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© 2018 by Iowa State University. What is the Technology-Writing Connection?

Lecture Transcript for the


AE E-Teacher Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and administered by FHI 360. This work
is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License, except where noted. To view a copy of
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Using Educational Technology in the English Language Classroom

Technology for Teaching Writing

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlE2-ekUHe81WFzeFNO_4_38KL_8vergF

Carol A. Chapelle

Iowa State University

Slide 1: Technology for Teaching Writing. In this part of the course, we explore how
technology can help support and shape the teaching of writing. We have asked Carol
Chapelle, a Distinguished Professor at Iowa State University, to provide us with
insights into the writing and technology connection. Let’s listen.

Slide 2: In this Lecture. In this lecture we’ll talk about the technology-writing
connection. And then in the second part we’ll meet our writing expert: Elena Cotos.
We’ll ask Elena why writing is important for students and what teachers should know Prof. Carol Chapelle
about writing. We will then ask her for some advice for teachers and finally look at "Professor Carol Chapelle"
how technology can help in the teaching of writing to English language learners. by Iowa State University is
licensed under CC BY 4.0
Slide 3: The Technology-Writing Connection. Many educators in applied linguistics
today see a very strong connection between technology and writing. They see their students using
technology to put their thoughts into words to have conversations with each other, and with a lot of
people throughout the world, through the use of new technologies. Overall, technology provides access
to many different ways for students to write. And students seem to really enjoy taking those opportunities
to make new friends and establish relationships and just have fun. Teachers can find many resources to
help teach writing on the Internet as well. This connection between writing and technology seems to be
a very strong one. There are two examples of technology for writing that seem to have really played an
important role in everything we’re doing in education today. They are word processing software and the
second is collaboration software.

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Slide 4: Word Processing. The image shows an example of a word processing software program, Microsoft
Word, which most people are probably familiar with. This is one, but only one, of many different kinds of
text editors that students are using for
writing their essays. The introduction of
word processing into the world of writing
and instruction has been really important
because of students’ ability to write
something on the screen and then make
changes by looking at what they have
written, or revising what they have
written. In my example, a student has Microsoft Word processing program
written in response to an assignment to
"Writing assignment on Microsoft Word" by Iowa State University is licensed
write about someone that he or she under CC BY 4.0
admires.

Slide 5: Word Processing. In this example the student has taken the prompt of “Person I admire” and used
it for the title. The first version of the essay names Barak Obama and tells who he was, the President of
the United States. The student writes, “He work very much and people liked him. He is a nice guy. He
traveled a lot and he play sport like basketball.” Most of us would recognize as teachers that this should
only be the first draft of an essay that has a lot of room for development. The fact that the student has
written it using a word processing program makes that development an obvious and easy thing to handle
in a physical sense. Writing on paper wasn’t that easy. On paper, the finished product tends to be the
paper that the student writes the first time. Word processers, on the other hand, make it easy to change
text and that has had a really strong effect on the teaching of writing.

Slide 6: Word Processing. Word processing, when it was introduced in the 1980s, had the effect of
changing how teachers thought about writing: The change was from thinking of writing as a product to
thinking of writing as a process. In the model where writing is considered a product, the focus is on the
finished text as opposed to the process view of writing where the focus is on the process of developing
the text: writing, revising, and editing. The idea is that writing is an ongoing process. In the product mode
of thinking, writing is for teachers to mark, whereas writing as a process conceptualizes writing as a way
for students to learn. This is one way for students to learn the language. If we think of writing as a product
the feedback is used to explain the mark that the student gets on a particular paper. When writing is
viewed as a process, feedback is an important tool for learning; feedback is intended to be formative and
to help students to reconsider what they have written and to advance as writers.

Slide 7: Collaboration Software. A second major development that has occurred in writing instruction has
been the use of software that allows students to collaborate. In the past, students were seen as individuals
in front of their piece of paper or their computer having to generate text on their own. Collaboration
software in contrast allows students to work together so that they can integrate ideas. The idea is that
two heads might be better than one or maybe even three might be better than two so that students can
benefit from speaking about what they’re writing, getting the ideas of others, and putting all of that

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together. Such collaboration software is used a lot in business and so the process of collaborative writing
also prepares students for work in the real world.

