martes, 11 de noviembre de 2008

Learning to use the resources of the written language

While the copyright for this cartoon by Jerry King belongs to From Now On, readers may distribute and republish provided they reproduce the credit with a link to Jerry's Web site http://www.jerryking.com/ and to From Now On http://fno.org.


The most effective resource when it comes to writing is reading. It is not that a good reader will become good writer, but it will certainly help while developing meaning through writing. Nevertheless, in actual practice, students need to be aware of the purpose of the writing. In other words, teachers ought to set communicative writing activities, and first they have to point out the purpose of writing. Secondly, a purpose comes a reader, so teachers should emphasize the importance of knowing to whom is that text written for, in order to adequate the information, to the reader's level of cognition and schemata. Thrirdly, the text's structure should be taught paying special attention to the linking devices, sentences and paragraph formation.

It is also important to make clear, the difference between oral communication and written communication. Since they often have the same purpose, it is not expressed the same. While writing tends to adopt a formal structure, speaking always carries an unformal way of expression. So, student's need to learn that we do not write sounds.

Reflection:

As hard as it might seem, teachers should not give up on teaching how to write properly. I agree with those who state that student's might not know how to write correctly in their mother tongue, fact that makes our task a lot more difficult. Nonetheless, I strongly believe in the power of formal writing. As in speaking we have a formal way and an informal way to express the same message with the same meaning, but the decision upon using formal or informal expression will lay is to whom we will send the message, and it happens the same thing in writing, we might use informal writing will using IM and it is acceptable, but we will never use this kind of writing in academic writing to give an example. While for some IM writing will be the only way of writing, I have to say is up to us teachers to not let this happen, we need to teach the importance, relevance and communicative purpose of all kinds of formal written texts.


1 comentario:

Margaret dijo...

Hi Xochitl

I agree with you that we should teach writing and that we have to show the students both formal and informal writing. As I think Linda mentioned in class, just because we might not write much now or in the future in real life, it's still a valuable skill to have, especially for its communicative value.
Margaret
P.S. Love the cartoon!!!