Free Productive Ability and Lexical Text Analysis to Improve Student Writing

The classroom is often an arena of Controlled Productive Ability. Within this system, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. Further, this ‘banking’ concept of education, extends the scope of action afforded to students only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. Education is thus seen as a process of depositing knowledge into passive students. Freire (1970) exhorts that ‘…the more completely they (the students) accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited on them’. This research paper will look at how a class of low-intermediate Japanese learners of English, can become more attuned to Free Productive Ability, the active use of productive vocabulary, in their written English endeavors. Writing itself is a production skill, in that it requires learners to produce language, as with speaking activities. Written English can be used to produce a message that you want others to understand. However, at most stages of the writing process from selecting themes and topics, brainstorming ideas, organizing ideas, drafting a text, reviewing and editing before submission, and finally grading and reflecting, the student is part of a passive process managed by the authority of the teacher. This inhibits student critical thinking and the ownership of their own productive abilities. An alternative is to develop and practice a free productive system, limiting the traditional teacher-centric learning system. At all times, students should be encouraged to think, and tackle problems presented to them on their own. This research builds on previous research of student self-affirmation (Deadman, 2015a, 2015b, 2016a and 2016b)