Writing as a process. Writing in the subject English.

Abstract: Writing as a process, Writing in the subject English is a paper, which researches an activity of writing at upper secondary school. It investigates the challenges of teaching writing experienced by English teacher as well as the ways of how best to assist students in their writing assignments. The primary interest of this study is coherence and its development. The primary aim of this work is to follow the development of coherence in English A texts of students during a certain period of time. The method used for this investigation embraces the following stages. I compare eight compositions written by members of my group on the first test, with eight compositions written by the same individuals at the second test, nearly four weeks later. The first composition shouldn’t be shorter than 100- 150 words and the pupils had one hour to accomplish it. The second composition should be long and the pupils had two hours to accomplish it. All preparatory work on both occasions was done together in a classroom. To achieve best results in the conquering all obstacles in the activity of writing the notion of Writing as a process was introduced, explained and implemented in every writing situation. A chapter devoted to empirical findings contains a thorough analysis of grammatical, textual and linguistic aspects of thirty-two texts written on two occasions. In the sections discussion and conclusion there is an expression of a support for using writing as a process to improve writing skills of the students. At the same time there is also a great desire to encourage writing across curriculum. The reflections around the study situation at English classes for students with other first language than Swedish hold a special place in this work. Writing as a process approach towards writing helped the students to improve the cohesive aspect of their writings immensely but it couldn’t replace all white spots in their English language acquisition.