A REVOLUTION IN WRITING SKILL

A revolution in writing skill has begun in Papua New Guinea and starts with exercises in combining sentences.

To the present, students have not been able to write sentences except to express themselves in baby talk. They wrote single simple sentences with no idea of how to write in complex format

They could not use the connector words. Effective writing should consist of a combination of simple and complex sentences.

Teachers had no idea whatever of how to teach students to write. They hoped that students would be able to do so after learning about nouns, verbs, adjectives, tenses and clauses. But this was not enough to help students to bridge the gap. Many still wrote baby talk.

The only students who could step across the void to write complex sentences were those who read books. They would see the magic of writing and could imitate styles. They appreciated patterns of ideas expressed in simple and elegant ways.

They would teach themselves the skills of putting ideas together. They could record in sentence form a sequence of ideas in cause and effect, all linked together in sets of complex sentences. Such students were the ones who did well in assignments and exams.

They knew to read over what they had written, replace any words needlessly repeated and edit sentences to reduce clauses to phrases. Sentences should not be too detailed.

When John arrived at the house, his friend was waiting for him. His friend had been sitting under the tree for several hours. He talked to his friend under the tree. He took him to meet his father. His father was in the garden. John walked down to the garden with his friend. The garden was on the river bank.

John found his friend who had been waiting under the tree at the house for several hours. After talking, he took him to meet his father working in the garden along the river bank.

But many students could not write well as their teachers had never shown them how. Students would write essays that the teacher returned with red biro marks that meant nothing.

The essay would then be thrown away. Or the teacher would make a note that this was excellent work when it really was rubbish.

The exercises on this blog have been prepared to guide students into a systematic strategy for learning to write.

Sequences of patterns have been prepared that give them detailed guidance, far more than they could ever teach themselves by reading books. The exercises below are for students in upper grades:

MASTERY WRITING FROM WORLD HISTORY (1)


MASTERY WRITING FROM WORLD HISTORY (2)


MASTERY WRITING FROM WORLD HISTORY (3)

The problem is that many students can not read books. They can not write because they can not read. They can not read because they can not write. Many open books to look at the pictures. 


First language speakers can reread what they have written and identify errors in format just by the music and rhythm. So can speakers of other languages.


But PNG students would usually not identify errors in structure. It would all sound the same. I could have the same problem with Bahasa Indonesia despite years of study.