Writing Unit 4 UNIT 4: WRITING - KKHSOU · 4.3 Developing writing skills 4.4 Mechanics of writing 4.4.1 Dictation ... that these readers aim at teaching all the four skills – listening,

Writing Unit 4

69Proficiency in English

UNIT 4: WRITING

UNIT STRUCTURE

4.1 Learning Objectives

4.2 Introduction

4.3 Developing writing skills

4.4 Mechanics of writing

4.4.1 Dictation

4.4.2 Spelling rules

4.5 Controlled writing

4.6 Free and creative writing

4.7 Writing a paragraph

4.7.1 Topic sentence

4.7.2 Cohesion and coherence

4.8 Letter writing

4.9 Messages and Notices

4.10 Writing as process

4.11 Let us Sum up

4.12 Further Reading

4.13 Answers to Check Your Progress

4.14 Model Questions

4.1 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you will be able to

� specify the skills of writing

� distinguish the mechanics of writing

� compare the features of controlled and free composition activities

� specify the process of writing.

4.2 INTRODUCTION

Do you happen to have copies of Marigold readers produced by NCERT

and adopted by SCERT? Open at any one of these readers. You will notice

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70 Proficiency in English

that these readers aim at teaching all the four skills – listening, speaking,

reading and writing.

How do these readers teach writing? Of course– step by step. The

first step is to develop the mechanics of writing. You will find a number of

tasks given at Book II of Marigold or any other standard graded series of

textbooks in English. They will provide you with a springboard for developing

the mechanics of writing. While you engage your pupils in the basic stages

of writing in your English class, you are certain that they have been doing a

similar activity in their mother tongue/first language in the MIL classroom.

Being bi-linguals or multi-linguals, they are required to tackle more than one

script. You select a good advantage of exploiting the resources of the L1 of

the learner in teaching the writing skills of English.

Once the child starts writing words and sentences, you find that he/

she has to tackle a host of issues relating to writing. Most importantly, the

child has to understand that there are certain rules that operate in arranging

words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into

stories and essays and lessons.

As a teacher of English, you should be acquainted with the process

of writing. You should be able to organize activities in the class in order to

make the task of developing writing skills an enjoyable activity. This unit

aims at making you aware of some of the ways by which you can teach the

pupils different writing tasks.

4.3 DEVELOPING WRITING SKILLS

The word ‘developing’ refers to a progression from one stage to another.

In this case, let us take the first year of English as the starting point for

developing writing skills and class VIII as the goal. During these eight years.

the learner progresses from a stage when he/she learns to write the letters

of the alphabet to a stage when he/she learns to write a letter, a story or a

report. During these years, the learner’s development can be noted through

a series of activities that he/she can perform. These activities are the sub-

skills of writing. For example, the learner.

1. acquires the mechanics of writing

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2. copies single words and sentences from blackboard or textbook

3. writes sentences dictated by the teacher

4. rearranges scrambled sentences

5. transforms sentences

6. supplies items in the variable columns of substition tables and structure

tables

7. rearranges sentences and paragraphs in proper sequence

8. writes parrallel passages

9. describes events from visual or written cue

10. writes different kinds of letters

11. writes reports

12. writes freely on a given topic.

The NCERT has listed a set of instructional objectives of school

subjects separately for the different stages of school education – lower

primary, upper primary, secondary and higher secondary stages. The

NCERT document had grouped all languages under the heading languages.

Here attempt has been made to make the skills exclusive to English as

second language upto the upper primary stage.

4.4 MECHANICS OF WRITING

The mechanics of writing include the learner’s ability to –

� make proper strokes with proper hand movement

� make letters of the right shape and size

� make the right spacing between letters, words and lines

� use capital letters and marks of punctuation correctly

� use the running hand fluently to distinguish between the print script.

� use appropriate spellings.

The first step in teaching handwriting to the pupils of the first year of

English at school is to help them to make proper strokes with proper hand

movement. You can do this as a blackboard activity by following these

directions :

� Draw four lines on the blackboard

� Write the letter clearly on the board

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� Describe how the letter is formed

� Say the name of the letter

� Give the sound of the letter

� Pupils report the sound

� pupils copy the letter

You can describe how the letter ‘a’ is formed by saying ‘‘draw a

semi-circle, move up, and back down again...

In order to make the letters of the right shape and size, it is always

advisable to use four-line exercise books.Show how letters a, c, e, i, m, n,

o, r, s, u, v, w are written between the blue lines. On the other hand b, d, etc

moves up to nearly touch the upper red line, g, j, y etc moves down to touch

the lower red line.

For example. look at these letters. You may draw the attention of pupils

to the differences between the printed and cursive scripts :

In order to mke the right spacing between letters, words and lines,

demonstrate by writing up a sentences of your choice on the blackboard.

While writing up a sentence, choose words that require an initial capital

letter, Ask pupils to copy that sentence on their exercise books.

At the early stages most of the writing will be simply copying. This

activity enables the pupils to practice the letters in terms of proper shapes

and sizes. It also increases the pupil’s motor skills. He masters the spelling

of words that he has learnt in speaking and reading. His knowledge of capital

letters and punctuation marks is also reinforced by practising copying

sentences. Copy book activities have their merits from this point of view.

