Building a Regular Writing Habit, Essay Example

Writing is one of the many professional activities with a significantly high degree of complexity with a myriad of aspects that are attributed to writing. It is therefore, prudent to address writing and teaching people how to write from a divergent of perspectives. Before writing, it is prudent to account for the objectives that the writer upholds in relation to purpose, role, audience as well as text form (Baumann,  Kameenui  & Ash, 2003). This paper posits to address the significance of writing in the English as a Second Language, ESL in lower or upper secondary classroom.

It is crucial to acknowledge the fact that, English language is the main language that is widely used by foreign countries. The English language therefore serves as an elemental language in the majority of the global nations (Baumann,  Kameenui  & Ash, 2003). English is also the applicable formal language not only by the United States of America, the Great Britain as well as many other nations that were initially under the colony of Britain, but also an official language in the European Union. The global leading organizations  also makes use of English as an official language for business purposes. English is the third most spoken native language in the world (Baumann,  Kameenui  & Ash, 2003). Statistics released by the United Nations showed that, English has become so popular that it has even become a requirement for one to work in certain professions or fields such as the field of computers or medicine. The positive repercussions are that over one billion individuals across the globe all speak a minimum basic level of English while the negative repercussions is that, it has lead to a reduction in the use of other native languages (Baumann,  Kameenui  & Ash, 2003). English is the international, global or world language because of its broad application. English as a Second Language is also currently being taught the most and in countries that are non-English speaking,  in contrast to other languages such as French and Spanish among others (Baumann,  Kameenui  & Ash, 2003). This scenario is based on the understanding that majority of the literature books, articles, journals, magazines and newspapers all around the world are written in English language, the widely used computers are programmed in English and most operations use English words and sounds, scientific works, and experiments are recorded in English even though most of them are the works of non-English speaking scientist.

The purpose of writing is a crucial consideration. A writer may have several purposes of writing including the following:

• Informing, explaining, describing, expression and reflection
• Inquiry and exploration
• Understanding, learning and remembering
• Analysis, evaluation, judgment, entertainment and interpretation
• Persuasion, statement of opinion, convincing, taking a specific point of view and arriving at a common ground
• Keeping in touch with other people and upholding friendly contact.

Building a regular writing habit in English is crucial and can effectively be achieved through offering opportunities to students to write various forms of texts in diverse contexts in the course.  However, the initiative of starting the process of writing is associated with significant challenges, especially among students. The duty of the instructor is, therefore, to assist the students in recognition of the purpose of writing any text that they are instructed to write. Acknowledgement of the purpose makes the process easy for the students (Beck & McKeown,  2007). The knowledge of the intended audience is also an important consideration in writing. An understanding of the texts that have been written by the professionals, also called ’real-world texts’, is resourceful for understanding the purpose and audience of writing for the students (Beck & McKeown,  2007). Understanding the ’real-world texts’ serves as a mentor text as well as models to the students. The role of the write during the practice is very imporatant, writing as oneself or someone else differentiates the perspective of text presentation. Recognitition of structures, genre conventions as well as patterns are important consideration in writing.

In a nutshell, therefore, important considerations before actual writing must be taken into account. They include the reasons behind writing, the audience of the text, shall other people read the text, either a particular person or a group. The audience may be peers or the general public (Baumann,  Kameenui  & Ash, 2003). When writing, it is also important to acknowledge whether the writing is in the first person or third person, i.e. writing as oneself or as someone else. The type of writing involved is also worth consideration. What type of writing are the writer doing and the specific genre of the text? These are the most important considerations in building a regular writing habit as a tutor as well as a student.

References

Baumann, J. F., Kameenui, E. J., & Ash, G., (2003). Research on vocabulary instruction: Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts 2, pp. 752–785). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G., (2007). Different ways for different goals, but keep your eye on the higher verbal skills. Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension. (pp. 18–24).New York: Guilford Press.