"Grafted Writing" by Eric Richards

I think that one of the most difficult skills for students when it comes to language acquisition is writing in L2, especially if these students already struggle with writing in their own L1. So often we tell our students to "write," and then we are not pleased with the results. In my opinion, there are a number of reasons:

• we have not properly prepared students for the task which involves writing.
• we ourselves are not managing our own expectations properly for what students are able to accomplish at their specific proficiency level (level of output, grammatical accuracy, topics, etc.).
• the task is either too broad with little parameters or too narrow in scope.
• we have not properly scaffolded lessons nor properly built up students' foundations towards writing.

Well, look no further - let me highly recommend Eric Richards' book Grafted Writing! I had not formally met Eric until last summer at the CI Summit (although I knew of his name professionally) where both of us were coaches/team members in the same cohort. At the end of the conference, he did a short workshop on getting students to write in the target language based on this book, and for me, this was the best part of the CI Summit.

One of the things which I like about this book is how sensible so many of Eric's activities are - namely that many writing activities focus on implementing readings which you as a teacher are already doing with your classes. I like how this allows me to have students do some type of writing 1-2 times a week based on our current reading in different ways and with different goals. As a result, every writing activity does not have to be a free/timed write. And yet many of his "free write" activities are scaffolded in such a way that you as a teacher are not just throwing students into a "sink or swim" writing situation.

Eric's book is firmly grounded in CI/ADI pedagogy, namely that students cannot output without sufficient comprehensible input and that output is the result/overflow of bathing students with understandable messages. While some may view a few of his writing activities as students simply copying down text and calling that "writing," that still falls in line with Comprehensible Input theory. Although "copying" itself is found on the lowest end of Bloom's taxonomy, if the messages which students are copying down are 100% understandable to them, then students are receiving repetitions of those messages through both re-reading those messages and then understanding them as they copy them down - double input, if not triple! Thus, subconscious language acquisition is occurring! And even within those activities, there is a degree of higher order thinking happening within students based on the task!

Each of Eric's activities in this book are broken down into the following sections:

1. directions/explanation of activity
2. sample text in English with which to work
3. suggestions for extension activities
4. tips and variations
5. teacher talk

If you have ever met Eric or have attended one of his presentations, you know how practical his communication style is - this definitely carries over into his writing. This book is very easy to read, his directions are not difficult to understand and to picture, and his reflections are very incisive. I have already written about his activity Treasure Hunt - Writing on this blog.

So I highly recommend Grafted Writing as a resource for your CI/ADI classroom, and if Eric is ever presenting at a conference which you are attending, attend his session - you will learn so much!