Writing skill

Writing is the productive skill in the written mode. It, too, is more complicated than it seems at first, and often seems to be the hardest of the skills, even for native speakers of a language, since it involves not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way.

Here are some of the micro-skills involved in writing. The writer needs to:

• use the orthography correctly, including the script, and spelling and punctuation conventions.
• use the correct forms of words. This may mean using forms that express the right tense, or case or gender.
• put words together in correct word order.
• use vocabulary correctly.
• use the style appropriate to the genre and audience.
• make the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, and object, clear to the reader.
• make the main ideas distinct from supporting ideas or information.
• make the text coherent, so that other people can follow the development of the ideas.
• judge how much background knowledge the audience has on the subject and make clear what it is assumed they don't know.

• Fact module: Writing skill
• In overview module: Four basic language skills
• In overview module: Introduction to guidelines for a language and cult...
• In modular book: Guidelines for a Language and Culture Learning Program, by Carol J. Orwig
• In document collection: Other Resources
• In bookshelf: Language Learning

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 3.5, published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 1999. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 15 September 1998

© 1999 SIL International