PWP (2) Narrative Construction for Writing Skills Development

Perhaps, one of the main challenges in English Teaching is the development of the writing skills in students. Often, learners (at basic and intermediate level) succeed in expressing orally quite complex ideas, but fail in the statement of those same ideas on paper.

Lack of vocabulary does not seem to be a significant problem, since students have available a huge lexical source in dictionaries, internet and other media. The main difficulty seems to be the elaboration of a coherent discourse as a consequence of the misuse of the structures of the second language and the interferences of the native one. The causes could be traced to the lack of exposure to writing models in the first phase of the formational process.

Taking a look on the acquisitional process of the native language, it is remarkable that, in childhood, tales and short stories are the way people get involved by the first time in reading and writing activities. This first contact is critical in the development of complex discoursal practices throughout the lifetime. It determines the way people attach to writing and reading in their own language.

This is the kind of exposure the students are in need of. Learners who fail in writing in a second language lack writing models as they have in the native language. These models shape the first writing experience: they influence and sculpt those primordial composing activities based in the first reading experience.

As a way to improve the writing skills in a second language, I think an exposure to literary pieces in the target language will be useful. These pieces should work as writing models for the development of writing in students, just as it works in the native language.

By the exposition to literary pieces (from the most basic to the most complex), the teacher provides sources and makes up to the absence of models and writing tools. Subsequently, the students will have the opportunity to create literary expressions based on the texts they were given. This will be a continuous exercise in which the students will effectively “apprehend” means for their own written construction.

One of the rewards of this activity is to link them to the creative processes that bring the literary pieces they as learners read and appropriate. Giving learners the tools of a creative process in writing will be a prometheic act*.

The exercise works in a double way: not only to generate an aesthetical delight in students, but also to provide them with tools for the development of writing skills. The approach to literature also stimulates imagination. The tematics must be fresh and attractive, they must catch the students' attention and give them the elements for their own discoursal construction. This is supposed to be the beginning of a full process in which the learners will go from weaving short narrative texts to the development of complex elaborations.

This work is intended for beginning learners concerned about improving their writing competencies, as well as teachers interested in boost their students' imagination and creative abilities. This exercise is relevant since it generates and boosts writing competencies in students in the same way it works in the mother language.

My purpose as an author is to make a pedagogical contribution. It is the suggestion for an attractive activity that will be fruitful in the formational process of language learners.

*Prometheus is a titan in Greek mythology, who stole the fire from the gods and gave it to men. Because of his transgression, Prometheus was sentenced by Zeus to be bound in the top of a mountain where an eagle ate his liver every night. Prometheus, immortal, had its bowels regenerated every morning.

The allegory to the Greek myth -referring to the act of giving something sacred (the fire) to mortals and allowing them to develop- evokes the fact of providing students with the tools of the narrative construction for their own writing development.

Andrés Bolaño M.