A Travel Guide. Vilnius.

Writing activity

A Travel Guide. Vilnius.

Writing has always been one of the least favourite activities for the students. There might be a lot of different reasons for this. Having heard the task, most of the students start to complain immediately. They either do not want to write an article or an essay in the classroom, or they find it too difficult to think of the arguments or interesting topics for the writing activity. Or they are simply bored of those traditional ways of learning and completing tasks.

As a matter of fact, it happened in my lessons not long ago. When the students heard they would have to do the writing task, I could sense the feeling of dissatisfaction “Oh, now. Not again. Will we write it in the classroom?” They were expecting to get a traditional task which had to be completed in the lesson. That day I had different intentions… I thought of something which they had never done before :)

TASK: Write an article for the Travel Guide. Vilnius.

AIM: Students will be able to:

• Produce a page for a travel guide with useful information about a chosen place in Vilnius;
• Focus on  particular vocabulary (extreme and base adjectives, modifying adverbs);

Preparation. Students were pre-taught the strategies of writing an article and a variety of extreme and base adjectives, modifying adverbs. And they knew that they were going to create a travel guide for the future tourists in Vilnius.They were told that every student in class had to choose one place in Vilnius and write a description of that place. One of the requirements was to choose the place which would be off the beaten track, not very popular with tourists, but very attractive and worth seeing. Another requirement was to get to that place and take some photos of the place. And of course, they had to follow a certain plan:

1. 1st paragraph- the location, some history facts;
2. 2nd paragraph- the first impression
3. 3rd paragraph- things to do and see there.

And the third requirement was to complete the task at home:)

Process. I also asked them to write or print their articles on a 4A page and make their descriptions appealing (colourful, creative, one of a kind, etc). Since the result of the work was going to be a book, the drafts of the descriptions had to be checked and corrected before publishing.

So the students were given a time limit and they were working on their chosen places, gathering information, taking photos, etc. On an agreed day the students sent me in their drafts and I evaluated them according to the evaluation criteria which had been presented for the students in advance. The funny thing was that students who were not satisfied with their results kept sending me their descriptions till they got the mark they were happy about. You would never do that with a task in the classroom, would you? But I learned that analysing and correcting mistakes can teach the students more than you can expect. Some of them changed their descriptions completely after listening to my advice.

Of course, there were students who simple copy-pasted the information form the websites, but there were students who described the places in their own words, using a wealth of active words, revealing their ability to write real stories, expressing their feelings about that place. While reading the articles, I could literally see and feel the places.

 When the day came, the students handed in their works which were very different. Some of them were printed on  coloured paper, with photos or drawings, handwritten, or simply copied from the wiki pages (they were evaluated for that as well). Some of the students volunteered and made a cover page for each travel guide. The result was astonishing. Even though there were students who did the task just because they felt obliged, the majority of the students did their job with great interest. Although I didn’t mention this, but seeing my students work with passion and devotion was my biggest intention. I wanted the students to feel enjoyment and satisfaction. And I reached that goal.

Reflection. After we compiled the books, we had a reflection lesson. The students got to evaluate the travel guides of other students. Being asked to evaluate the importance of the task, the students answered that the task was highly effective and worthwhile doing. Since then I’ve been receiving the questions “ Are we going to have some similar tasks?” I guess this is the perfect evaluation of this non-traditional way of completing a writing task.

Major threats. Students still feel the temptation to copy the information from different sources of information. Teachers have to be aware of this fact and don’t tolerate this behaviour evaluating accordingly.

Last comments. This collection of nice descriptions is not only the way to evaluate students’ communicative skills. It has a practical value as well. We can use them while showing our foreign guests round the city:)

Here are some photos of the travel guides:)