These activities are generally graded. From writing letters, the pupils proceed

to writing words and them senteces.

4.4.1 Dictation

The great merit of dictation in the early stage of teaching

English is that it is both a teaching strategy as well as a testing

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strategy leading to remeditation. As a teaching strategy, dictation

(a) improves listening comprehension of the pupils as they have

to listen attentively to what they hear and understand it before

writing.

(b) trains the pupil to reproduce faithfully in good handwriting what

has bean listened to.

(c) fixes in their minds the division of each sentence in terms of

meaningful chunks of language, (what in phonetics is known

as tone group)

(d) gives the most valuable practice in spellings and sentence

patterns already learnt by them.

(e) provides them practice to write at a reasonable speed.

As a testing strategy dictation can be a means of identifying

the pupil’s weaknesses in writing words and sentences. The pupils

may for example find problems with.

(a) homophones, ie words with the same sounds and spelling eg.

knew and new, there and their, see and sea etc.

(b) understanding that a particular sound can be realized in a variety

of ways in letters because in English there is no one-to-one

correspondence between letters and sounds. For example the

sound /k/ can be realized as ‘c’ in cake, k in kit, cc in occur. q in

conquer ch in school. etc.

(c) the silent letters which may be a cause of spelling mistakes

eg.

‘b’ is silent in doubt, debt, tomb etc

‘d’ is silent in bridge, judge, lodge etc.

‘k’ is silent in knife, know, knowledge etc.

These problems of writing would require the teacher to plan

remedial lessons with the help of spelling rules. Whenever it comes

to rules, things tend to be very dry. Teachers should devise spelling

activities in the classroom in order to make learning spelling an

interesting activity.

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4.4.2 Spelling Rules

Most standard grammar books include a chapter on spelling

rules which give elaborate accounts relating to

doubling consonants : travel - travelled,

dropping letters : write - writing

changing letters : apply - applied

In addition to that, grammar books specify British and American

spelling forms as well.

What we can do here is to devise certain strategies for handling

spelling in the class by taking pupils’ spelling problems as basis.

You will find many pupils finding difficulty with silent letters. What

kind of remedial activity would you like to do?

You may like to discuss with your pupils that ‘k’ in front of ‘n’ is

generally silent. Ask pupils to supply words like knee where ‘k’ is

silent and write up the words on the blackboard. You may have a list

like

kneel, knew, knife, knight, knit

knob, knock, knot, know, known.

knowledge, knuckle.

As an individual activity you may ask students to write their own

words from the list.

You may conduct a similar activity with the consonant sound

‘wh’ where ‘h’ is generally silent.

The list can includes words like

whole what whether whey

which while white whim

whine whip whirl whisper

Here are some more examples that can engage your pupils in a

spelling activity

� Find words where silent e is dropped when a suffix is added :

come - coming, love - lovable

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� Ask pupils to spot the correct word eg :

decieve - deceive, seize - sieze

fourty - forty

� Display a chart in the class containing words that are generally

misspelt. Such charts should be replaced after every fortnight

� Develop in pupils the habit of consulting a dictionary

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Q 1: Teaching spelling can be made joyful by

organizing spelling games. Here is a spelling game

Here are lists of things that we read. The words are

scrambled. Unscramble each word and write it in the space provided.

(a) koob : _______________________

(b) mope : _______________________

(c) yorts : _______________________

(d) rettle : _______________________

(e) bella : _______________________

(f) tone : _______________________

(g) gasemes : _______________________

(h) etonic : _______________________

Q 2: Now construct a similar spelling game for pupils of class

IV by providing a list of animals that are scrambled.

Q 3: Give three pairs of homophones other than those given at

4.4. that create dictation problems to your pupils.

Q 4: Which of the following is not included under mechanics of

writing

A. ability to use capital letters

B. ability to write a parallel paragraph

C. ability to spell corretly

D. ability to make proper strokes while writing the letters of the

alphabet.

Ans : _______________________

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4.5 CONTROLLED WRITING

The term ‘controlled writing’ is used to refer to a writing activity that

moves beyond the mechanics of writing ie, copying, dictation and the like to

another level that lies midway to free composition. Controlled writing shows

techniques for writing activities which focus pupils’ attention on meaning

and offer them some challenge, but which are sufficiently controlled to avoid

serious error.

Controlled writing focusses the pupils attention on specific features

of the written language. Depending upon the level of the pupil, controlled

writing activities can be graded to include simple blank filling activities at an

early stage to developing a composition from a visual cue or outline. Let us

look at a few examples :

Example - 1 : Grammar

Fill in the blanks with a, an or the.

Once there was _______ beautiful garden.

________ garden had ______ apple tree _______

orange tree and _______ guava tree, In ________ garden lived

________ big giant. _________ giant did not like children to play in

________ garden ...

[Source : Marigold II p 151]

The aim of this activity is to test the pupils ability to use the articles.

