BASIC TYPES OF WRITING

1.Imitative.

To produce written language, the learner must attain skills in the fundamental, basic tasks of writing letters, words, punctuation, and very brief sentences. This category includes the ability to spell correctly and to perceive phoneme-grapheme correspondences in the English spelling system. It is a level at which learners are trying to master the mechanics of writing. At this stage, form is the primary if not exclusive focus, while context and meaning are of secondary concern.

2.Intensive (controlled).

Beyond the fundamentals of imitative writing are skills in producing appropriate vocabulary within a context, collocations and idioms and correct grammatical features up to the length of a sentence. Meaning and context are of some importance in determining correctness and appropriateness, but most assessment tasks are more concerned with a focus on form, and are rather strictly controlled by the test design.

3.Responsive.

Here, assessment tasks require learners to perform at a limited discourse level, connecting sentences into a paragraph and creating a logically connected sequence of two or three paragraphs. Tasks respond to pedagogical directives, lists of criteria, outlines, and other guidelines. Genres of writing include brief narratives and descriptions, short reports, lab reports, summaries, brief responses: reading, and interpretations of charts or graphs. Under specified conditions, the writer begins to exercise some freedom of choice among alternative forms of expression of ideas. The writer has mastered the fundamentals of sentence-level grammar and is more focused on the discourse conventions that will achieve the objectives of the written text.

4.Extensive.

Extensive writing implies successful management of all the processes and strategies of writing for all purposes, up to the length of an essay, a term paper, a major research project report, or even a thesis. Writers focus on achieving a purpose, organizing and developing ideas logically, using details to support, to illustrate ideas, demonstrating syntactic and lexical variety, and in many cases, engaging in the process of multiple drafts to achieve a final product. Focus on grammatical form is limited to occasional editing or proof reading of a draft.

Ø Micro-skills of Writing

1. Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.

2. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.

3. Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order patterns.

4. Use acceptable grammatical systems (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization), patterns, and rules.

5. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.

6. Use cohesive devices in written discourse.                      

Ø Macro-skills of Writing

1. Use the rhetorical forms and conventions of written discourse.

2. Appropriately accomplish the communicative functions of written texts according to form and purpose.

3. Convey links and connections between events, and communicate such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given in formation, generalization, and exemplification.

4. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings when writing.

5. Correctly convey culturally specific references in the context of the written text.

6. Develop and use a battery of writing strategies, such as accurately assessing the audience's interpretation, using prewriting devices, writing with fluency in the first drafts, using paraphrases and synonyms, soliciting peer and instructor feedback, and using feedback for revising and editing.