Making Writing Communicative

Ideas for communicative writing tasks

• Find ways to publish learners' writing, on websites such as
  

  • The BBC site Your stories

• They can also publish in blogs, in newspapers, and on posters. Get learners to create individual and group profiles on social utility sites such as Facebook. Publish a class magazine of previous writing work.

• Encourage learners to write with a clear purpose and for a clear audience, for example in letters to newspapers, pen friends, to teachers and other students.

• Find challenging and rewarding tasks which can support a variety of learning aims and integrate other skills and language systems, such as summarising, project work, translation, writing up notes from interviews, and preparing a briefing or talk.

• Use relevant and realistic tasks such as writing notes, recipes, e-mails, filling in forms and preparing signs for the class.

• Respond to the content of the work that your learners give you as well as correcting the errors they make, by adding your own comments to their homework or establishing a dialogue through e-mail and learner diaries.

• Make writing easier and more fun by doing group writing activities and group correction and editing of work. Process writing includes elements of this.

• Support writing with reading. This not only helps learners develop the sub-skills they need but also helps them understand that good writing is a powerful and important communication tool.