Helping Students Become Better Writers

The English Language Center at UTAS-Ibri has always been at the forefront in providing opportunities to the teaching fraternity at regular intervals to exchange its know-how on ELT Dynamics. As part of the ELT events hosted by the PDC committee, Ms Amal Ashour Ebid gave an informative presentation titled Helping Students Become Better Writers on 27.04.2021 at UTAS-Ibri.

The painstaking effort exerted to teach academic writing skills to EFL/L2 students is gratifying when learners are cognizant of the need to improve their English language skills and gain the mastery of the skill that is a pre-requisite for their academic and professional life.

Ms Amal Ashour highlighted the significant challenges of teaching writing and shared her views on facilitating students to improve their writing skills. She skillfully integrated Bloom's Taxonomy as part of planning instructions to teach writing skills. She further added that it could train students to use higher-order thinking skills to evaluate their writing. Her suggestion to use Bloom's taxonomy to enhance vocabulary in formal language was noteworthy.

She promoted using writing rubrics as a ready reckoner to help students plan and organize their ideas accordingly while writing.

The presentation had rich takeaways for writing teachers, and the tips shared were tailor-made and were worth adding to the teachers' activity repertoire.

Ms Amal Ashour Ebid holds a bachelor's degree in Education from the Suez Canal University, CELTA and a master's degree in English from the Annammali University. Her 14 years of teaching career is replete with exciting observations and her experiences are enriching.