Besides, the pupils knowledge of capital letters is also reinforced in this

activity

Example - 2 : Connecting sentences

Write these sentences in proper order.

1. Finally I dress up and go to school

2. Then I brush my teeth.

3. First of all, I get out of bed.

4. After this I eat my breakfast.

[Source : Marigold III p 50]

This activity leads the pupil to see the cnnection between sentences

in a piece of connected text. This activity can be done as a group work– with

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group of four pupils, each pupil trying to decide upon the sequence of the

sentence each pupil has in his/her hand.

Example 3 : Syntax

Describe an interesting train or bus journey you have taken or would

like to take. Write four sentences about your journey you can use

some of the following words and phrases :

Many people crowded tea stalls

station/bus station river

window big and small trees

seat hills

ticket loud whistle/bell

Example : I went to the railway station with my father.

...........................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................

...........................................................................................................

[source : Marigold III p 54]

This activity is more challenging. Here many elements of writing come

to the surface. The pupil is required to imagine a situation in which the words

and phrases given in the box become meaningful to him or her. This activity

too can be done as a group work activity in which groups of 4 would interact

among themselves to build up a situation of a railway station or a bus station.

The opening sentence given as an example can lead to other sentences

like ‘where did the pupil go,’ why did he go’ and what his experiences were.

Example 4 : parallel passage

Read the following passage about the daily life of Sri Anil Dutta.

Every day Sri Anil Dutta gets up at 5 am. He takes a walk for about a

kilometre to the railway station. He buys a newspaper from the station

book-stall and returns home. He takes his bath at 8 o’clock. He leaves

for office at nine thirty.

Now write a specific report on what Sri Anil Dutta did on last Monday.

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This activity can be carried out as a group work activity. Notice that

in doing this exercise, the pupils will require to change the sequence of

tense to the past form.

The activity can be extended to make each pupil to write a similar

paragraph about himself/herself or about a member of his/her family by

making necessary changes to suit the person’s morning activity.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Q 5: Say whether the following statements are true

or false

(a) Dictation is a controlled writing activity. T F

(b) Controlled writing is a practice on writing for meaning. T F

(c) Writing a story from a picture story is free composition. T F

(d) Blank-Filling with articles to complete a paragraph is not a

controlled writing activity. T F

(e) Controlled writing activities are designed with focus on

grammatical elements and meaning. T F

4.6 FREE AND CREATIVE WRITING

The development from controlled writing to free and creative writing is

a major development in the learners’ use of language. It is a shift from

grammatical competence to communicative competence. We have noticed

in 4.5 that guided or controlled writing has a high amount of focus on the

knowledge of grammar, punctuation, spelling and handwriting among other.

This focus is referred to here as ‘grammatical competence’. The shift to

‘communicative competence’ implies that most free and creative writing

activities have communication as a goal.

It is a fact that speech also has communication as goal. When we

speak, we comunicate or exchange information with another person or

persons. However, free and creative writing is much more challenging than

speaking or conversation. Can you think of some differences between

speech as communication and writing as communication? Some differences

include

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� Speech is carried out in real-time situation unlike writing.

� Knowledge shared between participants in speech consequent to

which speech is less explicit than writing.

� In speech one tends to switch language depending on situations. But

writing normally uses the standard variety of the language.

The list can be lengthened. You may try to do so.

Getting back to the point on communication in the first paragraph of

this section, it is easy to state that guided or controlled writing can also

communicate some information if the activities are organized in a slightly

meaningful way. The difference is between a meaningless drill in a substitution

table task and a meaningful drill in which the some sentences framed by

means of substitution table sctivities can be made purposeful. For example,

think of an activity in which pupils write these sentences from a substitution

table:

(a) Last Sunday, I visited my uncle

(b) _______ I visited the Zoo

(c) ––––––– I watched TV

Such sentences produced out of a substitution table can be made

meaningful when the activity is rephrased to ask a pupil what he/she did last

Sunday. Thus, there is some amount of communication even in controlled

writing though not as much as in free writing. Hence, we can refer to

controlled writing as micro-level writing because here the focus is on specific

written forms at the level of words and sentences. In the same light, we can

refer to free writing as macro level writing where the emphasis is on context

and organization.

Free writing invites the learners to express themselves by using their

own words, state a purpose for writing and often specify an audience. Let

us think of some examples.

1. Personal experiences

Often learners are required to relate in writing their personal

experiences of visiting a place of interest, a book fair etc at their own level of

proficiency.

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2. Describing a scene

Learners find enjoyment in writing about a scene that they had seen.

They will enjoy writing about a rainy day, a scene in a railway station or an

examination hall.

3. Describing persons & their qualities

Biographical writings of well-known and even lesser known persons

can always be a joyful activity. However, learners require some first hand

information.

4. Writing letters

Letters, formal and informal, are indeed a highly communicative activity.

However, learners need to know some of the features of the forms and

conventions of letter writing. Learners enjoy writing personal letters to friends,

pen-friends and relatives. Then there are tasks relating to formal letters, job

applications and so on.

