Teaching English Composition

R. J. Owens

In the S.E. Asian countries represented here today, all school and post.
school courses in which English is studied as a foreign language re-
quire that students should be able to write English fluently and correctly.
Training in this aspect of the course normally goes by the name of
composition, and there seems a general agreement that standards of
achievement disappointingly low. In one country pupils find diffi-
are

culty inproducing short compositions and letters based upon the voca-
bulary and structures taught during the previous six years. After a
further five years compositions on such topics as Rice, Rain, and The
Uses of Wood, are described as being ’very poor’, and only an estimated
45% of pupils attain a satisfactory level of competence. In another
country, and after nine years of teaching, reasonably competent Free
Composition writing is hoped for but is seldom produced. In a third
country, the same disappointing performance is reported, though in
this case the standard expected seems unreasonably high, if one
can judge from one examination paper set at the end of the secondary

stage. Three composition topics were given, of which I recall two.

The first required the candidates to write a letter to a friend at home in
which the writer gave his impression of a visit to the United States,
and one imagines that not many of the candidates can actually have
made such a trip. The other said, ’Draw a portrait of any butterfly of
society you know and give your appreciation of him.’
Information provided by participants at the Regional English Lan-
guage Centre’s recent course, confirms one’s gloomy impression. In
no case did anyone feel that more than a ’guesstimated’ 50% of stu-
dents achieved a satisfactory level of competence in written English
composition.
It is in the light of this disappointing performance, common to all
member countries, that I have prepared this paper. In presenting it to
you I shall be concerned to discuss these questions. First, Are we
expecting an unreasonably high level of competence? Second, Is there
anything wrong with the teaching methods currently employed? Third,
What ideas and /or materials have been developed recently which might
help to improve matters?
In regard to the first question, the levels of competence expected,
it seems fair to say that unless 75%, or more, of students achieve them,

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 then a vast amount of pupil and teacher time, effort and money is being
wasted. It is being wasted, I think, largely because the aims of most
courses are unrealistic. Unrealistic in terms of the time, teacher com-
petence, materials and curriculum content provided. But these aims are
unrealistic also, because they are too ambitious in respect of the skills
and knowledge expected of students by the ends of courses much too
imprecise in regard to the steps by which these very aims are to be
achieved.
By composition writing I understand the putting together of words
into grammatically correct sentences, and the linking of these sentences
into a logically appropriate order. The finished discourse should be
acceptable English, relevant to the situation in which the language is
used. It is easy to slide into the assumption that this is the same thing
as essay writing, and to demand from students creative or journalistic
talent which they are unlikely to possess even in their mother tongue.
Accurate English serving one or other of several limited purposes is one
thing, and a fair demand; creative originality in a range of prose styles
is quite another, and is an unrealistic demand. During the greater part
of his school career the learner is only literate within the limits of the
language structures and vocabulary he has acquired in class. These
structures and vocabulary items do not, as a rule, belong to the same
language registers and styles as those found in the prose used for
exciting narrative, elegant or humorous description, or reasoned dis-
cussion. It is true, of course, that the wider a student’s reading is, the
more likely he will be to have an active command of language items
suitable to essay writing, but, in my experience, this is left very much
to chance, and many students never read a book in English which is not
prescribed. The result is an overestimate of what his course has, in
fact, equipped him to write about. The foreign language learner will
acquire, at best, only a restricted knowledge of English at school. It
is part of my argument that we should recognise this, state as specifically
as possible the limited range expected, and build proficiencies within it.
There is a second criticism to be made of many courses, or rather,
of those who teach on them. This is the tendency of examiners, and
hence teachers, to anticipate the results of training before the training
has, in fact, been completed. If, after X years, a student is expected to
have reached a certain level in written English to be able to write a
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250 or 500 word composition, let us say it is surely unreasonable to

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demand that same competence at X minus 1, or X minus 2 years of the

total course. Nevertheless it frequently happens. And it happens
largely because examination requirements are anticipated by teachers,
who begin practising to meet them too early, and certainly long before
the student has been taught enough to cope with them. Thus, not
only are the targets of written competence sometimes too ambitious in
themselves, but they are made even more so by their anticipation at too

