UNIT 6: WRITTEN COMMUNICATION. TYPES OF WRITTEN TEXTS.

STRUCTURE AND FORMAL

1. INTRODUCTION

2. WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

3. TYPES OFWRITTEN TEXTS

4. COMPONENTS GOVERNING WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

5. FREQUENT WRITING TASKS: READINGAND WRITING IN THE CLASSROOM

6. CONCLUSIONS

7. CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS

1. INTRODUCTION

According to Canale (1983), “Communication is understood… as the exchange and negotiation of

Research in cultural anthropology (Crystal 1985) has shown that the origins of communication are to be
found in the very early stages of life when there was a need for animals and humans to communicate adequately for
their purposes, in order to express their feelings, attitudes and core activities of everyday life, such as fighting,
hunting, eating, or breeding among others. However, even the most primitive cultures had a constant need to express
their ideas by other means than gutural sounds and body movements as animals did. Concerning humans, their
constant preoccupation was how to turn thoughts into words. Hence, before language was developed, non-verbal
codes were used to convey information by means of symbols which were presented, first, by means of pictorial art,
and further in time, by writing.

Language, then, is a highly elaborated signaling system with particular design features. It is worth noting,
then, the distinction between human and animal systems as they produce and express their intention in a different
way. Yet, the most important feature of human language that differs from animal systems’ is to be endowed with an
auditory vocal channel which allowed humans to develop and improve language in further stages. Besides, the
possibility of a traditional transmission plays an important role when language is handed down from one generation
to another by a process of teaching and learning.

Therefore, we may establish a distinction in terms of types of communication, where we distinguish mainly
two, thus verbal and non-verbal codes.

1. Verbal: Verbal communication is the use of language to transfer information through speaking or sign
language. Verbal communication can also be:
- Oral: it is the exchange of information, ideas, and feelings between two or more people through word of mouth.

- Written: Written communication is the act of writing, typing or printing symbols like letters and numbers to
convey information

2. Non-verbal: non verbal communication is the use of body language, gestures and facial expressions to
convey information to others. It can be used both intentionally and unintentionally.

One of the most important subtypes of nonverbal communication is visual communication. Visual communication is
transmission of information by means of visual language (images, signs, etc.) on the one hand, and on the other hand
– by means of visual perception (organs of vision, perception).

Both verbal and non-verbal communication can also be subdivided between:

• Face-to-face communication: may be defined as communication when the communicator transmits his
message in person to the receiver in person verbally and even non-verbally. It allows for a better exchange of
information since both speaker and listener are able to see and interpret body language and facial
expressions.

• Distance communication: Any interpersonal communication in which the physical gap between the
participants is beyond the physiological limits of unaided human perception.

We shall focus here on written systems, which are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in
that one must usually understand something of the associated language in order to successfully read and comprehend the text.
This contrasts with other possible symbolic systems such as signs, painting, maps, and mathematics, which do not necessarily
depend upon prior knowledge of a given language in order to extract their meaning.

Every human community possesses language, a feature regarded by many as an innate and defining condition of
humankind. However, the development and adoption of writing systems has occurred only sporadically. Once established,
writing systems are on the whole modified more slowly than their spoken counterparts, and often preserve features and
expressions which are no longer current in the discourse of the speech community. The great benefit conferred by writing
systems is their ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed in a language, which can be retrieved
independently of the initial act of formulation.

All writing systems require:

1. a set of defined base elements or symbols (termed characters or graphemes);

2. a set of rules and conventions understood and shared by a community, which arbitrarily assign meaning to the base
elements, their ordering, and relations to one another;

3. a language (generally a spoken language) whose constructions are represented and able to be recalled by the interpretation
of these elements and rules;

4. some physical means of distinctly representing the symbols by application to a permanent or semi-permanent medium,
so that they may be interpreted (usually visually, but tactile systems have also been devised).
2. WRITTEN COMMUNICAITION

2.1. Nature of reading communication: reading and writing

Written communication, like any other kind of communication, is a two-way process between writer and reader.
Written communication refers both to the receptive aspect of written language which is reading, and the productive
aspect which is the writing process itself. Both skills are interrelated and often complementary, since writing involves the
encoding of a message and reading involves the decoding of one. According to Caroll (1970) reading is the activity of
reconstructing a printed message into a spoken message (this definition refers to reading aloud). Venezky (1970) proposed a
more complete definition according to which reading is translating from written symbols to a form of language to which the
person can attach meaning. In summary, reading can be defined as obtaining meaning from print. When children learn to read in
their language, they already have a degree of competence in the language. Understanding written language requires some
knowledge of the language system and how it is used for communication. In the case of second language learners, however, this
is often not the case, as they may not have much experience in the functioning of the language they are learning.
Understanding a written text means extracting the required information from it as efficiently as possible.

