WRITING SKILL ITS TECHNIQUES AND PROBLEM IN WRITING

WRITING SKILL

Writing is an important form of communication. Writing has been view by the writers in several different ways. It has been agreed that writing is a means of communication made possible through graphic symbols, arranged according to certain conventions to form words, which in turn are arranged to form sentences. 

TECHNIQUES OF WRITING OF SKILL

Good writers use different writing techniques to fit their purpose for writing. To be a good writer, you must master each of the following writing techniques.

 Description

 Exposition

 Narration

 Persuasion

 Comparison and Contrast 

Description: Through description, a writer helps the reader use the senses of feeling, seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting to experience what the writer experiences. Description helps the reader more clearly understand the people, places, and things about which the writer is writing. It is the most common form of writing. You will find descriptive writing in newspapers, magazines, books, and most other forms of written communication.

Exposition: Through exposition, a writer informs, explains, and clarifies his/her ideas and thoughts. Exposition goes beyond description to help the reader understand with greater clarity and depth the ideas and thoughts of the writer. Expository writing, like descriptive writing, is commonly found in newspapers, magazines, books, and most other forms of written communication.

Narration: Through narration, a writer tells a story. A story has characters, a setting, a time, a problem, attempts at solving the problem, and a solution to the problem. Bedtime stories are examples of short stories while novels are examples of long stories. The scripts written for movies and plays are further examples of narrative writing. 

Persuasion: Through persuasion, a writer tries to change a reader's point of view on a topic, subject, or position. The writer presents facts and opinions to get the reader to understand why something is right, wrong, or in between. Editorials, letters to the editor in newspapers and magazines, and the text for a political speech are examples of persuasive writing.

Comparison and Contrast: Through comparison and contrast, a writer points out the similarities and differences about a topic. Comparison is used to show what is alike or in common. Contrast is used to show what is not alike or not in common. Describing living conditions in 1900 and living conditions today would allow for much comparison and contrast.

By using the writing technique that fits your purpose, you will be able to communicate your ideas effectively. 

PROBLEMS IN WRITING

“For some people writing often comes easily, others find it a continued struggle. Some people find writing a strain, others a release. Students very often find it hard to compose a piece of writing since they do not know the right words, they do not know the right grammar or they are not good at composing and organizing. Sometimes they cannot even think of anything to write. This results in dry, flat, mechanical prose full of grammatical errors and empty of life and content.”

 Psychological Factors

 Linguistic Factors

 Cognitive Factors

Psychological Factors: Writing is a solitary activity without any interaction or feedback which makes it a difficult task. Writing necessarily involves knowledge of the writer and the purpose of negotiation, in Pakistani schools learners mostly write without this knowledge of audience and purpose. This makes it difficult for them to write.

Linguistic Factors: Since the learners do not have the same range of lexical and syntactic choices available to them that native writers have, they find difficulty in writing. In addition in speech a speaker can take help from paralinguistic devices whereas writing is the real test of one’s linguistic abilities.

Cognitive Factors: It relate to the interest in the specific writing task. Writing without a purpose or audience i.e, artificiality of the writing task makes writing an unpleasant job. 

Besides the above difficulty in writing also arises due to the unawareness of the process of writing. The students think that the whole act of writing should be successfully complete in the first attempt whereas the actual writing process is carried out in several stages.

Pre-Writing: It is the preliminary, preparatory stage of composition which involves thinking, reflecting, and planning about what can go on

Writing: It is the real act of putting ideas to pen, translating images into meaning. It is a process of discovering and exploring ideas and putting these on paper.

Post-Writing: Once the text is written, it needs reading, reviewing and editing to be modified and polished.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE

There are many differences that can be noted between written and spoken language. Sometimes speaking in a way that things would normally be written, or writing in a way that people speak can lead to language sounding strange, unnatural or inappropriate.

Most of us intuitively understand that there are differences between spoken and written language.  All communication includes the transfer of information from one person to another, and while the transfer of information is only the first step in the process of understanding a complex phenomenon, it is an important first step.  Writing is a fairly static form of transfer.   Speaking is a dynamic transfer of information.  To be an effective speaker, you must exploit the dynamism of oral communication, but also learn to work within its limitations.  While there is a higher level of immediacy and a lower level of retention in the spoken word, a speaker has more ability to engage the audience psychologically and to use complex forms of non-verbal communication

When speaking people tend to include contractions such as I’ll or don’t that tend not to be appropriate in formal written language. There are also many slang words that are popped into spoken language, that depending on the context are not strictly correct in written language. There are other language conventions that are constantly broken in spoken language, which are more strictly adhered to in written language. 

