GST111 Writing Skills PDF

Courseware for GNS 111 Professor Abdullahi Kadir Ayinde Topic: Writing Skills Introduction This chapter concentrates on the techniques for writing all form of essays, letters, reports and other academic course works requiring a step-by-step method of pre-writing, writing and re- writing. Of al...

Courseware for GNS 111 Professor Abdullahi Kadir Ayinde Topic: Writing Skills Introduction This chapter concentrates on the techniques for writing all form of essays, letters, reports and other academic course works requiring a step-by-step method of pre-writing, writing and re- writing. Of all the skills of communication, writing is the most difficult because it demands meticulous effort and painstaking commitment to accomplish. Writing essays does not mean using long words and lofty phrases. Matthew Arnold cited in Collinson (1986, p.144) advises that “Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can”. There is no single, universal and exclusive set in which an essay should be written, but certainly, writing requires a form or shape for it to be meaningful. Writing is of various categories. Its dominant characteristics are the audience, subject matter, and purpose. The different kinds of writing include essays namely: (Narrative, Descriptive, Argumentative, and Expository), letters (Formal and Informal), creative writing, business correspondence, news reports, feature articles, editorials, advertisements, press release, technical and research reports among others. For effective communication, all learners must be adequately familiar with the skills of writing already enumerated above. The purpose of this chapter is to deal with some of the main conventions and techniques for the scholarly presentation of written work. The chapter provides a working knowledge of the main conventions for effective written communication. Basic Form The basic form of writing may nearly be derived from the kind of the discourse in question. The basic form must be developed into a coherent plan that can be given content. Writing, according to linguists, is a dual interaction and interface between the writer and audience. A good writer must, therefore, have a firm grasp of the various steps required for presenting a good piece of essay. These steps have been simplified into pre-writing, writing and post-writing. Pre-Writing Pre-writing is the first major stage of presenting a good essay. It is the preliminary stage where the writer assembles relevant ideas that could serve the purpose of developing a coherent discourse. The activity at this stage is brain-storming. The writer prods his thought to generate cogent ideas that can support the essay. The writer also reads widely to gather materials needed for content development. At this era of information and communication advancement in technology, the writer can also take advantage of the internet and emerging artificial intelligence platform to research ideas that can concretely help to develop a meaningful report. The golden advice is that when you read through an essay question for the first time, you may immediately find ideas about the topic crowding into your head or you may have to do quite a lot of reading and thinking before you start writing. Preparatory reading for gathering ideas and brain- storming is what the linguists referred to as the pre-writing stage. The recommendations for preparing an essay at this stage include: 1. Assemble the materials you will need for the writing 2. Develop an outline plan that will deal systematically with the essay  3. Read the topic carefully to see exactly what it requires you to do. Devise a basic form for the writing, noting key words in the topic 4. Jot down the main points that you think should be included in the essay and fit them into the plan 5. Refer back to the topic to check that you are actually doing what is required of you 6. Write a short opening paragraph to the essay embodying your main idea, conclusion, argument or claim A word of warning at this stage is that one must be aware of the danger of assembling a large number of books and notes at the same time. The writer may find him or she bogged down in reading and searching for materials and so confused in starting the essay. Resist spending a disproportionate amount of time on this stage. Writing Writing is the second stage that launches the writer into the real business. This is also the segment where the writer arranges ideas in logical paragraphs. Essay must be developed coherently in such a way that there is a free flow of thought from one level to another. The stage requires the writer to prepare a meaningful draft that follows the order of the beginning, body and conclusion. The beginning is the introductory paragraph where the writer sets the tone of the essay in a way that is highly captivating for the reader to develop a strong interest in reading the content. The body is where the writer communicates the rest of the ideas systematically in a stream of coherent paragraphs. Writing involves combining a sequence of ideas until they form a cohesive whole. The advice is that the writer must avoid an haphazardly combined string of sentences with disjointed paragraphs and ungrammatical expressions that make mutual intelligibility difficult to achieve. Writing requires the rules of meaningful expression be carefully done. It also involves an avoidance of the pitfalls that typify bad writing. The basic rules is that the writer must be guided by the following signposts to make the writing reader-centred: 1. What am I trying to communicate to my audience? 2. What is the better way to achieve mutual intelligibility? 3. What image or word choices will make the communication have the desired effect? 4. Is the general expression good enough to have an effect? 5. Have I avoided unnecessary digression? 6. Are there superfluous preambles to be removed? In the words of Collinson (1986, p.157), the good writer is someone who has paragraphs varied in length, development and organization. He lets me know where he is going, moves quickly through the simple materials, and explain and illustrates more difficult points. His paragraphs are carefully connected, and when there is a marked change in thought, there are enough indications to help me follow the shift. He does not repeat unnecessarily or digress; instead, he covers his subject thoroughly and briefly. While I am still interested, he completes his work in a satisfactory final paragraph and leaves me wishing that there were more writers like him. Post-Writing The post-writing stage is where the writer carefully edits, reviews and proof readings the draft generated at the writing stage. The idea is that since the mind travels faster than the pen while writing, the possibility of mistakes, omissions and grammatical infelicities are  inevitable. This stage requires two levels of editing namely: structural and stylistic. Structural editing involves the overhauling of the entire structure of the paragraphs to achieve an effective organization of ideas and adequate logical and coherent forms. Stylistic editing involves paying attention to grammatical expressiveness, mechanical accuracy and relevance. Basic rule here is that: 1. Check back the topic to be convince of appropriateness of the ideas 2. Mark and remove any words, phrases and sentences that do not relate directly to the argument 3. Remember to make sure you edit, review and proof read 4. Improve the sentence structure 5. Have an eagle eye to spot mistake and effect corrections 6. A careful editing and revising reduces mistakes of grammar, lexical choices, bad organization and several other inappropriateness References Collinson, D.J.(1986) Writing English: A Working Guide to the skills of written English, England: Wildwood House