us can get too much good instructional advice in this area.

Today, Jenny Vo, Michele Morgan, and Joy Hamm share wisdom gained from their teaching experience.

Before I turn over the column to them, though, I’d like to share my favorite tool(s).

Graphic organizers, including writing frames (which are basically more expansive sentence starters) and writing structures (which function more as guides and less as “fill-in-the-blanks”) are critical elements of my writing instruction.

You can see an example of how I incorporate them in my seven-week story-writing unit and in the adaptations I made in it for concurrent teaching.

You might also be interested in The Best Scaffolded Writing Frames For Students .

Now, to today’s guests:

‘Shared Writing’

Jenny Vo earned her B.A. in English from Rice University and her M.Ed. in educational leadership from Lamar University. She has worked with English-learners during all of her 24 years in education and is currently an ESL ISST in Katy ISD in Katy, Texas. Jenny is the president-elect of TexTESOL IV and works to advocate for all ELs:

The single most effective instructional strategy that I have used to teach writing is shared writing. Shared writing is when the teacher and students write collaboratively. In shared writing, the teacher is the primary holder of the pen, even though the process is a collaborative one. The teacher serves as the scribe, while also questioning and prompting the students.

The students engage in discussions with the teacher and their peers on what should be included in the text. Shared writing can be done with the whole class or as a small-group activity.

There are two reasons why I love using shared writing. One, it is a great opportunity for the teacher to model the structures and functions of different types of writing while also weaving in lessons on spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

It is a perfect activity to do at the beginning of the unit for a new genre. Use shared writing to introduce the students to the purpose of the genre. Model the writing process from beginning to end, taking the students from idea generation to planning to drafting to revising to publishing. As you are writing, make sure you refrain from making errors, as you want your finished product to serve as a high-quality model for the students to refer back to as they write independently.

Another reason why I love using shared writing is that it connects the writing process with oral language. As the students co-construct the writing piece with the teacher, they are orally expressing their ideas and listening to the ideas of their classmates. It gives them the opportunity to practice rehearsing what they are going to say before it is written down on paper. Shared writing gives the teacher many opportunities to encourage their quieter or more reluctant students to engage in the discussion with the types of questions the teacher asks.

Writing well is a skill that is developed over time with much practice. Shared writing allows students to engage in the writing process while observing the construction of a high-quality sample. It is a very effective instructional strategy used to teach writing.

‘Four Square’

Michele Morgan has been writing IEPs and behavior plans to help students be more successful for 17 years. She is a national-board-certified teacher, Utah Teacher Fellow with Hope Street Group, and a special education elementary new-teacher specialist with the Granite school district. Follow her @MicheleTMorgan1:

For many students, writing is the most dreaded part of the school day. Writing involves many complex processes that students have to engage in before they produce a product—they must determine what they will write about, they must organize their thoughts into a logical sequence, and they must do the actual writing, whether on a computer or by hand. Still they are not done—they must edit their writing and revise mistakes. With all of that, it’s no wonder that students struggle with writing assignments.

In my years working with elementary special education students, I have found that writing is the most difficult subject to teach. Not only do my students struggle with the writing process, but they often have the added difficulties of not knowing how to spell words and not understanding how to use punctuation correctly. That is why the single most effective strategy I use when teaching writing is the Four Square graphic organizer.

The Four Square instructional strategy was developed in 1999 by Judith S. Gould and Evan Jay Gould. When I first started teaching, a colleague allowed me to borrow the Goulds’ book about using the Four Square method, and I have used it ever since. The Four Square is a graphic organizer that students can make themselves when given a blank sheet of paper. They fold it into four squares and draw a box in the middle of the page. The genius of this instructional strategy is that it can be used by any student, in any grade level, for any writing assignment. These are some of the ways I have used this strategy successfully with my students:

* Writing sentences: Students can write the topic for the sentence in the middle box, and in each square, they can draw pictures of details they want to add to their writing.

* Writing paragraphs: Students write the topic sentence in the middle box. They write a sentence containing a supporting detail in three of the squares and they write a concluding sentence in the last square.

* Writing short essays: Students write what information goes in the topic paragraph in the middle box, then list details to include in supporting paragraphs in the squares.

When I gave students writing assignments, the first thing I had them do was create a Four Square. We did this so often that it became automatic. After filling in the Four Square, they wrote rough drafts by copying their work off of the graphic organizer and into the correct format, either on lined paper or in a Word document. This worked for all of my special education students!

I was able to modify tasks using the Four Square so that all of my students could participate, regardless of their disabilities. Even if they did not know what to write about, they knew how to start the assignment (which is often the hardest part of getting it done!) and they grew to be more confident in their writing abilities.

In addition, when it was time to take the high-stakes state writing tests at the end of the year, this was a strategy my students could use to help them do well on the tests. I was able to give them a sheet of blank paper, and they knew what to do with it. I have used many different curriculum materials and programs to teach writing in the last 16 years, but the Four Square is the one strategy that I have used with every writing assignment, no matter the grade level, because it is so effective.

‘Swift Structures’

Joy Hamm has taught 11 years in a variety of English-language settings, ranging from kindergarten to adult learners. The last few years working with middle and high school Newcomers and completing her M.Ed in TESOL have fostered stronger advocacy in her district and beyond:

A majority of secondary content assessments include open-ended essay questions. Many students falter (not just ELs) because they are unaware of how to quickly organize their thoughts into a cohesive argument. In fact, the WIDA CAN DO Descriptors list level 5 writing proficiency as “organizing details logically and cohesively.” Thus, the most effective cross-curricular secondary writing strategy I use with my intermediate LTELs (long-term English-learners) is what I call “Swift Structures.” This term simply means reading a prompt across any content area and quickly jotting down an outline to organize a strong response.

To implement Swift Structures, begin by displaying a prompt and modeling how to swiftly create a bubble map or outline beginning with a thesis/opinion, then connecting the three main topics, which are each supported by at least three details. Emphasize this is NOT the time for complete sentences, just bulleted words or phrases.

Once the outline is completed, show your ELs how easy it is to plug in transitions, expand the bullets into detailed sentences, and add a brief introduction and conclusion. After modeling and guided practice, set a 5-10 minute timer and have students practice independently. Swift Structures is one of my weekly bell ringers, so students build confidence and skill over time. It is best to start with easy prompts where students have preformed opinions and knowledge in order to focus their attention on the thesis-topics-supporting-details outline, not struggling with the rigor of a content prompt.

Here is one easy prompt example: “Should students be allowed to use their cellphones in class?”

Swift Structure outline:

Thesis - Students should be allowed to use cellphones because (1) higher engagement (2) learning tools/apps (3) gain 21st-century skills

Topic 1. Cellphones create higher engagement in students...

Details A. interactive (Flipgrid, Kahoot)

B. less tempted by distractions

C. teaches responsibility

Topic 2. Furthermore,...access to learning tools...

A. Google Translate description

B. language practice (Duolingo)

C. content tutorials (Kahn Academy)

Topic 3. In addition,...practice 21st-century skills…

Details A. prep for workforce

B. access to information

C. time-management support

This bare-bones outline is like the frame of a house. Get the structure right, and it’s easier to fill in the interior decorating (style, grammar), roof (introduction) and driveway (conclusion). Without the frame, the roof and walls will fall apart, and the reader is left confused by circuitous rubble.

Once LTELs have mastered creating simple Swift Structures in less than 10 minutes, it is time to introduce complex questions similar to prompts found on content assessments or essays. Students need to gain assurance that they can quickly and logically explain and justify their opinions on multiple content essays without freezing under pressure.

Thanks to Jenny, Michele, and Joy for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

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The Harvard Writing Project publishes resource guides for faculty and teaching fellows that help them integrate writing into their courses more effectively — for example, by providing ideas about effective assignment design and strategies for responding to student writing.

A list of current HWP publications for faculty and teaching fellows is provided below. Most of the publications are available for download as PDF files. If you would like to be added to the Bulletin mailing list or to receive printed copies of any of the guides listed below, email James Herron at  [email protected].

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Essay Writing: A complete guide for students and teachers

P LANNING, PARAGRAPHING AND POLISHING: FINE-TUNING THE PERFECT ESSAY

Essay writing is an essential skill for every student. Whether writing a particular academic essay (such as persuasive, narrative, descriptive, or expository) or a timed exam essay, the key to getting good at writing is to write. Creating opportunities for our students to engage in extended writing activities will go a long way to helping them improve their skills as scribes.

But, putting the hours in alone will not be enough to attain the highest levels in essay writing. Practice must be meaningful. Once students have a broad overview of how to structure the various types of essays, they are ready to narrow in on the minor details that will enable them to fine-tune their work as a lean vehicle of their thoughts and ideas.

In this article, we will drill down to some aspects that will assist students in taking their essay writing skills up a notch. Many ideas and activities can be integrated into broader lesson plans based on essay writing. Often, though, they will work effectively in isolation – just as athletes isolate physical movements to drill that are relevant to their sport. When these movements become second nature, they can be repeated naturally in the context of the game or in our case, the writing of the essay.

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Planning an essay

The Boys Scouts’ motto is famously ‘Be Prepared’. It’s a solid motto that can be applied to most aspects of life; essay writing is no different. Given the purpose of an essay is generally to present a logical and reasoned argument, investing time in organising arguments, ideas, and structure would seem to be time well spent.

Given that essays can take a wide range of forms and that we all have our own individual approaches to writing, it stands to reason that there will be no single best approach to the planning stage of essay writing. That said, there are several helpful hints and techniques we can share with our students to help them wrestle their ideas into a writable form. Let’s take a look at a few of the best of these:

BREAK THE QUESTION DOWN: UNDERSTAND YOUR ESSAY TOPIC.

Whether students are tackling an assignment that you have set for them in class or responding to an essay prompt in an exam situation, they should get into the habit of analyzing the nature of the task. To do this, they should unravel the question’s meaning or prompt. Students can practice this in class by responding to various essay titles, questions, and prompts, thereby gaining valuable experience breaking these down.

Have students work in groups to underline and dissect the keywords and phrases and discuss what exactly is being asked of them in the task. Are they being asked to discuss, describe, persuade, or explain? Understanding the exact nature of the task is crucial before going any further in the planning process, never mind the writing process .

BRAINSTORM AND MIND MAP WHAT YOU KNOW:

Once students have understood what the essay task asks them, they should consider what they know about the topic and, often, how they feel about it. When teaching essay writing, we so often emphasize that it is about expressing our opinions on things, but for our younger students what they think about something isn’t always obvious, even to themselves.

Brainstorming and mind-mapping what they know about a topic offers them an opportunity to uncover not just what they already know about a topic, but also gives them a chance to reveal to themselves what they think about the topic. This will help guide them in structuring their research and, later, the essay they will write . When writing an essay in an exam context, this may be the only ‘research’ the student can undertake before the writing, so practicing this will be even more important.

