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Teaching speaking and writing — Part 2: Writing
Writing is often called the hardest skill in language learning. Students stare at the blank page. They write one sentence and stop. They copy from each other. They hand in two short, careful sentences when you wanted a paragraph. And then we, the teachers, are left with a pile of books to mark.
For many EFL students, writing in English feels almost impossible. They can speak more than they can write. Their hand cannot keep up with their head. The blank page is silent and unforgiving in a way that pair speaking is not.
But writing matters — for exams, for further study, for any future job that needs English. We cannot skip it. We have to teach it well, in our real classrooms, with our real students.
The good news: the same principles that broke the silence in speaking work for writing too. Safety, practice, collaboration, scaffolding. Plus some specific writing techniques that turn the scary blank page into something students can actually fill.
Q2: Which of these are real challenges in your writing lessons? (Tick all that apply)
- Most teachers face exactly these challenges. Writing is genuinely the hardest skill for most EFL students — you are not failing if your students struggle
- The blank-page freeze is almost always a scaffolding problem, not an ability problem. With the right preparation steps, even very weak writers can produce something
- If students write much less than you asked, the most common reasons are: the topic is too distant from their lives, they have no model to follow, or they have not had time to plan
- Marking everything is impossible in a class of 50. Use peer and self-checking (see the lesson on Peer and Self-Assessment) and focus your detailed marking on a small sample
- Writing develops slowly. Two months of regular short writing produces more growth than two long essays a term. Consistency beats intensity
Writing is harder than speaking for one important reason: it is silent and lonely.
When a student speaks, they get instant feedback — a nod, a smile, a partner asking a question. They can correct themselves as they go. They can use their hands and face. Mistakes pass by quickly.
When a student writes, the page does not respond. Mistakes sit on the page, visible. The student must hold the whole sentence in their head before writing it. There is no partner to help unless we build one in. Writing needs more scaffolding than speaking — and the techniques below are exactly that scaffolding.
Most teachers find one is something they could do tomorrow, and one feels much bigger.
- The easiest technique to start with for most teachers is showing a model first (Technique 2). It takes 3–5 minutes and immediately changes how students approach the task
- Short and often (Technique 4) sounds easy but requires changing how you think about writing time. It is the technique with the biggest long-term effect
- Collaborative writing (Technique 1) often feels strange at first — teachers worry it is “cheating.” It is not. It is how students learn to write
- Process writing (Technique 5) is the biggest mindset change. It means accepting that a first draft is not the final product, and building time for revision into your lessons
- You do not need to use all five at once. Pick one. Try it for two weeks. The principles work together — once one starts working, the others fit in naturally
These are real EFL classroom situations. The right answer is the one most likely to actually develop writing skill.
Concrete plans are far more useful than general intentions. Think about a real lesson next week.
| Technique | Your specific idea |
|---|---|
| Write together, not alone (collaborative writing) | |
| Show a model first | |
| Plan first, then write | |
| Short and often, not long and rare | |
| Process: draft, share, revise, finish |
| Technique | How it can work |
|---|---|
| Write together, not alone | Try “collective story writing”: in groups of 4, each student writes one sentence, then passes the paper to the next student. After 8–10 sentences, you have a story that everyone helped write. Confidence-building, especially for shy students. |
| Show a model first | Before students write a description of their home, show a 4-sentence model on the board: “My home is in a small village. It has three rooms. The kitchen is my favourite place. We eat there every evening.” Notice the structure, then write their own. |
| Plan first, then write | Before any writing task: 3 minutes in pairs to plan. “Tell your partner three things you will write about. Decide the order.” Add 4–5 useful words to the board. Now no student is starting from blank. |
| Short and often | End every other lesson with 5 minutes of writing: “Write three sentences about something good that happened this week.” Students get the writing habit. After two months, the blank page is no longer scary. |
| Process: draft, share, revise, finish | For longer tasks, use two lessons. Lesson 1: plan, draft. Lesson 2: peer-check using criteria, revise, finish. The second draft is always much better than the first — and students learn how good writing actually happens. |
Q6. Watch the video below. Think about which change is easiest for you to try first.
Host: We have just looked at five techniques for teaching writing. Now listen to three teachers. They share their problems first, then the changes they made.
Teacher 1: I used to give writing topics on a Friday. “Write 200 words about your school.” The next week I would collect the books. Half the class had written nothing or copied from a friend. The other half had written tiny, careful pieces full of mistakes. I would mark every mistake in red, hand them back, and we would all be discouraged. Then the next Friday, the same again.
Teacher 2: My students would freeze when I gave them a writing task. They would stare at the blank page. I thought they were lazy or did not care. I would walk around saying “just start writing!” It never helped. The page stayed blank.
Teacher 3: I had no time for writing — I felt I had to focus on grammar and reading because that was the exam. So writing got squeezed out. The few times we did write, the quality was so poor I felt the time had been wasted.
Teacher 1: I changed two things. I started showing a short model on the board before any writing task. And I stopped marking every mistake. Now I mark only the 2–3 main patterns and write one specific suggestion. The marking takes half the time. The students improve faster — because they actually read the feedback now.
Teacher 2: I started having students plan in pairs for three minutes before writing. Just three minutes. They told their partner what they wanted to say, in L1 if they needed. Then they wrote. The blank page stopped being scary because they had words in their head before their pen touched the page.
Teacher 3: I gave up on long essays and started doing 5-minute writing tasks at the end of lessons. Three sentences about something. Two reasons for an opinion. A short ending to a story. Students wrote almost every lesson. After three months, when I gave them a longer task, they could do it. The short writing had built the muscle.
Host: None of these teachers had different students or more time. They changed how they framed the writing task — how they prepared, how they marked, how often they made students write. The blank page got smaller. The pile of marking got smaller. The writing got better.
Q7. For each technique, choose the option that best describes where you are now.
Choose a real task. Write what you will do at each stage. Specific is better than general.
- Writing is harder than speaking because the page does not respond. Students need more scaffolding — not just “write something”
- The blank-page freeze is a planning problem, not an ability problem. Three minutes of planning, plus a short model, removes most of the fear
- Collaborative writing turns a lonely task into a social one. Confidence and volume both go up. Try it for short tasks first
- Short and often beats long and rare. Five minutes of writing every other lesson builds more skill than one long essay per term
- Teach writing as a process: draft, share, revise, finish. The first draft is for ideas. Revision is where the real learning happens. Mark less, comment more specifically
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