5. Report writing

This is another kind of writing activity requiring a knowledge both of

form and content. Learners may be required to report on an event or an

incident. They may write about a natural disaster, an accident, a cultural

programme, a fair, and so on.

6. Story writing

Every one of us is a story-teller. We like to tell stories. Similarly we

can write the stories that we like to tell to others. It can be a deeply absorbing

activity.

These are only a few examples of free and creative writing activities.

We shall be more specific in this aspect in our subsequent sections 4.7.

where we shall talk about writing a paragraph, in 4. 8. where we shall look at

other forms of free writing and 4. 9. where we talk about the process of

writing.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Q 6: (a) Explain the term ‘grammatical

competence’.

(b) Explain the term ‘communicative comptence’.

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(c) ‘‘In speech, one tends to switch language’’. What do you mean

by ‘‘switching language’’?

(d) Can you think of some ways why people in course of their

conversation changes language or mix language.

[Hints : Observe some persons around you and note their language

behaviour. What is their mental state when they change from one

language to another.]

4.7 WRITING A PARAGRAPH

The basic unit of composition is the paragraph. It is a structural piece

of written text. In this section, we shall look at the ways by which a paragraph

is structured.

Remember that an effective paragraph has three qualities :

(a) a central controlling idea,

(b) adequate development of that idea, and

(c) coherent connections between the parts of the paragraph.

In many paragraphs it is possible to pin-point these characteristics

precisely by marking off particular words and phrases. Let us illustrate this

point.

In the box below, you will find a piece of text. However, the paragraphs

are not indicated. can you mark the paragraph?

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Q 7: Read the passage and rewrite it by making

appropriate paragraphs.

Gandhi went to South Africa for twelve months –

but he stayed for twenty-one years. Why did he do that? And what

did he do there? After he had finished his work in Pretoria, he decided

to stay in that part of the country. He stayed there for a whole year.

He wanted to help the Indians who were living there. They had many

problems. In fact, he now wanted to help all the Indians who were

living in South Africa. That had become his goal in life. Soon after he

had arrived in Pretoria, he asked the Indians there to come to a

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meeting. He stood up to speak. He spoke quietly, but he was not

nervous. He was a different man from the lawyer who could not

speak in the law court in Bombay. He spoke about his own

experiences– on the train and in other places. The Indians at the

meeting nodded. They understood him. They had also had

experiences like this.

Donn Byrne : A Fight without weapons

Now you may compare your written work with the paragraphing as

done by Donn Byrne given at 4. 12 (Answers to check your progress) You

may like to ask yourself what had actually prompted you to make the

paragraph divisions. Obviously, you know that every paragraph has a central

controlling idea which is realized through a topic sentence. Let us get back

now to the notion of the topic sentence.

4.7.1 Topic Sentence

The topic sentences is sentence in a paragraph that contains

a central controlling idea. A paragraph consists of more than one

sentence organized in such a way that the ideas smoothly glide

from one sentence to another. At the same time, you will discover

that among the sentences in a paragraph. there is only one sentence

that carries the central controlling idea. This sentence is the topic

sentence. The writer often takes the liberty to place his/her topic

sentence either at the beginning or at the middle or even at the end

depending upon his point of focus in developing the idea. Read the

following paragraph :

August 6, 1945 – the day the atomic bomb was dropped on

Hiroshima – brought home to all us in dramatic fashion the

significance of science on human life. The impact of the bomb

has left us stunned and confused. Certainly, we laymen are

frightened by science as we never were before. And certainly,

too, we are bewildered by the power which science has suddenly

placed in our laps – bewildered and humbled by our realization

on how unequipped we are, in terms of ethics, law, and

government, to know how to use it.

Raymond Fordick : ‘‘A Layman Looks at Science

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The central controlling idea of this paragraph is that there

has dawned upon humans the terrible realization on the significence

of science on human life. This idea is expressed in the first sentence

of the paragraph. Hence, this sentence is the topic sentence of the

paragraph. This is the test of the structure of a paragraph. You may

try this test yourself or even engage your students to do so by giving

them sample well-written paragraphs requiring them to choose the

topic sentence.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Q 8: Read the following paragraph and identify

the topic sentence.

Once upon a time there was a man who went around selling

small rattraps of wire. He made them himself at odd moments from

the materials he got by begging in the stores or in the big farms. But

even so, the business was not especially profitable, so he had to

resort to both begging and petty thievery to keep body and soul

together. Even so, his clothes were in rags, his cheeks were sunken

and hunger gleamed in his eyes.

Selma Logerlof : ‘‘The Rattrap’’

4.7.2 Cohesion and Choerence

What is meant by ‘cohesion’? Cohesion is the grammatical

and/or lexical relationship that exists between the different elements

of a piece of text in composition. This may be the relationship between

different sentences or between different parts of a sentence in the

paragraph. To illustrate this concept let us take the paragraph given

in the box at 4.7.1. We discovered that the first sentence of the

paragraph is the topic sentence. The other sentences contribute to

the topic sentence by developing a sequence of related ideas. Thus,

the phrase ‘the bomb’ refers back to ‘the atomic bomb’ in the first

sentence and refers forward to ‘science’ in the following two

sentences thereby producing a cohesive structure of the paragraph.

