IATEFL 2013 Working on writing: an interview with Guy Brook-Hart Where should we start from when preparing students for IELTS Academic Writing? I think you have to start by looking at what Band score your students need and by looking at the Band Descriptors, what writing and language skills they will have to demonstrate in order to achieve that score. You also have to manage students’ expectations and take them step by step to the level they require. A student who would currently score a Band 5, but who needs a Band 7, won’t achieve a Band 7 without going through the stages described for students in Band 6.
In the early stages, whatever students’ general level of English, we may well have to teach them types of writing which they’re not familiar with in their own cultures. Academic essays are, for example, very much part of British educational culture, but are not necessarily something students from other countries have been systematically been taught to do in their own languages. Writing academic essays takes time and requires comprehensive critical thinking skills, but it’s central to a lot of what students will be required to do when they go to an Englishspeaking university. They will need to research, think through the subject and decide what their position is; then there’s planning and organising ideas and expressing them persuasively and coherently. Writing academic essays trains students to think in an analytic and opinion-forming way. How do you motivate students to write? Writing is hard work and doesn’t come naturally to every student. Some teachers react with surprise when I tell them that before you ask students to start work on a piece of writing you need to spend at least an hour in class helping them to prepare and understand what the task involves. Just writing the title of a piece of writing homework on the board at the end of the class really doesn’t work.