1 Writing skills and coherence

Writing skills and coherence Gadea, Gabriela Micaela Instituto Privado Carlos Linneo

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Abstract This researchs topic involves the difficulties of learning writing skills and connecting sentences properly. The research was conducted in a class of Secondary school with 20 students of an average age of about 17 years old. The data recollection device was an anonymous survey with semi-structured questions answered by the same students. The aim was to identify why students have problems in the skill mentioned and why it is so difficult for them to develop coherent pieces of writing. Keywords: writing skills, competence, coherent, difficulty.

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Main body Literacy During hundreds of years, philosophers were thought to be literate because they could manipulate a set of discrete, valued-free technical skills which including decoding and encoding meanings, manipulating writing tool, perceiving shape-sound correspondences (Hyland; 2002). In modern times, however, this view started to change. Our parents were pointed as literate if they were capable of reading and writing; they were symbols of power and they could give you new opportunities in the working life. Nowadays, we could also perceive some changes in this area, but they are always related to social contexts. This means that if people could read or write in a certain occasion or purpose, they would be more prestigious than others. And, apart from that, there are other differences that emerge from the time; in these days, it is certainly true that to be deprived of the opportunity to write is to be excluded from a wide range of social roles, which the majority of people in industrialized socialites associate with power and prestige (Tribble; 1996) The use of technological devices is very common today, where almost everybody could have contact with a computer and the internet; while in the Christian world, the literate people only had their knowledge of Latin, a piece of paper and a pen. It is said that in different moments of life, humans could have different literacies, depending on the importance that we give to our writings or the purpose of it. For example, we would have to write an essay or a short story if we are at university; or only in a diary for organizing events if we work in a company. Writing This skill represents any language through the use of a set of signs or symbols known as the writing system. It began in ancient times as result of political expansion which needed a reliable way of transmitting information, maintaining financial accounts, keeping historical records, among others. And, in these cases, it replaced the spoken language which was not useful because retelling could be a synonym of forgetfulness.

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And as regards teaching, it appears as a clear topic for debates: teachers should teach writing because and it is so important to teach... Writing represents a unique mode of learning not merely valuable, not merely special, but unique (Jane Emig; 1977), and this is connected with the definition of language as a process-production, which could be achieved only by learning strategies. Some contemporary psychologies such as Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner did researches into this skill, and they concluded that in the analysis or in the synthesis of any text, writing plays a heuristic role; that is to say, it is based on discovering and experiencing things ourselves. There are a great number of approaches that teachers could follow in the classroom. First, it is important to determine whether they are going to focus on the process or the product. Many authors convey that the best idea is to pay more attention to the end product. Opposing to that, some educators advocate a process approach to writing, where the procedure of putting together all the pieces of the writing is considered. In this case, there is a highlight of all the stages that have a piece of writing, where re-writingre-vision seeing with new eyes has a central role to play in the act of creating text (Ron White and Valerie Arndt; 1991). Taking into account these words, it is crucial to see writing as a wheel, where writers move both around the circumference of the wheel and across the spokes (Jeremy Harmer; fourth edition). Sometimes, almost with the final version ready, we return and re-visit the stages.

Planning

Drafting

Final version

Editing
FIGURE 1

5 Writing skills and coherence Planning: it is the time when we ought to think about the topic that you are going to write; and start collecting material about it, reading books, magazines, researching on the internet. Then, brainstorm ideas emerge, creating maps, webs, tables with opposing ideas, etc. (depending on the piece on writing that you are going to create) Drafting: with all the material that you have, you start writing a draft. Editing: read aloud; share with partners; check your grammar, spelling, use of tenses. Make changes if it is necessary. Final version

