WRITING SKILL

WRITING SKILL

English has adopted the Roman script as its script. Long ago there were 27 letters used in the English alphabet. Now we have only 26 letters.

The writing system in English presents several complexities which a second or foreign language learner may find hard to cope with.

LEFT TO RIGHT DIRECTION: Languages in the Middle East and languages of Afghanistan, India and Pakistan use the right to left direction in writing their words, phrases and sentences. Chinese, Japanese and Korean use top to bottom direction. Thus, there is a need for you to make this distinction clear to your students from the beginning and remind them constantly of it. They will have some initial difficulty. In English, we use left to right direction.

WRITING ON THE LINE: English is written in a straight line. A four-lined notebook helps students to learn which letters go above and which go below.

SHAPE AND SIZE OF LETTERS IN THE HANDWRITTEN FORM: Students may find it difficult to form the basic shape of some letters.  They may have some difficulty in distinguishing between the shapes of some letters. Before they practice learning any letter, give them some practice with curvy lines.

HAND MOVEMENTS: English uses both clockwise and counter-clockwise movements, top to bottom, and bottom to top movements. For every letter, there is a conventional way of moving the hand. This conventional way must be taught, and students must be encouraged not to deviate from it as much as possible.

CAPITAL/ UPPER CASE LETTERS: There is a complete set of capital letters in English. Except in the case of a few letters, capital letters and their corresponding small case letters are quite distinct from each other. As a result, the second or foreign language learner of English must be taught to recognize the capital and small letters.

SMALL/LOWER CASE LETTERS: More often than not, the beginners are first taught the small/lower case letters. By far these letters are more frequently used than capital letters. Once again, the small letters form a set by themselves.

JOINING LETTERS: Conventional way of writing letters in English is to join them within a word or word-like unit. Joining one letter with another requires practice and adoption of hand movements conducive to joining. A traditional way to teach joining is to ask students to join all the 26 letters of the alphabet.

There are three styles of handwriting. Printing, Simple Cursive and Full Cursive. In Printing, we keep the letters separate, and they look the same as in printed books. In Simple Cursive, most letters are joined, but the same basic shape as in Printing is maintained. In Britain, most children learn this style, and most adults use it. However, in the United States, Full Cursive continues to be more popular. In Full Cursive, all the letters are joined, and many have different shapes from Printing. Italics is another style used in Printing for achieving certain effects. This style or convention also needs to be learned by the second or foreign language learner. Ornamental writing is hardly practised these days. However, it continues to be used in the titles of movies, mastheads of newspapers, degree certificates, etc.

HOW TO TEACH ‘WRITING’?

Writing is a difficult art. It requires complete control of muscles of the hand and wrist and this control a small child does not naturally possess.

Writing involves the following grounds:

1. Teaching to develop the skill of controlling the small muscles of the fingers and the wrist, while writing.

2. Teaching coordination of hand and eye.

3. Getting students to do various exercises in written work.

4. It helps the students to write correct and legible English.

STAGES AND METHODS OF TEACHING WRITING:

The teaching of writing English should go through the following stages:

1. STAGE – The first stage is related to motivation. First of all the pupils should be motivated to learn writing. The teacher, for this, can use various motivational techniques.

2. STAGE – This stage is very important. It is related to penmanship, i.e. giving knowledge of writing letters of the alphabet. There are four methods of teaching penmanship:

          (a) Kindergarten Method.

          (b) Tracing method.

          (c) Free Imitation Method.

          (d) F.G. French’s Method.

3. STAGE – It is related to writing words and sentences. The teacher emphasises uniformity, clarity, cleanliness and attractiveness in writing. For this, various types of exercises should be given as:

(a) Copying – The teacher writes the words, sentences or phrases etc., on the black/whiteboard and students do its copy carefully and neatly.

(b) Calligraphy – A model word or sentence is written on the first line of the notebook. Students are asked to write the same word or sentence a number of times below the model word or sentence clearly and neatly.

(c) Dictation – The aim of dictation is to educate the pupils and to examine their way of writing. It is helpful in producing a spelling consciousness among the students. It facilitates understanding. Errors of writing can easily be detected and thereafter corrected.

(d) Composition writing – In this stage, the aim of the teacher is to prepare the students to do composition work without anyone’s help. Various exercises can be undertaken for this purpose as illustrated below:

          1. Writing letters.

          

          2. Writing short stories.

                   3. Construction of sentences in proper sequence.

                   4. Construction of single sentences etc.

METHODS OF TEACHING WRITING:

There are four methods generally used for teaching how to write:

1. KINDERGARTEN METHOD: It is based on the principles of the Kindergarten method of education. Under this method, a kindergarten box is used. In it, there are pieces of wood or plastic of different shapes. By joining these pieces, the letters of the English alphabet (both capital and small) can be formed.

2. TRACING METHOD: This method requires the learner to make movements over the printed or written letters with a pen or pencil held in his hand. The letter of the English alphabet is either written in dotted lines or in a frame. The teacher writes letters in this manner in the notebook of students and asks them to pass their hands over the letters.

3. FREE IMITATION METHOD: In this method, children copy out the letters as written by the teacher on the board. The model letters should be written on flashcards. It is called ‘free’ because a student copies it down according to his own perception and retention.

4. F.G. FRENCH’S METHOD: F.G. French has suggested that beginners should not be taught to write letters straight. Instead, they should be first taught to do some hand movements either with the finger in a tray of sand or with chalk on a brown paper.