As we have seen in the introduction, writing is somehow detached from the wide range of expressive possibilities of
speech. A writer is unable to exploit all the devices available to the speaker (gestures, body movement, facial expressions, features
of voice, stress and hesitations). A speaker can clarify and revise ideas according to the interaction received from the
listener, a writer has to compensate all these disadvantages. As Byrne (1988) has pointed out, writing is more than the
production of graphic symbols, just as speech is more than the production of sounds. The written symbols must be arranged
according to certain conventions to form words, and the words have to be arranged to form sentences. Writing is not an easy or
spontaneous activity - it requires great mental effort. Effective writing requires a high degree of organisation in the
development of ideas and information; a high degree of accuracy so that there is no ambiguity in meaning; the use of
complex grammatical devices for focus and emphasis; a careful choice of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and sentence structure
to create a style that is appropriate to the subject matter and the eventual reader.

When we write we use graphic symbols related to the sounds we make when we speak. Those symbols are arranged
according to certain conventions to form words, and words are arranged to form sentences. At the same time, sentences are
ordered and linked using rhetorical devices forming a coherent whole called text.

According to Halliday, writing emerged in societies as a result of cultural changes which created new communicative
needs. Since then the world of written communication has been developed and nowadays, written text are used for
entertainment (comics, books), information (newspapers,

magazines, etc) and action (public signs, product labels)- and internet also covers all of these.

2.2 Quality of textuality or texture

As Basil Hatim stated, texture refers to "the property that ensures that a text hangs together both linguistically and
conceptually". So, to be text it must be coherent (continuity of sense) and can be cohesive (presenting connectivity between its
surface elements).
Gramley and Pätzold distinguished seven factors that entails textuality: (DeBeaugrande’s Constitutive Principle)

o Cohesion and coherence: Text sentences linked by grammatical and lexical items are interpreted in terms of
grammatical and lexical cohesion. A deeper semantic level is involved in discussions of coherence or continuity of concepts.

o Intentionality and acceptability: They are related to the attitudes of the participants. The sender has an
intention with the text that must be accepted by the reader in order to achieve communication. The sender's intentions and
receiver's acceptance are not only based on the knowledge of the language system, but on their knowledge of the world.

o Informativity: It refers to the degree to which the text produced is expected or unexpected or whether the
information is already known or provides new information.

o Situationality: It refers to those factors which make texts appropriate and relevant to a particular situation. It
deals with discourse strategies.

o Intertextuality: The fact that the production and reception of texts and texts units often depend upon the
participants' knowledge of text forms and their ways of expression.

3. TYPESOFWRITTENTEXTS

3.1. Definition of text

Following Scinto, a text can be defined as a functional unit of complex meaning that involves the elaboration of sentences by
a process of composition and concatenation. This process of composition requires a communicative intention, the organisation
of the meaning into appropriate information units, and the concatenation of these units through the integration of semantics
and pragmatics into a coherent form. Defined as such, a text is a set of linguistic means of expression used to fulfil a particular
communicative intention, and realised in a given social context.

The ultimate goal of the process of composition and concatenation is the conscious production of a coherent form that
fulfils the communicative objective of the text. The critical concept here is coherence. The notion of coherence implies
that this process is not the mere juxtaposition of units, since units do not merely stand in relation to one another but are
structured into a closed system. What is crucial in achieving coherence is the establishment of this dependency through the
creation of functional relations among units.

3.2. Text elaboration: genre, topic, and comment

Once the notion of text has been established, we will focus on the prerequisites and characteristics of text elaboration.
Although the variety in the different types of texts and in its characteristics makes it difficult to set up the guidelines of text
formation/creation, we can analyse text production in terms

of three basic features:

a) what sort of text is under way: genre;

b) what sort of topic in under discussion: topic (theme); and c) exactly what he wishes
to say about it: comment (rheme).
Elaboration at each of these levels progressively constrains the possibilities of the subsequent level, and when elaboration
at each level is abandoned, the writer leaves the reader with no uncertainty about the meaning of the communication.