An illustrative example of writing collaboration

"Example of writing collaboration" by Iowa State University is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Slide 8: Collaboration Software. In our example of “A person I admire” a collaboration between two
writers might have resulted in a suggestion to change the title and to not use the same title that is in the
prompt. This would make the title specific and give the title more of a central position that the essay
could then help to develop. So the suggestion which I’ve indicated here (using myself as the collaborator)
is to replace “A person I admire” with “The Greatest US President.” If students are working together on a
text like this they can have a conversation through these comments to write and discuss and revise using
their ideas.

Slide 9: Collaboration Software. Let’s take a look at some of the important differences that collaboration
software has made in writing pedagogy. If we think of writing alone, the focus is on the individual’s writing
ability, or how well this person can write on his or her own. For collaborative writing, the focus is on
writing in a social context and this is, as I mentioned, something that a lot of students will be doing in the
future. Therefore, this is a possibly a good thing to begin doing in the classroom. If we consider writing
alone, writing is prompted by reading and by thinking. These are the two kinds of inputs and processes
involved in writing whereas when writing is done collaboratively, writing can still be prompted by reading
and thinking, but talking also plays an important role. And talking is another process that allows students
to consider what they are writing and practice what they have to say and try things out. These processes
are really important for language learning as well as for producing good writing products. Third, if we are
thinking of writing alone, feedback comes from teachers and from the computer after the student write
something: the students are on their own while they are writing. In collaborative writing situations,
feedback comes from peers as part of the collaboration process. Feedback can still be obtained from
teachers and computers, but the collaborative process naturally brings about a lot of feedback during the
process of conceptualizing and drafting as well as revision.

Slide 10: Meet our Writing Expert. So I think we are ready to meet our writing expert. Professor Cotos
teaches English at Iowa State University, specifically for graduate students. She has also done research to
investigate how to teach writing in English better by using technology. I asked Professor Cotos how she
became interested in writing.

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Slide 11: Meet our Writing Expert. Professor Chapelle: How did you get interested in writing?

Professor Cotos: I became interested in writing when I was a graduate student.


Coming from a different country and a completely different educational system, I
was challenged by all the writing assignments that I had to complete in my
coursework. Even though I knew English well enough, I was not at all confident in my
academic writing skills. I was eagerly waiting for the feedback from my professors,
and I came to realize that the way I was taught to write in my own language was
Prof. Elena Cotos drastically different from the kind of writing expected here. For example, back in
"Prof. Elena Cotos" school, my teachers always emphasized that the main idea has to be developed
by Iowa State gradually, with details that are described using complex sentences and abundant
University is licensed
under CC BY 4.0
stylistic devices like metaphor, hyponymy, hyperbole, and so on. I learned to write
very long, complex sentences and to use flowery language. I came to realize that in
English, the readers have completely different expectations. They want to see the
main idea at the very beginning, and they expect carefully organized details to support the idea. I also
realized that flowery, metaphorical language is not very appropriate in academic writing.

I should say that I learned a lot about writing through teaching when I was a teaching assistant in graduate
and undergraduate writing courses. Since the approach to writing was so different from what I knew, I
spent a lot of time preparing for class, and I learned together with my students. In fact, I often completed
the tasks that I planned to assign to my students myself first, trying to see whether and what I would learn
from that. Putting myself in my students’ shoes gave me a really good understanding of both the writing
conventions and how to best teach them. The thing that keeps me most interested in writing is the
importance of knowing how to write for specific purposes and for specific audiences. For instance, the
purpose of writing an expository essay, which is often assigned to undergraduate students, is to explain
an idea or an issue, and the immediate audience is typically the teacher and other classmates, so students
follow very specific assignment guidelines provided by the teacher. On the other hand, the purpose of a
research article that a graduate student prepares for publication is completely different. In this case, the
audience is a broad disciplinary community whom the student doesn’t even know, but the members of
this disciplinary community have high and very specific expectations of how a research argument should
be presented in a journal manuscript.

Slide 12: Meet our Writing Expert. Prof. Cotos realized that the way she learned to write in her own
language was very different than the way she needed to write when she started writing in English. She
noticed that in her own language they use flowery language, they develop ideas gradually, and they use
long complex sentences. She noticed that in English this style and process doesn’t work.

Slide 13: Meet our Writing Expert. Prof. Cotos thinks that writing is interesting because of the fact that in
order to be successful, the writer has to choose the right language depending on the purpose and the
audience of the writing. She noticed that there is not one correct way to write in English, but instead,
there are a lot of choices to be made and where there are choices, there are interesting things to learn.

