10 Microskills for writing

1. Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English
2. Produce an acceptable core od words and use appropriate word order patterns.
3. Use acceptable grammar systems, patterns and rules.
4. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.
5. Use cohesive devises in written discourse.
6. Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse,
7. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose.
8. Convey links and connections between events and communicate generalization and exemplification.
9. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing.
10. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of written texts.

Characteristics of written language

 

Permanence: whatever you can do as a teacher, guide and facilitator to help your students to revise and refine their work before final submissions will help to give them confidence in their work.

 

Production time: if you are teaching in EAP you have to train your students to make the best possible use of time limitations.

 

Distance: One of the thorniest problems writers face is anticipating their audience.

 

Orthography: everything from simple greetings to extremely complex ideas are captured through the manipulation of a few dozen letters and other written symbols.

 

Complexity: writers must learn how to remove redundancy, how to combine sentences, how to make references to other elements in a text. how to create syntactic and lexical variety.

 

Vocabulary: writing places a heavier demand.

 

Formality: whether a student is filliong out a questionnaire or writing an essay, the conventions of each form must be followed.

The second language writing

The trends in teaching of writing are similar to those of teaching other skills especially Listening and Speaking. Since 1980 teachers have learned more techniques about how to teach fluency and not just accuracy. Also they have learnt about how to use authentic texts and contexts in the classroom, how focus on the purposes of linguistic communication and how capitalize in learner's intrinsic motives.

The trends above mentioned applied to advances in teaching of writing in second language contexts.
Decades ago writing teachers were interested in the final product: The essay, the report, the story, etc., and how they should look like. In this way, students had to based on an special model in order to produce their own projects.

However, in due the course of time, teachers have paid more attention to the advantage given to learners when they are seen as creators of language so, teachers began to develop what is now name the Process Approach to Writing Instructions and this approach aims that teachers should:

• Focus on the process of writing which leads to the final written product
• Help Ss writers to understand their own composing process
• Help Ss to build strategies for prewriting, drafting and rewriting
• Give Ss time to write
• Pay more attention on the process  revision
• Let Ss discover what they want to say as they write
• Give Ss feedback while the composing (not just the final product)
• Engourage feedback peers.

Being asked to write something means that you have to put your ideas down on paper to transform thoughts into words and give them structure and coherent organization.

One disadvantage of the development of this skill is that learners may feel anxiety, while composing, because of the pressure to write something that learners know will be graded and judged by their teacher and also it will be returned withouth chance to improve it.

On the other hand, writing skill is unlike speaking since the first one can be planned, write and rewrite before it is ready. So, writing gives students the chance to think what they want to express.

According to Peter Elbow we have to think of writing as natural process. We have to start writing at the very beginning before we know our meaning at all so that, out words are going to change and envolve.

Even though we have to pay more attention to the process we have also to balance since emphazing process could disminish the product and product is, after all, the main goal of writing.

Robert Caplan aims that the differences among cultures and languages make different patterns of written discourse. An example of that is that Wnglish follows a straight line of development so that parragraphs often begins with a statement of its central idea meanwhile spanish's line of thougth is sometimes interrupted.

Developing writing as a discourse skill

Fluency in writing

To be a fluent writer, it is necessary to write often and at length. It is also important to take into account sime advices:

• Think in English as you write: many students find difficult to think in English while they write. However, if you can do it while you speak and listen, you can do it while you write.
• Use the words you know: in writing, using the words you know means you should write your ideas using the words you are already comfortable with. So that, you can focus on ideas while you're writing.
• Keep riles in their place: too much emphasis on rules and grammar exrcises can hold back your development of fluency.

Children can be encouraged to choose and copy texts that they find interesting:items form the internet on their favorite pop star or player, or the rhymes learnt in class, or sections of their reading books that they enjoyed. The element of choice is to ensure that copying is meaningful and motivating. Another way to encourage extended writing is to ask children to write a jurnal, giving them a regular five or ten minutes in class to write whatever they want, or about a topic from the news that they are given, perhaps without worrying about correct spelling or grammar.

Complexity of written language.

In general, the level of the language that pupils write will lag slightly behind the level that they are comfortable with in speaking and listening.

