I have taught writing in French for students whose native language is English. This is a writing course for which I sought certification as a "writing-intensive" course in my university's general education curriculum. That request did not win automatic support from the certifying committee. Colleagues in the English Department, who dominated the committee, were skeptical about the ability of foreign language teachers to guide students to improve their general writing skills and to come to understand writing as a complex iterative process for forging and arranging ideas and for communicating effectively. So it was my task to demonstrate the rigor and the vigor of our course for teaching second-language writing.

The various kinds of activities that I included in the course are as follows. First, we focused on writing as a process. Part of the preparation for writing particular kinds of texts in particular genres and styles was to read model texts in those different genres. (Each unit focused on one kind of text: autobiographical, argumentative, narrative, academic presentation of evidence, descriptive.) In other words, we started by reading to learn to write. In reading, I encouraged students to discern and discuss the major features or conventions that made up such genres, to note the elements and building blocks of the model texts. I then asked them to collect evidence and examples, to begin writing some of those building blocks, and to plan how to assemble those elements to form a their own text. This part of each lesson was intended to help writers note the generic rules and principles and to begin planning in a way that draws on their authentic, original experiences and thinking. 

A second preparatory process used in each unit was free-writing and organizing outlines. I taught students to brainstorm in the target language, in this case, French. I got them to free-associate words linked to basic ideas. I got them to summon up concrete images and metaphors that might be applicable. I directed them to assemble lists of adjectives or verbs that might be associated with a particular writing task. I then taught them to evaluate and arrange their brainstormed ideas, iterating the process multiple times.

I organized students into small groups or in pairs to read each others' drafts and to comment on them, to evaluate strengths and weaknesses, not so much in terms of grammar, but in terms of cogency, flow, effectiveness of communication, rhythm. We practiced oral critiques and written critiques. We formally edited the work of others. We identified strengths and weaknesses; we asked questions or pointed out inconsistencies. 

I asked students to keep a concise writing journal, where they noted their own strengths and weakesses. I asked them to critique each other's work, with an eye to understanding the writing process better and to sharpening their own critical and self-critical perspectives. We did peer reviews focusing on different aspects of writing at different times (cogency, transition words, grammatical accuracy, paragraph structure, strong thesis statements, citation form and accuracy in reference lists, excessive repetition, sociolinguistic register, etc.). We learned to give positive and detailed feedback. And in giving feedback, I asked students to reflect on their own writing in the same way as they were reviewing the writing of others. I also asked students to write in their reflective journals after giving or receiving peer critiques, thinking about the experience and drawing lessons from it, each time.

Part of each lesson involved revision -- with entries in reflective journals noting particularly interesting or problematic parts of the process. Students learned that critique and revision, including self-critique et self-correction, is an essential and highly iterative part of writing. Students learned to separate the distinct phases for clearer thinking, so that they they were not trying to plan and write while their were self-critiquing. Writing is one thing. Self-critique is a different thing. Revising is quite another altogether. I trained students to avoid overmixing these different stances. 

Finally, in "publishing" the work in the course LMS, I encouraged students to think multimodally, including hyperlinks to other writing, to images, to blogs or websites, to other digital artifacts. My goal was for students to think of their foreign-language writing not only as a product for a particular course, but as a complex cognitive and social modality that can help them think through issues, make connections, and realize the nuances and complexities of communication, of collaborative thinking, of fundamental human connection through language, and to appreciate the pleasures and the potentialities of language.

So... for me, that's how I think about writing in a foreign language or in one's native language. It's about exploration, connection, reflection. I like to think of it as "writing to learn."