Slide 14: Purpose and Audience. Let’s take a closer look at what Prof. Cotos means by purpose and
audience. For example, we have a writer who is a graduate student at Iowa State University and she is

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writing an email to her friend in Australia. The friend in Australia is going to be the audience for the email.
Even if there is only one person, we consider her the audience because she is the person that is going to
receive and read the email. She’s the one that we need to write appropriately for. The purpose of the
email is to apologize for not sending an email for a long time. So what does our writer do? She chooses
language that will be appropriate for her friend in Australia--language that will convey the apology that
the writer intends to convey. She chooses this language: “My research has really kept me busy over the
past semester.” And this she thinks is a good way of beginning her apology to her friend. In English an
apology is a pretty good one if it includes a reason why something wasn’t done or why the act that needs
to be apologized for was committed. So that works.

Slide 15: Purpose and Audience. Let’s change the audience and purpose to one that is very important
also for graduate students. What if the audience is professionals in the field and the purpose is introducing
research articles. Our graduate students, after they do their research, want to be able to write an article
and submit it to a journal so it will get published. Okay, so the writer is the same. She’s talking about her
research but the purpose and audience are different. What if she choses to introduce her research by
saying: “My research has really kept me busy over the past semester.” Will that work? Is that a good way
to start a research article?

Slide 16: Purpose and Audience. No, I don’t think our writer would be very successful if she started her
research article with: “My research has really kept me busy over the past semester.” When the audience
is professionals in the field, that’s a large audience of people that the writer doesn’t know. They don’t
really care that her research has kept her busy over the past semester. Plus, when the purpose is to
introduce a research article, we want her to talk about the research and we don’t want to refer to time
that is specific to the writer’s moment that she is writing. So the language is going to have to be different
for starting a research article.

Slide 17: Purpose and Audience. But what should the language choice be in this context? Let’s take a look
at what some successful researchers have done. You read an article a couple of weeks ago about student’s
perceptions and experiences of mobile language learning and it was published in Language Learning &
Technology. Let’s see how they started their research article.

Slide 18: Purpose and Audience. Their purpose was to introduce their research article; their audience was
professionals in the field. So these authors chose this language: “In recent years, researchers have begun
to investigate language learning using various mobile devices such as mobile phones (e.g., Wong, Chin,
Tan, & Liu, 2010), pocket PCs (e.g., Wong & Looi, 2010), and Apple iPhones (e.g., Jong, Specht, & Koper,
2010),” So their opening statement for their research article is very different from what our writer wrote
to her friend in Australia. This is the kind of language that works for the introduction of a research article;
it opens up by introducing the larger field of research, and by indicating that that there has been some
work done in this area, they set the stage for what’s to come next.

Slide 19: Why Writing is Important. Those ideas of audience and purpose start to give us an idea of why
writing is so important. But I asked Prof. Cotos to tell us why she thinks that writing is so important for
English learners. She said that writing actually helps students to learn English. Let’s listen.

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Slide 20: Why Writing is Important. Professor Chapelle: Why do you think it’s important to teach writing
to students?

Professor Cotos: Writing is often overlooked in EFL teaching and learning, as was the case in my English
learning experience. I think my English teachers may have shied away from teaching writing not only
because of its many complicated rules and structures but also because they were not familiar with
different types of texts and different types of audiences. However, I strongly believe that teaching
students to write well is very important. Overall, writing helps students learn the English language better.
You may ask how.

Well, writing allows students to apply and consolidate the vocabulary and grammatical forms that they’re
learning in class and from their textbooks. That means that writing allows students to actually translate
passive knowledge of language structures to active use. Writing also allows students to go back and see
what they produced on paper or a computer screen. It allows them to self-analyze, self-assess, and detect
the language problems or language misuse that they need to be working on. Plus, writing can be
considered a stress-free way to practice language.

Another reason why teaching writing is important is because writing is increasingly used in a wide variety
of situations outside of the classroom. We live in an age of globalization, where English has become the
language of international communication. With advanced technologies, for example, everyone engages
in written communication more than ever before. People of all ages are text messaging, posting on social
media, blogging, and commenting on various types of online posts, so writing skills are key to participating
in the English speaking world. In a sense, writing also keeps communication mobile and fun with all these
devices. Of course, different modes of communication employ different writing styles, different language
choices, and different levels of formality, but for many people, writing is also an opportunity to express
agency and identity and show who they are and what they believe in. Thinking of more formal contexts
like business, education, and employment, writing ability is really high-stakes because well-written
documents are often a person’s way to demonstrate professional expertise. Oftentimes, students’ writing
is the only way to assess their content knowledge or their academic potential and performance. A poorly-
written resume, on the other hand, will never land anybody their desired job, so teaching writing has long-
term benefits because writing skills will be useful to students in a wide variety of situations outside of the
classroom.

