Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Graduate School of TESOL

Teaching Writing

Spring 2007

Raimes (1983), Chapter 8: Techniques in Teaching Organization

Answers

1. Why is it important that we teach organization to our students?

Addressing the issue of organization is important for our students because without organization skills they simply won`t know how to write anything above the sentence level. Writing is often approached without the idea of organization. The idea is that people should just write sentences first and then they will somehow be able to move up t the level of where they can organize. This is seen over and over in general course books produced both here and abroad. Organization is often taught separately from writing, which is often just focused on the grammar of producing acceptable sentences. This difference is exacerbated by the prevalence of strict sequencing in second language teaching methods. Even Raimes (1983) waits until almost the end of the book to mention organization as if it were an unimportant issue not useful until the students have attained a certain level. This is not true.

We should not wait to teach organization. We can and should teach organization right from the start in simple ways. This is important because organization reveals the way users of the language think. Organization varies across cultures. Different cultures organize in different ways so it is important to get used to the target language norms in relation to organization to make ones writing comprehensible. It is also true that organization within a specific culture also varies across writing genres. Different genres will follow a different type of prototypical organization. Students need to know these things otherwise their writing simply makes little sense to the reader.

2. What are some ways of dealing with the issue of organization?

As organization is not composed of a finite set of unchanging and inflexible rules (nothing is in language) the best way of dealing with the principles of organization is through a combination of using texts, overt teaching of principles, and practice. Using models and analysing them in different ways is a good way of getting the students used to how they might organize their own writing. Using outlines is a good, nicely controlled way of doing this that also fits in with the writing process. It is important then to integrate reading and writing across genres but students need to learn how to do this critically. This is where analysis comes in. Ask questions about a text or texts not too different from the set of peer review questions we have been asking. You can use these questions with models or the students own writing. Some overt teaching of some of the principles of organization, like that English writing is usually is linear, is also necessary and makes understanding quicker and better.

3. Of these, which do you think is the most effective?

It is hard to say which one is the most effective but since we are most used to outlining at his point maybe outlining is the most effective. It is important to acknowledge that whatever you do as far as teaching organization, it must involve some sort of integration of reading and writing and should be critical.

4. How can we get our students to move from meaning to organization?

To get the students to move from meaning to organization is a simply a matter of planning. The whole point of the writing process, as we have discussed it, is to try to get the students to improve their writing skills and thinking skills at Same time. It should be obvious by now that writing and thinking go together and cannot be separated. We therefore need our students to think out their processes and organize as they go. They need to learn how to structure an argument in genres are extremely important in relation to this, but what I really all comes down to is planning. Good planning will insure that the organization is somewhat sound. It also gives students and writers a chance to get a fee for organization before they start actually writing it is important to separate these two things have is it is hard for especially novice writers to do to many things at the same time.