LECTURE 13. TEACHING WRITING. Plan: 1. What writing is. 2. The main features of writing are 3. Characteristics of Written Language 4. Microskills for Writing 5. Types of Classroom Writing Performance 6. Principles for Designing Writing Techniques Everybody will agree that writing is a part of our everyday routine, and it is also a part of our professional life.
Writing is one of the means of communication having some purpose, organization and addressed to somebody.)
The main features of writing are: In the last few decades writing is being paid more and more attention to which leads closer inspection of the methods of teaching this skill. Several things should be taken into consideration when we think about teaching writing.
1). Firstly, teaching writing involves both a teacher and a student in a partnership, where the participants are equal. Treating any peace of writing only for correcting language errors and mistakes on the teacher's side misses the aim of this creative process on the student's side.
2). Secondly, it is a myth that all it takes to write is to sit down in front a blank page to begin at the beginning and write through to the end, without planning, drafting, revising, editing or discussing. The following diagram shows the complex process of writing.
Characteristics of Written Language: 1. Permanence Once something is written down and delivered in its final form to its intended audience, the writer abdicates a certain power: power to emend, to clarify, to withdraw.
2. Production time The good news is that, given appropriate stretches of time, a writer can indeed become a "good" writer by developing efficient processes for achieving the final product. The bad news is that many educational contexts demand student writing within time limits, or "writing for display".
3.Distance One of the thorniest problems writers face is anticipating their audience. That anticipation ranges from general audience characteristics to how specific words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs are going to be interpreted. The distance factor requires cognitive empathy, in that good writers can "read" their own writing from the perspective of the mind of the targeted audience. Writers need to be able to predict the audience's general knowledge, cultural and literary schemata, specific subject-matter knowledge, and very importantly, how their choice of language will be interpreted.