RESEARCH YOUR ESSAY

The previous step above should reveal to students the general direction their research will take. With the ubiquitousness of the internet, gone are the days of students relying on a single well-thumbed encyclopaedia from the school library as their sole authoritative source in their essay. If anything, the real problem for our students today is narrowing down their sources to a manageable number. Students should use the information from the previous step to help here. At this stage, it is important that they:

●      Ensure the research material is directly relevant to the essay task

●      Record in detail the sources of the information that they will use in their essay

●      Engage with the material personally by asking questions and challenging their own biases

●      Identify the key points that will be made in their essay

●      Group ideas, counterarguments, and opinions together

●      Identify the overarching argument they will make in their own essay.

Once these stages have been completed the student is ready to organise their points into a logical order.

WRITING YOUR ESSAY

There are a number of ways for students to organize their points in preparation for writing. They can use graphic organizers , post-it notes, or any number of available writing apps. The important thing for them to consider here is that their points should follow a logical progression. This progression of their argument will be expressed in the form of body paragraphs that will inform the structure of their finished essay.

The number of paragraphs contained in an essay will depend on a number of factors such as word limits, time limits, the complexity of the question etc. Regardless of the essay’s length, students should ensure their essay follows the Rule of Three in that every essay they write contains an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Generally speaking, essay paragraphs will focus on one main idea that is usually expressed in a topic sentence that is followed by a series of supporting sentences that bolster that main idea. The first and final sentences are of the most significance here with the first sentence of a paragraph making the point to the reader and the final sentence of the paragraph making the overall relevance to the essay’s argument crystal clear. 

Though students will most likely be familiar with the broad generic structure of essays, it is worth investing time to ensure they have a clear conception of how each part of the essay works, that is, of the exact nature of the task it performs. Let’s review:

Common Essay Structure

Introduction: Provides the reader with context for the essay. It states the broad argument that the essay will make and informs the reader of the writer’s general perspective and approach to the question.

Body Paragraphs: These are the ‘meat’ of the essay and lay out the argument stated in the introduction point by point with supporting evidence.

Conclusion: Usually, the conclusion will restate the central argument while summarising the essay’s main supporting reasons before linking everything back to the original question.

ESSAY WRITING PARAGRAPH WRITING TIPS

●      Each paragraph should focus on a single main idea

●      Paragraphs should follow a logical sequence; students should group similar ideas together to avoid incoherence

●      Paragraphs should be denoted consistently; students should choose either to indent or skip a line

●      Transition words and phrases such as alternatively , consequently , in contrast should be used to give flow and provide a bridge between paragraphs.

HOW TO EDIT AN ESSAY

Students shouldn’t expect their essays to emerge from the writing process perfectly formed. Except in exam situations and the like, thorough editing is an essential aspect in the writing process. 

Often, students struggle with this aspect of the process the most. After spending hours of effort on planning, research, and writing the first draft, students can be reluctant to go back over the same terrain they have so recently travelled. It is important at this point to give them some helpful guidelines to help them to know what to look out for. The following tips will provide just such help: 

One Piece at a Time: There is a lot to look out for in the editing process and often students overlook aspects as they try to juggle too many balls during the process. One effective strategy to combat this is for students to perform a number of rounds of editing with each focusing on a different aspect. For example, the first round could focus on content, the second round on looking out for word repetition (use a thesaurus to help here), with the third attending to spelling and grammar.

Sum It Up: When reviewing the paragraphs they have written, a good starting point is for students to read each paragraph and attempt to sum up its main point in a single line. If this is not possible, their readers will most likely have difficulty following their train of thought too and the paragraph needs to be overhauled.

Let It Breathe: When possible, encourage students to allow some time for their essay to ‘breathe’ before returning to it for editing purposes. This may require some skilful time management on the part of the student, for example, a student rush-writing the night before the deadline does not lend itself to effective editing. Fresh eyes are one of the sharpest tools in the writer’s toolbox.

Read It Aloud: This time-tested editing method is a great way for students to identify mistakes and typos in their work. We tend to read things more slowly when reading aloud giving us the time to spot errors. Also, when we read silently our minds can often fill in the gaps or gloss over the mistakes that will become apparent when we read out loud.

Phone a Friend: Peer editing is another great way to identify errors that our brains may miss when reading our own work. Encourage students to partner up for a little ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours’.

Use Tech Tools: We need to ensure our students have the mental tools to edit their own work and for this they will need a good grasp of English grammar and punctuation. However, there are also a wealth of tech tools such as spellcheck and grammar checks that can offer a great once-over option to catch anything students may have missed in earlier editing rounds.

Putting the Jewels on Display: While some struggle to edit, others struggle to let go. There comes a point when it is time for students to release their work to the reader. They must learn to relinquish control after the creation is complete. This will be much easier to achieve if the student feels that they have done everything in their control to ensure their essay is representative of the best of their abilities and if they have followed the advice here, they should be confident they have done so.

WRITING CHECKLISTS FOR ALL TEXT TYPES

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How to Teach Essay Writing

Last Updated: June 26, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Christopher Taylor, PhD . Christopher Taylor is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Austin Community College in Texas. He received his PhD in English Literature and Medieval Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 88,748 times.

Teaching students how to write an essay is a big undertaking, but this is a crucial process for any high school or college student to learn. Start by assigning essays to read and then encourage students to choose an essay topic of their own. Spend class time helping students understand what makes a good essay. Then, use your assignments to guide students through writing their essays.

Choosing Genres and Topics

• Narrative , which is a non-fiction account of a personal experience. This is a good option if you want your students to share a story about something they did, such as a challenge they overcame or a favorite vacation they took. [2] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Expository , which is when you investigate an idea, discuss it at length, and make an argument about it. This might be a good option if you want students to explore a specific concept or a controversial subject. [3] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Descriptive , which is when you describe a person, place, object, emotion, experience, or situation. This can be a good way to allow your students to express themselves creatively through writing. [4] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source
• Argumentative or persuasive essays require students to take a stance on a topic and make an argument to support that stance. This is different from an expository essay in that students won't be discussing a concept at length and then taking a position. The goal of an argumentative essay is to take a position right away and defend it with evidence. [5] X Trustworthy Source Purdue Online Writing Lab Trusted resource for writing and citation guidelines Go to source

• Make sure to select essays that are well-structured and interesting so that your students can model their own essays after these examples. Include essays written by former students, if you can, as well as professionally written essays.

Tip : Readers come in many forms. You can find readers that focus on a specific topic, such as food or pop culture. You can also find reader/handbook combos that will provide general information on writing along with the model essays.

• For example, for each of the essays you assign your students, you could ask them to identify the author's main point or focus, the structure of the essay, the author's use of sources, and the effect of the introduction and conclusion.
• Ask the students to create a reverse outline of the essay to help them understand how to construct a well-written essay. They'll identify the thesis, the main points of the body paragraphs, the supporting evidence, and the concluding statement. Then, they'll present this information in an outline. [8] X Research source

• For example, if you have assigned your students a narrative essay, then encourage them to choose a story that they love to tell or a story they have always wanted to tell but never have.
• If your students are writing argumentative essays, encourage them to select a topic that they feel strongly about or that they'd like to learn more about so that they can voice their opinion.

Explaining the Parts of an Essay

• For example, if you read an essay that begins with an interesting anecdote, highlight that in your class discussion of the essay. Ask students how they could integrate something like that into their own essays and have them write an anecdotal intro in class.
• Or, if you read an essay that starts with a shocking fact or statistic that grabs readers' attention, point this out to your students. Ask them to identify the most shocking fact or statistic related to their essay topic.

• For example, you could provide a few model thesis statements that students can use as templates and then ask them to write a thesis for their topic as an in-class activity or have them post it on an online discussion board.

Tip : Even though the thesis statement is only 1 sentence, this can be the most challenging part of writing an essay for some students. Plan to spend a full class session on writing thesis statements and review the information multiple times as well.

• For example, you could spend a class session going over topic sentences, and then look at how the authors of model essays have used topic sentences to introduce their claims. Then, identify where the author provides support for a claim and how they expand on the source.

• For example, you might direct students to a conclusion in a narrative essay that reflects on the significance of an author's experience. Ask students to write a paragraph where they reflect on the experience they are writing about and turn it in as homework or share it on class discussion board.
• For an expository or argumentative essay, you might show students conclusions that restate the most important aspect of a topic or that offer solutions for the future. Have students write their own conclusions that restate the most important parts of their subject or that outline some possible solutions to the problem.

Guiding Students Through the Writing Process

• Try giving students a sample timeline for how to work on their essays. For example, they might start brainstorming a topic, gathering sources (if required), and taking notes 4 weeks before the paper is due.
• Then, students might begin drafting 2 weeks before the paper is due with a goal of having a full draft 1 week before the essay's due date.
• Students could then plan to start revising their drafts 5 days before the essay is due. This will provide students with ample time to read through their papers a few times and make changes as needed.

• Freewriting, which is when you write freely about anything that comes to mind for a set amount of time, such as 10, 15, or 20 minutes.
• Clustering, which is when you write your topic or topic idea on a piece of paper and then use lines to connect that idea to others.
• Listing, which is when you make a list of any and all ideas related to a topic and ten read through it to find helpful information for your paper.
• Questioning, such as by answering the who, what, when, where, why, and how of their topic.
• Defining terms, such as identifying all of the key terms related to their topic and writing out definitions for each one.

• For example, if your students are writing narrative essays, then it might make the most sense for them to describe the events of a story chronologically.
• If students are writing expository or argumentative essays, then they might need to start by answering the most important questions about their topic and providing background information.
• For a descriptive essay, students might use spatial reasoning to describe something from top to bottom, or organize the descriptive paragraphs into categories for each of the 5 senses, such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and feel.

• For example, if you have just gone over different types of brainstorming strategies, you might ask students to choose 1 that they like and spend 10 minutes developing ideas for their essay.

• Try having students post a weekly response to a writing prompt or question that you assign.
• You may also want to create a separate discussion board where students can post ideas about their essay and get feedback from you and their classmates.

• You could also assign specific parts of the writing process as homework, such as requiring students to hand in a first draft as a homework assignment.

• For example, you might suggest reading the paper backward 1 sentence at a time or reading the paper out loud as a way to identify issues with organization and to weed out minor errors. [21] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source
• Try peer-review workshops that ask students to review each others' work. Students can work in pairs or groups during the workshop. Provide them with a worksheet, graphic organizer, or copy of the assignment rubric to guide their peer-review.

Tip : Emphasize the importance of giving yourself at least a few hours away from the essay before you revise it. If possible, it is even better to wait a few days. After this time passes, it is often easier to spot errors and work out better ways of describing things.