Any text, according to the context it appears, normally sets the tone and indicates to readers just

what sort of communication is under way. Readers know very soon if the text will be satire, fiction, irony, neutral or
academic. By the end of the first lines we normally know not only what sort of text we are reading but also the general topic
(what the author mainly wants to discuss) and probably his general comment about this topic (what he mainly wants to say about
it). The general topic may have several subtopics, every each of them with possible comments.

3.3. Different types of texts

Peter Newmark takes Bühler's functional theory of language adapted by Jakobson and classifies

texts into three main groups:

o Expressive texts: serious imaginative literature (novel, plays, poems), authoritative statements

(legal documents, scientific and academic works by authorities, statutes), autobiography, essays and personal
correspondence.

o Informative texts: They are concerned with any topic of knowledge: scientific, technological,

commercial, etc. (textbooks, articles, thesis).

o Vocative texts: They refer to notices, instructions, publicity, etc

According to Gramley and Pätzold, the majority of texts are informative or directive. When both

functions are grouped together five major types of texts are often recognized:

o Narrative texts: They have to do with real-world or imaginary events where a story is told.

Their main characteristic is that the sequencing of events in which dynamic verbs occur in the simple form and in which
sequencing adverbials provide the basic narrative structure.

o Descriptive texts: They are concerned with the location of persons or things in the space. They

give a mutual image of the object, scene person. They set the stage for narration. They use state or positional verbs
together with adverbial expressions to describe events. A key word or title summarizes its information. This
information progresses linearly. We can distinguish between subjective and objective descriptions.

o Directive texts: They are totally addressed to the receiver. Imperatives or forms, which

substitute for them, such as polite questions or suggestive remarks, are used.

o Expository texts: They are cognitively oriented, so they explain or clarify something. They

include text forms such as definitions, explanations, summaries and essays. They may be analytical, starting from a
concept and then characterizing its parts.

o Argumentative texts: They depart from the assumption that the receiver's belief must be
 changed. They may start with the negation of a statement, which attributes a property to something or so.

Gramley and Pätzold warned as well that few texts are pure realizations of a single type. The previous text typology is
only one of many because, as Hatim and Mason acknowledged in 1990, the

multifunctionality or hybridisation of any text made it impossible to develop convincing taxonomies.

4. COMPONENTSAND RULES GOVERNING WRITTEN EXPRESSION

4.1. Components: mechanics, production, conventions, linguistics, and cognition

Written expression is one of humanity's greatest achievements because it requires the integration of many skills. Larsen (1987)
suggests that there are five areas or components that are important for written expression. All five components are interrelated.
A problem with one component is likely to

result in difficulty with the rest:

• Mechanics: This refers to the writer's ability to form letters, words, numbers and sentences in a legible way. It is
associated with three aspects: the writer's handwriting- it is (not) legible or poses so many difficulties to the reader the
message will not be conveyed; neatness, it must also be neat, this is especially important in examinations or handing in
written assignments; good use of punctuation is important because it conveys clarity to the message; it is important to keep
sentences short and avoid complicated constructions with unnecessary subordinate clauses.

• Production: The number of words, sentences and paragraphs a writer is able to generate is sufficient to convey the
meaning and produce a suitable written text.

• Conventions: This includes the use of capitalisation, punctuation and spelling

• Linguistic: This involves the ability to use varied vocabulary and correct syntax

• Cognition: This refers to the organisation of the text, whether it is logical, sequential and coherent. This can make the
message difficult or impossible to understand.

4.2. Rules

Rules include the use of orthography, punctuation and other devices, which the written language makes in order to convey
patterns of meaning.

4.2.1. Orthography

This refers to the mastery of the written system and includes the ability to spell. In the English language, due to the weak
relationship between sound and symbol spelling is a problem for native and non-native speakers alike.

