"Writing" is a medium used by human to communicate their thoughts and ideas. In fact, it refers to the process in which symbols -letters of alphabet- are used. Also, Writing is one of the four language skills and an essential part of human life. It is important not only for students at school but also for employees in their jobs. Even for sending a simple letter to a friend or keeping diaries, writing is needed.
Writing can take a lot of different forms depending on the materials a writer wants to write about. Generally, there are four main types of writing: expository, persuasive, narrative and descriptive. Expository writing is a writing in which the writer informs or explains the subject to readers. In persuasive writing the writer writes
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As a result, it is very important to find out why some learners are reluctant to get involved in writing activities in the classrooms so that they will lose their interest in writing and they may be really disappointed. After a while, they may come to this conclusion that they are not able to do well in their writing classes. This reluctance may be related to the students’ perceptions and attitudes toward their classroom writing. Such a problem is serious in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting where there is little chance to use the target language outside the classroom. Studies on behavioral psychology have showed that providing a choice of academic task often affects students’ classroom engagement. As its name shows, self-selected materials are associated with the concept of choice making. Self-selection in language teaching has been discussed mostly in teaching language skills such as reading, speaking, and writing. (Bonyadi, …show more content…
They realized that if children are allowed to choose their own books, their desire to read will increase.
Bonzo (2008) examined the effect of topic selection (teacher-selected topics and student-selected topics) on participants’ fluency in writing. The results indicated that topic selection affected the overall fluency of students’ writing when they selected their topics. Also a significant relationship between fluency and grammatical complexity was shown.
Threadkell (2010) examined the differences between students’ perceptions of teacher-assigned and self-selected literature. He found that the students were more motivated to read when they were allowed to select their own texts. However, the participants spoke positively about certain teacher-assigned books.
Leblanc and Fujieda (2012) examined the effect of topic selection on the writings of university level Japanese EFL learners. A quasi-experimental research was conducted to measure the lexical variation of the students’ writing through a type-token formula. The results showed that topics selected by the readers had a positive
According to Runciman, there are many plausible reasons that students and other people don’t enjoy writing. Evidence, assumptions, and language and tone are the basis for which Runciman makes his argument. Overall, this argument is effective because reliable and well known sources are used in a logical fashion. Also, the assumptions made about the audience are accurate and believable. Runciman used his assumptions wisely when writing his claim and in turn created a compelling, attention capturing argument. The article was written so that students and teachers at any level could understand and easily read it. This argument is interesting, captivating, relevant through its age, and can relate to students and teachers at almost every academic level.
Michaela Cullington, a student, wrote a paper “Does Texting Affect Writing?” in 2010 for an English class. The paper is an examination of texting and the belief that it negative effective student’s writing. Cullington goes into detail about textspeak- “language created by these abbreviations”- and their use in formal writings. She organizes the paper in a way that is confusing to understand at first (pg. 1). At the end of the paper, she discusses her finding in her own research which comes to show that texting does not affect writing. But this is contradicting to the information she received from the teachers. The students and the teachers were seeing differences in the use of textspeak in formal writing. Cullington has good support for her
In Laura Purdy’s account of Genetics and Reproductive Risks: Can Having Children Be Immoral?, Purdy’s claim is that conception of a child is immoral when there is reasonable concern of a genetic disorder and if prenatal screening is not done to see how likely it is for your child to obtain that disease, then it is wrong. Purdy thinks it is immoral to reproduce when we are at high risk of transmitting a disease or defect and she says it is wrong to reproduce without knowing the consequences of our genome. The birth of a child at risk of a serious defect could be prevented by abortion or preventing conception of a child. And conception is only allowable once a person has undergone a prenatal screening and if a selective abortion would be done, and for those who are against abortion must be extremely careful not to conceive.
In “The Lonely, Good Company of Books,” by Richard Rodriguez, you learn that Rodriguez had read hundreds of books before he was a teenager, but never truly understood what he was reading. His parents never encouraged him to read and thought the only time you needed to read, was for work. Since his parents never encouraged Rodriguez to read it effected how he perceived books.
Writing is a tool that is universally known and used as a primary source of communication. It is a process that is taught, practiced, and perfected throughout the course of one’s life. The process of learning to write begins in your early school years and continues to develop all the way through high school, college, and even beyond college. However, once you get to college writing tends to become a little bit more challenging and is typically more articulate. Writing can help you gain more knowledge and also help you to explore and discover new ideas. In terms of college writing, it is the process of being able to express your thoughts and ideas in an intellectual and effective way.