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early a stage. Once again the corrective measure seems to be a very
much more precise formulation of the competence-levels feasible at the
intermediate stages.
It is becoming widely accepted these days that, at the early stages,
the same amount of teacher control is necessary over a pupil’s written
utterances as he will customarily have over his students’ oral utterances
in classroom drill situations. This view rests on a clearer understanding
of the differences in the growth of language ability in a native speaker
and the foreign learner. The native speaker has a functional command
of English grammar by the time he starts school, is untroubled by
negative transfer from another language, and increases his vocabulary
naturally through his own enlarging experiences. His increasing lin-
guistic knowledge is not limited to vocabulary alone. The native speak-
ing school-child is also learning to respond to and to operate the com-
plex system of spoken and written language types in his mother tongue.
These partially independent sets of patterns and vocabulary some- -

times called styles and registers constitute a variety of restricted lan-

-

guages within the English language at large. The extent of the con-
trasts between them is seldom realised, particularly by native speakers
who absorb them unconsciously but may suddenly become uncom-
fortably aware of them when interviewed on the radio, or asked to make
a speech or required to write a special kind of letter. The ability to
manipulate these language varieties or variations of language in both
the spoken and written forms constitutes literacy an attainment of -

greater complexity and requiring longer training than is commonly

realised. The teaching task, so far as written composition for the Ll
speaker is concerned, is seen mainly as that of organising what the child
already knows into a suitable written form. In consequence his com-
position course is made up of such matters as paragraph organisation,
suitable ideas, relevance, style, genre writing and rhetoric generally.
There is no dearth of criticism about the results obtained, at least in
Britain.
Now let us turn to the Asian student. He lacks this basic function-
al command, verbalises his new experience in his mother tongue, and
is ill equipped even to perceive the difference between styles and regis-
ters. To a large extent his efforts at composition of the sub-essay type
are concealed translations. Inevitably he produces many mistakes, and
the more he is required to write, the more errors he produces and
practises. This, or a variation of it, is the chief argument in favour of
strictly controlled written utterances by the L2 learner. Once again,
however, an over ambitious syllabus, or a teacher’s anticipation of
skills not yet developed, has a deleterious effect. For they lead to the
discarding of language control at too early a stage. From the question-
naire I mentioned earlier, I gather that full control of the structures and
vocabulary used in written work is only practised in SEAMEO coun-
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tries to a small extent, and at the beginner stage. It quite soon gives
way to the looser type of control in which an ’oral’ composition is
produced by the class, corporately, in response to the teacher’s questions.
This is written up on the board and rewritten again at home by the
students. At a later stage, still, compositions are produced in which
the teacher control is limited to brief suggestions of ideas, structures
and vocabulary. If we must have the essay or sub-essay type of written
work then I can see nothing wrong with these methods in principle. But
everything depends of course on how they are implemented, on the
teacher’s linguistic sophistication and on the timing of the relaxation
of control. This brings me to the problem of grading composition
work and also brings me on to the third of my questions, What new ideas
and materials have been developed which might help composition
teaching?
To take up the matter of grading first, and by ’grading’ I refer
to the conscious sequencing and ordering of the items and skills to be
taught, and not to the marking of finished work. It is obvious that
there must be some organising principle according to which one teach-
ing item comes before another, and one skill is practised before another.
It is equally obvious that, anterior to any such ordering activity, there
must be a list of teaching items to sequence. The more detailed the
list of language items and skills is, the better the chances are of pro-
ducing a reasonable course and attainable ends. For, as I remarked
earlier, the L2 learner is acquiring a restricted knowledge of English
only, and this restricted variety is susceptible to a more, or less, ac-
curate description. Thus, according to the age at which English is be-
gun and the number of hours of class-time devoted to it, it should be a
relatively simple matter to decide what can reasonably be achieved in
500, or 750 or 1000 hours. Since learning a second language is largely
a matter of developing skills, ample time must be provided on the

course for their acquisition and practice. It may take 15 minutes to

present a new structure or sentence transform, but it takes up to 10
times longer for the learner to internalise and integrate this new material
with what he has already learnt. Drill, repetition with variations, and
contextualised practice in abundance, are vital to satisfactory achieve-
ment. It is no good rushing things simply in order that the teacher
can ’cover the syllabus’, yet this happens fairly frequently, and it is rare
to see any calculation, of the type just mentioned, which allots nearly
enough time to the learning as opposed to the teaching of language
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items. And one other point needs emphasis. Complex skills, such
as learning to write acceptably in a foreign language, take a long time
to acquire, so the satisfaction to be derived from their accomplishment
is a long way off from the early attempts. This means that, in one
way or another, the teacher has the added task of providing intermediate

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 satisfactions; and so of maintaining motivation. Getting things right
instead of getting them wrong is one sort of satisfaction for a learner,
so the more that the teacher can exclude the possibility of error at the

early stages, the better.

