Practical Steps for Writing Reports: Overcoming Difficulties and Teaching Strategies

4. The Practical Part by: Mr. Amr Samir

5. The Points To Be Discussed 1- Difficulties and solutions in writing reports. 2- Why teach writing ? 3- What are students needed to write? 4- How to teach the report writing in the class? 5- A diagram of the writing stages. 6- The fast writing instructions. 7-The practical steps for writing smoothly .

6. Writing reports

7. Difficulties in Writing reports 1- Brainstorming ideas for report writing. 2- Lack of ideas . 3- Lack of frequent writing practice . 4- Lack of vocabulary . 5- Lack of Grammar Knowledge.

8. Solutions for Difficulties in Writing 1- Practice writing frequently . 2- Learn about grammar. 3- Build up Vocabulary . 4- Read English materials . 5- Discuss with the classmates.

9. Why Teach Writing ? • 1- Writing for learning : • Where writing is used as a practice tool to work with language being studied . • E.g. Write 5 sentences using the past continuous. • 2- Writing for writing : • Where writing is directed at developing the ss’ skills as writers. • E.g. Writing e-mails ,letters , reports and essays.

10. What do your students need to write? • E.g. Your students need to know how to write • formal letters (e.g. application, complaint) • informal letters and stories • articles (e.g. newspaper and magazine) • reports

11. Discuss • How do you teach reportwriting in class? • Do you use different approaches to writing? • What are the main differences between the product and process approaches? When do you use them?

12. A product approach • is more traditional, focusing on form • imitates a model text, through analysing, copying and transforming models of particular text types • highlights features and includes controlled practice of those features • involves the student working individually • allows for one draft only • emphasises the end product

13. A Process approach • focuses on the writer • views writing as creative rather than formulaic • sees ideas rather than models as the starting point • includes planning, drafting, re-drafting and evaluating • is NOT linear – the writer can re-visit stages to change, amend, develop the text • involves students working collaboratively

14. How to deliver a process report writing activity?

15. Which model best summarises a process approach? Why?

16. PROCESS WRITING STAGES Individual Becoming more collaborative

18. Practical Steps . . . • Write down new words: • A good idea for building vocabulary is to immediately look up every unknown word. • Either copy or summarize the dictionary definition onto a note card or sticky note and hang it up in places where it will be seen during the day. ( Vocabulary Log ) • Study sentences: • Observe sentence structure when reading good books. • Also watch the way words are put together into various kinds of sentences when reading good books.

19. Observe writing styles: • When reading something of interest, either for pleasure or to later write about, watch what is written to learn how others have written it. • Become immersed in the writing styles particular to subjects of interest to learn how to write similarly. • Annotating: • Annotation is “recording your reactions to, interpretations of, and questions about a text as you read it.”2 • Strategies for annotating: • Making marks “directly on the page.”3 • Underlining important points • Highlighting • Making notes in the margins

20. Outlining: • Outliningis “listing the text’s main ideas to reveal how it is organized.”4 • Outlining forces writers to search for the overall flow of a text. • When using this in writing, it helps to clarify thoughts and to make the paper flow. • Paraphrasing: • Paraphrasing is “restating something you have read using mostly your own words.”5 • Being able to say something in different words shows that one truly understands it. • Summarizing: • Summarizing is “a summary is a relatively brief restatement . . . of the reading’s main ideas.”6 • Skills in summarizing will be especially useful in writing introductory and concluding paragraphs.