Slide 21: Why Writing is Important. Prof. Cotos emphasized that writing allows students to use the
grammar and vocabulary that they are learning in other classes. When students write, they get an
important type of practice: they have to access and combine their language knowledge in new ways in
order to convey meaning.

Slide 22: Why Writing is Important. Students can also observe, analyze, and assess their language
knowledge by looking at the page where they have written. This can be a stress-free way to practice using
English.

Slide 23: Why Writing is Important. Writing is used for many forms of communication inside and outside
the classroom. Everyone engages in written communication more than ever these days. They text
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message, post on social media, blog, comment, and email. Written communication has become a fun thing
to do.

Slide 24: Why Writing is Important. But more than just fun, writing is really important because it’s a way
of expressing identity and agency. By identity we mean expressing who we are. It’s not just what we look
like or what nationality we are or what language we speak. It is actually how we use the language, it’s
what we say, it’s the words that we choose to say it, and all of the ways that we use language that create
who we are. It also is involved in defining what we can do with the language that we know. The language
you can control effects what you can do, who you can talk to. When we write, we choose the words and
create the texts that show who we are! Students need to see how important their language choices are.
The importance of language is easiest for students to see in business, education, and government. They
can usually see that those who can handle the language very effectively tend to do well. Through language,
students have the power to write themselves into the places they want to go.

Slide 25: Why Writing is Important. Some people say that, “Success depends on who you know”.

Slide 26: Why Writing is Important. Other people say, “Success depends on what you know”.

Slide 27: Why Writing is Important. I would say, “Success, who you know, and what you know all depend
on how you express yourself in writing. Writing is the vehicle for connecting yourself to the rest of the
world and it provides you a mechanism for writing yourself into the world.

Slide 28: What Teachers Should Know. I asked Prof. Cotos what teachers need to know about writing.
She talked about three fundamental characteristics of writing: register variation, process orientation, and
interpersonal function. Let’s listen.

Slide 29: What Teachers Should Know. Professor Chapelle: What’s the most important thing for teachers
to understand about teaching writing?
Professor Cotos: First of all, it is important for teachers to understand that writing skills include multiple
types of abilities, including the ability to effectively use the writing strategies and conventions of different
registers. What I mean by registers is the many styles or varieties of language that are determined by
social context, purpose, and audience. In fact, this is what teachers of ESL writing generally find difficult
to teach. It is also very important for teachers to understand the relationship between linguistic forms
and communicative functions. We do things with language in different contexts all the time. We ask
questions, we give directions, we argue, we persuade, and different registers employ different language
choices and levels of formality. Teachers should draw their students’ attention to how specific language
choices can help writers better convey specific shades of meaning.

Teachers need to also understand the stages of writing as a process and not perceive writing as just a
product. Writing is generating and shaping ideas that get polished through multiple drafting and iterative
revisions before they make it into the final product.

One other idea I’d like to mention is that writing happens in the midst of social relationships, which is why
writers often carefully choose appropriate linguistic forms. They do that not only to express ideas but also
to present their identity and to create relationships in certain contexts. Because people write for a wide

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range of purposes, teachers need to shape writing instruction in ways that provide students with
opportunities to write for varied purposes, trying to create authentic meaning for particular audiences.
That means that teachers should expose students to authentic texts representative of different registers
and help the students focus on analyzing the audience, analyzing the context, and the purpose of those
texts, even before assigning their students certain writing tasks.

Slide 30: What Teachers Should Know. So the three critical aspects of writing are 1) register variation, 2)
process orientation, and 3) interpersonal function. Register variation refers to the fact that written
language varies according to the social context, purpose, and audience. We saw the example of how the
language choice has to be different depending on whether you’re talking about your research to a friend
or introducing your research to a professional audience of journal readers. Process orientation refers to
the fact that writing requires multiple drafts. We saw how this idea has really been pushed forward and
played out through the introduction of word processing in the writing process. In the US and some other
countries this started in the 1980s. Third, interpersonal function refers to the fact that writing builds
identity and relationships.