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Thus, cohesion refers to the interrelation of the sentences in the

paragraph. This interrelation can take place at the level of grammar

and at the level of words.

The other term is coherence. We can say that a paragraph is coherent

when the relationship between parts are clear, smooth and logical. The reader

must be able to move easily from one sentence to the next, seeing their

connection to one another and to the paragraph’s central idea. There are

two commonly used ways to achieve this smooth flow of thought:

(1) a logical sequence of ideas, and

(2) use of functional transitional devices such as key words, repetition,

paralled structure and transitional signals.

Let us examine the paragraph in the box at 4.7.1 from these points of

view.

(1) Logical sequence of ideas

The expression implies that the thought pattern of the entire paragraph

must be clear in itself. We can see that the ideas are logically presented.

The basic idea contained in the topic sentence is ‘‘the significance of science

on human life. This idea is connected with ‘‘stunned and confused’’–

‘‘frightened... as we never were before’’– ‘‘be wildered’’–‘‘bewildered and

humbled’’. These phrases picked up from different sentences in the

paragraph illustrate the logical sequence of ideas brought out in the

paragraph.

(2) Use of functional transitional devices

Functional transitional devices contribute towards coherence of a

passage by sharing the relationship between the elements (words, phrases,

clauses and sentences) and the construction of the passage. These devices

show how the elements are connected. They are related to unity.

You will find that a paragraph that is coherent employs certain devices

for transition from one sentence to another. The passage that we had

examined earlier at 4.7.1. has coherence. There is a smooth transition of

ideas. An attempt is made to represent this transition with arrows.

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August 6, 1945 ... the atomic bomb

the impact of the bomb

certainly – and certainly too

bewildered bewildered and humbled

Note how the atomic bomb glides to the impact of the bomb which

glides on to certainly and moves on to and certainity too, leaving us

bewildered, bewildered and humbled. What teachers must take note of is

that there must be certain transition of ideas with devices such as key words

(atomic bomb), repititions (certainly and certainly too), parallel structures

(certainly, we laymen and certainly too) etc that signal the transition in

the passage.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Q 9: Write a paragraph on : ‘‘The Purpose of

life’’.

Note : (a) Ensure that the passage is cohesive in structure.

(b) Try to confine your paragraph to 60 words.

4.8 LETTER WRITING

Letter writing is an important writing activity in our school curriculum.

Have you ever thought why such importance is given to letter writing? At the

upper primary level ‘letter writing’ is one of the very few free writing activities

that learners have to perform. Two reasons for this may be :

(a) Letter writing supports real-life and purposeful writing activity and

(b) It helps learners to understand the full meaning of what communication

for interactional purposes and communicative competence entail.

Communicative competence is the ability to use a language socially

in a given context for meaningful purposes. We use the language to

communicate something in the form of a letter to someone. It may be a

formal letter or an informal letter. While formal letters are official, informal

letters are personal. In our personal letters we communicate our ideas, our

feeling and so on. A personal letter is an example of the creative use of

language in an acceptable format.

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This section looks at strategies for teaching letter writing at the upper

primary level. Obviously, most prescribed textbooks and grammar books

contain examples of different types of letters. But these are ‘products’ of a

letter writing activity. What we as teachers must concern ourselves more

than the ‘‘product’’ is the proces of letter writing. The learners must be made

to feel the joy of writing a letter to someone rather than engaging himself in

memorizing the letters from grammar books with the exam question papers

in mind.

Most teachers will have the classroom experience that a large section

of their pupils in a given class would find writing freely on their own an

extremely challenging task. Hence it is proposed that written work in the

classroom must stress an the process more than the product.

Longer writing tasks are best done as homework; this saves time in

class and allows learners to spend as long as they need on them. (Leo

Jones 2010) But writing tasks especially letter writing tasks can be prepared

by working together, brainstorming ideas, oganizing your thoughts, and

making notes. In other words, the process part can be dealt with in the

classroom.

Let us suppose, you are teaching writing personal letters to learners

of the upper primary level. Organize the class into groups of 8 pupils. (In our

schools, about 4/5 pupils sit on a bench. By asking one bench to turn around

and with certain adjustments you can make 5/6 groups in the class)

Ask each group to provide some purposes of writing letters. Write

the responses on the blackboard. You may have on the blackboard such a

list.

(a) informing someone about something.

(b) inviting someone

(c) inquiring about something

(d) complaining to someone about something

(e) congratulating someone on some achievement

(f) expressing sympathy to someone

(g) expressing feeling about something to somebody etc.

Follow up the discussion with responses on the persons to whom

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your pupils will write letters. They could be (a) friends, (b) relatives, (c) pen-

friends and so on.

Now tell your groups that each group will receive a letter from a

friend. But the letter is in strips : each strip of paper containing only one little

bit of information. Ask the group leader of the group to distribute one strip of

paper each to each member of the group. The pupils now will exchange

information on the contents of the strips of paper and try to organize the

content in the form of a letter. They can even write up the letter so that at the

end of the activity, someone in the group can read out the letter to the class.

