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The two productive skills, speaking and writing, are quite different in many ways, but they are used for active communication. In many ways, writing is a neglected skill in the TEFL world, however, in Asia for example, there is more emphasis in writing, reading and vocabulary than in speaking. Smaller and private classes often focus on comprehension, communication, speaking and listening, while rather large language classes in public schools often have no resources to encourage and practice individual speaking. One often meets students with an extensive and impressive yet passive vocabulary but rather poor speaking skills. Teachers need to help students to activate their vocabulary and productive skills. Writing skills can vary dramatically between languages; handwriting, spelling, and punctuation can be very different. Accuracy activities are focused on producing correct language. Fluency activities allow students to use their language in a creative and experimental manner. Moving from accuracy to fluency one goes from doing controlled activities to guided activities to creative communication activities. Encouraging students to speak is very important and there are techniques and teaching skills for it. Straight arrow ESA method works well here. For the creative communication lessons, it is important to maintain the feeling of free flow and creativity while there must be guidelines, direction, and boundaries in form of instructions. The activity should be evaluated, and one must provide (constructive) feedback. Common and often repeated mistakes must be addressed, while one might want to correct and help some students in a private manner. When it comes to writing, accuracy, grammar, handwriting, layout, spelling and punctuation teachers must take students language background into consideration. For example, students who are native speakers of pictorial languages need different teaching compared to native speakers of European languages. A straight arrow ESA method works well for writing activities as well.
