Discourse and Context in Language Teaching. A   Guide for Language Teachers.

CHAPTER 8

Writing

ISFD 41

Language & Written Expression IV

STUDENTS:

Vega David

Salas Rita

Vera Eduardo

Suparo Paula

Garcia Macarena

Moncada Cristian

Porco Belen

Bezenzette Madelaine

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Index

Introduction

Writing for Communication

Two Conflict Positions

Writing for a reader

The importance of Prior Knowledge

Why a Reader-based Approach?

Writing Process

Reading as a Model for Writing

The Portfolio

Writing & Rewriting

Conclusion

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INTRODUCTION

• In this chapter we are going to understand better why an experienced writer has the responsibility to compose a written text that will be understood by an intended reader who is distant in time and place from the writing process. But who nevertheless will be able to comprehend the text.

Introduction

• This chapter is designed to help the writing teacher meet his responsibility.

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• A skilled writer, who writes often and for a variety of purposes, does not necessarily find the writing process easy. Many such writers report on the difficulties they encounter in the writing process.
• Some writers begin the composing process by drawing out outlines, others design flow charts or make lists of questions to be addressed, while some simply sit down, experience a natural flow of creativity, and start writing. Many writers use different strategies for different type of writing.

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Introduction

• Since variation from writer to writer seems to be the most outstanding feature of the composing process, how then can this skill be taught?
• So, we are not really talking about teaching a person how to write but about creating the best context and the most suitable condition to encourage a person to write. Particularly in a second language.
• When writing is viewed as a communicative act, producing a successful written text is a complex task. It entails an ability to factor in consideration of the ways the discourse must be shaped for a particular audience and particular purpose.

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Writing for Communication

The writer communicates his/her ideas in the form of a written text from which a known or a unknown reader will eventually extract its ideas and meanings. Most of the time we write so that someone can read and comprehend the message. That is why, writing is a productive skill that enable the language user to express his/her ideas and communicate them to others

Two conflicting positions

1. Writing is different from speech, because it is viewed as a much more decontextualized production in which the writer needs to continually consider and accommodate an absent reader- audience to his or her ideas. A writer cannot rely on the context to provide support for interpretation.

Two conflicting positions

2) Writing is similar to speech. This school of thought takes a more social view and talks about the importance of conversational dialogue for the development of writing competence as it is for the development of spoken discourse.

Writing for a reader

-You become a literate writer by being exposed to and by reading a lot of text in one’s first or dominant language and also by writing in that language. Actually, it is through schooling and personal development that we expand our use of writing skill.

Students often perceive the teacher as their only reader audience Developing a more expanded notion of reader audience is part of becoming a “good communicator” in writing

Writing for a reader

Berlin’s writing instruction components

1. Writer/knower
2. Audience/reader
3. Reality/context
4. Language of the written text

The writer as creator must care for what the reader brings to the reading process

Writing for a reader: Approaches

Expressivist: This approach considers writing as an act which leads to and encourages self-discovery and it is crucial. Leaders of this movement (elbow) have emphasized fluency and power over the writing act as major aims in the writing class

Writing for a reader: Approaches

Cognitivism: This approach considers writing as a problem-solving activity and emphasizes thinking and process in it. According to Hayes and Flower, writing requires the activity to work with higher order thinking skills. The writer make plans that can sider the context, choose and generates alternatives. Moreover, it arrives at a well-supported conclusion. All this items are the components of the “composing process”. This process reflects recursivity (version and its revisions). The revisions require interaction between top-down (the audience and the intention) and bottom-up (language features and other conventions)

Writing for a reader

Impact on writing in 2nd language context:

-Expressivist: Leads to the development of the use of journals and individual rewriting in the ESL classroom

-Cognitivism: Leads to the important work on the process of ESL writing

-Intereractionist: it has had an impact in L2 writing. Bakhting focuses on intertextuality

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Writing for a reader: Grice’s maxims

These maxims are about top-down and bottom-up strategies. These maxims help during revision and editing. Although the maxims are universal, their realizations are very different from culture to culture

-Of quantity: The amount of information

-Of quality: The writer must provide support and a justification for your position to give accuracy and truth value

-Of relevance: The writer must create a text that make sense within the potential context in which it will be read

-Of manner: Bottom-up techniques to make the text unambiguous in make of linguistic form and sentence structure

The importance of prior knowledge

• The language user relies on his/her prior knowledge when approaching a written text and combines it with discourse knowledge of writing conventions along with assessments of the purpose.
• Language knowledge is important for bottom-up processing whether we are interpreting a text or editing our written production.

Why a reader-based approach?

