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Creating The Fluent, Confident Writer: Innovative Techniques For Esl Writing Courses, Prudence Ingerman

MA TESOL Collection

ESL students are usually concerned with writing with no errors and this built-in critical editor stifles the rich writing potential which all students have. Through creating a safe environment and activities which nurture the creative spirit, it is possible to limit this editor to infrequent but necessary appearances and encourage writing large quantities of ungraded material. This paper suggests techniques for building a classroom community, including the use of a scripted writing process, responding to instructor writing and one-to-one conferencing. The essay also demonstrates how fluency can be achieved via a weekly silent class, mind-mapping and copious free-writing. These techniques …