No cliché was left unclichéd

Robots and their automated responses.

All the writing which I have seen out of this year’s PAL classes so far has been a veritable fest of clichés. Their answers to the first writing task in the monthly test were almost all identical as they wheeled out the same dull stuff about not having seen some nameless relative for a long time. The response to the second writing task was a little less uniform.

Anyway, because of all the marking, I’ve only just looked at some of the practice writing I had them do before the test. That, too, is larded with clichés, almost all delivered in the same order, and yet there’s no conspiracy here. One student didn’t do all the writing while the rest copied.

As anyone who’s taught Chinese students knows, they are completely lacking in imagination. As far as I’m aware, Chinese class doesn’t occasionally involve the teacher saying, “Write me a story.” When I’ve asked students why they’re not writing anything, a typical answer is that they don’t know what to write.

I was thinking about the matter of planning and that this is not something I’ve taught well. The problem is that you show students what to do, whether it’s a brainstorm with bubbles or lists with indenting, and they then completely ignore that step and just start writing (probably because the clichés are dripping off their pens).

Last year I thought they could forego planning for short pieces of writing between 100 and 150 words, but this year I think I need to make them plan for the sake of variety. In Exam Exercise 6, the planning is done for students, but just lacks specific details, which are then replaced by clichés in their writing.

My intention is to have students plan and then put up a variety of their ideas on the board to see whether I can get them used to the idea that they don’t all have to think in the same way. Sad to say, I see the hill and the water that I’m trying to push up it.