The complexity of the written language depends on:

• the length and the purpose of writing
• the style and structure of the writing
• the content of the writing

And all these aspects depend on the level of language of the students.

*This was taken from  "teaching languages to young learners" by Lynne Cameron  pages 154 - 155.Cambridge Language Teaching Lybrary.

Learning to write for audience

The ability to write for an audinece requires selecting and adapting language so that other people can make sence of the writer's ideas and arguments. When  we are writing for an audience we have totake into acount the level, agem background knowledge of our audience and if we are going to use formal or informal language.

Writing for an audience should have a clear Audience, Purpose and Topic (APT). When we are writing in a Foreign Language (FL) we have to think beyond writing, we have to think about grammar and vocabulary. Activities in which we can practice this vocabulary and grammar are: letters and e-mail messages, articles about class events, essays on new films, simple stories, etc.

If we focus on how to teach children to write we have to take into account all the aspects mentioned previously and also teach them the following aspects:

• Editing drafts; these helo strudents to make some changes in their writing, if it is necessary
• Checking work with others; after they edited their first drafts they can check their writing with their classmates by reading it aloud in front of the group and after read it s/he can ask if her/his writing is understandable and if the topic is interesting
• Pairs-checking; after they edited and read aloud their writing they can chack with a partner if they have to make some changes on their final writing.

Written and spoken discourse

Written Discourse is:

• More grammatical
• More formal
• Has richer vocabulary
• Is stylistically more elegant
• Is planned

Spoken discourse is:

• The primary form of language
• There are not fully convey
• Is unplanned

Differences:

1. Time pressure: in spoken discourse we have little opportunity to come back and correct anything. In written we can re-read and re-write what we do not like.
2. The presence or absence of the audience: in spoken discourse we have a feedback immediatly. In written discourse we have to be sure that we write clear and express exaclty the meaning we intended to convey.

Main Features:

• Spoken discourse: hesitations, body language, strees and intonation, the main unit of grammar is the clause, noun and phrases ar short and post modification is less frequently, vague language is common, lexical density is low, vocabulary consist mainly of high frequency items, deixix (context), nominalization is rare, interactive expressions are frequently used, repetition and paraphrase are common.
• Written discourse: deletions, additions and correction are found in drafts, mod and attitude are conveyed mainly thourgh lexical choices, the main unit of grammar is the sentence often with complex subordinate clauses, noun and phrases are often long with pre- and porst modification, vocabulary is more specific and precise, lexical density is high, vocabulary often includes items that are rare of low frequency, reference outside the text is usually to background knowledge, nominalization is frequently, interactive expressions are uncommon, repetition and paraphrase are common.

Functional Grammar

Functional grammar is the general theory of the organization of natural language. FG wishes to be a theory whis is "functional" in at least three different, though interreleted senses:

• it takes a functional view on the nature of language
• it attaches primary importance to functional relations at different levels in the organization of grammar
• it wishes to be practically applicable to the analysis of different aspects of language and language use.

Lexical functional grammar is a theory of grammar that is, in general terms, a theory of:

• Syntax (roughly, how words can be combined together to make larger phrases, such as sentences) define different prespectives though which states of affairs are presented in linguistic expressions.
• Morphology (how morphemes - parts of words, such as the  parts of writers, namely the verb write, the "agentive affixes" -er and the plural markes -s -can be combined to make up words)
• Semantics (how and why various words and combinations of words mean what they mean) define roles that participants play in states of affairs, as designated by predications.

In addition, grammar is often taken to include phonology (the study of the sound systems of human languages), but LFG has relatively little to say about this.
In LFG, there are 2 parallel levels of syntactic representation: constituent structure (c-structure) and functional structure (f-structure)

• C-structures have the form of context-free phrase structure trees.
• F-structure are seen of pairs of attributes and values: attributes may be features, such as tense and gender, or functions, such as subject and object.

the names of theory emphasizes an important difference between LFG and the Chomsky tradition from which it developed: many phenomena are though to be more naturally analysed in terms of grammatical functions as represented in the lexicon or in F-structure, rather than on the level of phrase structure. An example is the alternation between active and passive, which rather than beign treated as transformation, is handled in the lexicon. Grammatical functions are not derived from the phrase structure configurations, but are represented at the parallel level of functional structure.