Writing characteristics Potential strategies
  • Rarely write letters or notes.
  • Need help completing forms such as job applications.
  • Start with tasks that interest them and as they see success, begin to introduce writing tasks that are more difficult.
  • Struggle to produce a written product.
  • Produce short sentences and text with limited vocabulary.
  • Make spelling errors, may confuse letter order, miss middle syllables, spell exclusively by sound and/or fiind some words may be completely unrecognizable.
  • Teach the basic framework for writing (planning, writing and revision).
  • Within this, incorporate strategies to assist with the process such as: think sheets that use a series of prompting questions to help plan writing tasks, mind-mapping, putting sentences on index cards and organizing them into paragraphs.
  • Work on vocabulary and spelling by introducing word-building strategies to teach prefixes, suffixes and combining words.
  • Create personal dictionaries.
  • To also help with spelling, you may choose to access some of the following strategies: develop a list of trouble words and highlight the problem areas, use chunking, help with tracking the sound sequence, use See, Say and Spell or Fernald-Keller technique trace to increase visualization of the word.
  • Omit critical content or put information in the wrong place.
  • Omit transition words.
  • Build vocabulary and writing process.
  • Encourage learners to devise a series of prompts to help them through the writing process.
  • Build vocabulary list of transition words (chronological, cause effect, comparison and contrast words).
  • Work on using the words in sentences and understanding the meaning.
  • Do not communicate a clear message.
  • Express thoughts that don’t contribute to the main idea.
  • Introduce the main components of a story such as main character, action and outcome so they understand the basics of a narrative.
  • Use mind-mapping to help organize thoughts.
  • Provide a list of writing process steps to help write a composition.
  • Use sentences that contain errors in syntax or word choice.
  • Fail to clearly indicate the referent of a pronoun. Unable to determine which noun they are referring to, i.e. “She glanced at him while looking through the window.”
  • Work on sentence structure – provide grammar checklist to help them recognize and self-monitor problem areas.