Slide 31: What Teachers Should Know: Register Variation is Important. Prof. Cotos emphasized that
register variation is very important for teachers to understand. Written language varies according to the
social context, purpose, and audience. So, communication functions are connected to language form. In
other words, the language forms that a student chooses for a particular paper should be justified. In other
words, choices should be made on the basis of the communication functions that the student is trying to
perform. This has an implication for the way we set up assignments: Students need to have an idea of
who they’re writing to and what the function is for. Teachers should draw students’ attention to the
connection in examples. Prof. Cotos points out that writing should start by looking at examples of other
written work that performs the same function as that that the student is trying to perform.

Slide 32: What Teachers Should Know: Writing is a Process. The second important point that Prof. Cotos
brought up is that writing is a process. The process orientation has had a massive impact on the way we
teach writing because writing requires multiple drafts from students and the process of developing a
particular writing assignment has to consist of multiple phases. For example, many of our writing
assignments are carried out through a process of taking the students through a planning process, a
drafting process, revising, editing and proofreading. This is a much different model of writing than is the
idea of students coming and sitting for half an hour and writing words on a page that are then marked by
the teacher. And it’s interesting from our perspective in this course because this process is really carried
out with a variety of uses of technology and we’re going to show you some examples of those in a few
minutes.

Slide 33: What Teachers Should Know: Writing is Personal and Social. The third important aspect of
writing is that it is personal and social. Writing is not only for expressing ideas. It is also for expressing the
writer’s identity and it is for establishing and maintaining social relationships. So writing carries a lot of
functions simultaneously because it is for expressing ideas but it also has these interpersonal functions as
well. In addition, she points out that achieving these interpersonal uses of English can be very satisfying
to students, but it is also difficult. So a person can create a polite, sophisticated, sarcastic, or pessimistic

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identity in English. But in order to do so, the person really needs to control the language in order to create
the proper identity.

Slide 34: Advice for Teachers. Prof. Cotos has already provided some useful concepts about writing. I
asked her specifically for some ideas about how to teach writing. And here’s what she said:

Slide 35: Advice for Teachers. Professor Chapelle: What advice do you have for teachers about teaching
writing?

Professor Cotos: Writing is a difficult skill, even for native speakers of a language. Just think: how often
do people write a longer piece of prose, especially now that texting and chatting on the go encourage
short, abbreviated text? It is a difficult skill to teach because teachers have so many things to focus on:
appropriate vocabulary, grammatical and syntactic accuracy, correct spelling and punctuation, cohesive
development of ideas, and content organization that’s appropriate for the target register. Plus, teachers
should also tap into their students’ imagination to help them develop and fine-tune their ideas through
planning, drafting, and revision. All these abilities are certainly important, but I would advise teachers:
don’t try to do it all at the same time. Break these up. Develop activities through which students could
practice different abilities and then gradually combine them.

The most important piece of advice, though, is to provide students with lots of opportunities for practice.
Generally, ESL teachers spend a lot of time teaching grammar and spelling rules rather than helping
students develop writing fluency. Before students are asked to produce an academic essay, they can begin
to exercise writing about simple topics related to personal interest or social events. They could be
encouraged to write every day. For example, keep a journal or blog. In fact, they need to make writing a
habit.

Another thing is that it’s not uncommon for students to see writing assignments only as a means of
assessment. For some students, grading is some sort of punishment. Instead, writing assignments should
become opportunities to build students’ writing skills. Teachers of writing should contextualize tasks and
make them real forms of communication. They should also give students multiple opportunities to revise
their work for a better grade and provide ample feedback on students’ drafts. Note that the feedback has
to be selective, and it has to highlight patterns of issues that reoccur so that students don’t become
overwhelmed and lose focus, which will affect quality. Engaging students in providing peer feedback is
also essential because it gives students a chance to have a real audience and to understand whether and
why what they’re writing may or may not have the desired effect on readers.

One last piece of advice: support students as they compose with a variety of modalities and technologies
because part of writing is learning how to use writing tools. Most students have access to the Internet
nowadays, and this expands their opportunities for writing practice and authentic communication.
Therefore, teachers should explore and recommend tools that can help students write independently and
collaboratively in the modalities that best fit their needs and purposes. A note of caution, though, here:
technologies should be very carefully selected, not offered to students just because they might be freely
available. Teachers have to know why and how exactly they would implement certain writing tools in their
writing classes. They should capitalize on technological strengths but, at the same time, be aware of the
limitations of whatever writing technologies. If you think of Criterion, for example, this software provides

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automatic feedback on language errors. The feedback is not always accurate. Teachers then need to
explain to their students how to make best use of automated feedback instead of making all the
corrections suggested by the computer.