Conventionally, such practice and motivational satisfactions are
sought for in terms of individual sets of exercises, each exercise typically
comprising a series of sentence transforms according to the grammatical
point being taught. For example, 10 sentences are given with the
instruction: Change these into reported speech, or into the passive voice,
and so on. The trouble with this time-honoured practice is that from
the pupils’ point of view it does not seem to mesh easily with the more
continuous composition writing they are required to do. The sentences
in exercises are usually unrelated contextually, and the learner who is
quickly able to make the necessary alteration to word or phrase in
accordance with some rule, is rarely required to think about what he is
writing in terms of total meaning. The same weakness attaches to
many of the filling-in-the-blank exercises he meets.
However, if the restricted language to be taught has been graded
in the manner I have suggested, and has also been given a reasonable
time allocation for the acquisition of desired skills, the teacher is in a
much better position to build the foundations of writing competence
through practice with linguistically controlled materials. The materials
used should be geared to a measured rate of progress through the list
of items decided upon, and if possible, should also allow of some sort
of limited self-pacing rate to match the normal range of abilities met
with in all classes.
This manner of procedure should not, I believe, be limited to the
first year, or first terms only. It should last for years rather than
months. It is surely useless to treat the teaching of composition writing
too early in such terms as style, mood, variety of language, coherence
of paragraphs, emphasis, and balance; or even in such terms as lively
verbs, picture words, words that appeal to the senses, transitional words
and phrases, as I saw on one S.E. Asian country syllabus I examined,
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though it might do very well for a class of fairly literate native speak-
ers. Terms such as these are generalisations which have been crystallis-
ed out of the teacher’s knowledge of a large number of concrete items.
And these items do not exist in a linguistic vacuum, but in relevant
literary or social contexts. Unless or until the learner has both learned
these items and can relate them to appropriate contexts of usage (which
is the same thing), a teacher’s invocation of them is meaningless.
We need, then, a course which consists of well-planned and reason-
able aims, and which will instruct and practise the learner in con-
sciously and suitably restricted varieties of English. We need that it
should be reduced, so far as possible, to an itemised list of linguistic
features -

structures, transforms, functional and content words, idioms

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etc. which are characteristic of the written styles aimed at and also -

grant ample time for the learner’s skill to develop within this area.
And we need materials designed to help him accomplish these ends
which will avoid mechanical, uncontextualised language use, while at
the same time being self-pacing, motivating, and non-conducive to error.
It is comparatively simple to make such a demand, but how is one
to meet it? There are, fortunately, signs that something is being done
to meet it. Syllabuses are being improved and made more rational,
teacher training is improving, and there are beginning to appear a few
texts which -
so far as composition training is concerned - are either
useful in themselves, or else provide models of the sort of thing which
could be produced locally. These texts not only practise the learner in
writing out, many times, the basic structures he has learned to say,
but also focus his attention on the meaning of what he writes by offer-
ing alternative linguistic choices within the controlled sentence patterns.
The seed of such exercises is that familiar teaching tool, the sub-
stitution table. But by linking together sentences from several tables
so that they build up into a meaningful paragraph, the learner is pro-
vided with many alternative possibilities for the grammatically - -

’same’ paragraph. The given paragraph acts as a model for him to

copy, but the elements which constitute it are variable to a controlled
extent that either eliminates or minimises the possibilities of error, and
hopefully, stays within the same register which doesn’t always hap-
-

pen. Both L. A. Hill and K. W. Moody, (at present working in In-

donesia), have produced such texts. As progress is made along the
itemised list of teaching points more advanced selection among alter-
nates can be left to the students, though, at the start, arcy of the alter-
nates chosen within the given sentence will produce a grammatically
and lexically correct sentence. Sometimes a selection of one alternate.
shall we say Johrc, will necessitate a particular choice being made later
in another sentence, shall we say he or the boy, and other similar
choices for reasons of concord, number, tense and so on can be built
into the exercises. Control of what is written and practised and -

the composition frames can be used as often as any substitution table

can -
remains with the teacher, who is able to gauge the rate at
which to relax it and leave more free choice to the pupil, until, finally,
he reaches a stage where the student is so practised in the model para-
graph that he can produce a similar one through memory and analogy.
One criticism levelled at this kind of controlled writing practice is
that it becomes mechanical, and hence, dull. This need not be so if a
thinking choice is forced upon the student in terms of the language al-
ternates offered, such that only one or two will form acceptable sen-
tences. D. H. Spencer has produced some interesting examples of
such guided composition exercises.

