These are my notes from today's ICT class. As an ELT teacher, we all have to incorporate different language skills into the syllabus and they should be given more or less equal proportion. So, when it comes teaching writing skills, what help can we get from ICT? Is the use of ICT effective in teaching writing? If so, in what ways? My answer is, YES, ICT comes in very handy to teach writing skills. Here I will explain my reasons.
1. At the very elementary level, let us look at the use of word processor in teaching writing.
Most writing activities are generally divided into 2 categories: a) product writing and b) process writing. In the past, many writing activities were organized around product writing. For example, teacher gives a sample of the letter and asks students to produce a similar kind of letter of their own. Process writing, on the other hand, involves a lot of stages of writing.
The use of word processor is valued highly in process writing. Students can write, rewrite, review and restructure as many times as they would like to whereas writing with pen and paper would make it too much time consuming. Moreover, teachers can comment on students' writing and students can see the feedback and improve. Finally, it makes students work a good looking product and thus motivates them to do more writing outside classroom.2. L2 learners generally have positive feelings about the use of WP in language classrooms. They see writing as a fluid process and pay more attention to writing. It can also help them to spend more time composing outside classroom. Teacher has to make sure that L2 have access to WP either at home or learning resource centres at school. In addition, learners are assumed to have basic IT skills to use WP.
3. The class can agree on the use of spell checks and grammar checks. Personally, I would let them have spell check but disable the grammar check. That is because we all use spell check in real life and in my opinion accuracy is not always the important issue in communicative way of teaching.
4. You can set up a task on WP such as text repair, text manipulation and guided dictations.
Now, let us look at web-based writing. Can we use web-based tools to teach writing?
1. Blogs and wikis are now widely available to everyone to use at no cost. Creating blogs and wikis to publish their own work can be very motivating to any level of students and blogs look very good. End result could be learners spending more time composing, structuring and writing.
2. Teacher add comment on specific language forms. Peers can add comment so it is evaluated collaboratively. Everyone can see each other's work, compare and learn from one another as well
3. Learners can show finished work at no printing cost, easy distribution and it becomes a reading task for other students in class
In general, I think the use of ICT in teaching writing is highly valued in language classrooms. Although I beleive that there is still certainly a place for handwriting, ICT could be incorporated into writing activities to make the activity more attractive. Especially, those who are used to a different script in their own language might find it really discouraging to do writing exercises in L2, only because they find it hard to write in a completely different script. In addition, elementary and pre-intermediate level students will find it more motivating to do web-based collaborative writing activities.
Some tools that can be used to teach writing
1. Web Rhubarb and Sequitur from Creative Technology. Both softwares are only free with short texts and will need licensing for longer texts. They can be downloaded from
2. Blogs can be created at http://www.blogger.com/home and wiki at http://pbworks.com/
3. Writeboards http://writeboard.com/
5. ZOHO online word processor http://writer.zoho.com/home
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