However, just in case they may need some brushing up of the

structure of the letter, you can invite learners to come to the blackboard to

identify the space for different parts of the structure of a personal letter. This

will help them to notice the structure of a letter in sharp focus. Here are

some of the points to be discovered :

� Who is writing the letter? Where do you put the writer’s address?

(learner will mark the space on the blackboard)

� Where do you put the date? (learner shows the space)

� Who is the letter for? How do you address the person?

� Where do you put th closing/complementary closing remark?

� How do you conclude?

� If you are to write the address of the person you are writing to, where

is the space for writing the address?

Having got the format of the letter out of the way, you may now ask

learners to engage themselves with the strips of paper. In a haphazard form,

these strips will appear like this.

1. Your loving friend,

Neena

2. My dear Sweta,

3.My parents have also asked me to invite you to our house, We

can have a nice time together.

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4. 18, Rajgarh Road

Chandmari,

Guwahati-3

5. I have not heard from you for a long time, I am sure you must be

busy with your studies since the examination is so close by. All

my best wishes for the examination

6. Convey my regards to your parents and love to your sister Buli.

7. After the examination is over, why don’t you make a plan to visit

us? It will be a pleasant break for you to spend some time with

us.

8. To : Miss Sweta Dutta,

Amolapatty

Dibrugarh

Assam.

9. There are so many things you can see when you are in the city.

The Kalakhetra is one place you will surely enjoy. You haven’t

seen our Zoo either. The list is endless. Do come over.

10. 16th October 2012

About the body of the letter, the cohesive structure that we had

discovered in the section on paragraph writing can be helpful. After all, here

too the logical development of ideas operates. You may discuss with the

learners why a particular chunk will come before another chunk and so on.

Identify the linkers that are used in the letter.

In another letter writing class use the completed letter from Neena to

Sweta as the springboard for a classroom discussion. Ask some

comprehension questions on where Neena lives, where Sweta lives, how

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many sisters does Sweta have etc. with the objective of leading the learners.

repeatedly to the form and content of the letter. Now once again in group

work activities let the learners to work out the reply to this letter. One group

may even find some valid excuses for not visiting Guwahati but on the contrary

asking her friend instead to visit them at Dibrugarh.

As stated earlier, letter writing activities at the upper primary level

are largely personal letters. However, there is the scope for practising a few

formal letters such as the following.

� Letters to the Heads of Institution praying for leave of absence.

� Letters to the Head of Institution on allowing the class to visit the World

Environment Day programme held in the city. etc.

You may write up a formal letter on the blackboard and then lead the

class to a group discussion the distinctive features of formal and informal

letters in terms of (a) heading (b) salutation. (c) body of the letter (d)

complementary close and (e) style of language used. Here is a sample

formal letter.

To :The Headmistress,

DDB Girls’ High School,

Golaghat.

Dated, Golaghat, the 1st June 2013

Sub : Prayer for leave of absence.

Madam,

I have the honour to inform you that I could not attend to my

class on the 28th and 29th May 2013 because I was suffering from

high fever. A medical certificate to that effect is enclosed herewith

for your kind consideration.

I hope you will kindly grant my leave of absence for these two

days.

Your obedient pupil,

Barsha Dutta,

Roll No. 32

Class VII (A)

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4.9 MESSAGES AND NOTICES

Message writing and notice writing are two of the several writing

activities that learners practise in the classroom. Let’s first of all discuss

the term message. A message is an oral or a written piece of brief information

meant for a particular person. Here we shall discuss written messages and

lead our learners to understand the form and content of such messages.

You may like to discuss with your pupils the situations in which message

writing and message receiving appear to be appropriate.

Situation 1

An official in a workplace is not present at his desk at a given point of

time when the boss urgently needs him. The boss instructs his/her PA to

leave a message at his desk asking him to see the boss immediately.

Situation 2

A student, let’s say Rajiv, is visiting his friends Ratul to borrow a book

which he needs. On finding Ratul absent, he leaves a message with his

mother requesting him to carry that book to school the next day so that he

could borrow it.

Situation 3

Anita rings up Adity in connection with the science project. But on

finding her absent, Anita leaves a message with Adity’s mother asking her

to take with her the project to Bratati Ma’am.

You can think of some incidents or anecdotes to present situations for

message writing to your pupils. One such anecdote relates to Khuswant

Singh during the time when he was working as Information Officer in the

staff of Krishna Menon who was then the Indian High Commissioner in Britain.

It so happend that Krishna Menon was on bad terms with Sudhir Ghosh the

PRO who was Khuswant Singh’s immediate boss. Once when Krishna Menon

found Mr. Ghosh absent, he lost his temper and instructed Khuswant Singh :

‘‘Tell Ghosh to see me the moment he comes in. Leave a note on his table.’’

We take this anecdote to ponder over the message that Khuswant

Singh might have written to his boss Sudhir Ghosh. In all probability, the

message might have been something like this :

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15th Sept

9.30 am

Sir,

HE, the Indian High Comm. would like to see you immediately on

your arrival. He had asked me to leave this message at your desk.