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 Another criticism is that the student is alternately moving from
maximally controlled to minimally controlled exercises as he progresses,
and this, I think, has more substance. To overcome this, the American
educationist, G. Dykstra, has produced another text of controlled com-
position exercises. Like Moody’s Professor Dykstra’s controlled com-
position text was produced for a specific area outside S.E. Asia, but
this does not diminish its relevance to similar problems here. Dykstra’s
text is based on a graded sequence of some fifty steps. It covers noun,
gender, number and tense transforms, and leads on to sentence com-
binations, clause additions, the retelling of stories, and finally para-
phrase. He does this by providing a set of prepared paragraphs which
act as models for imitation. Each new step requires a change to be
made in the model paragraph by a substitution. The substitutions,
which have already been taught in the classroom, become increasingly
wide and complex, but if at any step the student makes a mistake,
the text is so constructed that he can repeat the exercise using one of
the other paragraphs provided. In this way each attempt by the
student is made on fresh material rather than requiring him to work
the same material over many times. Yet, since he is always required
to write out the model paragraph in full, he is constantly reinforcing
his knowledge of the basic sentence patterns used.
Provided the teacher has a clear idea of the sort of practice he
wants the student to have at any given point, the use of this sort of
composition material is very flexible. With more advanced classes
it is possible to use it for training students in writing within a determined
style and register as Anita Pincas has shown
-
such as narrative,-

descriptive, letters or technical writing and at the appropriate level of

formality. It is possible also, as Mr. Moody is showing us, to link the
composition work in English to the language needs of other subjects on
the curriculum being taught in English, such as science or technical
subjects. One can, perhaps, best indicate the potential advantages by
listing them:
1 the new materials can be used at various levels.
2 they provide plenty of practice in writing correct forms, rather
than practising the incorrect forms of too hastily required free
composition,
3 they allow the teacher to gauge and control the advance of the
student towards such types of free composition as may be possi-
ble within the course,
4 they cover teaching points systematically and gradually, and
hence link composition work to classroom instruction, and
copy-writing to free-writing,
5 they are planned to fulfil a specific purpose, and are based on
discernible principles,

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 6 they permit the learner to pace his own progress within limits,
7. they are not too difficult to produce, provided one has an
itemised graded syllabus to work from, and a clear idea of the
register restriction involved,
8 they lighten the teacher’s load, since they are quick and easy
to correct,
9 the learner his own progress, finds the work within his
sees

ability, canpractise further when needed, and is thus motivated

to try harder to improve on the few mistakes he may make.

I began by asking three questions, which I hope I have now an-

swered. I believe that the present poor standards of written English
stem from the unrealistic final aims of most syllabuses. This in turn
leads teachers to anticipate the natural rate of development of writing
skills in a desperate attempt to get some way towards these aims, but
with foreseeably poor results. The confusion of written composition
with the English essay, an art form, does not help matters nor does
the rather superficial view of what constitutes literacy. I have sug-
gested reasonable aims, and a far greater allowance of time for the
acquisition of complex skills. The aims of the course should be
translated into a sequenced list of specified language items which will
lead up to them, and written work should be based, where possible, on
contextualised oral classwork rather -than on old style exercises. And
finally, I have drawn attention to recently developed materials which
seem helpful where written English is concerned.

REFERENCES
Dykstra, G., Ananse Tales, a course in controlled composition, Teachers College
Press, Columbia University, New York, 1968.
Hill, L. A., Elementary Composition Pieces, Oxford University Press, London,
1964.
Jupp, T. C. and Milne, John, Guided Course in English Composition, Heinemann,
London, 1968.
Moody K. W., Written English Under Control, Oxford University Press, Ibadan,
1966.
Pincas, Anita, "Structural Linguistics and Systematic Composition Teaching to
Students of English as a Second Language" in Language Learning Vol. 12 No. 3,
1962.
Pincas, Anita, "Teaching Different Styles of Written English" in English
Language Teaching Vol. 18 No. 2, 1964.
Spencer, D. H., Guided Composition Exercises, Longmans, London, 1968.

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