It may apply to anything -you’ll never able to output unless you’ve input to begin with. Daily QWing has been a good reason for me to keep writing every day, in other words, “outputting” every day. For most of the English learners, young and not so young, beginner and advanced, full-time and part-time, forming a habit to write something daily may be not so easy. I’m not talking about writing two or three poetic sentences in English along with a pretty picture. I’m talking about writing more passage-like pieces or whatever you may call “essay”. As an English learner who’s been writing almost daily for seven months (only seven months, though), I strongly feel that I need to do something more demanding to refine my writing skills. I read online articles while learning new words. I occasionally pick up my favorite article to do Conditioned QWing for which I try using unfamiliar words that I found in the piece in my own writing. This Conditioned QWing practice is actually intended to learn new words and phrases through using the words in different ways, so it may be more like vocabulary-building-through-outputting. I won’t negate the importance or effectiveness of such form of outputting. In fact I think I’ll do more Conditioned QWing. But I’ve sort of realized that Conditioned QWing is a good theme to do QWing, but I’m not so sure that such style of writing practice develops my writing skills simultaneously. What I mean here by “writing skills” is the ability to write with richness of vocabulary and grammatical accuracy and complexity. Nation (2009) states five aspects of writing as 1) Richness of vocabulary, 2) Mechanics (spelling, punctuation), 3) Grammatical accuracy and complexity, 4) Organization and coherence, and 5) Content. As far as my writing practice is concerned, I’d like to focus on 1) and 3) for the time being, being aware that those two aspects of writing are what my writing skills lack most. Thanks to QWing and QWF, I’ve somehow established a habit of writing every day just like I brush my teeth after each meal for my dental hygiene. Next thing I need to do to my “habit” is to examine the outcome more closely. Habit-making phrase is over, so to speak. Next up may be outcome-refining. To do so, I’ll need to adopt a different approach with a little adjusted viewpoint to the way of obtaining input – it should be like more of “Output-oriented Inputting”.
Reference: Nation, P. (2009). Teaching ESL/EFL Reading and Writing. New York: Routledge.
Hi, Aya! When I read your post above, I thought I should introduce this book I read recently. It’s 「ことばを鍛えるイギリスの学校」written by Asako Yamamoto published in 2003. The author is a linguistics researcher who has lived in Reading, UK with her family since 1986. She mainly wrote about English education in UK along with British education system, school curriculums and British people’s views on education in general from her research and experience as a mother of three sons. Since I’ve always admired British people’s logical argument and richness of expressions, I read the book with avid interest.
What impressed me most was their strong belief on education, which is learning by speaking, in other words, developing thought by production. She explains that people believe that children can learn by speaking what they know in front of others and by discussing it with them. In school, students are trained to express their own opinion clearly and logically in speaking and writing from early age. It seems demanding even ambitious to me, who was raised by being told that listening is the very first step of learning. However, output-oriented learning would create more interaction in class and it can start any time under appropriate instruction. It might be challenging yet should be encouraging and enjoyable for students.
English is a national language for British people and the most important subject in school. It’s not just the matter of the quantity. They put English in center and other subjects around it. She explained the importance of English education as a subject and relationship with other subjects giving an example of a history assignment his son worked on at age 8. While studying the Tudors, he was instructed to write an essay on the followings: 1) Write some features of schools in the Tudors. 2) Compare them to those of your school and write which you prefer and the reasons. Of course, the students were required to answer in full sentences. As another example, his eldest son made a newspaper on Macbeth and later wrote scripts for a TV news report on the same subject during studying Shakespeare and the media. As you can see, there is a clear attitude that they read and listen in order to speak and write. When I look back my early school days, I didn’t have such intention when I read a book. That attitude would probably change the whole point of views.
The book has a lot more to talk about and I have some concerns, but I should stop now. I found the book very informative and intriguing. It’s highly recommended if you are interested in language and education.
The book seems interesting because of your review. I will read it. In fact
I have already put it in Amazon want list. It seems that I will have
to buy a used one.
I'm glad you've got interested in the book. I borrowed it from a library.
As you see, the book is about the development of L1 proficiency, not about L2 learning in foreign language learning settings. Still, I thought we could adopt some of their language learning strategies. For starters, I should definitely stop jotting down in words and phrases and should write a decent amount in a decent form, which needs lots of time and efforts. That's why I have so much respect for our moderator, who has been practicing QWing EVERY DAY.
Anyway, I hope you can find the book soon and enjoy the reading, Jin!
>>4
Didn't you call me, Hiro? ;-D
Let me just celebrate a shift change on your writing practice. What I'm doing here on QWF is far from what you call "a decent amount in a decent form", but I can say daily writing practice works for many aspects of our English learning. Guess what, Hiro. I tried something NEW regarding tonight. I'll tell you about it pretty soon.
If you need the place you post your pieces, please feel free to create a new thread on QWF and post your products. You might want to start your own English learning blog, yet you can also warm up your engine here. You’re always welcome.
Let me start with my daily journal. Starting my own English learning blog? As you know, I'm not a writer... I would take your suggestion as an encouragement;-) And I'll post my pieces on QWF more often.
By the way, what did you try, Aya?? I can't wait to hear about it!!
>>8
I'd be more than happy to read your QW pieces here, Hiro. :-) Please feel free to create a new thread as you like, okay? I'll write about my NEW project in QW 1227. And I’m sorry it’s not exclusive only to you! I'd appreciate if you could share your thoughts on that.
