Freeze! Making writing tasks more collaborative

This activity can follow input work on writing in a particular style, for example, an informal email inviting a friend to visit your hometown for a holiday.

Set up the context for the email by doing a quick brainstorm of what information would need to be included. If you feel your learners need more support you could write their suggestions on the board using a mind map. They may offer ideas such as:

• name of friend / name of hometown
• possible dates for visit
• places to visit
• things to see and do
• what to bring 

Procedure

• Put your learners into pairs or small groups of three.
• Give each pair/group a large piece of paper and ask them to write the opening greeting of the email (Dear Sam, / Hi Sam,) and then stop.
• Then tell them that they are going to write the main content of the email. But, as soon as they hear you say Freeze!  they have to stop writing, even if they’re in the middle of a sentence.
• The learners begin to write their first sentence. Check that everyone has written something before you say Freeze! for the first time.
• After saying Freeze!, transfer each paper to the next group so that everyone’s working with another text.
• Tell learners to read, correct, improve and continue. In this way, they work on the text that they have received and then they continue writing that email until you say Freeze! again.
• Repeat the procedure, transferring the papers to the next group so that the learners are working with a different text each time. Monitor the groups to make sure they are reading and correcting the email before continuing it.
• Continue the procedure until the papers come back to the original group and this time instruct learners to close the email so that they finish the same text that they started.
• For homework, they could each write a final draft of their corrected email.