Fluency - the first start

I have recently answered my colleagues' questions regarding the development of students' writing skills. I propose a few writing activities that I believe they can be useful for EFL students. These activities are under the same theme, developing fluency in writing.

Freewriting is the first activity in which I believe it helps students to generate more ideas. It also helps students to look beyond the accuracy or the focus on correction, which should be focused at the later drafts of the paper. Freewriting helps students to gain fluency through writing continuously for 5 to 10 minutes without stipping. If students cannot write or think of anything to write, ask students to write "I dont have anything to write" until students have something else come to mind. This will also help students to develop their "voice" in their writing.

Dialogue journaling is another activity I am suggesting to my colleagues. This dialogue journaling is a fun activity in which it helps students to gain skill in responsing to students' questions and to clarify, to be more specific when writing. Teachers can also ask questions for students to clarify awkward sentences, generate more questions for students to think beyond thier ideas, and practice students about peer responses. This is a low stake writing, so students do not worry much about grammar and acuracy. Fluency is the key in this activity.

The last one is to ask students to keep daily journal. This can be appraoched thematically or randomly. This is also another low stake writing in which students do not need to show this to students if they do not want to. They can clip pages together when teachers ask students to submit.

I hope all these three activities will help EFL students to develop their writing skills.