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For many learners around the world, English will be an important part of their futures and careers, and they will, therefore, need to develop their academic writing skills in further education or at university.
In this blog post, we’ll look at some practical strategies for improving writing fluency in ELT, and explore how teachers can help learners produce effective academic writing.
Why are academic writing skills in ELT important?
All children learn words and language by listening and speaking first. This often occurs years before they learn to read and write.
Developing writing skills is, therefore, amongst the last things we learn during our language development, and writing can remain a challenge for many adults in their own languages long after they have finished school. If this wasn’t the case, teachers and editors would be out of a job!
In our increasingly globalized world, and with English being the language of science, medicine, technology, business and the humanities, English proficiency is a fundamental goal for many students around the world, and in many cases their careers and economic prospects will depend on it. It is therefore vital that we teach effective academic writing in ELT classrooms.
How to improve academic writing skills in English?
Let’s look at five ways that educators can help English learners improve their academic writing skills.
1. Start with the structures of academic writing
Students can’t write academic texts if they don’t know what an academic text is like. Think back to your own experiences of writing essays when you were at university. No doubt you had no idea where to start, but were offered an Academic Writing 101-type class, which helped you learn how to construct academic texts such as essays, technical reports and research articles.
Having to be taught how to write academic texts is important for people whose first language is English, but is even more important for those using it as a second or additional language.
So how can you give learners the same support in your classes?
Give your students academic writing exercises that get them to analyze the structure and conventions of the academic texts they will produce, while having them understand why these texts are good models and how they can write their own in the same way.
Once students have learned what a good piece of writing should look like and how to put it together, move on to the next step of teaching the tone, style, clarity and formality of language that is used in formal academic writing, which differs considerably from general English writing.
If you’re not sure how to begin with this, Garnet Education’s 50 Steps to Improving Your Academic Writing is a great place to start. It takes students through a step-by step process of how to organize a text and make writing more academic. It also features modules on researching and organizing an essay.
2. Prevention is better than cure
Improving academic writing requires a lot of guidance and feedback from teachers, often in the form of grading and assessing pieces of writing. We know that teachers can’t always spend a lot of time on giving deep, personal feedback on every piece of writing, especially when they teach larger classes. But there are some ways to help ELT students learn how to improve their writing for themselves so that you don’t have to spend as much time doing it for them.
For instance, Pamela Flash of the University of Minnesota Center for Writing recommends recording regular patterns of errors that your students make in their texts, which you can then use as a basis for correcting common mistakes. If you are familiar with your students’ first language (L1), you will likely already know some of the errors they commonly make when writing in English (L2), and can, therefore, work on some common L1-L2 transfers.
For example, I taught writing courses at two universities in South Korea, and I recognized that many Korean students say ‘two days later’ instead of the English construction ‘in two days’ time’, or ‘I’m expecting (something)’ instead of ‘I’m looking forward to (something)’.
Teaching common errors and working on their fixes can easily be done at the start of a semester. In my own university classroom, I presented a lecture on common errors Koreans make and worked to fix them in the first week of my writing course. I had students complete a handout as they followed along to ensure they worked on the fixes and were able to understand why they were errors. I then used this handout as the basis of my grading criteria and feedback when assessing their writing tasks during the semester.
By pre-teaching your students some common errors, you can easily assess their development, or use this as a way to have them self-identify their mistakes and learn to self-correct their writing before they submit it for assessment.
There are two benefits to this: teachers can save time, and students learn to be autonomous and not depend on their teachers to correct their writing.
3. Work on students’ mechanics
Kathleen Cali from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill defines mechanics as the conventions of written language that do not appear in spoken language. In a nutshell, we’re talking about the boring parts, like capitalization, italics and punctuation.
As anyone who struggles with these knows, mechanical conventions must be learned, and this is especially true for people whose languages do not use the Roman alphabet, such as those from Asian or Middle Eastern countries.
Mechanics play two important roles in writing: they help with communication, and they inform how much effort has been put into the work. Readers depend on mechanics such as italics to know when they’re reading a word of foreign origin, for example, or rely on apostrophes to show singular or plural possession.
All of these serve to aid comprehensibility. And if the mechanics in a piece of writing are not good, the reader will judge the writing and, as a result, the author to be of lesser quality. This won’t be good for any student’s success in academic fields.
So, how can you improve your students’ mechanics? One way is to introduce and practise one or two mechanical conventions each week. For example, in the first week you could tackle capitalization of names, titles, languages, countries, natural features and school subjects, and then move on to products, brand names and technology, such as apps, websites and computing devices.
Over the following weeks, you can then introduce more mechanical conventions, such as italics, word forms, conjunctions, subject-verb agreement and parallel structure. In this way, students build up a linguistic toolbox and learn to develop their academic writing skills.
4. Make students accountable by grading what you teach
Introducing mechanics and teaching text structure is all well and good, but how can you ensure students are going to actually apply what you’re teaching them? One way to have learners improve their mechanics and the organization of their academic writing is to make it part of your grading criteria.
Sheryl Holt, also from the University of Minnesota Writing Center, recommends categorizing what you are grading. In my writing classroom, I shared with my students a grading rubric chart which broke the grades down into different criteria: mechanics, structure, content, etc. These then formed part of the grade they received.
When new mechanics or structural conventions (topic sentences, supporting details, conclusions; conjunctions, word forms, and so on) were taught, these were added to the rubric for the next writing assignment.
Creating a rubric allows students to think about what they need to include when they plan and write their texts and what they will be graded on. Then, if they are unsure about anything, they can review what has been taught in class or reach out to you or a fellow student for help. This also helps students become autonomous learners, as they need to find ways to overcome the issues they encounter.
5. Teach students to proofread and edit their work
When leaving the house for a night out, most people check themselves in the mirror. They review their appearance, and if they’re not happy with something, they take the time to amend it.
The same principle should apply to written work that students are submitting to their teachers or for publication. Too often, students are so relieved to have finished their work that they send it off and don’t take the time to review it. Likewise, time-constrained teachers too often get their marking pens out and go to town on correcting students’ spelling and writing before delving into the content.
Helping students learn to proofread and edit their work before they submit it is important. But remember, students can’t do this unless you teach them what they need to look out for.
On the first day of class, ask your students to write a short introductory paragraph about themselves. This will give you great insights into what mechanical and organizational issues your students have, and will help you decide which mechanics to teach.
After a couple of weeks, when you have been able to explain structure and mechanics in a class or two, give the students their paragraphs back and ask them to proofread their work and correct any spelling or mechanical issues they identify.
You may find they’ll quickly be amazed at what a difference learning about mechanics has already made to their writing. Then, for homework, ask them to edit the paragraph and revise it. This will help them learn the differences between proofreading and editing, and what to look out for in their own writing.
Resources for teaching academic English writing
There’s a slew of student writing resources online, but if you’re looking for resources for teaching academic English, then Garnet Education’s 50 Steps to Improving Your Academic Writing study book is a good place to start.
If you’re teaching pre-sessional modules at a university, you might be interested in the TASK (Transferrable Academic Study Skills) kit, which features ten modules on topics such as Essay Writing and Referencing & Avoiding Plagiarism. You can buy the kit as a whole, or pick and choose just the modules you need.
The bottom line
Academic writing is a skill that needs to be developed, although it can seem daunting. Teachers should remember that students play a large part in their improvement, too. And as these tips show, once learners are armed with the right tools, this doesn’t have to be something that is arduous or time-consuming for students or teachers.
So, take a look at the 50 Steps study books and the TASK kit today, and see how easy it can be to improve your students’ academic writing.