K. Singh

Inf. Offr.

The above message throws light on a number of aspects of message

writing. Here are a few of them.

1. A message should begin with a brief salutation. Since Sudhir Ghosh

was Singh’s boss, obviously he would address him as ‘Sir’. ‘Dear Sir

is not used in in-house official notes or file notes. However beyond

officialese the salutations are similar to those in personal letters.’

2. There is usually no address on the message slip

3. Only relevant information is written in plain and clear language. Mutually

understood abbreviations and clippings are acceptable. Ghosh will

know that HE stands for his Excallency, Similarly he will know the

clipped forms ‘comm’, ‘Inf offr’ too.

4. Do not add your own comments on the message

5. Write the message in indirect speech

6. Put your name at the end. Since, the above message was official, the

rank was also given in abbreviation.

7. Time and date of the message must be mentioned.

Teachers will practice with pupils the skill of message writing by

using imaginary telephonic conversation in which the caller will find the

wanted person absent and therefore has to leave a message.

Now, let’s come to the other concept of this section : Notice writing.

Notice refers to a piece of news on something about to happen or something

that had happened. A notice can be used to give information to a segment

of people so as to disseminate the required information. Let us take a sample

notice writing sctivity.

Imagine, Ranjeet/Ranjeeta Dutta of class VIII of Adarsha High School,

Guwahati-21 is also the student editor of the school magazine Visions.

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Imagine yourself as Ranjeet/Ranjeeta Dutta and write a notice for the school

Notice Board inviting articles, stories and poems for publication in Vision to

be submitted by 18th June 2013.

Adarsha High School

Guwahati-21

NOTICE

Articles for School Magazine

18th May, 2013

Articles, stories, poems and jokes are invited from students for

publication in the school magazine Visions. Entries must be original

and written legibly on one side of the paper. Entries must reach the

undersigned by 18th June.

Ranjeeta Dutta

Student Editor

You may tell the class these points about a notice.

(a) A notice is always written in the third person,

(b) It should have a heading.

(c) It should be brief and precise

(d) It should give all the required information, in simple language.

(e) The name and designation of the issuing person is to be mentioned.

(f) It should have a date and placed on the top right hand side just below

the subject.

CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Q 10: Here is a notice writing task that you can

use in your class. Try to work it out on your own.

Anish Gogoi/Anisha Gogoi of Lakhimpur. High

School, Lakhimpur, is the class captain of class VIII. The

Headmistress had asked him/her to put up a notice on nthe

notice board inviting names for participating in an inter-class quiz

competition to be held on the following Monday, the 11th June.

Write the notice for Anish/Anisha.

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Q 11: The following is a telephone conversation between Dipa and

Anita’s mother.

Dipa : Hello! I am Dipa, Anita’s friend.

Anita’s mother : Hello Dipa!

Dipa : Can I talk to Anita please?

A’s mother : I’m afraid, she’s not at home. woud you like me

to convey a message?

Dipa : Yes, could you inform her that the special class

on science scheduled for tomorrow morning,

has been re-scheduled to 5 o’clock in the

afternoon.

A’s mother : I’ll convey the message.

Dipa : Thanks Auntie, Bye!

Now write the message for Anita’s mother in about 50 words, in a

box.

4.10 WRITING AS PROCESS

The word ‘process’ in the present context, contrasts with the word

‘product’. One of the innovations in teaching methology of writing is the shift

from product to process. You may like to know what this shift implies.

When we look at a writing task in terms of ‘product’ we are concered

with the following behavioural outcomes identified in the syllabus of NCERT

as per NCF 2005.

At the end of this stage (VI – VIII) learners will be able to do the

following :

Write simple message, invitations, short paragraphs, letters etc.

(page 66 - 67)

The focus is on the final product – the message, the letter etc. The

shift to process can be explained by using the metapher of weaving. The

process of writing can be compared to weaving.

Imagine the process involved in a creative writing activity, for example,

a story, when we ‘‘weave’’ stories, one thread may be our personal life,

another thread may be our imagination, other threads may come from our

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social experiences and how they effect us in some way or the other. In

addition, writing as weaving may be realized when we discover that just as

one thread in a fabric intertwines with another, one word in a sentence

naturally leads to another, one sentence in a paragraph leads to paragraph

leads to another and one paragraph in a composition leads to another.

However, what is striking about the words and phrases in a piece of

composition (the word ‘text’ is better) is that at each level, there are certain

reference features to help the reader to recall the past and participate the

future. Besides the ideas are presented in such a way that one idea is related

to the other. Such a provision of reference features contribute to the ‘textuality’

underlying a piece of text.

What does the word ‘textuality’ mean? It is used here to mean textness

i.e. the various features that contribute towards cohesion and coherence

underlying a piece of text. Writing as process takes into account this notion

of textness. You may lead your learners to discover this textness by observing

a piece of text closely. Here is a paragraph from arigold reader Book IV

(page 81)

It was the summer of 1880. A healthy baby girl was born in a

small town in Alabama. Her parents loved her dearly and named her

Helen Keller. But one day, the baby become ill and day after day her

fever stayed high. Everyone in the family tried to help her to get better.

