A guidelines for writing

Writing as one of the basic language skills is directed at developing and improving students’ communicative abilities. The kind of writing the students are supposed to do depends on what genre they need to write, what writing process they are involved and what writing habits they have.

A genre is a type of writing which members of a discourse community would instantly recognize for what it was, either they were small ads in a newspaper, or articles, or news reports etc. Genre analysis helps students see how typical texts within a genre are constructed, and this knowledge will help them create the appropriate texts of their own.

The writing process involves planning what the students are going to write, drafting it, reviewing and editing what they have written and then producing a final version. Many people think that this is a linear process, but a closer examination of how writers of all different kinds are involved in the writing process suggests that they do all of these things again and again: plan – re-plan, edit – re-edit etc. before they produce their final version. This process may be time-consuming but necessary for the students to improve their writing skills.

Building the writing habit is also important as some students do not want to write. This may be because they lack confidence, think it’s boring or have “nothing to say”. But if the students often do different writing activities that are enjoyable to take part in. they are involved in writing process with enthusiasm and they improve their language level.

Writing and speaking are known to create language production. Speakers have a great range of expressive possibilities at their command. Apart from the actual words they use they can vary their intonation and stress which helps them show which part of what they are saying is most important. By varying the pitch and intonation in their voice they can clearly convey their attitude to what they are saying, too; they can indicate interest or lack of it, and they can show whether they wish to be taken seriously. At any point in a speech event speakers can rephrase what they are saying; they can speed up or slow down. This will often be done in response to the feedback they are getting from their listeners who will show through a variety of gestures, expressions and interruptions that they do not understand. And in a face to face interaction the speaker can use a whole range of facial expressions, gestures and general body language to help to convey the message.

The writer suffers from the disadvantage of not getting immediate feedback from the reader – and sometimes getting no feedback at all. Writers cannot use intonation or stress, and facial expression, gesture and body movement are denied. These disadvantages have to be compensated for by greater clarity and by the use of grammatical and stylistic techniques for focusing attention on main points, etc. Perhaps most importantly there is a greater need for logical organisation in a piece of writing than there is in a conversation, for the reader has to understand what has been written without asking for clarification or relying on the writer's tone of voice or expression.

Perhaps the most important difference between writing and speaking, however, concerns the need for accuracy. Native speakers constantly make 'mistakes' when they are speaking. They hesitate and say the same thing in different ways and they often change the subject of what they are saying in mid-sentence. Except in extremely formal situations this is considered normal and acceptable behaviour. A piece of writing, however, with mistakes and half-finished sentences. would be judged by many native speakers as illiterate since it is expected that writing should be 'correct'.

When writing, therefore, there are special considerations to be taken into account which include the organising of sentences into paragraphs, how paragraphs are joined together, and the general organization of the ideas into coherent piece of discourse.

So, to be successful in writing everyone needs to plan, draft and edit in that way, even though this may be time-consuming. Students need to see the difference between spoken and written English.

There are some peculiarities in written grammar versus spoken grammar.

Written grammar	Spoken grammar
Sentence is the basic unit of construction	Clause is the basic unit of construction
Clauses are often embedded (subordination)	Clauses are usually added (co-ordination)
Subject + verb + object construction	Head + body + tail construction
Reported speech favoured	Direct speech favoured
Precision favoured	Vagueness tolerated
Little ellipsis	A lot of ellipsis
No question tags	Many question tags
No performance effects	Performance effects including hesitations repeats false starts incompletion syntactic blends
Verb forms Active / passive tense forms Modal expressions Infinitive constructions Participial constructions	Verb forms Present tense forms outnumber past tense forms by 2:1 Simple forms outnumber continuous and perfect forms by over 10:1 The past perfect and present perfect continuous are rare Passive verbs account for only 2 % of all finite verbs in speech Will, would and can are extremely common in speech.

Besides, students should know that when they write postcards, notes or messages they can leave out a lot of words.

e.g. Weather horrible (The weather is horrible).

Having a great time (We are having a great time).

What is more, the senders of text messages have invented a unique language of abbreviations to save space:

U.	You	WAN2..?	Do you want to…?
HOW R U?	How are you?	2DAY	Today
4U	For you	2MORO	Tomorrow
THX	Thanks	TXT ME BAK	Text me back
L8R	Later	GR8	Great
Y	Why?	CU18	See you later
XXX	Kisses	CU	See you

Each piece of writing usually consists of some paragraphs. A paragraph usually begins with a topic sentence. It is written to make it clear to the reader what ideas are planned to set down and substantiate in this paragraph. It is a kind of one-sentence summary of the entire paragraph narrowing its content to one or two points. The topic sentence has to be followed by supporting statements, which are aimed at proving what is said in the topic sentence. But you should not make the paragraph too long as it can become too tiresome to read. Three, five, or seven sentences at the utmost would probably be enough for one paragraph. A paragraph should end with a concluding sentence. The concluding sentence summarizes the argumentation of the supporting statements, draws some conclusion(s) from what was said in the topic sentence and the supporting statements, and may also provide logical links to the following paragraphs.

The paragraph must be logical, i.e., all statements (sentences) have to be logically interconnected. The paragraph is logical when it has unity and coherence. This means clear organization and logical sequencing of ideas. There should be no unnecessary repetitions. The logical order and logical connectors ensure coherence and cohesion. Logical order is the sequence of sentences in the paragraph when every following supporting statement is logically connected to the preceding one and has direct connection to the idea(s) stated in the topic sentence. Logical connectors, sometimes called link-words and expressions, are words/ expressions providing links between sentences and paragraphs by language means. These are such words as: first, next, last, therefore, meanwhile, furthermore, nevertheless, on the one hand…on the other hand and others. Using link-words when writing a paragraph is very helpful not only to the reader for whom the logic of what is said becomes clear. They are no less helpful to the writer giving him an opportunity of organizing his own ideas logically.

A very important thing is not to deviate. When writing the supporting statements, you should develop only the idea(s) compressed in your topic sentence. Never let yourself be distracted by different associations generated by your main idea(s). Irrelevant or off-topic sentences must absolutely be excluded. They will only make your paragraph illogical, vague and hard to read, while it should go straight from the main idea(s) to its substantiation in an arrow-like manner without sidetracking.