Community Q&A

• Students often need to write essays as part of college applications, for assignments in other courses, and when applying for scholarships. Remind your students of all the ways that improving their essay writing skills can benefit them. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/index.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/narrative_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/expository_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/descriptive_essays.html
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/argumentative_essays.html
• ↑ https://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v1n2/petrie.pdf
• ↑ https://www.uww.edu/learn/restiptool/improve-student-writing
• ↑ https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/reverse-outline.original.pdf
• ↑ https://www.niu.edu/citl/resources/guides/instructional-guide/brainstorming.shtml
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/faculty-resources/tips-on-teaching-writing/situating-student-writers/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/faculty-resources/tips-on-teaching-writing/in-class-writing-exercises/
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/

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Don't just throw your homeschooled-student intoformal essay crafting. Focus on sentence structure and basic paragraph composition before movingto more complicated formal essay composition.

Are you a competent essay writer? Even if you know how to write an essay , chances are you are dreading the coming years of teaching homeschool writing just as much as your novice writer could be dreading learning how to write . Writing comes naturally for very few, but most view writing as an insurmountable abstract mountain. The Write Foundation writing curriculum is a divide and conquer method of teaching writing. Focusing on small portions of writing paragraphs and later five-paragraph college level essays, eventually you and your students will be able to use all the necessary writing skills to easily compose wonderfully crafted formal essays .

Start with a good foundation

That is, of course, what The Write Foundation teaches. Don’t just throw your homeschooled-child into the middle of essay crafting. Focus on sentence structure and basic paragraph composition before moving to more complicated formal essay composition . Learn to write essays one bite at a time. This helps students develop writing skills by using writing tools which helps them gain confidence and enables parents who are insecure about their own writing skills learn with their students.

Hold their hand as much as they need you hold their hand.

An abstract assignment with limited instructions can appear quite daunting to a reluctant, struggling, or new writer; tiny decisions can become writing blocks in a new writer’s mind.

Share the experience with your homeschooler. Discuss writing blocks and ways to overcome them. Discuss the planning process and experience how it helps flesh out an essay. Walk them through each lesson making sure they complete each step successfully before attempting to move on in the writing process. Working side by side with your student also helps you become a better instructor by solidifying the lesson for yourself. As students gain confidence with their new skills they will need your help less and less so they will shoo you away as they learn writing is much easier using the complete writing process.

Use concrete assignments

Creative writing is very subjective, and it is also very abstract for a new writer. You need a writing curriculum which focuses on concrete assignments and provides a variety of writing topics that fit the type of writing being taught in that assignment. Give your students a structure to work into a paragraph using their creative information. Leaving several factors to the unknown, such as type of writing, structure, and so on, leaves more decisions that the novice writer is not ready to determine. An abstract assignment with limited instructions can appear quite daunting to a reluctant, struggling, or just new writer; tiny decisions can become writing blocks in a new writer’s mind. Even experienced writers face writer’s block. Students need to be given tools and taught skills that overcome “But, what do I write about?”

Know your audience

Let your child select from a list of possible writing topics that may be interesting to them. Your child may enjoy the experience more if he is writing about his favorite pastime instead of writing about your favorite pastime. Choosing topics about things that directly influence your child, such as different views about their favorite sport, the influence of network TV or political topics that hit close to home may open the doors for lively discussion and insight into your child’s mind.

Writing is a necessary life skill. When teaching writing remember you are not alone. If you are worried about teaching formal writing to your homeschooler, use the support system of The Write Foundation for any questions you may have through the process, and know that you are not alone. Look into a homeschool writing co-op in your area to lighten the burden and give new perspective on your child’s essay writing development. Use The Write Foundation and use a proven writing system.

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Research and teaching writing

• Published: 12 July 2021
• Volume 34 , pages 1613–1621, ( 2021 )

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• Steve Graham 1 , 2 &
• Rui A. Alves 3  

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Writing is an essential but complex skill that students must master if they are to take full advantage of educational, occupational, and civic responsibilities. Schools, and the teachers who work in them, are tasked with teaching students how to write. Knowledge about how to teach writing can be obtained from many different sources, including one’s experience teaching or being taught to write, observing others teach writing, and advise offered by writing experts. It is difficult to determine if much of the lore teachers acquire through these methods are effective, generalizable, or reliable unless they are scientifically tested. This special issue of Reading & Writing includes 11 writing intervention studies conducted primarily with students in the elementary grades. It provides important new information on evidence-based writing practices.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

There are many different ways that teachers can learn about how to teach writing. One way of acquiring such knowledge is by teaching this skill to others. As teachers apply different instructional procedures, they form judgments about the value and efficacy of these practices. In essence, they learn by doing (Graham, 2018 ).

A second way teachers learn about how to teach writing is by observing others and learning from them (Graham, 2018 ). Teachers likely remember some of the instructional methods used by those who taught them to write (e.g., teachers, mentors, parents, guardians, and peers). They may in turn adopt some of these practices when they teach their own students. This may be particularly true for instructional practices they considered effective.

Teachers can gain additional insight into teaching writing by observing and absorbing insights offered by others who have taught writing or studied how to teach it. This includes knowledge acquired from instructors teaching literacy and writing courses as well as experts offering advice on writing instruction at conferences, through workshops, podcasts, or other forms of information sharing. Teachers may also learn about teaching writing by discussing this topic with their peers or observing them as they teach writing.

A third source of knowledge that teachers can access are published materials about how to teach writing. This includes textbooks and articles on the subject, curriculum guides, commercial materials, and position statements from professional organizations to provide just a few examples. These resources can further involve digital sources such as videos demonstrating how to apply specific writing procedures, experts promoting specific teaching techniques, or web sites devoted to writing instruction.

The concern

Given all of the possible knowledge sources teachers can access or experience, there is an abundance of information, recommendations, and teaching materials on how to teach writing that is available to teachers. This blessing experiences at least one serious limitation. Too often, there is limited, circumscribed, or no evidence that the proffered advice, know-how, or wisdom works. There are many claims about what is effective, but too little proof. Unfortunately, this observation applies to much of the lore that teachers acquire about writing instruction.

Teaching lore mainly involves writing practices teachers experienced when they learned to write, instructional practices teachers develop and apply with their students, writing practices they see other teachers apply, and teaching practices promoted by experts (Graham & Harris, 2014 ). While we have no doubt that teachers and experts possess considerable knowledge and insight about how to teach writing, basing the teaching of this complex skill on such lore alone is risky.

Why is this the case? One reason is that it is difficult to determine which aspects of teaching lore are valid. For example, there are many things a teacher does while teaching writing. When their students’ writing improves, they may attribute this change to specific procedures they applied. While this evaluation may be correct, it is also possible that this judgment is incorrect or only applies to some students or to a procedure in a given context.

Teachers are not the only ones who can succumb to such selective bias. Specific teaching lore promoted by writing experts are also susceptible to misinterpretation in terms of their effectiveness. To illustrate, writing experts can overestimate the impact of favored instructional methods, forming judgments consistent with their philosophical views on writing development or instruction. For instance, proponents of the whole language approach to learning to read and write believed that writing and reading develop naturally just like oral language (Goodman, 1992 ). Consistent with these beliefs, they championed an approach to literacy instruction based on the use of informal teaching methods (e.g., reading and writing for real purposes), while at the same time deemphasizing explicitly and systematically teaching students foundational writing and reading skills and strategies (Graham & Harris, 1997 ). Instead, these skills are only taught when the need arises, mostly through short mini-lessons. Advocates for whole language frequently promoted the effectiveness of this two-pronged approach (Begeron, 1990 ), without providing much in the way of empirical evidence that it was effective, or perhaps even more importantly, that it was as effective as other alternatives such as reading and writing programs that emphasized reading and writing for real purposes, coupled with systematic and explicit skills and strategy instruction (Graham & Harris, 1994 ). Even for fundamental writing skills such as spelling, there is considerable evidence that both informal teaching and explicit instruction are effective (Graham, 2000 ; Graham & Santangelo, 2014 ), while whole language approaches are fundamentally misguided about what is written language (Liberman, 1999 ).

Whole language is not the only approach to teaching writing that has suffered from questionable claims about its effectiveness. Even the venerable Donald Graves was guilty of this to some degree with the process approach to writing that he supported and advocated (see Smagorinski, 1987 ). The evidence he offered in support of his favored approach to teaching writing relied in large part on testimonials and exemplar writing of selected students, presenting a potentially overly optimistic assessment of this approach. This is not to say that the process approach is ineffective, as there is now considerable empirical evidence supporting the opposite conclusion (Sandmel & Graham, 2011 ). Instead, this example illustrates that adopting whole cloth even highly popular and widely used teaching lore without careful consideration of its effectiveness and the evidence available to support it can be risky. The lack of evidence or the type of evidence provided can make it extremely difficult for teachers or other interested parties to determine if the testimonials or evidence used to support specific teaching lore in writing are representative or atypical.

A third issue that makes some teaching lore risky is that it may be based on the experience of a single or a very small number of teachers. As an example, this can occur for knowledge a teacher acquires as a result of his or her experience teaching writing. The teaching practice(s) may in fact be effective for the students in this teacher’s classroom, but they may not be effective when applied by another teacher or with different students. Until this proposition is tested, there is no way to determine if this teaching lore will produce reliable results when applied more broadly.

As these concerns demonstrate, the validity, generalizability, and replicability of instructional practices based on teaching lore are uncertain. This is not to devalue what teachers or experts know, but to demonstrate the limits of this knowledge.

Evidence-based writing practices

The concerns about the value of teaching lore raised above raises the question: How should the structure and details of writing instruction be determined? The solution that we recommend is to take an evidence-based practice approach to both enhance teachers’ knowledge and develop writing instruction. Starting with medicine in the 1990s, and spreading quickly to psychology, informational science, business, education, and a host of other disciplines, this movement promoted the idea that practitioners in a field should apply the best scientific evidence available to make informed and judicious decisions for their clients (Sackett et al., 1996 ). The basic assumption underlying this approach is that the findings from research can positively impact practice. The evidence-based practice movement was a reaction to practitioners basing what they did almost strictly on tradition and lore, without scientific evidence to validate it.

One reason why this represents a positive step forward in education and the teaching of writing is that instructional practices based on high quality intervention research addresses the three issues of concern we raised about teaching lore. First, high quality intervention studies address the issue of validity. They are designed specifically to isolate the effects of a specific instructional practice or set of instructional practices. They provide systematically gathered evidence on whether the instructional practices tested produced the desired impact. They further apply methodological procedures to rule out alternative explanations for observed effects. Second, high quality intervention studies address issues of generalizability by describing the participants and the context in which the practice was applied, and by using statistical procedures to determine the confidence that can be placed in specific findings. Three, they address the issue of replicability, as the replication of effects across multiple situations is the hall mark of scientific testing (Graham & Harris, 2014 ).

