<h1><b> In the beginning of the class Ailsa handed each of us a piece of paper and asked us to follow her instructions: as it is Valantine’s Day today, we need to write one or two sentences to describe a man. We all felt a little bit nervous about what we were to write. After careful thinking we write down our deions. Surprisingly Ailsa told us to fold our paper so that nobody could see the words and pass our paper to the people on the right. Then we went on writing about one woman , and again after finishing, we folded and passed on. Finally after repeating this procedure for four times we cooperated with each other and created a romantic or ridiculous love story. </b></h1><h1><b> By then we realized the purpose of this activity: Ailsa wanted us to think on our students’ feet and sense the pressure of our students when they are doing their writing homework alone just like what we did in the first step. More meaningfully she led us to enjoy the safety and easiness of our students’ mind if they were allowed to write a passage collaboratively. So marvelous! </b><b>In addition we noticed that the topic itself was much more interesting than that in exams so with this kind of interesting topics, students will be motivated to write spontaneously. Besides, this kind of writing work was totally creative which could engage the students. Finally, this kind of writing work was focused on fluency rather than accuracy. That’s why students were not tired or bored or frightened of keeping everything correct.</b></h1><h1><b> As Ailsa said in class: Don’t make students feel writing a tough or boring task! Please show them and create a motivated environment for writing! We should all reflect on!</b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1> <h1><b> So what we can do to help both students and teachers to overcome this difficulty?</b></h1><h1><b> Believing in our students, arousing their interests and building up their confidence in their daily peer work is the key to the solution. It doesn’t mean teachers just leave students working alone and have an easy job. We teachers should learn to reform our teaching approach from the traditional product-based approach to process-based approach in order to guide our students.</b></h1> <h1><b>The Process Approach </b></h1><h1><b> The Process Approach is a top-down one focused on the process of creating a piece of writing , which is quite difficult from the traditional Product Approach , a bottom-up approach that lays its emphasis on just the end product. </b></h1><h1><b> Obviously, teachers should adopt the former approach. We should excite our students,give them insights,help them cooperate with each other and evaluate each other.</b></h1><h1><b> The teaching procedure advised:</b></h1><h1><b>Step 1. Brainstorming to activate the schema (students discuss with each other just to get some ideas; they don’t need to write down anything; they just focus on fluency but not accuracy)( if the writing topic is unfamiliar then teachers can prepare texts or videos as resources or teachers can ask students to do some research work before class)</b></h1><h1><b>Step 2. Arranging information (students work together to plan their writing with their ideas under the teacher’s guidance)</b></h1><h1><b>Step 3. First draft (students write collaboratively their first passage)</b></h1><h1><b>Step 4. Group / peer evaluation ( swap passages with other groups)</b></h1><h1><b>Step 5. Second draft ( make changes ang edit their passage according to the feedback of other groups and also self evaluate to check their own writing)</b></h1><h1><b>Step 6. Final draft ( make final response to their draft) ( or before this step teachers can show a modal of old students for students to analyze, they may learn from it or they just ignore it)</b></h1><h1><b>Step 7 . Teacher just share all the example summaries written by all the students </b></h1><h1><b> As you can see , teachers are involved in the process but Not just stand there and give everything! How about the students? They will learn different structures ;coherence ; vocabularies; unfamiliar ideas from each other and they just correct each other in spelling or grammar mistakes. They learned so much! Their sense of confidence will build up during the process! This is absolutely a win-win situation. (Teachers don’t need to spend a lot of time in marking homework.) Do try to focus our students on some collaborative writing in class! Get them to do peer editing or peer correction or peer feedback in class! Don’t make writing just a burden, a homework and don’t let students write alone! </b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1><h1><b><br /></b></h1> <h1><b>To make sure it goes well in a classroom with students of different levels teachers need to consider the grouping of students carefully! Sometimes one strong and one weak; sometimes two weaks together! Just have a try and see it!</b></h1>