Hindrances to Student Writers

Gülistan Akmugan, Turkey

Gülistan Akmugan has been teaching English as a foreign language to Turkish students ranging from young learners to young adults for more than 20 years. She is currently working at Bahçeşehir University in İstanbul. She is interested in finding out ways to help her students become effective communicators in English.
E-mail: gulmugan@yahoo.com

As teachers of English, I assume we are all aware of the fact that writing isn’t a popular activity among a considerable amount of language learners. The situation is not very different in my country, Turkey. Throughout my teaching experience, I have observed that most students have the tendency to develop negative feelings towards writing. When I ask them to identify their feelings about writing, they do not compare it to going on a thrilling adventure but rather to a long journey full of hardship, and to being lost in a wild jungle. They describe feelings of insufficiency; they feel that they have to defend themselves and their points of view, rather than feeling the joy of self-expression. Having observed different groups of Turkish students ranging from young learners to young adults, especially the ones who are studying at universities, I can nominate a few reasons that lead our students to feel defenseless, insufficient and consequently unsuccessful when they are supposed to communicate in written contexts

To begin with, one of the most remarkable reasons behind the failure of students in academic writing is the inadequate amount of conscious and systematic contribution made to writing skill by students themselves and the environment in which they communicate either in written or in oral contexts. Conscious and systematic contribution can be defined as the effort that should be spent to enrich the intellectual knowledge on any topic related to human beings and global issues. I believe that being able to have an idea about the issues that raise the whole world’s concern and are the focal points of academic world is possible by means of different experiences such as listening, speaking, observing, watching, experimenting, perhaps travelling and most importantly by reading. For students reading is the most valuable contributor as it leads students to improve their range of vocabulary, deepens their subject knowledge and comprehend the information offered by the text at their own pace. ‘Extensive reading – most notably, reading of a voluntary nature - dramatically enhances skills related to comprehending and producing written text’ (Ferris, 1998). That is, to be able to start writing for academic purposes, student writers need to have accumulated in time background knowledge which they can easily access by reading. In addition to enrichment of background knowledge, through reading students will certainly be exposed to different types of writing texts and a variety of exposure to these text types will enable them to recognize the characteristics of text types and quality and as a result they can write more consciously and effectively. As Hedge mentions ‘Reading benefits students to be exposed to models of different text types so that they can develop awareness of what constitutes good writing’ (Hedge 2005:13). And as for the contribution of the environment in which student writers try to communicate in written or oral contexts, the importance of reading to become competent writers should be stressed to students very often. Moreover, for further readings on topics covered in the course, some selections of more readings should be offered to students.

A second reason for negative preconceived opinions towards writing is that syllabuses of most state schools in my country do not allocate enough time for writing skill and therefore there are not specific writing classes which aim to enable students to focus on process of writing. Students are assigned to write compositions of three or four paragraphs, usually at home, which should include introductory, body and concluding sections. In other words, they are told what to do but not taught how to do it and they are expected to concentrate on the end product rather than on the process. Due to lack of training and not devoting efficient time and energy to writing skill before student writers reach universities where they are expected to communicate their messages accurately and coherently using appropriate genre, they cannot develop one of the basic and productive language skills. When they are asked to fulfill the requirements of written contexts in the foreign language that is recognized as the medium by the university, the student writers feel that their journeys full of scary adventures start. However, it is stated by Celce – Murcia, Olshtain (2000:146) that having a good foundation in writing in one’s first language can help one eventually become a good writer in a second language. I personally believe that attempts of forming a good foundation in writing in students’ native language should take place in the curriculum of primary and elementary school due to the fact that students’ writing skill, developed in their first language is generally transferable to their second language.

Thirdly, academic writing, which university students are exposed to during their studies to become competent in their future professions, is a discipline which allows writers to present their arguments and analysis accurately and concisely. Universities expect their students to write academic texts in a common context applied in the English speaking world. Main features of academic writing can be listed as register, organization, style, content, task fulfillment, coherence, cohesion, lexis and sentence structure. Academic environments demand student writers to fully respond to all the above mentioned requirements. In the case of lacking required features, the academic text is considered as an inefficient one and graded accordingly. For instance, lack of sense of audience, purpose and direction may mislead students in choosing the appropriate language or style, or lack of a good range of vocabulary may prevent them from generating ideas as they may have difficulties in expressing them properly. That is, when they do not know how to express a statement with the correct structure, they may change their direction, even though their idea is an effective one, in order not to take any risks.

The final reason which I think is worth considering is that most students are not aware of the phases of writing especially pre-writing stage. According to Hedge, process of writing involves setting goals, generating ideas, organizing information, selecting appropriate language, making a draft, reading and reviewing, then revising and editing (Hedge 2000: 302). I have observed that among these stages of the process, the most painful one is being motivated and getting started to write. Even in their native languages, the most fluent writers in their native languages need to generate ideas and plan what they are going to write. Therefore, discovering and gaining pre-writing strategies for preparatory work is crucial for student writers to communicate fluently for academic purposes in written context in various genres. Besides spending some time and effort on pre-writing strategies, if student writers do not consider writing as a process and do not apply the above mentioned stages, they may have difficulties in choosing and developing the most effective and appropriate ideas among the generated ones and consequently, they may not convey their messages appropriately.

All things considered, we can say that a good piece of writing should demonstrate schematic knowledge, an appropriate and accurate language and the way in which the pieces of the text are put in a logical order with appropriate linguistic devices. As Hedge clarified ‘A piece of writing is the outcome of a set of complicated cognitive operations’ (Hedge 2005:303) and White & Amdt (1992:3) claim writing is not only a simple matter of transcribing language into written symbols. It is a thinking process in its own right and it demands conscious intellectual effort, which usually has to be sustained over a long period of time. Here, the expression ‘a long period of time’ should lead us to conclude that writing is a life-long process. The would-be academic communicators, in other words, our student writers should raise their awareness about writing skill, features and requirements of it and approach to it accordingly if they wish to turn their frightening journeys into enjoyable ones which enable them to broaden their horizons.

References

Celce-Murcia, M., & Olshtain, E. (2000). Discourse and Context in Language Teaching. CUP

Hedge, T. (2005). Writing Oxford.

Hedge, T. (2000).Teaching and Learning in the language classroom Oxford.

White, R. & Arndt, V. (1991). Process Writing Longman

Feris, D., & Hedgcock, J. (1998). Teaching ESL composition: purpose, process and practice Lawrence Erbaum Associates

Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Methodology and Language for Secondary Teachers course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.