Research taster
Students can produce more fluent and accurate writing in modern foreign languages by using an electronic writing frame to develop their writing skills.    Teachers in this study used writing frames to provide students with drop down menus containing additional information to add to their writing including adjectives and linking words. Students who used a writing frame to develop their writing skills:

• could all form a correct sentence in the perfect tense when writing under test conditions, compared to only a small number of students in the same school who had not been exposed to the MFL design initiative
• gained higher marks in their GCSE than students in similar classes who had not been involved in their use; and
• produced coursework that was well structured, personalised and amusing.

Your evidence
Perhaps you could work with a colleague to identify materials you use to support writing in Modern Foreign Languages and consider the strengths and weaknesses of each one.  You might like to consider how these resources offers appropriate support and subject expertise to learners, and how it enables or constrains teaching and record your findings in a matrix like the one below.

(Adapted from Reflective Activity 8-1d on the Reflective Teaching website at: http://www.rtweb.info/ch08/ra8-1d.html)

Moving forward
Now you have gathered evidence on the strengths on weakness of different resources could you work with teachers in the ICT department to create your own resources to support your students’ writing based on these findings? 

Find out more
The full project is InterActive Education: teaching and learning in the information age set out to answer a big question lead by Prof. Rosamund Sutherland, Prof. Susan Robertson, and Prof. Peter John. The project website is at: http://www.interactiveeducation.ac.uk/

You might like to read an article about the use of electronic writing frames to develop writing in modern foreign languages: Taylor, A.. Cole, R. & Lazarus, E. (2005)
Putting Languages on the (Drop Down) Menu. Educational Review, Vol.57, No. 4, November 2005.  You can read this article online at: http://www.interactiveeducation.ac.uk/Publications/Taylor%20-%20proof.pdf