In many FL departments at universities, you will have limited choices when teaching writing, both in terms of what you teach and how you teach it. You may already have found that your own department is prescriptive about the nature and type of writing task required. This may hamper your sense of freedom, and prevent you from making the classroom more 'communicative'. The writing component of the course you are teaching on may also be dictated by other factors beyond your immediate control:

• the course book that you are using;
• the attitude, motivation and expectations of the students;
• the range of activities your department expects you to set;
• the extent to which writing is linked to the assessment procedure;
• the nature and 'dominance' of the assessment procedure itself.

You may, however, find yourself in a more flexible setting that allows you to devise your own strategies for tackling writing, and that welcomes new approaches. However, almost all writing programmes will be constrained in some way by the need for assessment and by departmental policy itself.

Your biggest constraint is likely to be that of time. If your students attend language classes only once a week, devoting large amounts of class time to writing tasks may be seen as a waste of resources that could be better spent developing their oral skills. For this reason, many tutors tend to relegate writing tasks to a homework activity. However, if writing is always set as a homework task, students will not benefit from learning collaboratively and drawing on other students' strengths. Nor will they be able to receive more immediate feedback from the tutor. Ideally, then, you need to establish a balance between these two extremes.

You may find it useful to look at what Byrne (1988) says about involving students in writing activities during class time. He observes that a carefully constructed writing syllabus, where writing is produced in class as well as at home, not only enables students to feel that they are making tangible progress with a language, but also allows an integration of language skills, and a greater feeling of 'authenticity'. By this, he means that a writing task may arise naturally out of reading, or may follow on directly from a discussion-based activity. Byrne (1988) sees the use of texts, visual materials, project work and simulations as a useful way of generating enthusiasm for authentic use of the language. This in turn increases opportunities for free expression through writing.

Reflection activity 1