But all they could say was, ‘‘There is nothing more we can do, The

baby may not live.''

What you see inside the box is the product. The process that was

involved in developing the ideas into this complete passage can be explained

by using the some terms that we had used for reading ie pre-writing, while

writing and post writing.

Pre-writing : This is the stage when the writer makes a mental plan.

He/she had already gathered the necessary information on the subject and

now she has made the plan to present her ideas in a cohesive way. She

uses a narrative style building up the story with a seasonal background (the

summer of 1880).

While writing : This is the stage when the writer puts his/her thoughts

Writing Unit 4


into appropriate language – in other words, finding the right words and

sentences to express her idea. At this stage she makes her first draft. In

doing so, she may have written some sentences that were dull or

grammatically unecceptable.

Post writing : At this stage, the writer will try to weed out the language

errors, brush up the language and make the text more cohesive. She will try

to find out critically how one sentence leads to another. She notes the

expression ‘‘a healthy baby girl’’ in sentence 3 and ‘‘the baby’’ in sentence 4

and ‘‘her’’ in sentence 5 and again ‘‘the baby’’ in sentence 7. She notes how

repeated forms of ‘‘a healthy baby girl’’ bind the sentences together into a

unified piece of text.

4.11 LET US SUM UP

� Writing is a skill that needs to be developed in the learner in a graded

way begining with the mechanics of writing.

� The learners at the early stage of writing is engaged in the micro level

activities like spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc and gradually

moves on to the structure of the paragraph.

� The learner now moves on to guided writing or controlled writing

designed in a graded way ranging from blank filling tasks to writing

parallel paragraphs.

� At the next stage the learner moves on to free composition with a

focus on a variety of writing activities.

� Learners are however to be made aware of the process more than

the product and therefore there is a focus on the structure of the

paragraph with a gradual shift to passages requiring more than one

paragraph – letter writing for example. But small functional writing tasks

like notice and message writing are never lost sight of. The focus is

sharpened in this unit on the process of writing.

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4.12 FURTHER READING

1) Raimer, Ann (1983) Techniques in Teaching Writing OUP.

4.13 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR

PROGRESS

Ans to Q No 1: (a) book (b) poem (c) story

(d) letter (e) label (f) note

(g) message (h) notice

Ans to Q No 2: (a) god (b) woe (c) kenomy

(d) reab (e) seroh (f) fubloaf

(Answer : dog, cow, monkey, bear, horse, buffalo)

Ans to Q No 3: pain – pane, mane – main

reign – rain

(any other pairs will do)

Ans to Q No 4: B

Ans to Q No 5: (a) False (b) True (c) False

(d) False (e) True

Ans to Q No 6: (a) Grammatical competence is the knowledge of grammar,

punctuation, spelling etc acquired by a learner.

(b) Communicative competence is the competence to use language

with social communication as one of its goals.

(c) Switching language means changing from one language to another

in course of a conversation. For example, a person may begin

speaking in English but soon he changes to another language.

(d) Often familiarity or sense of solidarity may lead a person who began

speaking in English to shift to an Indian language. Again when a

Writing Unit 4


person is agitated or annoyed, he is likely to shift from speaking

his mother tongue to speaking English.

Ans to Q No 7:

Para 1 : Gandhi went .......... do there ?

2 : After he ........ problems

3 : In fact ........ in life

4 : Soon after ........ in Bombay

5 : He spoke ........ like this.

Ans to Q No 8:

Topic sentence : The last sentence on the paragraph.

Ans to Q No 9: The Purpose of life

Life becomes meaningful when we have a purpose in life. Life is worth

living when we live each day with a goal in mind. It is not enough to

survive or to prolong our existence in this world. We must learn to

improve the quality of our lives. This will provide meaning to our

otherwise meaningless existence.

Ans to Q No 10:

Lakhimpur High School

Lakhimpur

NOTICE

Names for participation in quiz

22nd May 2013

An inter-class quiz competition is going to be held on 11th June 2013

in our school. Interested students are requested to submit their names

to the undersigned by 1st June 2013.

Anisha Gogoi

Class Captain

Class VIII

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Ans to Q No 11:

2nd June 2013

Ani,

Dipa rang up at 4 pm to inform you that the special class on science

scheduled for tommorow, has been re-scheduled to 5 o’clock in the

afternoon.

Mom

4.14 MODEL QUESTIONS

Q 1: Design a spelling test using multiple choice format (at least 5 words)

Q 2: Construct a punctuation task for pupils of class VI.

Q 3: Write a parallel paragraph activing on the life of a person. (You will

write a biographical account based on which learners will write an

account of another person (65 words)

Q 4: Write a composition on the role of mobile phones.To it a boon or bone?

(200 words)

Q 5: Write an essay on protection of the environment.

*** ***** ***

Documents

Writing Unit 4 UNIT 4: WRITING - KKHSOU · 4.3 Developing writing skills 4.4 Mechanics of writing 4.4.1 Dictation ... that these readers aim at teaching all the four skills – listening,