ENGLISH compositions by EFL students often fail to convey accurate messages to readers. One reason for this is that the students lack analytical and organizational skills. Hirayanagi Yukio, an English teacher at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan, discusses how to use four developmental tools in a listening and writing course for intermediate level college freshmen who are non-English majors: fluency journal writing, working journal writing, expository writing and free expository writing.
The fluency journal can be a homework assignment in which students write as much as possible, since evaluation is based entirely on the amount of English written. They are not to be concerned about grammatical errors. Since students have no frame of reference for identifying and correcting errors on their own, the teacher's guidance is valuable. Teacher corrections give them correct models of the expressions they want to use.
The working journal gives students the opportunity to exchange opinions in writing with their teacher. The parametres for the working journal are the same as those for the fluency journal, with the addition that students should express their opinions. English news articles and editorials form the basis for the writing. The working journal helps develop students' awareness of how they are expressing themselves.
Controlled expository writing aims to develop organizational skills and the ability to use rhetorical patterns by writing based on an assigned topic. The teacher give students the following ground rules: the paper should be organized into sections (i.e. introduction, body and conclusion); each paragraph should be cohesive (i.e. the topic sentence should be supported by other sentences); discourse markers such as conjunctions and demonstrative pronouns should be used; abstract statements should be followed by concrete examples or illustrations; opinions should be clearly stated at the beginning.
The fourth tool is a free expository composition, which aims to improve organizational skills by doing background research and personal reflection. For example, after watching a video dealing with discrimination against women, students write a free expository paper which becomes a deductively developed discussion about one of the points presented in the video.
