Teens and writing skills

Hello, my dear readers!

I cannot but agree that writing is becoming an increasingly important skill in today’s world. Teenagers use the written word in their own language to communicate in both social and academic contexts and many of them will need to develop good writing skills in English too. This article provides some awesome tips to improve your writing skills. You can find my favourite tips below.

 

Before writing

1. Having something to say - helping to think of ideas and shape these ideas into a plan before students begin writing. 
2. Roleplay - before starting a piece of writing such as an opinion essay or a ‘For and against’ essay, it can be useful for learners to argue different points of view about tphe topic.
3. Speedwriting - it helps learners jot down all the ideas and information they have about a subject. They write continuously about a certain topic for three minutes. The aim is to get ideas down on paper.
4. Images - they can help learners think of ideas for different kinds of writing tasks.
5. A story mountain - before writing a story it is useful for learners to plan their storyline. A story mountain can help them do this by giving them a basic story structure. Find an example of a story mountain here:http://www.brainpop.co.uk/uk/new_common_images/files/11/112523_GO_STORY_MOUNTAIN-UK.pdf
6. Extending vocabulary   

 

 After writing

1. Having an audience – reader response - learners will be more motivated to write interesting content and think about accuracy if they know their writing is going to be read by someone other than their English teacher.
2. Correction codes - e.g. learners make a glossary of the correction codes the teacher uses in their notebooks (sp = spelling, wo = word order, vf = verb form, p = punctuation, etc.). They also assign a section of their notebook to track the mistakes they make in each piece of writing. This way, they can see which mistakes they regularly make and consciously look out for these particular mistakes when reviewing their work. 
3. Spelling - students do various exercises to improve their spelling as well as they memorize misspelt words from their assignments.

In my opinion, these tips by Samantha Lewis are very reasonable. You should check the full article to find out more information about improving writing skills: 

http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teens-writing-skills