When (and how) to introduce writing in English class? Genki English

When (and how) to introduce writing in English class?

Posted: 19 Jun 2014 12:45 PM PDT

writing Melanie wrote in to ask:

Thanks again.I’m thoroughly enjoying this! My question, at this moment, is: when and how to begin introducing the written English, while keeping up with the Genki enthusiasm? – Melanie

Good question, Melanie!

As you know we do things a little differently at Genki English. Getting the kids really good, really fast is always my aim. And of course all the while making it fun. :) So the easy answer is,

Move on to reading as soon as the kids can speak really well (e.g. at least a third to half way through the Genki English curriculum). Then teach the writing using the writing parts of the Genki Phonics course, which is of course lots of fun!

Hope that helps!

Or … for those of you into teaching theory ….

The longer answer is …. and I hope this doesn’t become too heavy, so let’s start at the beginning….

First up is the order we teach things in. The usual order - and we need to get it right, after all we don’t put the fish’n'chips in newspaper and then fry it! – in order of priority the skills are:

Listening first
Speaking
Reading
Writing last

To be honest some courses do really well with just the first two. And these are always the skills that are needed most, especially if the kids will get an overdose of reading and writing at high school.

But, if you do decide to take the whole challenge …..

With Genki English as we use so many songs and games, the time between the listening and speaking can be really, really short, measured in seconds really.

For example I’d always have the kids speaking, and speaking confidently, from the very first lesson. Very often they only have to hear each new word or phrase 2, 3 or 4 times before they can speak it.

So basically you can consider speaking and listening as one pair to be taught at the same time.

(Some courses recommend keeping the children silent for a very long time, but experience shows this only works if the kids have a *lot* of English input i.e. at least one lesson every day.)

For reading …

Then between speaking and reading, in Genki English we always prefer to have a much longer gap.

Experience tends to show that where courses move into reading too quickly the kids tend to lose focus on the speaking and it is detrimental to their pronunciation and fluency. e.g. think of the majority of high school English classes around the world.

Reading and writing also takes a lot of time and it is always more efficient to spend that time on speaking/listening as much as we can.

A nice extra bonus, though, is that the longer you wait to teach reading, the easier and easier it becomes!

In an ideal world, and where I have full control over the curriculum, I’d wait until the kids could fully converse in English before doing reading.

But very often with parental pressure etc. it can be difficult to hold out this long.

So a general rule of thumb is to start reading as soon as the kids are comfortable with speaking the English studied so far and are still excited about learning. Depending on how many classes the kids have, this could be anywhere from between a third and half way through the Genki English curriculum. So for one or two hour lessons per week, this could be 6 months to 1 year into the course.

You want to try and have as much English ability in their heads first before you start the reading.

So leave as much time as you can, then once you feel they ready for reading, it’s really easy to do it with the the Genki Phonics.

Then writing …

Now it’s finally writing time!

The challenge here is that writing tends to become a time suck, and also an excuse for older kids to not do any speaking work. And speaking, in the 21st century, is *always* the most important skill. (Remember we’re not making 19th factory robots in school anymore, we’re building intelligent capable 21st century people who can communicate all the knowledge that is instantly accessible to them in today’s workplace.)

So we need to really think about and balance out how much time you put into the writing.

If you only have one or two lessons a week then I would say keep the writing at a real minimum, either none at all or just the basic exercises in the phonics workbooks.

This is until the kids have finished the Genki English curriculum i.e. they can speak really well and you now have lots of time free.

Once the kids can speak and read really well, then go ahead and put as much time as you like into writing and particularly communicative, creative writing. And one of the best courses for this is Oxford’s “Read, Write, Inc” – very expensive but gets great results if the kids have the Genki foundation. Or, if you like, I can write up the full Genki English writing system in a separate blog post, do let me know in the comments.

But why teach writing at all?

And finally, why teach writing at all? Very often as teachers we tend to get stuck in the 19th century overemphasis on handwriting.

But for most of the children of today, their jobs will be very, very different from ours.

And as such most of their creative output will not be handwritten at all. It will be, just as this piece is I’m writing now, typed.

In Careers Education we always say that the easiest way to increase almost anyone’s income (including yours!) is to invest the time in learning to type as fast (or faster!) than you can speak.

The classroom of the 19th century had the four skills as listening, speaking, reading, writing.

But the classroom of the 21st century has the four skills as