WEBVTT

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>> How do you actually design
second language writing tasks?

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What I would like to focus on first is to
assess your students' writing abilities.

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What is the level of language
that they are capable of doing?

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Any of the writing tasks that we give them,
you have to make sure that the level of writing

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and the writing task you
want to assign match up.

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You mentioned essays, proposals, articles.

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Where would they fall in terms of
the language learning spectrum?

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[ Inaudible Remark ]

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>> Aha, exactly.

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Graduate level work maybe.

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Yeah. Once you have your tenure
track position, possibly, yeah.

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So, if you have a beginning class,
where would you have your students,

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or what would be some tasks
that would match that?

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>> Paragraph.

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>> A paragraph to describe something--

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>> Even e-mails--

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>> -- an email, taking notes for a grocery list.

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[ Inaudible Remark ]

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>> Email.

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>> Writing a definition?

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>> Filling out forms.

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Very good.

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Writing definitions, very good.

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Exactly, those are all writing tasks that
would be very good for both beginning

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and then intermediate learners, which
is our target population primarily.

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So you select the level, appropriate
writing purpose to match that

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and then you decide whether writing
is a support skill or a main skill.

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It's okay to use writing as a support skill.

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The written work allows the students to plan
to reflect to take some time before they have

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to produce, so many of our students feel
very comfortable with this modality.

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So it's perfectly fine to use
writing as a support skill,

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it's just don't limit it to
writing as support skill.

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And then you want to identify the subskills
that are needed to complete the task,

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and we'll come to an example in just a second.

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Writing isn't just something,
"Here is your assignment.

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Go and write and have fun."

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There are a lot of steps involved in that
and they really need as point 6 will mention,

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you need to guide your students
through each of those steps.

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And then 5.5 is bracketed in
here, is design activity sets.

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Not just one activity, not just
use the essay topic, write it.

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But you actually wanna build up to
that writing and you want to follow

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up that writing with something else at the end.