KOTESOL International Conference 2016
(Concurrent Session)
Shaun Manning, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, College of English & Graduate School of TESOL
A Linked Skills Approach to Improving Writing
Abstract
Trying to get your students to write more accurately and with more complex structures? This study investigated doing this through a linked-skills approach. After reading an article, one class of students worked in small groups of three or four members each to reconstruct an instructor-written summary which had all the grammar (function) words, punctuation, and capitalization deleted (a form-oriented task). Another class was also divided into small groups which were tasked with collaborating on a group-summary (a meaning-oriented task). Then all students wrote individual responses to the article. Results showed the reconstruction activity promoted more attention to form in the group activity, and also more accurate and complex writing in subsequent individual essays. I will also discuss how to 'simplify' this for lower-level writers.
Biographicals
Shaun Manning holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Victoria University of Wellington, NZ. He also holds an MA in TESL (University of Birmingham) and an MS in Psychology (University of Toronto) with an emphasis on memory and learning. He joined Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in 2001 where he teaches College of English undergraduate conversation and writing classes, along with Graduate School of TESOL classes in research design, course design, methodology (teaching writing, teaching speaking and listening, teaching vocabulary), and assessment. He also supervises graduate students' MA thesis research in the HUFS Graduate School of TESOL. His research interests are: instructed SLA, the role of interaction in learning, task-based learning, task design and implementation, and task-based assessment.
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