Humanising Language Teaching
Year 1; Issue 4; June 1999

My students' self-correction strategies in writing tasks

By Ana Robles, Spanish Secondary

Page 3 of 3

HOW DO YOU WRITE IN ENGLISH?

Write a composition in English about the topic of your choice.

As you write, pay attention to how you think the composition through and describe as accurately as possible whatever comes to your mind. Here are some questions than may help you to describe your way of thinking out the composition:

• Do you get mental images or do you get words straight away?

• If you get mental images, what are they like?

• Do you hear yourself or other people talking about the topic?, how are the voices?, what do they say?

• Do you get feelings? What sort of feelings? How would you describe them?

Think about how you transform all that into a composition:

• Do you think first what you want to express in your mother tongue and then in English or do you think it in English straight away?

• When you think the composition , how do you think it?, do you see it written, do you hear yourself, do you get feelings?

• or do you think it in one way in mother tongue and in a different way in English? (for instance, you see it written in mother tongue and then your hear it in English)

• Do you get sentences or do you get one word after the other?, or do you get sentences in one language and words in the other?

• Once you have thought of something in English, do you write then down immediately or do you check it?

• How do you check it?

• Once you have written it down, do you re-read to check?

• How do you check?, do you compare it with the rules you know?

• Do you get a feeling?, do you talk to yourself, do you see the words written?

• Do you check in any other way?, how?