Despite the major Lebanese educational reform, the English language books are still lacking in many skills at all levels. The writing skill is completely neglected in Grade 10 and then in Grade 11/Humanities, we see signs of writing and in Grade 12/ Humanities, writing is addressed in a completely different way than it had been in previous classes. This all leaves the teacher with no choices other than to neglect this skill or to make up for it using external material. For Grade 10, I have added the following writing lessons to give students the opportunity to improve their understanding of different types of essays and to have them go through the writing process and become better prepared for the coming grades :
- Narrative writing
- Physical description
- Compare and contrast essays
- Cause and effect essays
- Process writing
- Argumentative essays
For each essay type, students read a text and analyse its type and what characterize that writing. Then we focus on 2 or 3 grammatical points that I expect them to focus on in their writing. Preliminary writing activities are carried out and finally, they write the essay going through the steps of the writing process.
