LIETUVOS ANGLŲ KALBOS MOKYTOJŲ ASOCIACIJA

Revisiting the Teaching of Writing: Focus on the Essay

Lecturer Jurga Kasteckienė, VU

Jurga Kasteckienė has been a lecturer of Academic Writing at Vilnius University for nearly 20 years. In 2017, 2019, 2020 she was a senior assessor of the State Examination in English and an assessor-trainer. Participating in Erasmus teaching programme she held seminars on Academic Writing at Jaume University (Spain). She follows new trends in teaching and assessing academic writing and is eager to share her knowledge and experience with teachers in Lithuania. 

Abstract. Academic writing poses numerous challenges for learners as well as teachers. The seminar is designed for upper secondary level teachers of English. The participants will familiarise themselves with modern approaches to teaching and assessing writing, and ways to overcome challenges while encouraging students to write coherent, cohesive and well-argumented essays of different types.The seminar aims to discuss writing as a process as well as peculiarities of different genres. The participants will be introduced to different modes of writing: description, narration, exposition, and argumentation. Much attention will be devoted to the argumentative type of essay: analysing the topic, writing an outline and providing the right arguments, creating a logically developed and coherent text, choosing lexical and grammatical means to achieve a specific communicative purpose, revising the written text with the help of language corpora. Numerous practical tasks will be examined so that they could be easily implemented in class. Essay assessment criteria and their application will also be discussed.