You can use the model as a reading comprehension passage so that it will serve a dual purpose. In the first part of the lesson, you can ask the students to deal with content (for comprehension) and language and organization (for subsequent application in their own writing). Information from the model text can be transferred to a worksheet as part of reading comwork.

When they have completed the worksheet, the students can then use it as a cue sheet in order to reconstruct the original text. In other words, they attempt to rewrite the model, though possibly in a shortened or simplified form. Their version will retain many of the important features of the origi-nal, though changes are permissible and may in fact be encouraged. For instance, you may wish to add some vocabulary practice to the exercise and this could lead to changes in words or expression in the version which the students produce.

Rewriting completes the first main stage. This can be followed by a second stage of parallel writing. In parallel writing the students are given new information which they use to write a parallel composition, similar in style to the original model. The main change lies in the content of the parallel version rather than in structures or functions. For instance, if you were dealing with narrative, you could give the students, new information -possibly in pictorial form - which would require them to use many of the same verbs as in the original model text, but in a different sequence.

The final stage, which might be done as a homework assignment, involves the students writing compositions of their own. They can then exchange compositions with a partner. Each member of the pair reads his or her partner's composition and uses the information to carry out an information transfer activity similar to the one which they performed in the first lesson. Since neither member of the pair knows in advance exactly what the other partner is writing about, there is a communicative element to this writing. Furthermore, by writing for each other and subsequently discussing each other's compositions, students will begin to develop a sense of writing for an audience as well as realizing the importance of being explicit and accurate in what they write.

Another aspect of writing which needs developing is the organization of ideas. The ways of organizing ideas in English prose may be rather differ-ent from the conventions in the students* own language, and at intermedi-ate or advanced level, students sometimes have trouble with organization and logic rather than with grammar or vocabulary. It is partly a matter of style. In English, the writer of objective, referential prose stands at a distance from his subject, and adopts an impersonal attitude towards the topic and the reader. Informal references to personal experience as evi-dence are usually considered inappropriate to this type of writing, whereas in some cultures such personal anecdote is perfectly acceptable as a way of stating evidence.

Another dimension of the same problem lies in the organization of a series of statements to indicate logical relationships such as concession, hypothesis, inference, deduction, and so on. In academic writing in English it is common to put forward an entirely hypothetical argument which is usually, but not always, signalled by. Everything within the argument is hypothetical, including statements of concession or contrast. Students unfamiliar with these conventions will need help, not only in using such signals of meaning as however, although and whereas, but also in underthe meaning of such signals as part of the total text.

As with the writing work outlined earlier, it is probably best to begin with examples of the type of writing which you wish to teach. You can focus the students' attention on various aspects of the model text, particuthe organization of ideas and the ways in which these ideas are ex-pressed. The students can then be given parallel writing in which they apply features of the model text to a similar piece of prose. The final stage involves them in writing an original text of their own, incorporating the organization and logical features which they have practised in the precedlessons.

Other writing activities which can be introduced at intermediate and advanced level include adding information to an existing text, deleting information from within a text and placing it elsewhere in the same passge, changing the emphasis or viewpoint and changing the function of a text (for example rewriting a description of a process as a set of instruc-tions). Each of these is an authentic task because they are the kinds of activity which we often perform, even in everyday writing. For instance, one may face the problem of how to write an informal note to a friend or