Writing

Department of English Language and
Translation
Done by: Sadam AL Radaat
Supervised by Dr Khaleel Al Bataineh
Source: Sárosdy, Bencze, Poór and Vadnay. 2006. Applied Linguistics I for BA Students
in English.

Writing
While speech has a greater range of non-verbal means to
express meaning writing will need a greater accuracy as
no immediate feedback is given to the writer. Writing is
more precise and it should be more accurate than speech.

1. Historical background
There are various stages of writing
1. writing is a mechanic process during which all the technical aspects of writing
can be acquired.
2. writing can be called teaching composition which practically means individual
creative work.
This stage involves many thoughts:
- Translation used to belong to this stage.
- In the renaissance, handwriting had a very important role. In the Middle Ages
teaching writing and spelling could not be separated.
- writing which means individual style and register there are four steps to follow:
transcribing (copying), rewriting (changing of the original sentence into
another structure), imitation (imitating certain techniques of poets or writers)
and then comes creative writing which is an individual activity.

 - In the 20th century, after WWII all the methods dealt with
developing writing skills.
 - In the first three decades after WWII the methodology of
teaching English was interested in the product and not the
process of writing
 - In the Audio-lingual method Byrne (1979) dealt with writing
though the classical Audio-lingual method wanted to develop
all the four simplex skills but they thought that the more
students write the higher their academic level will be.
 - Some methodologists thought that writing is only a practice
of grammar.
 - Byrne in his methodology distinguished controlled writing
from semi-controlled composition (guided composition) for
which sentence transformations were favoured for example,
matching two halves of sentences, re-writing, extension of
sentences and simplifying sentences

 In the end of the sixties something new started referring to
complex texts to the complete discourse. This new approach
(contrastive rhetorics) states that discourse competence is
culture specific.
 It was the first step in teaching writing when the focus of
teaching English fell from the result of writing to the process of
writing.
 By the 90s it had been achieved that language teachers accepted
that writing was a very complex thinking process which could be
taught and learnt but it had to meet a lot of requirements. For
example, the legal background of rhetorics, cultural awareness,
rewriting and revision. But we could not miss invention and
creativity either. The teacher is supposed to provide students
with techniques making it possible for him to meet modern
demands.

2. Sub-skills of writing
 1. Spelling: is a difficult sub-skill for Hungarian learners as
pronunciation does not coincide with the various ways of
spelling.
 2. Punctuation: in English is completely different from the system
in Hungarian as commas have special functions, for example, in
relative clauses.
 3. Orthography observing orthographical rules is very important
in writing, whenever we teach a new language structure we are
supposed to teach the necessary orthographical rules
simultaneously with it.
 4. Writing at the required speed - writing as motoric process
must be done at the required speed..

 5. Linguistic competence which means 'knowledge of lexical
items and rules of morphology, syntax, sentence grammar,
semantics and phonology' (Canaleand Swain 1980:29).
 6. How to make a text cohesive, well-structured - so as to
achieve this aim we need discourse competence which is the
ability to connect sentences, to form a meaningful whole out of
a series of utterances.
 7. How to focus on the relevant message - a writer should be
able to choose the most significant parts from a lot of pieces of
information.
 8. How to write in the expected style and register - while
writing a text the author is expected to be aware of the
features of various styles and registers so as to make an
appropriate piece of writing (Savignon 1983: 40-41).

 3. Stages of teaching writing
 While teaching writing teachers are supposed to keep the
principle of graduality.
 In several manuals on methodology developing writing skills
was treated in a similar way. According to Rivers (1978) in the
first stage writing is a mechanic process which he called 'writing
down'. The next stage would be writing in the language which
revealed the grammatical, lexical and pragmatic rules and the
awareness of the rules above. At the production stage
sentences and paragraphs were formed. The last stage of
developing writing skills was free or expressive writing which
meant writing compositions in which a language learner could
use the language code with necessary awareness and for a
certain communicative purpose

 Byrne (1979) distinguished the following stages:
 early stages which meant basic level,
 the next stage of his system was developing skills which meant
the stage between basic and intermediate levels followed by the
stage named contexts for writing which was equal to the
intermediate level.
 The last stage of writing was free writing according to Byrne.
 Gorman (1979) also distinguished four stages of developing
writing skills: controlled writing, directed writing, guided writing
and independent writing.

 Nowadays we also define four stages of teaching writing
namely:
 1. Controlled - controlled writing activities are copying and
dictation. It is a good idea to use copying in a way which
encourages students to think: this means using crosswords or
matching pictures with captions or sequencing sentences.