Examples of this include beginning sentences with but or because and ending sentences with prepositions.

Some grammar tends to be used almost exclusively and not in speech. An example of this would be past perfect grammar. This is typically used to narrate something and therefore is rarely used in spoken English. 

Example: “He had been thinking of taking a summer house in Tuscany for some years before he met Valeria.” It is possible to use this grammar construction in spoken English, but it is rarely done so.

 Spoken language is generally less formal than written language.

 Spoken language tends to be less precise than written language.

 Written language is often more articulate and sophisticated than spoken language.

 Spoken language can be more communicative than written language due to extra cues such as body language and tone.

 Spoken language us generally less formal than written language

The written language can be significantly more precise.  Written words can be chosen with greater deliberation and thought, and a written argument can be extraordinarily sophisticated, intricate, and lengthy.  These attributes of writing are possible because the pace of involvement is controlled by both the writer and the reader.  The writer can write and rewrite at great length, a span of time which in some cases can be measured in years.  Similarly, the reader can read quickly or slowly or even stop to think about what he or she has just read.   More importantly, the reader always has the option of re-reading; even if that option is not exercised, its mere possibility has an effect upon a reader's understanding of a text.  The written word appeals more to a contemplative, deliberative style.

Speeches can also be precise and indeed they ought to be.  But precision in oral communication comes only with a great deal of preparation and compression.  Once spoken, words cannot be retracted, although one can apologize for a mistake and improvise a clarification or qualification.  One can read from a written text and achieve the same degree of verbal precision as written communication.  But word-for-word reading from a text is not speech-making, and in most circumstances audiences find speech-reading boring and retain very little of the information transmitted.

Spoken language can be more effective in expressing meaning to an audience.  This distinction between precision and effectiveness is due to the extensive repertoire of signals available to the speaker: gestures, intonation, inflection, volume, pitch, pauses, movement, visual cues such as appearance, and a whole host of other ways to communicate meaning. A speaker has significantly more control over what the listener will hear than the writer has over what the reader will read.  For these techniques to be effective, however, the speaker needs to make sure that he or she has the audience's attention--audiences do not have the luxury of re-reading the words spoken.  The speaker, therefore, must become a reader of the audience.  

Reading an audience is a systematic and cumulative endeavor unavailable to the writer.  As one speaks, the audience provides its own visual cues about whether it is finding the argument coherent, comprehensible, or interesting.  Speakers should avoid focusing on single individuals within an audience.  There are always some who scrunch up their faces when they disagree with a point; others will stare out the window; a few rude (but tired) persons will fall asleep.  These persons do not necessarily represent the views of the audience; much depends upon how many in the audience manifest these signals.  By and large, one should take the head-nodders and the note-takers as signs that the audience is following one's argument.  If these people seem to outnumber the people not paying attention, then the speech is being well-received.  The single most important bit of evidence about the audience's attention, however, is eye contact.  If members of the audience will look back at you when you are speaking, then you have their attention.  If they look away, then your contact with the audience is probably fading.

Speeches probably cannot be sophisticated and intricate.  Few audiences have the listening ability or background to work through a difficult or complex argument, and speakers should not expect them to be able to do so.  Many speakers fail to appreciate the difficulties of good listening, and most speakers worry about leaving out some important part of the argument. One must be acutely aware of the tradeoff between comprehensiveness and comprehension.  Trying to put too much into a speech is probably the single most frequent error made by speakers.

This desire to "say everything" stems from the distinctive limitations of speeches:  after a speech, one cannot go back and correct errors or omissions, and such mistakes could potentially cripple the persuasiveness of a speech. A speaker cannot allow himself or herself to fall into this mentality.  At the outset, a speaker must define an argument sharply and narrowly and must focus on only that argument.  There are certainly implications of an argument that are important but cannot be developed within the speech.  These aspects should be clearly acknowledged by the speaker, but deferred to a question-and-answer period, a future speech, or a reference to a work that the audience can follow-up on its own.  Speakers must exercise tight and disciplined control over content.