Considering this view, we have to pay attention that it could take a lot of time doing all these stages: time to collect ideas, time to make maps, time to draft a piece of writing, time to revise it with the teachers help, and so on. Apart from that, they involve discussions, more researchers, new ideas, etc. As it was mentioned, writing refers to a productive skill that needs from reading and listening in order to develop it successfully. You do not only need to read and listen extracts or books for doing an essay, for example. Producing a coherent, fluent, extended piece of writing is probably the most difficult thing that we ought to do among our lives. The first feature is perhaps the most controversial. There were some studies in San Diego State University, which explains the difficulties of students in writing, particularly in coherence; apparently the word that most appear in corrections is incoherence. Perhaps, students do not develop their writing skills because they do not know how to connect the parts in a clear and reasonable way. Having said our hypothesis, there will be support by different theories. The first explains that the quality or success in a text depends mostly on factors outside it: we think that writing quality is in part defined as the fit of a particular text to its context, which include such factors as the writer`s purpose, the discursive medium, and the audience s knowledge of an interest in the subject (Stephen Witte and Lester Faigley; 1981). To achieve this success we need a coherent writing, which allows the text to be understood in a real world setting, and the purpose of it is particularly important; a simple example will illustrate this point: Balls are used in many sports. Most balls are spheres, but a football is an ellipsoid The mayor problem with these sentences has to do with lack of coherence and that it does not have a clear purpose; it seems that this short paragraph does not meet with the needs of any audience. The idea is to link everything in the text to create meaning for the reader.

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Although coherence is crucial to effective writing, it is often considered an abstract, elusive, and controversial concept that is difficult to teach and difficult to learn (Connor 1990; Connor and Johns; 1990); an example could be that it is common to find that students of foreign languages concentrate on sentences rather than in the whole discourse The majority of ESL/EFL students feel that their only sense of security comes from what they have learned about grammar (Leki; 1996) and that grammar is the only tool they can use in writing English essays (Silva; 1992). There are five factors that we may consider when we speak about coherence in writing: A macrostructure that provides a pattern characteristic and appropriate to its

communicative purpose (Hoey, 1983; Martin and Rothery, 1986): one of the main purposes of a macrostructure is to make readers and writers understand the relation between sentences in a text. Another idea is to specify the purposes of each writing; for example, when the writer`s purpose is to make a for and against essay, it is useful to recognize that it should have two different topics stated by different authors and/or approaches. An information structure that guides the reader in understanding how information is organized and how the topic of text is developed (Danes, 1974; Firbas 1986): the writer should know how to use the information structure; for example, generally the old information is given before the new one. Connectivity of the underlying content evidenced by relations between

propositions (Kintsch and Van Dijk; 1978): this relation is what establishes if the text is coherent or not. The following example is stated by Icy lee: Free transport would be a good thing for the city`s shop and businesses, it is a preposition with any support; so the writer could add one as in Free transport would be a good thing for the city`s shop and businesses, because bus and underground users would have more money available to spend on both necessities and luxuries. Connectivity of the surface text evidenced by the presence of cohesive devices (Halliday and Hasan; 1976): the cohesive devises make a connection between sentences and phrases through the use of references (anaphoric, cataphoric, endophoric and exophoric), conjunctions (but, also, however), repetition, parallelism, synonyms, etc. Appropriate metadiscourse features (Van Kopple, 1985; Crismore, Markkanen

and Steffensen, 1993). This feature of coherence helps writers to organize and interpret

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information, using linkers (and, but), sequencers (firstly, finally) and certainty markers (no doubt, certainty) According to Halliday and Hasal, while you deal with coherence you should take into account the writing quality and it depends mostly on factors outside the text: exophoric, or outside-texts, references. It is necessary to cope with those factors, which may include the writers purpose and the context, during the class development. The audience previous knowledge and their preferences are also important; everything is connected and will interfere in the childrens learning. On the other hand, there are some Linguistics such as Joseph Grimes that limit coherence as an explicit mechanism in the text, arguing that students only need to deal with vocabulary and grammar for producing a piece of writing. Final words It is crucial that both students and teachers should understand that the writing process could be really difficult if coherence is taking as an explicit mechanism. They would need other factors such as the context and the topics may be chosen as result of considering the writers and audience`s previous knowledge of that subject. Data Recollection Device The data collection device will be make in a class of twenty students (3er year at the secondary school) Interviews: Students will be given a semi-structured set of questions to find out their opinion as regards their problems / difficulties writng. It will be made anonymously so they can express what they actually think without any type of pressure. Re-order sentences: students will have to re-order sentences taken from a piece of writing, in order to have a coherent paragraph. Letter of complaint: students will be asked to write an outline about a letter of complaint given by the teacher. They may pay attention to: situation, problem, solution and evaluation