My dad taught me that books could be my teachers, my mom taught me that our backyard could be my classroom, and my sister showed me that you could bring books into the swimming pool. I did not know it when I would spend hours in the pool reading a book that my parents weren’t encouraging it in vain, but my family life, for good reason, was centered on books. We were the planets orbiting around one sun that was the bookshelf. Little did I know that books would be the catalyst to academic success in my early life, and I owe it all to my family. Although a life with a book in your nose might seem boring, I was never bored. Living through the characters vicariously, I explored Narnia with Lucy, attended Hogwarts with Harry, and rode dragons with Eragon. Of course
In my opinion some individuals, counting myself, is thought that writing is just expressing yourself either by typing or handwriting something to someone and expressing what the person is feeling. I have learned that writing is a thoughtful process, is more than writing what is in your mind. Is thinking beyond what we are reading, is to put my thoughts in order and that everything that I am writing is coherent and have a relationship. One of the challenges that I face every day is trying not to summarize everything in one single sentence or even in a paragraph.
Writing can have many goals: to inform, to persuade, or to entertain, but in each section of writing the major
Qualitative and quantitative instruments were used in obtaining data for this instructional problem. The first instrument used was quantitative, the instructor gave students a writing assignment, and when it was graded, it was clear that there was a problem with effective topic and thesis statements, as well as general organization of the paper. To be sure that this wasn’t an isolated problem, the second instrument was developed; a quantitative instrument that surveyed the teachers, asking for information on their students comprehensive writing skills.
...ught good writing skills. Writing is an important form of communication, especially when there is a lack of verbal communication. These subjects are areas of knowledge important for all students. They prepare you for future education and life situations.
Although adequate writing skills are indispensable for life, leisure, and employment, quite a few students do not learn how to write effectively. Since writing is an exercise in thinking, it is important to balance the process of writing with the mechanics of writing. The areas of the brain involved in the writing task are varied yet interrelated; therefore, a student’s individual needs will determine the method of instruction they receive. Many students who have low expectations for their own academic success will not make even minimal efforts to complete a...
Language assessment is an important and inseparable part of foreign language learning/ teaching. An aim of language assessment is to find about how much the process of education improves learners’ knowledge of the target language. Dynamic Assessment (DA) has offered a new insight to the field of assessment through integrating instruction and assessment. In this study we are going to check do students' way of thinking and type of personality is important on their writing? This study was an attempt to investigate the effect of DA on Iranian introverted/extroverted EFL learners’ argumentative essay writing. To this end, 100 advance EFL learners in Tehran province, Iran were selected as the participants and divided into two groups (extroverted and introverted). To this grouping Eysenck personality inventory test was used. Then, the researcher applied the treatment to both
However, their purposes for writing are sometimes not the kind valued by Western academic communities. The nature of academic literacy often confuses and disorients students, “particularly those who bring with them a set of conventions that are at odds with those of the academic world they are entering” (Kutz, Groden & Zamel, 1993, p. 30). In addition, the culture-specific nature of schemata–abstract mental structures representing our knowledge of things, events, and situations–can lead to difficulties when students write texts in L2. Knowing how to write a “summary” or “analysis” in Mandarin or Spanish does not necessarily mean that students will be able to do these things in English (Kern, 2000). As a result, any appropriate instruction must take into consideration the influence from various educational, social, and cultural experiences that students have in their native language. These include textual issues, such as rhetorical and cultural preferences for organizing information and structuring arguments, commonly referred to as contrastive rhetoric (Cai, 1999; Connor, 1997; Kaplan, 1987; Kobayashi & Rinnert, 1996; Leki, 1993; 1997; Matalene, 1985), knowledge of appropriate genres (Johns, 1995; Swales, 1990), familiarity with writing topics (Shen, 1989), and distinct cultural and instructional socialization (Coleman, 1996; Holliday, 1997; Valdes, 1995). In addition to instructional and cultural
College students must learn how to write adequately so they sustain mental health, make better grades, and compete in the workplace. As the modern world evolves, one of the basic characteristics of humanity, communication, becomes more essential. The development of technologies such as email, texting, and social media have led to an increase in the value of proficient writing.
Literature has an enormous impact on a child’s development during the early years of his or her life. It is important for parents and teachers to instill a love of reading in children while they are still young and impressionable. They are very naive and trusting because they are just beginning to develop their own thoughts, so they will believe anything they read (Lesnik, 1998). This is why it is so important to give them literature that will have a positive impact. Literature can make children more loving, intelligent and open minded because reading books gives them a much wider perspective on the world. Through reading, children’s behavior can be changed, modified or extended, which is why books are so influential in children’s lives while they are young (Hunt, 1998). Literature has the power to affect many aspects of a child’s life and shapes their future adult life.