Another reason why the evidence-based approach represents a positive step forward in terms of teaching writing is that the evidence gathered from high quality intervention studies can provide a general set of guidelines for designing an effective writing program. Graham et al. ( 2016 ) created such a roadmap by drawing on three sources of scientific evidence: true-and quasi- experimental writing intervention studies, single-case design studies, and qualitative studies of how exceptional literacy teachers taught writing (see also Graham & Harris, 2018 ). They indicated that the scientific evidence from these three sources supports the development of writing programs that include the following. Students write frequently. They are supported by teachers and peers as they write. Essential writing skills, strategies, and knowledge are taught. Students use word processors and other twenty-first century tools to write. Writing occurs in a positive and motivating environment. Writing is used to support learning. Based on several recent meta-analyses of high quality intervention studies (Graham, et al., 2018a , b ; Graham, et al., 2018a , b ), Graham now recommends that the evidence also supports connecting writing and reading instruction (Graham, 2019 , 2020 ).

A third reason why the evidence-based approach is a positive development is that it provides teachers with a variety of techniques for teaching writing that have been shown to be effective in other teachers’ classes and in multiple situations. While this does not guarantee that a specific evidence-based practices is effective in all situations, a highly unlikely proposition for any writing practice, it does provide teachers with instructional procedures with a proven track record. This includes, but is not limited to (Graham & Harris, 2018 ; Graham et al., 2016 ):

Setting goals for writing.

Teaching general as well as genre-specific strategies for planning, revising, editing, and regulating the writing process. Engaging students in prewriting practices for gathering, organizing, and evaluation possible writing contents and plans.

Teaching sentence construction skills with sentence-combining procedures.

Providing students with feedback about their writing and their progress learning new writing skills.

Teaching handwriting, spelling, and typing.

Increasing how much students write; analyzing and emulating model texts.

Teaching vocabulary for writing.

Creating routines for students to help each other as they write.

Putting into place procedures for enhancing motivation.

Teaching paragraph writing skills.

Employing technology such as word processing that makes it easier to write.

It is also important to realize that an evidence-based approach to writing does not mean that teachers should abandon the hard-earned knowledge they have acquired through their experiences as teachers or learners. The evidence-based movement emphasizes that teachers contextualize knowledge about teaching writing acquired through research with their own knowledge about their students, the context in which they work, and what they know about writing and teaching it (Graham et al., 2016 ). When applying instructional practices acquired through research as well as teaching lore, we recommend that teachers weigh the benefits, limitations, and possible harm that might ensue as a consequence of applying any teaching procedure. Once a decision is made to apply a specific practice, it is advisable to monitor its effectiveness and make adjustments as needed.

Finally, while the scientific testing of writing practices has provided considerable insight into how writing can be taught effectively, it is not broad, deep, or rich enough to tell us all we need to know about teaching writing. It is highly unlikely that this will ever be the case. We operate on the principle that there is no single best method for teaching writing to all students, nor is it likely that science will provide us with formulas to prescribe exactly how writing should be taught to each student individually. Writing, learning, children, and the contexts in which they operate are just too complex to make this a likely consequence of the evidence-based movement. As a result, we believe that the best writing instruction will be provided by teachers who apply evidence-based practices in conjunction with the best knowledge they have acquired as teachers and learners, using each of these forms of knowledge in an intelligent, judicious, and critical manner.

Over time, we anticipate that evidence-based practices will play an ever increasing role in the process described above. This is inevitable as our knowledge about evidence-based writing practices expands. This brings us to the purpose of this special issue of Reading & Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal . This special issue presents 11 writing intervention studies focusing almost exclusively with students in the elementary grades. These studies were conducted in Europe and the United States, and they replicate and extend prior research conducted with young developing writers.

The special issue

Perhaps the most tested writing instructional practice of all time, and the one yielding the largest effects sizes (Graham et al., 2013 ), is the Self-regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) model developed by Karen Harris (see Harris et al., 2008 for a description of this approach). Several studies in the current special issue tested specific iterations of the use of the SRSD model as a means for teaching writing to elementary grade students. Collins and her colleagues examined the effectiveness of teaching third grade students in the United States task specific strategies for planning and drafting expository essays using information from social studies text using this model. This instruction enhanced the quality of students’ texts and resulted in improvement on a norm-referenced measure of writing where students identified their favorite game and provided reasons why this was the case.

In a second SRSD study conducted with second and third grade children in Spain, Salas and her colleagues examined if teaching planning and drafting strategies for writing an opinion essay was equally effective with children from more and less disadvantaged backgrounds. SRSD was equally effective in improving the opinion writing of children from both backgrounds, but carryover effects to reading comprehension (a skill not taught in this study) only occurred for students from less disadvantaged backgrounds.

A third study by Rosario and his colleagues involved a secondary analysis of data from an investigation in Portugal where third grade students were taught to write narratives using SRSD procedures and a story writing tool they developed. Their reanalysis focused on students experiencing difficulties learning to write showing that they differed in their approach and perceptions of teacher feedback. The majority of these children were able to use the feedback provided by their teacher and viewed it as helpful.

A fourth investigation by Hebert and his colleagues taught fourth grade students in the United States to write informational text using five text structures (description, compare/contrast, sequence of events, problem–solution, and cause effect). While the authors did not indicate they used SRSD to teach these strategies, the teaching methods mirrored this approach. In any event, the instruction provided to these children enhanced how well they wrote all five of these different kinds of text. These effects, however, did not generalize to better reading performance.

Lopez and her colleagues in Spain examined three approaches to improving sixth grade students’ writing. Students in all three conditions were taught how to set communicative goals for their writing. Students in one treatment condition were taught a strategy for revising. Students in a second treatment condition observed a reader trying to comprehend a text and suggesting ways it might be improved. Control students continued with the goal setting procedures. Students in both treatment conditions improved their writing and revising skills more than control students, but there were no differences between these two treatments.

In another Spanish study conducted by Rodriguez-Malaga and colleagues, the impact of two different treatments on the writing of fourth grade students was examined. One treatment group learned how to set product goals for their writing, whereas the other writing treatment group learned how to set product goals and strategies for planning compare/contrast texts. Only the students in the product goal and planning strategy treatment evidenced improved writing when compared to control students.

Philippakos and Voggt examined the effectiveness of on-line practice-based professional development (PBPD) for teaching genre-based writing strategies. Eighty-four second grade teachers were randomly assigned to PBPD or a no-treatment control condition. Treatment teachers taught the genre-based writing strategies with high fidelity and rated PBPD positively. Even more importantly, their students writing evidenced greater improvement than the writing of students in control teachers’ classes.

Walter and her colleagues in England examined the effectiveness of two writing interventions, sentence combining and spelling instruction, with 7 to 10 year old children experiencing difficulties learning to write. As expected, sentence combining instruction improved sentence construction skills, but even more importantly, these researchers found that the degree of improvements in sentence writing was related to students’ initial sentence, spelling, and reading skills.

In another study focused on improving students’ sentence construction skills, Arfé and her colleagues in Italy examined the effectiveness of an oral language intervention to improve the sentence construction skills of fifth and tenth grade students. This oral treatment did enhance the sentence writing skills of the younger fifth grade students. This study provides needed evidence that interventions aimed at improving oral language skills transfer to writing.

Chung and his colleagues in the United States examined if sixth grade students’ writing can be improved through self-assessment, planning and goal setting, and self-reflection when they revised a timed, on-demand essay. These students as well as students in the control condition were also taught how to revise such an essay. Treatment students evidenced greater writing gains, and were more confident about their revising capabilities than control students.

Lastly, Graham and his colleagues in the United States examined if the revising behavior of fourth grade students experiencing difficulties with writing can be enhanced through the use of revising goals that focused attention on making substantive when revising stories (e.g., change the setting of the story). Applying such goals across four stories had a positive effect on the revising behavior of these students when these goals were not in effect, resulting in more text-level revisions, more revisions that changed the meaning of text, and more revisions rated as improving text.

The 11 intervention studies in this special issue of Reading & Writing are particularly noteworthy for several reasons. One, some of these studies ( n  = 4) concentrated on improving students’ skills in writing informational and expository text. This is an area that has not received enough attention in existing writing literature. Two, enhancing students’ revising was the goal of multiple studies ( n  = 4). Again, too little attention has been given to this topic with either younger or older students. Three, it was especially gratifying to see that a pair of studies examined how to enhance sentence writing skills. This has been a neglected area of writing research since the 1980s. Four, multiple studies focused on improving the writing of students who experienced difficulties learning to write ( n  = 3). This is an area where we need much more research if we are to maximize these students’ writing success. Finally, more than half of the studies in this special issue ( n  = 6) were conducted in Europe, with the other half conducted in the United States. It is important to examine if specific writing treatments are effective in different social, cultural, political, institutional, and historical context (Graham, 2018 ), as was done with the four studies that applied SRSD to teach students strategies for writing.

We hope you enjoy the studies presented here. We further hope they serve as a catalyst to improve your own research if you are a writing scholar or your teaching if you are a practitioner.

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Graham, S., Alves, R.A. Research and teaching writing. Read Writ 34 , 1613–1621 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10188-9

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Planning a writing lesson

Writing, unlike speaking, is not an ability we acquire naturally, even in our first language - it has to be taught. Unless L2 learners are explicitly taught how to write in the new language, their writing skills are likely to get left behind as their speaking progresses.

But teaching writing is not just about grammar, spelling, or the mechanics of the Roman alphabet. Learners also need to be aware of and use the conventions of the genre in the new language.

What is genre?

Generating ideas

Focusing ideas

Focus on a model text

Organising ideas

• Peer evaluation

A genre can be anything from a menu to a wedding invitation, from a newspaper article to an estate agent's description of a house. Pieces of writing of the same genre share some features, in terms of layout, level of formality, and language. These features are more fixed in formal genre, for example letters of complaint and essays, than in more 'creative' writing, such as poems or descriptions. The more formal genre often feature in exams, and may also be relevant to learners' present or future 'real-world' needs, such as university study or business. However, genre vary considerably between cultures, and even adult learners familiar with a range of genre in their L1 need to learn to use the conventions of those genre in English.

Stages of a writing lesson

I don't necessarily include all these stages in every writing lesson, and the emphasis given to each stage may differ according to the genre of the writing and / or the time available. Learners work in pairs or groups as much as possible, to share ideas and knowledge, and because this provides a good opportunity for practising the speaking, listening and reading skills.

This is often the first stage of a process approach to writing. Even when producing a piece of writing of a highly conventional genre, such as a letter of complaint, using learners' own ideas can make the writing more memorable and meaningful.

• Before writing a letter of complaint, learners think about a situation when they have complained about faulty goods or bad service (or have felt like complaining), and tell a partner.
• As the first stage of preparing to write an essay, I give learners the essay title and pieces of scrap paper. They have 3 minutes to work alone, writing one idea on each piece of paper, before comparing in groups. Each group can then present their 3 best ideas to the class. It doesn't matter if the ideas aren't used in the final piece of writing, the important thing is to break through the barrier of ' I can't think of anything to write.'