Because it helps to ensure the communicative power of the text. This views writing as aiming to produce a text that can be “read successfully”. The writer has the responsibility of creating a text which accommodates to the potential reader (s). In order to reach this, the writer needs to use language, content, and conventions of writing in a way that will enable the reader to extract meaning effectively.

writing process

Creating coherence in a text is important to organize our thoughts and to provide a text in sequence which makes sense. It will deal with :

• scribbing down ideas at random
• start writing an introduction that then serves as an abstract, a basis for the whole text.
• organizing thoughts, planning , revision, editing

writing process: contrastive rhetoric

Contrastive rhetoric is the difficulties that learners encounter when reading or writing in a second language if they come from a cultural background where coherent conventions are different from the second language they are learning.

Hartmann(1980) and others have emphasized the need for researchers in contrastive rhetoric to use parallel texts when carry out any comparative analysis so that the genre, topic and register of the texts are controlled.

writing process

One important consideration in the creation of coherence in a text is the choice of genre and rhetorical format. At the most general level we distinguish between the narrative genre and the expository writing.The latter are recognized as prototype genres.

• narrative genre: the narrative is structured around a chronological development of events and is centered around a person or hero.
• expository text: it has no chronological organization but rather a logical one and is usually objective and factual in nature.

Reading as a model for writing

Many writing courses use well-written passages in order to use them later as examples or models which students will be able to use at the time of writing their own passagges.

The passages are used as stimuli by providing content that students will find interesting .Moreover, they help students to be aware of the writer and reader’s perspective.

SUMMARIZING is a meaningful communicative writing task because in the moment in which the student realizes that he/she is summarizing to give new information to his/her partners , it turns in a communicative task. It also involves the metacognitive skills such as getting the gist of the text and understanding the content of it , to write an effective summary.

Tactics for planning the writing process

Writing in L1 and L2 affects students in different ways. Ls writers seem to do less planning which provokes difficulties in setting up goals. Consequently, L2 writers have special needs that are not always met in their writing classes.

there are some pre-writing tasks that help students to organize their ideas such as :

1. Preparing an outline. An outline is a plan for or a summary of a writing project or speech. Outlines are usually in the form of a list divided into headings and subheadings that distinguish main points from supporting points. Most word processors contain an outlining feature that allows writers to format outlines automatically. An outline may be either informal or formal.
2. Preparing a flow chart. A flowchart is a graphic representation of a logic sequence The purpose of a flow chart is to provide people with a common language when dealing with a project.

The Portfolio

It is an “ongoing collection of different writing assignments kept by the student in a folder or workbook”(p.159)

It could be use as a tool for a final evaluation in which the teacher and the student discuss about the techniques involved in some of the student’s writings.

Furthermore, it could be useful in preparing longer writing projects because it involves collecting information and the student can go through different types of writing tasks within the project.

Writing & rewriting

One of the most important things in a writing class is to make the students feel comfortable about revising what they are writing.

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There are 2 mayor techniques: One of them is PEER FEEDBACK: Partner takes a written text and tries to understand the text, then the student can ask some question about it. While the writer of the text answer the questions he or she becomes aware of the problems of interpretation that appear in his or her written production. After that, the students rewrites the text to make it more READ-BASED. So, the students act both as a writer and as a reader.

Another technique is a SELF-QUESTIONING: The student-writer tries to answer the questions potential audience might ask. The students may have to answer questions such as: Will an audience be able to understand what I meant? Didi I provide enough support for my claims? Should I add more examples?

Such a self-questioning device can lead to useful rewriting and careful reconsideration of the text.

Writing & rewriting

To revising requires very carefully preparation on the part of students. They must learn to respect other's work and they have to learn how to offer and accept constructive criticism. Sometimes working in pairs or in small groups can help students.

The teacher also has an important role in this type of activities. Very often teacher assign students’ work as if it were a final draft and they don’t motivate students to carry out a reformulation of the text. They should consider their students’ writing as a work in progress.

Conclusion

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• This chapter has presented the composing process as an interactive communicative activity.
• The writing skill is often perceived as the most difficult language skill since it requires a higher level of productive language control than the other skills.
• Writing requires careful planning and revision, processes which in themselves worry students and create anxiety.
• The ultimate aim of teaching writing in a second language program is to encourage students to develop techniques and self-evaluation strategies that will enable them to write according to their personal needs.
• Language classrooms should provide students with a variety of writings opportunities. Teamwork and collaborative writing projects can be particularly effective activities in the second language classroom.

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Bibliography

Celce-Murcia, M. & Olshtain, E. (2000): Discourse and Context in Language Teaching. A Guide for Language Teachers. Chapter 9. U.K.: CUP.