Autobiography
Writing and Teacher-Senior Student Partnerships in Writing Classes for
Beginners
Aris Munandar
For
beginners, familiarity with the topic contributes a great deal to ease in
writing. This is the underlying reason for recommending autobiography writing
as an alternative project for beginners. It has been proven as a means of
giving students confidence and maintaining the
enthusiasm of the class. Despite their invaluable benefits to students’ writing
skill improvement, autobiography writing project are often seen as giving an
extra heavy work-load to the teachers. The problem can be solved by means of
bringing senior students into the class to help in peer editing or to do
assessment outside the classroom. During peer editing in the class, the can be
chaperons for small-group discussions. The teacher will interfere only when the
problem is too complicated for them to solve. This paper discusses the
application of autobiography writing and senior-assisted peer correction in
writing class for beginners. The discussion includes the procedures, problems,
and findings from the application. It also proposes some suggestions, based on
the previous application, for further applications.
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Munandar, A. (2004, April). Autobiography
writing and teacher-senior student partnerships in writing classes for
beginners. Paper presented at the RELC International Seminar on Approaches to
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