Writing with a Purpose

This morning, when I was writing some documents for the department, I thought of a question, "Do we write with a purpose?" I bet you can answer this question fairly quickly - 'Yes', but I would say 'No'. Why? It's simple. Think about our students. Whenever teachers ask them to write, it is for the grades or marks. Apart from grades, it seems to them that there is no other purpose embedded in their writing. Worse still, in Hong Kong secondary classrooms, writing is seldom taught. Teachers will probably pre-teach students some vocabulary items and explain what they are expected to do (this practice is good but I doubt how many teachers will mention their expectations because of the limited time available!). Most students try to finish their compositions in a double lesson (around one hour and twenty minutes) and they need to write about 300 words. If they are lucky, they will be given extra time such as lunch time to finish their work. Having finished the draft, their writing no longer belongs to them as their work will be comprehensively marked and inspected by the principal. I doubt how many teachers will return the marked papers to students in 2 - 3 weeks' time for revisions or corrections. Normally, teachers keep these compositions until the end of term. The above is my own experience as well as the data I interviewed my students when they talked about writing at secondary level and at tertiary level.

Apparently, Hong Kong students write for the grades and write for their teachers, but not for themselves. They lack an identity in which they can call themselves as a Writer. Instead they just write and complete the task for others. Writing with a real purpose seems strange to them. How can we reinforce students to write with a purpose? I work out the following strategies:

1. Using writing portfolios and we shift the ownership from the teacher to students.

2. Encouraging blogging so that students may have a sense of audience as they need to publish their work publicly.

3. Using genre-based approach to learning writing. For every genre, be it narrative or expository, students have to bear in mind that it serves various social functions and purposes.

4. Writing journals is also a good alternative as students can practice to have internal dialogue so that they can be more aware of their own learning.

The aforementioned advice is purely for reference. I am sure there are tons of methods which help students to write with a clear purpose. What do you think?