 2. Semi-controlled: fill-in exercises are useful activities, especially
at the beginner stages. They do not require much active
production of language, since most of the language is given but
they require understanding. Try to use meaningful exercises. Fill-
in exercises can be used for lexical and grammatical practice.
 The purpose of guided writing at word level is to make students
practise spelling and learn new vocabulary, for example, learners
can make lists or personal dictionaries, they can complete labels
to pictures or classify words under headings.
 The purpose of guided writing at sentence level is to make
students practise spelling, punctuation, new vocabulary and
structures, for example, they are supposed to write captions for
pictures, speech bubbles for cartoons or characters in a story or
write sentences based on completed charts, for example,
surveys or questionnaires. Students can match halves of
sentences and copy them. Students can sequence sentences and
copy them, they can be expected to correct mistakes in written
questions or they can answer the questions.

 3. Free - All free writing activities are to be prepared with warm-
up and pre writing activities. Pre-writing activities can be talking
or reading about the subject, students can make word stars, for
example. They are asked to write down all the words and the
expressions they can think in connection with the topic. Picture
descriptions or writing a report or an article can be very good
post-reading or post listening exercises. The only thing we have
to focus on is to prepare this task very thoroughly.
 4. Expressive/Creative - this type of writing activities needs a lot
of creativity and imagination. Students can be asked to write a
short story or a poem, or an article based on their previous
experience.

 4. The importance of writing process at compositions and
essays
 In most cases teachers give a title to the students and ask them
without any preparation to write an essay or a composition.
Though there are methodological steps leading students to
essay writing:
 - As a first step teachers should lead in the topic either with a
picture or with some introductory questions. Students could be
asked to come up with certain ideas about the topic in question.
This step can be called brainstorming. The ideas suggested by
the students must be put on the board and then classified
according to certain criteria, for example, in case of
argumentative essays arguments for a principle must be
enumerated in a column while counter arguments must be
listed in another one.

 - The next step to do is making a first draft followed by editing.
At this stage it is very important to call the students' attention to
proper organisation and to give them some prompts on how to
make a text cohesive. Discourse markers and linking words must
be in focus here.
 - The last stage of writing process will be making a final version.
Only this step should be made at home.


A piece of writing should contain certain parts:

introduction, body and conclusion.
Depending on the type of essay the basic parts mentioned above
be varied.
1.In argumentative essays, for example, after the introduction of
a problem background information and thesis are given.

2. As a second stage supporting ideas should follow which
means reasons to support the thesis, one paragraph for each
reason. Refutation will follow this part.

3. After refutation a proper conclusion must be given the
function of this is to offer solution or a recommendation. It is
important to remember that this part should not bring up a new
topic. For further information see Csölle, A. - Kormos, J. (2003).

 5. What to focus on?
 While writing an essay or a composition students must focus on
unity. It means that each sentence in the paragraph relates to
the same topic and develops the same controlling idea. Each
paragraph within an essay has to be directly related to the thesis.
If any sentence or paragraph does not relate to or develop that
idea, it is irrelevant and should be omitted from the paragraph or
essay.
 The next term to keep in mind while writing an essay is
coherence. A coherent paragraph/essay contains sentences that
are logically arranged and flow smoothly. Cohesion is the next
term we have to define here. By cohesion we mean the linguistic
devices with the help of which the writer makes the text
coherent. The strongest cohesive devices include pronominal
references (e.g. s/he, them, it) and conjunctions (e.g. and, but
and other discourse markers and connectives) (Csölle, A. et al
2003: 37 40)..

 Discourse markers and connectives (mostly adverbs) may be used to
signal relationships both within paragraphs and between paragraphs
e.g. also, besides, in addition express addition, in contrast,
nevertheless contrast.
 The term styles has something to do with formality. When we speak
about formal style we mean well organised texts which contain full
and mainly multiple sentences, passive voice, indirect speech,
sophisticated vocabulary, no contraction and no abbreviation or
idioms. By informal style we mean not well-organised texts full of
elliptic or simple sentences, idioms, contracted forms, active voice,
direct sentences and colloquial vocabulary.
 While making up a composition, writers should take registers into
consideration which are commonly identified by certain phonological
variants, vocabulary, idioms and other expressions that are
associated with different occupational or socioeconomic groups.
Registers enable people to identify with a particular group and to
maintain solidarity. Register is also sometimes associated with social
class distinctions, but here the line between register and dialect is
difficult to define (Brown: 1994).

Writing

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