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Model of interview Eleg una de las siguientes opciones: 1. Cmo te sents cuando tens que hacer un escrito en la escuela? a. Cmodo b. Inseguro c. Contento d. Otro 2. Cres que escribir es a. Fcil b. Ni fcil ni difcil c. Difcil d. Otro 3. Es ms fcil escribir sobre un tema establecido por el profesor, o uno que vos elegs? a. Uno que yo elijo b. Uno que el profesor propone 4. Qu es lo que ms te cuesta cuando escribs? a. Uso del vocabulario b. Conectar oraciones c. Estructuras gramaticales d. Otro 5. Cundo el profesor te entrega las correcciones qu errores son ms frecuentes en tus escritos? a. Gramatical b. Palabras mal escritas c. Puntuacin d. Palabra incorrecta e. Conectores f. El docente no entiende el propsito de tu escrito g. otro

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Model of article Re-order the sentences so the make sense: 1. I am writing to inquire if it would be possible for you to include this information as a simple correction in the next issue. 2. I was glad to see my article called Advertising Management Service, which appeared in the September issue of your newsletter. 3. This would give my company credit for encouraging the use of the techniques described in the article and for allowing me to publish them. 4. However, my affiliation with this company as their advertising manager was omitted. Model of letter of complaint Read the following letter of complaint and write its outline using the notes below Dear sir: Recently, I have noticed a marked increase in the number of dogs kept by families on my estate. I have lived on a public housing estate for more than 10 years. Tenants living on the estate are not allowed to keep dogs. However, I find the quality of management of my estate deteriorating. The rules are there for a reason. The dogs make the estate dirty and they bark at night, keeping residents awake. However, in spite of the ban on dogs, the management has done nothing about the problem. I hope that the estate officer will take some action. Yours faithfully, Peter Smith Situation: Problem: Solution: Evaluation:

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Results of interviews Question 1 Question 2

Question 3

Question 4

Question 5

It is important to identify why the students feel insecure while writing. Perhaps, this is because most of them have problems with coherence and with connecting ideas. And these are their most frequent errors. As result of these problems, some of the learners find it difficult to produce a piece of work. During the interview, some of them told me that depending on what kind of writing they are asked to make, they feel happy or frustrated. And this answer was analyzed with their teacher, having the conclusion that it depends

11 Writing skills and coherence mostly on the context. Why? Because they like writing e-mails and informal letter, some of them feel unnecessary to write a letter of complaint or an essay. It is important to pay attention to the question that says if they prefer to write about a given topic or not. The 99% of them chose letter B because they like writing by their own, choosing topics the like and investigating about topics in context. It was seen in the re-ordering sentences exercise that the students have difficulties in dealing with connecting ideas because the 80% of them could not notice that the word however is for contrasting sentences. Moreover, it is a difficulty for the teenagers to deal with references. The 63% of them were not able to identify which was this referring to. But at least, they know how to start the paragraph. By reading the letter of complaint and writing the outline, the 78% of the students productions have a good amount of progress if we relate this with the re-ordering sentences. They could understand the situation and notice which were the problems and solutions. These are good results because they do not know all the vocabulary used but, they used the guessing technique. Apart from that, the context played an important role because actually had some problems in their neighborhood related to dogs.

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References Witte, Stephen. Coherence, Cohesion and Writing Quality (1981) Lee, Icy. Helping students develop coherence in writing (2000) Emig, Jane. Writing as a mode of learning (1977) San Diego University. how to write (1986) Jeremy, Harmer. The practice of English Language Teaching.4th edition (2002)