泰孚教育：Encouraging students’ interests in writing

“Interest is thebest teacher.” This is an old Chinese saying, however, English writing is no tinteresting for most Chinese students because of the different language system.From a TESOL teacher’s perspective, motivating students’ interests in writingis crucial. As TESOL teachers, we could encourage our students through thefollowing approaches: psychological, sociological, and practical.   

TraditionalChinese teachers are using a teacher-centered orientated approach to teach.Specifically, the teacher will lay down templates and rules for students, andstudents have to follow every detail precisely, in order to receive a goodscore. Also, if students do not follow the teacher's rules, they will bereprimanded and receive a low mark. Thus, under this teacher-centeredorientated approach, students feel a tremendous amount of pressure. In the longrun, students gradually lose their interest and even confidence in writing inEnglish. As a result, most Chinese students show no interest in writingessays.

Stimulatingstudents’ interests in writing through a psychological aspect are thepriority.   To stimulate students' interests in writing, teachersshould always give a positive signal to their students. Instead of harshreprimanded, a teacher should promote creativity. For example, do not criticizestudents when they did not follow the rules; instead, a teacher shouldencourage creativity and imagination. We have talked about maintaining thesafety feeling of oral English during the class; however, I believe that notonly oral English needs a safe feeling, but also writing needs safety feelings.From a psychological perspective, maintain a positive relationship betweenteachers and learners will encourage students to participate; at the same time,the positive feelings stimulate students’ interest in writing.

From asociological perspective, not every student is willing to share theirwriting, even for their teacher to read. Some students feel embarrassed whentheir writing is reviewed by others. These students are thoroughly solitarylearners; for these students, teachers could ask them to keep personal journalsand feel free to share or not to share. For instance, a teacher could provide twocarbines for students to submit their work. One cabinet for those who wantto have their writing reviewed by the teacher, and the other cabinet for thestudents who do not want their work to be read. Therefore, a teacher couldmaintain a friendly and safe study community for students. However, a teachercould encourage students to share their work with someone who they willing to,and students could give peer evaluations or feedback to each other. In thisway, a teacher could maintain a learning community and safe learningenvironment for all types of learners.   

Lastly, I want toshare some thoughts about practical activities that I learned from my TESOLtrainer Alex. I learned two writing activities that are highly motivatingwriting interests. They are "chain fairy-tales" and "fold-overstories.” In more detail, the “chain fairy-tales” activity requires everystudent to grab a piece of paper and start to write a story. After that, whenthe teacher signals "switch," then students will stop writing and passtheir paper to the one who sitting next; and then continue. After a while, it'stime to read. The teacher will call out students to read their stories. This isa typically student-centered orientated activity. Switching fromteacher-centered to student-centered is a top priority. At the same time, the“chain fairy-tales” activity maintains an interactive and creative learningenvironment. Since students will not know who writes what, even the shyeststudent will feel safe to write something and to share it in front of theclass. Besides, the “fold-over stories” activity is also practical forstimulating students' interests in writing. In more detail, the “fold-overstories” requires the student to write a sentence story; at the beginning, theteacher will write "who, what, when, where, and why" on the board.Then, explain to students that they are going to write someone's name on thetop of the paper; after that fold the paper, so no one can see the name; andthen pass the folded paper to the next. The next person will write on thereceived paper what the subject did, and then fold it over and pass it to thenext. After everyone finished, the students could unfold their paper, and readout the story one by one. The “fold-over stories” activity is another goodexample for stimulating students’ interests in writing; at the same time, thisactivity encourages students' creativity and imagination. Therefore, the twowriting activities I learned from Alex are very practical.   

As a TESOLteacher, I feel that I have a long way to go to stimulate students' interest inwriting. It requires not only a character of patience but also a variety ofstrategies and tactics to apply to teaching. The training with Alex isvery hands-on, and I learned many strategies and tactics that I could apply toteach for my future career.‍

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