This is another stage taken from a process approach, and it involves thinking about which of the many ideas generated are the most important or relevant, and perhaps taking a particular point of view.

• As part of the essay-writing process, students in groups put the ideas generated in the previous stage onto a 'mind map'. The teacher then draws a mind-map on the board, using ideas from the different groups. At this stage he / she can also feed in some useful collocations - this gives the learners the tools to better express their own ideas.
• I tell my students to write individually for about 10 minutes, without stopping and without worrying about grammar or punctuation. If they don't know a particular word, they write it in their L1. This often helps learners to further develop some of the ideas used during the 'Generating ideas' stage. Learners then compare together what they have written, and use a dictionary, the teacher or each other to find in English any words or phrases they wrote in their L1.

Once the students have generated their own ideas, and thought about which are the most important or relevant, I try to give them the tools to express those ideas in the most appropriate way. The examination of model texts is often prominent in product or genre approaches to writing, and will help raise learners' awareness of the conventions of typical texts of different genres in English.

• I give learners in groups several examples of a genre, and they use a genre analysis form to identify the features and language they have in common. This raises their awareness of the features of the genre and gives them some language 'chunks' they can use in their own writing. Genre analysis form 54k
• reason for writing
• how I found out about the job
• relevant experience, skills and abilities
• closing paragraph asking for an interview
• Learners are given an essay with the topic sentences taken out, and put them back in the right place. This raises their awareness of the organisation of the essay and the importance of topic sentences.

Once learners have seen how the ideas are organised in typical examples of the genre, they can go about organising their own ideas in a similar way.

• Students in groups draft a plan of their work, including how many paragraphs and the main points of each paragraph. These can then be pinned up around the room for comment and comparison.
• When preparing to write an essay, students group some of the ideas produced earlier into main and supporting statements.

In a pure process approach, the writer goes through several drafts before producing a final version. In practical terms, and as part of a general English course, this is not always possible. Nevertheless, it may be helpful to let students know beforehand if you are going to ask them to write a second draft. Those with access to a word processor can then use it, to facilitate the redrafting process. The writing itself can be done alone, at home or in class, or collaboratively in pairs or groups. Peer evaluation

Peer evaluation of writing helps learners to become aware of an audience other then the teacher. If students are to write a second draft, I ask other learners to comment on what they liked / didn't like about the piece of work, or what they found unclear, so that these comments can be incorporated into the second draft. The teacher can also respond at this stage by commenting on the content and the organisation of ideas, without yet giving a grade or correcting details of grammar and spelling.

When writing a final draft, students should be encouraged to check the details of grammar and spelling, which may have taken a back seat to ideas and organisation in the previous stages. Instead of correcting writing myself, I use codes to help students correct their own writing and learn from their mistakes. Error correction code 43k

By going through some or all of these stages, learners use their own ideas to produce a piece of writing that uses the conventions of a genre appropriately and in so doing, they are asked to think about the audience's expectations of a piece of writing of a particular genre, and the impact of their writing on the reader.

If you have any ideas that you feel have successfully helped your students to develop their writing why not add them as a comment below and share them.

Further reading

A process genre approach to teaching writing by Badger, Richards and White. ELT Journal Volume 54(2), pp. 153-160 Writing by T Hedge. Oxford University Press. Writing by C Tribble. Oxford University Press Process writing by R White and V Arndt. Longman

Really innovative

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It was very informative and…

It was very informative and helpful

Interesting article.

Useful information

This is a very nice and…

This is a very nice and informative article.

Thanks for this amazing article

Planning a Writing Lesson Plan

I believe this will make the lesson not only productive but also interesting. Thank you.

Thanks for a very interesting

Thanks for a very interesting and useful article.

Ideas first, then language

 Thanks for sharing the plan~

I found in my class that it is always 'Ideas firt, then language follows', similar to L1 writing.

Dear Catherine,

I found your article very useful and I love the advice you give. When I ask my students to write an essay, I tend to correct their mistakes for them and after reading the article I realized that I should be doing it the way you suggested. I learned from my mistakes by finding them out and correcting them not having them corrected for me. 

Thank you for a wonderful article.

I am grateful for you for this great article

Research and insight

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A Systematic Approach to Teaching Narrative Writing

Clear strategies for each stage of the writing process help students improve their writing and serve as effective readers for their peers.

“I’ll never forget the colors,” I often read in student reflections.

As a middle school language arts teacher, I’ve developed a systematic approach to writing that helps students improve their storytelling skills. It includes strategies for writing in a variety of genres, such as personal narrative, memoir, and creative nonfiction. And in the revision stage I teach a color-coded approach to analyzing details that helps students see clearly what kinds of details they’ve used—and which they haven’t. Apparently this approach really sticks with my students.

When these strategies are used together, they help students improve their writing skills while also fostering relationships among themselves as they act as sounding boards for each other’s work.

Prewriting Q&A as a Source of New Ideas

Prewriting is an essential part of the writing process. If ideas aren’t flowing, however, some students may become stalled, with a lack of ideas acting as a roadblock for them. To get the ball rolling, I pair students together for prewriting conversations.

To begin, I share one of my own stories to demonstrate the art of storytelling. Next, I give students the opportunity to discuss their own story ideas with a partner. Then, as I walk around listening to their conversations, I’ll pause every now and then and ask a few students whose ideas piqued my interest to share their story ideas aloud with the entire group.

Next, I’ll demonstrate asking a series of questions to the student who is sharing aloud, explaining to the class that this strategy can help them dive deeper as writers. Students will continue their discussions in pairs, eliciting as many details as possible from the storyteller through questioning.

They might ask:

• “How was the narrator feeling at that moment?”
• “What would happen if…”
• “Can you help me picture the character?”

This type of thoughtful questioning helps students visualize the scene more vividly and replaces initial writing jitters with fun and flexibility.

They jot down their ideas with words, pictures, bullets, or anything else that helps them solidify the memories from their spoken stories now that they are ready to prewrite independently.

To See What You’re Writing, Act It Out

Instead of summarizing a whole story from beginning to end, I want students to create a writing piece based on a brief period that includes vivid detail. I’ve found that having students act out a scene helps them grasp this concept. 

First, I’ll have students read aloud a few pages from our class book. Then, in small groups, they’ll act out the scene. “Now that you’ve acted it out, how long do you think this moment would have taken in real life?” I’ll ask. There will be a friendly debate. In the end, students will realize that the scene was a moment of time told with meaningful details, whether they said it took 30 seconds or 10 minutes.

Students then deconstruct the scene they just acted out by creating a timeline of key character actions. For example, using pages 9–10 of The Glass Castle , by Jeannette Walls, the scene breakdown might look like this:

• At age 3, Jeannette is standing on a chair cooking hot dogs in the kitchenette and feeding them to her dog.
• Her dress catches on fire, sending flames up her body.
• Jeannette’s mom, painting in the next room, hears her scream and enters the kitchen.
• Mom uses an army surplus blanket to put the fire out.
• Mom, Jeannette, and brother Brian run to the neighbor’s house to get help.
• The neighbor drops her laundry she was hanging on the line and races to take them to the hospital, saying nothing.

Students will then work independently to apply the same strategy to their own ideas, focusing on showing rather than telling the entire story. Students will share their lists with their groups and then act out each other’s ideas.

The following conversation suggestions help students clarify and solidify their ideas.

Beginning, ending, and timing: Where does the heart of this moment start? Where does it end? When one student describes a moment that feels excessively long, the rest of the group suggests methods to shorten it. If a student has a moment that is too short, the group helps to extend it.

Characters: What is each character doing? What’s their motivation? What do they look like? How are they acting?

Setting: Where and when is this taking place? What’s going on around your characters?

Dialogue: What’s being said, how, and by whom?

Internal thinking: What are the characters thinking?

Students are now ready to move on to independent writing and complete a full draft.

Color-Coding Writing as a Detail-Oriented Strategy

Following the drafting phase, I teach students a variety of revising techniques. Every day I introduce a new one—and they’re color-coded to make it easier for students to distinguish between them. We might, for example, focus on character details one day. First, students will find vivid character descriptions they love from the read-aloud or their own independent reading. Then, they’ll add their own character descriptions to their writing, highlighting them in a particular color.

I encourage students to incorporate each color throughout their drafts. If character details are represented by blue, for example, blue highlighting should be used in the beginning, middle, and end of their pieces. Other color-coded strategies include setting details, figurative language, sensory details, dialogue, and internal thinking.

The use of assorted colors allows students to clearly see areas that have been enriched with vivid details and areas that have not. This visual strategy benefits learners of all levels by instilling confidence and a sense of accomplishment as rainbows of color emerge throughout their work.

This color-coding approach also aids in peer editing and teacher conferencing by encouraging meaningful conversations like this: “I see you’ve developed thoughtfully crafted blues in the beginning to describe the Mom character. How can you assist readers in picturing and getting to know your other characters? How can you incorporate more blues later to describe them?”

To showcase daily accomplishments, students add their favorite highlighted lines to the classroom bulletin boards. While students could easily copy and paste their examples into a shared class Google Doc, I’ve found that they’re more engaged when there’s movement and camaraderie, and they like having their words physically present in the classroom.

Recently I taped a piece of bulletin board paper for students to write on in the front of the classroom and another in the back. A student was waiting patiently for others to finish at the front. I encouraged him to go write his favorite line in the back since there was no wait and it offered more space to write.

“No thanks,” he chirped. “I want everyone to see mine when they walk into the room.”

A Guide to Teaching Essay Structure

Prevent students from 'telling a story' in their essays by helping them understand how arguments work

Essays are an important assessment type in subjects like History, and the skills required to succeed in essay writing are also foundational to other assessment pieces as well. As a result, both students and teachers need to invest significant time in understanding how to craft them.

When you first teach essay writing to students, it is important to demonstrate the core elements of structure first. Since the structure of History essays is foundational to the success of the argument and, by definition, the success of the essay itself, it is the most obvious place to start.

Here are the crucial ideas that students need to grasp about the argumentative structure of History essays:

• An essay’s hypothesis must be a 'genuine argument'
• The topic sentences of each body paragraph must be drawn from the hypothesis
• Each body paragraph needs to be supported by good evidence

In order to teach these ideas, I find that it is best not to use a historical topic as your first example. Most students struggle to understand the contestability of historical arguments, so using one as your first example could only confuse students more as they will already be working hard to understand essay structure.

Therefore, I tend to find that more ‘real world’ examples work best when teaching essays for the first time. These ‘real world’ examples can be based upon your students’ own interests. For example, create an example argument about who the best sports team is, or who the most influential global personality is, or whether homework is important to academic success. The more interesting the topic, the more the students will care about the argument.

Alternatively, you could prepare a number of these example topics for your class and even get them to choose which one they would like to use.

