How to promote descriptive writing skills in students

Introduction

            Writing is one of the important communication skills although some of us think about it as an unnecessarily difficult task. Some of us think that if they can write grammatically correct sentences, they should also be able to write well organized texts.

          To teach writing is an organized activity which needs proper attention and sequence on the part of teacher to follow some methods and sequence like the one which is taken from Ann Rimes book techniques in Teaching writing.

There are three types of writing:-

(i)                Descriptive writing

(ii)              Narrative writing

(iii)            Expository writing

          Writing may be subjective (Your personal idea or opinions) or objective (Includes objective facts) and there are three stages in the teaching of writing which are following:-

(i)                Controlled writing

(ii)              Guided writing

(iii)            Free writing

          In this research assignment I was concerned with the teaching of “Descriptive writing” with the following sequence.

(i)                To select group of students (Secondary or above) and to give them task about “Descriptive writing” so that to judge their skill.

(ii)              To design and implement lesson plan (Including subjective and objective description) to teach mentioned writing sub skills.

(iii)            Record improvement in their writing skills and to prepare a report.

Descriptive Writing

          The primary purpose of descriptive writing is to describe a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader's mind. It is also called showing writing. Capturing an event through descriptive writing involves paying close attention to the details by using all of your five senses. Teaching students to write more descriptively will improve their writing by making it more interesting and engaging to read and it is said that always be a descriptive writer and not a narrative writer.

Practical activity to judge writing skills of students

          For the purpose of teaching descriptive writing I select a group of students from class 10^th of Government high school Kamra village and give them writing task to write about spring holidays (Papers of selected students are attached) meanwhile I judge their writing  skills ,in their writing I observed the following points :-

S.NO	STUDENT’S NAME	OBSERVATION
1	Hassan	His writing was observed as without any sequence ,spelling mistakes ,poor sentence pattern and  vocabulary  .
2	Raza	Not properly started .spelling mistakes, and his writing was completely unintelligible.
3	M. Mubashir	He was copying from other students and wrote only one sentence at his own out of four small sentences.
4	Aqib Ali	He wrote nothing at his own he only was copying a student mentioned at S.NO 3 above.
5	Asrar	Punctuation, spelling, sentence making, and mainly his writing was without any sense or idea.
6	Abdur Rehman	His writing skill was comparatively better but he was also lagging in vocabulary spelling and punctuation.
7	Hamza	Punctuation , sequence , spellings and weakness in English writing was observed

          After this writing activity was over I delivered them lesson about writing skills in general and exclusively about descriptive writing both objective and subjective -my lesson was of 30 minutes duration (which is attached with this assignment in original).

Practical activity to judge descriptive writing skills of students

          The lesson was followed by practical self writing in response to selected pictures of a Railway station this activity was of 20 minutes duration  for this I also called  a student named as “Umar Farooq” who is class topper and who was not available in first writing activity I instruct the class to first write objectively and then subjectively  they were properly instructed how to write  but  they were more shy, hesitate  and were not able to write continually at many points they were puzzled as how to write  but due to my instructions they were able to ask me about sentences –and after picking ideas they were able to write but their writing was not up to the mark as education standard is much poor especially in government schools -I adopted the way of free writing when they were allotted with an assignment to write , whatever result I got is much horrible then I decided to visit an other school to conduct my assignment activity over there but then I decided that this is also a government school and their students are also required to be judged that’s why I prepare a report on my lesson and the output in Kamra village government high school  with my full student wise observation is mentioned in the following table  I also noted the following improvement in their writing sub skills my selected students were the top seven of 10^th class their descriptive writing papers are attached with this assignment in original.

S.NO	STUDENT’S NAME	OBSERVATION
1	Umar Farooq	He describe pictures objectively and he give only a touch of subjectivity at the end he also commit spelling mistakes.
2	Raza	He describe objectively mainly and  was  also copying student at S.NO1  his writing still has spelling and punctuation mistakes.
3	M. Mubashir	He describe objectively and at the end he added one sentence which could be termed as subjectively with spelling and punctuation mistakes.
4	Hamza	He started describing objectively but could not continue and his remaining writing was  without any sense. He was also copying.
5	Asrar	He started describing objectively but he could not continue and his remaining writing was  without any sense.
6	M.Ramzan	He hardly describe objectively a sentence of two and only with copying.
7	Usman	He hardly describe with copying but his writing still have spelling mistakes moreover he could not write subjectively.

Conclusion

          Standard of English speaking writing and using is limited in government  and sub standard private schools, teachers are not properly trained  ,government school teachers are not discharging their duties honestly ,parents are not taking main interest  therefore students in these schools are not able to write clearly .

Recommendations

(i)                Government should take steps to strengthen basic writing skills from KG level classes.

(ii)             Student’s active participation is to be ensured.

(iii)           Make writing goal and reward oriented.

(iv)          Ignore student’s mistakes at start and gently advise them to follow right world or techniques.

(v)             Teacher is of vital role he/she should try to give and check writing tasks daily wise.

(vi)          Writing dairies is also an effective way for improving writing.