Advice for teachers -
Foundation English

Unit 1 - Area of Study 2​: Creating texts

Outcome 2

Produce different text types for different purposes and audiences in response to academic, workplace or social contexts.

Examples of learning activities

• Watch and/or listen to a writer describe the way they approach the writing process.
• Consider some examples of effective writing for various text types and deconstruct the features that make them effective, considering the intended purpose and audience of the writing.
• Participate in a joint text construction with teacher and/or peers.
• Research examples of famous opening sentences from fiction. Discuss them as a class and explore what makes them effective.
  
• 
  Consider a sample job application letter that uses colloquial phrasing and other examples of informal language. Identify the inappropriate language and suggest suitable alternatives with which to replace it.
  
• As a class, read two articles from different news publications on the same issue or incident and compare the texts in terms of vocabulary, tone, sentence length, use of visuals, etc.
• After studying a number of text types, adapt a given text from one form to another; for example, adapt a poem or a short story to the form of a newspaper report or diary entry.
• Keep a journal of brief writing tasks for different audiences and purposes, adding something new to it each week.
• Brainstorm the qualities that would be expected in a high-level piece of writing with a particular purpose and develop a rubric based on the agreed qualities; use this for peer-assessment.
• Cut up a text into individual sentences and assemble them into the most coherent order, exploring different ways of creating cohesion in a text.

 

Detailed example

Identifying examples of inappropriate tone or register

1. The teacher consults the local paper or online job service and finds a position that would be appropriate for students as a part-time role.
2. Adopting a generic persona as a student, the teacher writes a sample letter of application. While the letter should mostly model the correct register and tone, it deliberately includes numerous examples of inappropriate vocabulary and overly colloquial register.
3. The mistakes should be varied in nature, and not equally glaring. While some can be exaggerated for humorous effect in order to maintain engagement, most of them should be realistic mistakes that students are likely to make.
4. The teacher shares the letter and original advertisement with the students, asking the class to read the letter individually and identify the mistakes.
5. As a class, students discuss why the identified phrases are inappropriate. They focus particularly on how these phrases do not support the purpose of the letter, or do not take its target audience into account.  They identify appropriate alternatives for the problematic expressions.
6. Students research a job of interest and write a letter of application, using the appropriate tone to support purpose. Peer editing and feedback can be used at this stage, before submission is finalised.

N.B. With appropriate modifications, this exercise could be applied to any form of writing that requires students to maintain a more formal tone throughout the piece. It could be particularly suitable for teaching and learning about essay writing.