Once decided, use it to proceed through the following steps.

1. An essay’s hypothesis is a 'genuine argument'

One of the most common mistakes that students make when writing essays is that they simply present a ‘story’ about a historical event or person. As a result, they fail to understand the purpose of a hypothesis .

A hypothesis is a statement about what the entire essay is arguing .

When an essay is nothing more than a narrative story, there is no argument.

Crucially, then, the first concept that needs to be understood is that each essay needs a hypothesis that is a 'genuine argument'. A ‘genuine argument’ means that what the essay is trying to prove could be challenged by someone else, or that the opposite of the hypothesis could be used in a different essay.

For example, a student could argue that:

“Homework is detrimental to the social, emotional and physical wellbeing of students”

If this is a genuine argument, the opposite of it could easily be used by someone else for their own argument. For example, another student could argue that:

“Homework is beneficial to the social, emotional and physical wellbeing of students”

This is one of the reasons that a ‘narrative’ essay fails to create good hypotheses: it doesn’t create a genuine argument. For example, a simple ‘story’ essay could say that “World War One saw a tragic loss of life as millions of soldiers from many countries died between 1914 and 1918”. Clearly, there is no argument here: it is just telling a story. One way of demonstrating the lack of an argument is to show that there is no way to argue the opposite of this.

2. Topic sentences of each body paragraph must be drawn from the hypothesis

The second key concept helps build upon the first. As a hypothesis presents the argument that the entire essay is going to prove, then students must make sure that they’re proving it throughout their body paragraphs .

Students can easily get lost in writing their body paragraphs and forget that they are supposed to be proving the argument they presented in their hypothesis.

To highlight that there is a direct relationship between their hypothesis and each of their body paragraphs, it is worth showing students that a good hypothesis can be ‘sliced’ into three parts that each of their body paragraphs will prove.

For example, the hypothesis that “ Homework is detrimental to the social, emotional and physical wellbeing of students ” has three clear elements that need to be proven: the social , emotional and physical impacts. As a result, each will become a topic sentence for their body paragraphs.

Be aware that once students notice the three elements, they will try to take the ‘path of least resistance’ in making their topic sentences. So, using the example above, they might try to make the following topic sentences:

• Homework is detrimental to the social wellbeing of students
• Homework is detrimental to the emotional wellbeing of students
• Homework is detrimental to the physical wellbeing of students

It is important to stress that each topic sentence needs to be expanded to provide a specific reason. Most of the time, students will need to know what evidence they’re using in order to successfully provide specific justifications. For the sake of the above example, here are three improved versions of the topic sentences:

• Due to the extra time required that could otherwise be spent developing friendships, homework is detrimental to the social development of students
• Homework is detrimental to the emotional wellbeing of students because of the additional daily stress it adds to students who are already overloaded with assessment pieces.
• Homework is detrimental to the physical health of students because it requires extended periods of student inactivity.

If the students find that they cannot identify three separate components from their hypothesis to prove in each body paragraph, it may indicate that their hypothesis was not developed enough. However, if you are introducing essays to your students for the first time, ensure that you provide example hypotheses that have three clear elements in order to help students grasp this step easily.

3. Each body paragraph needs to be supported by good evidence

Another common mistake made by students is that they feel the need to fill their body paragraphs with as much historical knowledge as possible. Consequently, students often fall back into the ‘tell a story’ mode which provides a series of people and events about the topic, rather than using the paragraph to present information that helps prove their argument.

The crucial step for students to understand is that whatever they said in their topic sentence needs to be shown in the sources from which they quote in their body paragraphs. While students will have to demonstrate historical knowledge of people, places, dates and event in their work, it should only be used as a way to help show how their sources prove their topic sentences.

If you’re doing your example essay which was based upon a ‘real world’ argument, this can be a great time to let students conduct research to find their own evidence. For example, if students are arguing for their favourite sporting team or their most inspiring personality, they can find facts and figures to justify their argument. (Also, this might be a great time to teach referencing of their sources, if you have time).

Once students then have their sources, they can begin crafting their body paragraphs in order to use their chosen evidence to prove their topic sentences. (You can read more about how to write essay paragraphs here , as I don't have the space to expand upon this part of essay writing in this blog post).

The end result

By the end of their example essay, students should have a better understanding of what makes a good hypothesis, how each topic sentence is drawn from the argument and how evidence is used by body paragraphs to help prove the argument.

Once you have built the example essay as a class (about a sports team or homework, etc.), working as a class to deconstruct a pre-written History essay to identify each element can be enormously beneficial for the students. Furthermore, if time allows, following the same steps to then begin writing their own History essay will often be the moment when the ‘lightbulb moment’ occurs for many of your students.

The entire process I have outlined may take as much as three or four lessons. If you have this amount of time, here is a potential approach:

• Lesson 1: Example ‘real world’ essay construction
• Lesson 2: Deconstruct a pre-written History essay
• Lesson 3-4: Plan and write a class History essay

Also, if you're looking for a more detailed guide to academic essay writing, particularly for senior students, I cannot recommend the book  A Short Guide to Writing About History enough (pictured to the right).

Final thoughts

Essay writing is an art that can only truly be mastered by continual practice. Don’t expect students to produce academically sophisticated essays straight away. However, if they can master the key structural elements of how an argument works through the hypothesis, topic sentences and evidence, they can avoid the simplistic errors found in the ‘narrative’ essay.

I hope that this has helped spark some new ideas for your own teaching of History essays. I would be very interested to hear from other teachers about what they have found works for them. Please feel free to add your thoughts below so that we can all benefit from the accumulated wisdom of other professionals.

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Teaching Writing to ESL/EFL Students: Tips and Activities for Any Level

• Linda D'Argenio
• August 19, 2022

Teaching writing to non-native speakers of a language presents a plethora of unique challenges and can feel overwhelming for new and seasoned teachers alike. However, teaching writing to ESL students can be dynamic and meaningful when approached with a bit of ingenuity.

If you’re new to teaching, you’ll want to get initial training and qualification with a TEFL certificate . You can explore our online TEFL courses to get started!

Why is it important to teach writing to ESL students?

In order to effectively participate as contributing members of society, individuals need to be able to communicate their thoughts in written form, whether they are using the English language as their vehicle or not.

Writing is an essential component of productive language, and ELs will need to demonstrate their ability to write in English if they hope to be competitive in a globalized world . Building competency in English-language writing supports reading comprehension, vocabulary expansion, and oral fluency , so there’s so much to be gained. And even if your students don’t plan to use the lingua franca on a regular basis, the skills gleaned from learning to write in another language transfer to all facets of life, making students more aware and more effective communicators in their native language(s) .

Teaching ESL writing aids in self-expression , which might be particularly meaningful for individuals who are hesitant to express themselves verbally. You might have the next Henry David Thoreau or Gabriel García Márquez in your class!

Why do ESL students struggle with writing?

Writing in another language is no easy feat, so it’s only natural that your ESL/ EFL students encounter difficulties when asked to do so.

First, it’s essential to recognize that writing conventions differ from one language group to another . Students from various linguistic backgrounds might declare that writing in English (particularly in an academic setting) is “boring,” something they perceive as formulaic. Often, these students come from backgrounds that value writing in a way that might seem “tangential” to native English readers.

In “Cultural thought patterns in inter-cultural education,” Robert B. Kaplan (1966) put forth a model for examining written discourse patterns, which illustrates how different thought patterns influence how speakers of other languages express themselves in written form.

You can observe that English is illustrated as being very straightforward, which aligns with the directness of spoken English. Kaplan poses here that other language groups tend to branch off in different directions in written form, pulling in supporting elements that might not be directly correlated to the main idea and that present as “off-topic” for native English speakers.

Secondly, it’s crucial to keep in mind that writing requires a vocabulary lexicon that can adequately support sharing . Often, even the most proficient English learners struggle to select the language they need to convey their point. When tackling writing instruction, make sure to consider how you’re supporting vocabulary development to support the conventions you’re teaching.

Lastly (and perhaps most importantly), writing is a form of self-expression, and self-expression through writing isn’t valued the same way in all cultures . There is a great deal of value placed on sharing one’s opinions in the U.S., for example, but this is not the reality all over the world. Some of your students might have been taught that they receive and process information, but that they are not in the position to make statements of their own or have the authority to teach others. Therefore, putting their thoughts down on paper might feel formal, high-stakes even, for your students.

What are some tips for teaching ESL writing?

Regardless of the age and proficiency level of your students, or whether you’re teaching writing in an ESL or EFL classroom, there is a myriad of strategies that you have at your disposal.

Don’t underestimate the value of conducting needs assessments

When it comes down to how to teach writing skills, even if you are teaching a group that is considered a certain proficiency level, recognize that there is always going to be a range of experience and ability present. Spend time getting to know what your students have been exposed to and in what ways before deciding on your approach. Teach to the middle to ensure no one is left behind.

Check out the following sample needs assessment to get started:

Think about how you can lower learners’ affective filters

A large portion of all successful teaching comes from relationship-building. In addition to getting a true sense of your learners’ experience and abilities, try to understand their attitudes towards writing as a process and any challenges that might be borne from those attitudes. How can you increase your students’ comfort level? How can you engage the individuals sitting in front of you?

Check out these 5 ways to build rapport with your students when teaching English.

Think about how the writing task can act as a building block for other assignments

Learning how to write in another language can be intimidating, and even more so if your students don’t enjoy writing in the first place. When wondering how to teach writing to ESL/EFL students, think about how you can integrate writing more often and more seamlessly into your lesson plans. Instead of approaching writing in isolation, teach writing skills alongside other “more engaging” activities that students tend to enjoy more. Have your students participate in role-playing and storytelling activities that require writing but don’t make writing the focus of the activity. This is your chance to be sneaky and get your students to build their writing skills without even knowing!

Present opportunities to examine authentic, written language

Providing students with examples of the target language is non-negotiable, but challenge yourself to move beyond the sample texts in your curriculum where possible. Students might feel bored by the selected works in their textbooks – they need to recognize that written language is all around them. Pull from authentic texts that cover an array of topics that you know matter to your students to keep them enticed.

Try incorporating pop culture into your ESL classroom to spice up writing activities!

Lead with function over form in instruction, and then alter your focus

Students can be discouraged to find their paper covered with red ink, highlighting their fallacies. While it is important to provide corrective feedback, consider the purpose of the assignment before marking up the composition. Was the output comprehensible? Did it touch upon everything that you asked for? Focusing on both function (the purpose of the assignment) and the accuracy in form simultaneously can feel overwhelming. Choose your objectives carefully, make them known to the learners, and provide corrective feedback accordingly .

