How to Teach Students to Write in English
At present, the approach of teaching process-writing is being emphasized. This writing approach can be briefly summarized as a process of planning, writing and reviewing (Flower and Hayes, [9J). in this article, the discussion on the process approach will, however, focus on explaining how to provide input for students before writing, how to develop students’ understanding of social contexts, arid how to give feedback to students’ writing since these seem to be the most serious problems that EFL teachers in Bangladesh often encounter.
How to provide input for students before writing
It is obvious that language teachers need to provide learners with certain input before asking them to write. Input drives acquisition, which should be put ahead of teaching in any approach of language instruction that wants to be successful. Therefore, how the teacher provides input for students and what kind of input to be provided are worth-concerning issues. As VanPatten asserts, to facilitate the process of turning input into intake, the instruction should be psycholinguistic ally motivated. For instance, the input provided prior writing can be given through reading since reading and writing go hand in hand. Learners will be motivated to write when they obtain necessary vocabulary, grammar and writing style through reading passages. Particularly, as suggested by Beck [11], authentic reading texts often contain different levels of adequacy in formal linguistics, that is, observational adequacy, descriptive adequacy, and explanatory adequacy. Consequently, students will develop their understanding of these three levels simultaneously, thus being able to present descriptive adequacy and explanatory adequacy in their writing, which, in fact, seem to be neglected in most grammar textbooks today. The combination of writing with reading also satisfies the requirement that language teachers need to consider the connection between the writing course with other courses in the total curriculum.