Slide 36: Advice for Teachers. Prof. Cotos' advice is that teachers not try to teach everything about writing
at the same time. There are just too many things: content and organization appropriate for the register,
cohesive development of ideas, spelling and punctuation, grammatical accuracy and vocabulary, to name
a few. Each of these needs to be worked on and focused on individually through the process of writing.

Slide 37: Advice for Teachers. Prof. Cotos also suggested giving students lots of opportunities for practice.
She suggested that students be given assignments to write every day in a journal or a blog. It doesn’t have
to be a lot of writing but it’s the doing it every day aspect that is important. She suggests that teachers
use writing assignments to help students learn, not only for grading. She suggests that teachers design
tasks to simulate real communication that is relevant to the students. In other words, these tasks should
make students’ writing interesting. She also suggests providing feedback regularly and selectively. This is
a particularly interesting question. How much? And how regular? And how selective should the feedback
be? It’s clear that teachers providing feedback on every detail of everything students write is neither
possible nor desirable for the students. But the balance of how much feedback and when feedback should
be given and how feedback should be given is something that is very much a topic of research today.
Finally, she suggested exploring the use of computer-generated feedback as well as peer feedback as is
possible in collaborate writing particularly.

Slide 38: Advice for Teachers. And finally, even though I didn’t asked Prof. Cotos specifically about
technology, her advice was that teachers help students to write through different modalities and using a
variety of technological tools. She suggested expanding opportunities for authentic communication with
an audience, and this is something that can be done through the use of the Internet. She suggested using
technology tools to help students learn and she pointed out that it’s particularly important for teachers
to learn what the tools can and cannot offer.

Slide 39: How can Technology Help? Prof. Cotos' suggestions are good ways to bridge into the question
of how technology can help. And we want to talk about a few different ways that technology can help in
the writing process. First, we want to look at how teachers can create a collection of register-relevant
texts that students can analyze for their assignments. As part of the planning process for writing students
need to see texts that are similar in audience and purpose to the ones they’re going to write. Second,
technology can help by helping teachers teach students to search for examples on the Internet to learn
about registers. Third, teachers should take advantage of the use of word processing tools to make writing
a process. Fourth, students should be taught how to use grammar checking tools and they need to learn
what those tools can and cannot do. And then finally, technology is very useful for creating some
assignments requiring the use of collaborative writing tools that allow students to work together. So let’s
take a look at some examples each of these suggestions.

Slide 40: Collection of a Relevant Register. First, students need to be able to look at examples of texts
from the relevant register when they are planning to write something. And the Internet, again, is an ideal
place for teachers to find texts that they can use to introduce an assignment to allow students to do some
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analysis of the texts as they’re planning their writing. Text needs to be at the right level and the right
register in order to provide examples of the type of language that students can use in their own writing.
The Internet is full of examples but for a lot of students the level of the language of many of the texts in
professional journals found on the Internet, found on news sources on the Internet is quite difficult. But
the Internet is full of lots of different types of texts.

Slide 41: Collection of a Relevant Register. Recall our student from the very beginning of the lecture who
was writing his essay on Barak Obama as a person that he admired. Well, the Internet has plenty of texts
about Barak Obama and many are too difficult for a student at that level but the Internet also has simple
texts. Actually, the example here is a text from Barak Obama himself: it’s a tweet. It was one of his first
tweets, I guess probably his first tweet, that he produced after he left the office of president. And the
language has maybe a couple of challenges in it, but overall it’s not all that difficult. He writes: “Hi
everybody! Back to the original handle. Is this thing still on? Michelle and I are off on a quick vacation,
then we’ll get back to work.” So places like Twitter have examples of language that are perhaps usable to
a lot of students at many different levels. That’s just one example, there’s quite a wide variety of language
available on the Internet. And reading activities provide a good opportunity to teach students about
plagiarism as well because in the planning process as we’re teaching students to analyze texts and to get
ideas for their writing, we also need to teach them how not to simply copy the language of others without
using proper quotation and citation. So there are many lessons here to be learned through the use of texts
found on the Internet by teachers and used to build assignments for writing.

This is a program of the U.S. Department of State administered


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by FHI 360 and delivered by Iowa State University

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