Choose writing activities that pertain to your students’ learning goals. For example, the following clip, from a BridgeUniverse Expert Series webinar , covers how to teach Business English students to write an email in English:

Consider formative assessment and reflective strategies

Whenever possible, assess student work periodically, examining the process with various checkpoints and iterations throughout, instead of just evaluating the final product. Writing is an iterative process, and students benefit greatly when offered opportunities to reflect on their process. Create opportunities for students to participate in self- and peer-revision processes, which in turn will result in more conscientious and focused writers.

What are some ESL writing activities and lesson plans for beginners?

It can feel challenging to come up with writing activities for learners with beginner proficiency, but with proper scaffolding , writing can be inclusive and participatory.

Try group writing processes in class to get students comfortable

Writers with beginner proficiency might default to a deficit mindset, believing that writing is inaccessible for them due to a dearth of vocabulary or experience, so when you start to look at how to teach writing in the ESL/EFL classroom, your first job is to inspire confidence and get students into a growth mindset. To get them comfortable with the writing process, engage them in group writing activities.

• Choose a familiar topic (or have your students choose a topic together), and explain that you are going to “group-author” a paragraph.
• Have the students share what they know about the topic, and you, as the teacher, act as the scribe, jotting down their thoughts in a central location.
• Continue gathering their ideas until everyone has shared, remembering to emphasize that this is a process and that there is no wrong contribution.
• Examine the individual contributions and note overlap: How can a few thoughts be grouped together? In the process, ask students to elaborate on what they meant and provide examples.
• Organize these preliminary thoughts to the best of your ability, involving the students and getting them to notice organizational structures and decipher between the main idea and details.
• After celebrating what you can refer to as the “first draft,” provide specific and limited ways to improve the piece. Did they include everything they thought was relevant to the topic? Could the paragraph benefit from additional cohesive devices? Do the subjects and verbs agree? Provide ample support in the form of examples, formulas, and sentence frames alongside the piece. Invite students to examine the paragraph and seek out these common mistakes (in partners or individually).
• Create your “final draft” together, and ensure that it’s displayed prominently in the space.

By engaging them in the writing process in this way, you are instilling habits that will aid them in writing autonomously when the time comes.

Make the most of brainstorming – both individually and with others

Have you ever had students tell you that they don’t know what to write? Students, particularly those at the beginner level, need ample time to think about the content before diving into the actual writing process . Emphasize the importance of brainstorming as a way to collect their thoughts and aid them in their writing. Engage students in different kinds of brainstorming activities, going beyond “write down what comes to mind.”

Consider Think-Pair-Share as a framework for brainstorming, where students take time to think independently about the topic, share their ideas with their peers, and then share aloud to a larger group. Typically, the sharing is done orally, but you could also consider the independent writing portion of the activity as “sharing” with a larger audience, just in written form.

What are some ESL writing activities and lesson plans for intermediate and advanced students?

Facilitate a two-way journal experience with your students.

Create a way for individual students to exchange their ideas with you in an informal way with a two-way journal . Have the students maintain a writing journal that you periodically collect to write comments and ask questions. The objective of this exchange is not to formally evaluate your students’ writing, but to gather intel about your students’ progress and connect with them as individuals. Within these exchanges, not only are you building and sustaining rapport, but you are also augmenting critical thinking and meta-cognitive skills with strategies like noticing and annotation.

Cultivate peer revision routines

Learning to write in a non-native language is as much a social process as it is a cognitive process. Involving students in peer revision activities can be incredibly beneficial in that students can learn from their peers (potentially those who are stronger writers than themselves) and develop the ability to think more critically about their own writing. While getting students to effectively participate in peer revision activities requires a lot of frontloading and the establishing of routine, it is the gift that keeps on giving. If you’re interested in facilitating peer revision with your students, consider the following as general guidelines:

• Start by determining your focus for the activity. What are you asking the students to do? Make it clear to the students what you’re looking for, and provide supports that they can use in the process (e.g., a checklist or rubric).
• Demonstrate how students would use the rubric, and go through the revision process as a group.
• Provide sample pieces to examine, and engage the students in discussion around the samples.
• Make sure that students are aware of what is considered appropriate and useful feedback through modeling. Have them practice, and give them feedback on their feedback.
• Monitor the peer review sessions and jump in as needed, ensuring the quality of feedback for all involved parties.
• Reflect on the peer feedback activity in whole-group format, asking students to share what they got from reading their peers’ work, defining areas that they excelled in and areas for improvement.

Timed writing

Once your students feel comfortable with the writing process and the structure at hand, consider different contexts that they’ll be writing in. Perhaps they are planning to take the TOEFL or the Pearson Test of English (PTE) and hope to study abroad, or maybe they’re about to enter the workforce and work collaboratively with others.

In either case, your students will need to demonstrate their ability to communicate their ideas in written form while adhering to time constraints . Plan timed writing activities for your students on a variety of topics and with different parameters. In a standardized test prep context, have students write under the same conditions as the test that they’re preparing to sit for.

Take a Micro-credential course in Teaching TOEFL Test Prep or Teaching PTE Test Prep to help students ace these high-stakes exams.

In a workforce development setting, illustrate a scenario in which an email from management warrants an urgent (and polished) response. In either context, examine the output and discuss strategies that the students used. Student output from timed activities provides fertile ground for examining accuracy in form. Walk students through noticing activities, and challenge them to remember their tendencies in subsequent timed writing tasks.

Teaching writing to ESL/EFL students requires commitment and perhaps a bit of innovation on the part of the teacher, but if done well, it can prove immensely useful in a globalized world, aiding individuals in self-expression and beyond.

In addition to writing, there’s another subject that can sometimes fill teachers with dread: grammar! Here are 7 simple strategies for teaching grammar to English language learners , so you can tackle this topic with confidence .

Linda D'Argenio

Linda D'Argenio is a native of Naples, Italy. She is a world language teacher (English, Italian, and Mandarin Chinese,) translator, and writer. She has studied and worked in Italy, Germany, China, and the U.S. In 2003, Linda earned her doctoral degree in Classical Chinese Literature from Columbia University. She has taught students at both the school and college levels. Linda lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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Strategies in Teaching Academic Essay Writing, Level of Effectiveness, and Instructional Barriers: The Case of Filipino Learners

2023, World Journal of English Language

This study about academic essay writing strategies was conducted in order to propose teachers' lesson guide based on the effective strategies that were ascertained after the investigation. The study used the descriptive-quantitative method of research. The University-approved questionnaire was used to identify the frequency of use of the strategies utilized in students' essay writing activities. There were 126 students and 20 English teachers in Cebu City, Philippines, used as the respondents of the study. It was discovered that the three academic essay writing strategies investigated in the study were always used in both argumentative and informative essay writing, as perceived by the respondents. The first two strategies, traffic light color coding, and planning using informal outline, were found to be very effective in both writing the argumentative and informative essays, while the third strategy, framed paragraph, was also effective to use in both writing the two types of essays. The strategies used, and the students' performance showed a significant relationship. The top barriers in teaching academic essay writing were as follows: teaching essay writing to second language learners, lack of time for explicit instruction, no strategies in place for the part of the students, lack of parental support, and lack of essay structures on the part of the teachers. It was concluded that there were various effective pedagogical strategies that teachers could utilize in teaching academic essay writing. Based on the findings, this study further presents its recommendations.

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Writing essay is still considered difficult for English students to master. The students are expected to be able to express their ideas correctly without making any chance of messages to be misinterpreted by the readers; therefore, they have to know and use the best or the most appropriate ways to write. The purpose of writing this article is to introduce learning strategies and the possibility of training of learning strategies in writing essay to English students. The first strategy is integration of strategy with the process of writing essay: pre-writing, writing draft, and post-writing activities. The second is training learning strategies, such as memory, cognitive, compensation, metacognitive, affective, and social strategies to students to make writing essay easier, faster, more enjoyable, more effective, and more self-directed to achieve the desired result in their writing. To get better result of improvement, the model of training of learning strategies in writing essay should be applied and developed based on the appropriateness of teachers, learners, subjects, and situations.

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Essay on Teaching Methods for Effective Learning Today

In what way are/were you taught and how will you teach? Teaching methods are vital for everyone – we all go or went to a school where teachers try to involve each student in the learning process. Namely, this learning process is identified as effective or ineffective by means of effective or ineffective methods of teaching accordingly. Methods of teaching are one of the primary topics any student undergoing pedagogic training has to deal with. It is no wonder that the majority of questions arising in this field are in this or that way connected with misconceptions or wrong assumptions concerning this topic. That is exactly what explains why a student willing to master knowledge or skills should pay special attention to grasping at least the basic theory of teaching methods and doing a lot of practice: for example, writing an essay about it.

In this article, you’ll learn how to write an essay on the topic “Teaching Methods”. Besides, you are given the list of references you can consult additionally. Make progress in essay writing right now!

3 ‘Teaching Methods’ Issues to Address in an Essay

You as a person who is receiving education don’t think about methods employed in this process. Education is something that just happens to you, and you don’t give extra thought to how it all is organized. Right? It is a common perception among students but the task to write an essay about teaching methods can’t remain unaddressed as it will influence your academic performance that is expressed in marks. You can do your best to get high marks for writing this particular essay. First and foremost, address the key points of the topic. Here you are:

1. Groups of Teaching Methods Differ in Outcomes, But All Are Aimed at Teaching

In reality, teaching methods are a complicated and multi-lateral issue, with many opposing schools of thought. When all’s said and done, however, most teaching methods can be roughly subdivided into two groups: teacher-centric and student-centric.

• Teacher-centric learning approach is also often referred to as the traditional educational model because it is basically what we are all used to associate with teaching and studying. In this model, students are considered to be de-facto “empty vessels”, passive receivers of knowledge and skills. It is a teacher’s job to provide instructions and guidance for them, “filling up” these empty vessels in the process, and students are supposed to learn by listening to lectures, observing and copying the teacher’s actions and in general subjecting themselves to the teacher’s ultimate authority.
• Student-centric learning approach to learning is a much more recent development, placing emphasis on students’ participation in the educational process. This approach considers students to be not just objects but subjects of education as well, and the teacher’s role is viewed as not as that of the instructor but facilitator and delegator. To simplify it a bit, a teacher doesn’t provide one or another method of doing things that are already set in stone but offers guidance and support so that students are capable to figure things out on their own, thus making them active participants of the process.
• Another subtype of student-centric approach, the so-called cooperative learning, emphasizes teamwork: students are encouraged to work in groups and engage in reciprocal teaching. The teacher is not eliminated from the equation altogether, but his role, again, is that of facilitator and delegator rather than that of the one and only authority on every question. This method is based on the assumption that students learn best when they work and communicate with their peers.

It is important to understand that there are no good or bad methods of teaching. One can easily assume that a teacher-centric approach is outdated, anachronistic and generally “bad”, while the student-centric one is progressive and modern. However, they both have their areas of application. For example, teacher-centric methods far outpace student-centric ones in teaching fundamental skills. In other words, both groups of teaching methods have their areas of application and can be used to great effect – if used appropriately.

2. The Areas of Teaching Methods Application Differ as Well

If we start speaking about different areas of using specific teaching methods, it is logical to name them. Don’t omit this point in your essay as well. Today, the educational process differs from that existing several decades ago. Modern teachers have to not only explain a topic and provide the knowledge to students and mentor them, but also to:

• Facilitate learning for students in a classroom encouraging active learning,
• Develop mutual cooperation among students,
• Give prompt feedback to guide students in the right direction to the progress,
• Motivate students to learn new materials and develop essential skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, etc.

In general, a teacher is supposed to prepare a student to deal with the real world. It is possible only when a person is equipped with the relevant theory and practical skills necessary for successful communication in modern society and personal, professional development. Only this gives a competitive advantage in life. For each aim of teaching, there are particular methods. If a teacher needs to simply present the information, he or she uses a lecture method. It is true that sometimes it is boring to listen to a lecturer. For that reason, this way of teaching is extended by the others, for example, interactive and participative methods. It is important to encourage students’ participation and develop discussions that result in gaining hands-on experience.

3. The Effectiveness of Teaching Methods

More and more instructors develop their teaching approach depending on students’ learning needs . They are far from simply going to school, college or university to get knowledge. Unfortunately, the understanding of learning needs differently can cause various learning challenges and pitfalls and problems in the educational system. The result is that it reflects on the professional development of graduating students negatively. What is a doctor whose learning needs aren’t met at university? The medical system is impaired. So the assessment of learning needs should become part of government policy in relation to the continuing professional development of all professionals. Let’s observe what learning needs determine the appropriate use of teaching methods:

• Know about phenomena occurring to various areas of study;
• Finding answers to different questions;
• Define problems that need to be solved;
• Develop and use original ideas;
• Plan and carry out systematic investigations;
• Analyze and interpret data, a lot of data (due to the information overload);
• Use critical thinking;
• Construct solid explanations and design optimal solutions and many more.

All these needs, exactly their fulfillment, influence the effectiveness of using one or another teaching method. The most critical condition applicable to effective teaching in the 21st century is that all the teaching practices need to create personal and social relevance for students. They need to be intellectually and emotionally engaged in their own active learning, in other words, motivated to learn this world and solve some problems. In fact, teaching for success while taking a test is insufficient today. The current education policies that give priority to assessment need to be severely curtailed.

This idea and many other ideas can be mentioned in your essay about teaching methods. However, it is important to always back up all the research ideas. Look at the following references you can also use in your essay:

7 References to Use in the Essay about Teaching Methods

• Arnold, J. (1998). Towards more humanistic English teaching. ELT Journal, 52(3), pp.235-242.
• Bligh, D. (2000). What’s the use of lectures?. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Cullen, R. (1998). Teacher talk and the classroom context. ELT Journal, 52(3), pp.179-187.
• Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gibbons, M. (2002). The self-directed learning handbook. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.
• Legge, K. and Harari, P. (2000). Psychology and education. Oxford: Heinemann.
• Wiseman, A. and Anderson, E. (n.d.). Annual review of comparative and international education 2014.
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Teaching Connections

Advancing discussions about teaching, who’s afraid of academic writing a reflective essay on dispelling anxiety and fear in an academic writing course.

WONG Jock Onn Centre for English Language Communication (CELC)

Jock Onn considers how educators can apply an ethics of care in their teaching, as he takes us through survey findings on students’ perspectives towards academic writing, particularly the emotions they associate with this activity and the challenges they face.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

I had previously spent many semesters in my teaching practice developing methods that I thought would help students excel in academic writing. It did not matter to me at the time that student feedback told me that my coursework was demanding; I took it to mean that I was on the right track (Wong, 2023a). It was only in recent years that I realised the need to show more care in my teaching (Wong, 2023b). Last year, amazingly, for the first time, the word ‘care’ appeared in my student feedback. A student wrote, “Dr Wong displays care for his students…” Realising the importance of care, I decided to find out why students need care and conducted a simple Google survey (entitled “Attitudes Towards Academic Writing”) last semester with my three classes. I asked them to make known the emotions they associate with academic writing, write qualitative comments on their answers, and tell me what challenges they face. I received 41 responses, and the survey yielded some tentative but interesting findings.

The survey asked, “Which of the following emotions do you associate with academic writing?” As shown in Table 1, over 50% of the students associated academic writing with fear and anxiety. Slightly over a quarter associated it with a rather positive feeling (26.8%) and only a very small percentage (4.9%) associated it with something very positive. The fact that over half of the respondents associated academic writing with fear (53.7%) and anxiety (63.4%) was a surprise to me. Fortunately, less than 10% hated academic writing.

Students also gave qualitative comments on why they experienced fear and anxiety in academic writing. Some indicated that they had insufficient linguistic knowledge, including the vocabulary and skills to write academically. A few even claimed that they did not know what academic writing entails. Other respondents indicated a lack of confidence. For example, a student wrote that knowing that their work is being graded caused anxiety. Several students attributed their anxiety to uncertainty and a lack of confidence in academic writing. In some cases, fear or anxiety was a result of bad experiences in junior college (JC). A student recounted their JC experience, when they had to produce an essay in three hours, causing their brain and hand to hurt.

The survey further asked respondents to tick the problems they face in academic writing from a list. Table 2 shows that the top three problems students face in academic writing have to do with not knowing what constitutes academic writing, not having enough ideas, and sentence cohesion . More than half of the students said that they did not know how to write academically (58.5%) and did not have enough ideas for writing (51.2%). Also, over 30% of respondents had problems with the introduction (‘don’t know how to start’) (36.6%), and grammar (34.1%).

Table 2 Problems that students face (in decreasing order of importance)

Anxiety is said to be “one of the critical individual affective factors in the process of learning a second language or a foreign language” (He et al., 2021, p. 1). Presumably, the same could be said of the process of learning academic writing. Anxiety, as studies suggest, is linked to “avoidance of the feared situation and loss of motivation to perform”, which could adversely affect retention (England et al., 2017, p. 2/17). Student anxiety and fear can ultimately affect language performance (Soriano & Co, 2022, p. 450). Thus, dispelling anxiety and fear among students is a pedagogic imperative.   

To dispel anxiety and fear, one would benefit from understanding what they mean. I believe most of us do. However, two co-authors offer an interesting perspective. According to Kastrup and Mallow (2016), fear “deals with things of which there is good reason to be afraid”, whereas anxiety means “being scared of something that is not intrinsically fearful” (pp. 3-1). Although Kastrup and Mallow (2016) speak in the context of science, their definitions seem to make general sense. As educators, we recognise that while some student concerns are practical in nature (e.g., they do not know the rules), others seem to be psychological. The solution to practical concerns could be addressed in a more straightforward fashion by using sound teaching methods; however, psychological barriers may require a different approach.

My proposed way of addressing the psychological challenge is to replace the bad experiences with pleasant ones. As Cook (2021) puts it, teachers “must provide instructor presence by providing a positive education experience for students” and give them “a sense of belonging” (p. 136). The teacher can achieve this by creating a positive learning experience through an ethic of care (Noddings, 2012). The teacher can display “empathic concern” (Patel, 2023) by acknowledging student perspectives in class, using inclusive languages, encouraging open communication, and accommodating student needs (p. 64). The teacher can create “a safe learning environment” by establishing “rules of engagement” and encouraging students to “explain their answers” in class without labelling the answers as “wrong” or “incorrect” (Teo, 2023, p. 79). After all, “harsh criticisms” can impede learning (Soriano & Co, 2022, p. 452), whereas positive feedback can alleviate anxiety (He et al., 2021). A student recently gave feedback that I often asked them whether they understood what I had taught, and this suggests that checking for understanding regularly is reassuring. To this end, the teacher could use ungraded quizzes, which do not cause student anxiety (England et al., 2017). There are many other things a teacher could do in this vein to help address such psychological learning barriers (Harvard Medical School, 2017; Abigail, 2019).

To maximise student learning, the teacher plays a big role, a role much bigger than I had previously thought—the teacher has a responsibility to dispel fear and anxiety among students. I agree with Kastrup and Mallow (2016) that it is the teachers “who most affect the anxiety (or lack thereof) of the students” (pp. 3-12). I would now say that what makes an excellent teacher is not just the use of time-tested teaching methods but also a capacity to care (Wong, 2023b). Thus, for me, the obvious way forward is to ‘integrate care in higher education’ by ‘teaching with heart’ (Holles, 2023, p. 18).

Abigail, H. (2019, March 5). Tips to beat back writing anxiety . Retrieved from IUPUI University Writing Center Blog: https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/programs/uwc/tips-to-beat-back-writing-anxiety/

Cook, M. (2021). Students’ perceptions of interactions from instructor presence, cognitive presence, and social presence in online lessons. International Journal of TESOL Studies (Special Issue “ELT in the Time of the Coronavirus 2020”, Part 3), 3 (1), 134-161. https://doi.org/10.46451/ijts.2021.03.03

England, B. J., Brigati, J. R., & Schussler, E. E. (2017, August 3). Student anxiety in introductory biology classrooms: Perceptions about active learning and persistence in the major. PLoS One, 12 (8), e0182506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182506

Harvard Medical School. (2017, October 13). Write your anxieties away . Retrieved from Harvard Health Blog: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/write-your-anxieties-away-2017101312551

He, X., Zhou, D., & Zhang, X. (2021, July-September). An empirical study on Chinese University students’ English Language classroom anxiety with the idiodynamic approach. Sage Open, 11 (3), 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211037676

Holles, C. (2023). Faculty-student interaction and well-being: The call for care. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 5 (3), 7-20. https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20230302

Kastrup, H., & Mallow, J. V. (2016). Student Attitudes, Student Anxieties, and How to Address Them: A Handbook for Science Teachers. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/978-1-6817-4265-6

Noddings, N. (2012). The caring relation in teaching. Oxford Review of Education, 38 (6), 771-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2012.745047

Patel, S. N. (2023). Empathetic and dialogic interactions: Modelling intellectual Empathy and communicating care. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 3 , 51-70. https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20230305

Soriano, R. M., & Co, A. G. (2022, March). Voices from within: Students’ lived experiences on English language anxiety. International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education, 11 (1), 449-58. http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v11i1.21898

Teo, C. (2023). Beyond academic grades: Reflections on my care for university students’ holistic development in Singapore. International Journal of TESOL Studies, 5 (3), 71-83. https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20230306

Wong, J. (2023a, March 29). When angels fall: The plight of an ambitious educator. Teaching Connections: Advancing Discussions about Teaching . Retrieved from https://blog.nus.edu.sg/teachingconnections/2023/03/29/when-angels-fall-the-plight-of-an-ambitious-educator/

Wong, J. (2023b). What completes an excellent teacher? Care in higher education English language teaching. International Journal of TESOL Studies2, 5 (3), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20230301