4.2.2. Punctuation

Punctuation has not been standardised to the same extent as spelling. Conventions are fairly established, but variation is
often tolerated. These conventions help the reader when understanding a text, a new paragraph tells him a new aspect will be
looked at, a question mark informs him that an inquiry has been made, etc. There are areas of difficulty such as the use of
hyphens in compound nouns, and very often the only solution is to look them up in the dictionary. Without punctuation,
words would follow in an endless stream and the meaning would be lost. There follow some of the main and simple rules of
punctuation:

5. TYPICALWRITING TASKS: READINGAND WRITING IN THE CLASSROOM

5.1. Reading skills

There are two main reasons for reading: reading for pleasure and reading for information (in order to find out
something or opt do something with the information we get). In real life our reading purposes constantly vary and therefore,
when devising exercises, we should vary the questions and the activities according to the type of text studied and the purpose
in reading it.

Reading involves a variety of skills: recognising the script, deducing the meaning, understanding implicit and explicit
information, understanding communicative value, understanding cohesion, identifying main points, extracting salient
points to summarise, transcoding information.

5.2. Reading practice in the classroom

As general guidelines for an intensive or extensive reading text, the following stages in a lesson should occur:

Before reading. Students should be motivated to read the text with pre-reading activities such as visual prompts,
discussing the subject in advance, watching a video, etc. They should also be encouraged to predict the contents, making
guesses about what the text is about, who wrote it, who it is for, where it appeared, etc. At this stage it could be useful to pre-
teach new vocabulary in the text. The text must be considered as a whole: its title, accompanying picture(s), the
diagrams, the typeface used, etc.

First reading. A task should be set to assist overall understanding. This task can be to answer to one or two questions,
to look for some information, etc. It should not be too complex and it should not require the students to read in great detail
because students should be asked to skim at his stage. Feedback on the task is very important because it will allow the teacher
to determine the difficulty of the text. If the task has proved to have too many difficulties it may be necessary to pre-teach
more aspects or carry out simpler tasks. To say that reading is a silent and personal activity does not imply that it is only
associated with individual work. On the contrary, it is particularly interesting to encourage comparisons between
several interpretations of a text which will lead to discussion.

Second reading. This time more detailed questions or tasks may be set. A set time should be allocated and groupings
should be established. Feedback should be checked. As it is necessary to reach a certain reading speed in order to read efficiently, an
effective procedure consists in helping students to time themselves and increase their reading speed little by little.

After reading. By this stage students may be asked to carry out a follow-up activity such as a summary or
comprehension, or a speaking task such as a role play or discussion. Reading activities can also be devised for students' work at
home. Two or three sets of exercises of varying difficulty can be prepared based on the same text so that each student can
work at home at his own level. This will certainly be stimulating for the weaker students, while the better ones will not feel
held back.

5.3. Writing skills

It has been traditional to consider writing as the most ignored of the language skills. Fortunately, this is no longer true,
especially because it has ceased to be associated only with language structure and its creative aspect has been emphasised.
Writing not only reinforces the grammatical structures but also help learners to learn, it can be the consolidation for the
other skills, and what is more important, it is a useful communication channel. As Raimes puts it, writing is now closely
associated with thinking in a foreign language, an activity which involves connected sentences with a functional, thematic and
grammatical link between them. According to recent research, the real purpose of writing is learning: students learn
more if they write, that is to say, they need to write to take advantage of one of the most useful learning tools in
activating interactive and communicative learning.

5.4. Writing practice in the classroom

Very often we ask our students to write freely too soon. The result is disappointing both for them and for the teacher: a lot
of red ink, unreadable texts, problems of all kinds (vocabulary, spelling, structure), etc. This happens because writing is a
process and some mechanisms should be mastered before writing full texts in a free way. Controlled and guided writing fulfil
this purpose.

a) Controlled activities generally take place in class, which means that we should give students time to think, to write, to
read, to correct and rewrite. They involve the manipulation of structures eventually leading to the construction of
paragraphs. At the word level we deal essentially with vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation. We can mention the
following activities:

- Game "What's the word?": completing letter gaps, forming words with jumbled letters.

- Game "Hangman".

- Game "Start with the end". Letter of the previous word¼

- Game "The crazy sound": write words beginning with a difficult sound.

- Fill in the gaps with the correct lexical items.

- Crosswords.

When dealing with sentences and texts here are some of the activities we can practise at the

controlled stage:

- Building stories from structural frames, choosing subjects and complements.

- Transformation: singular to plural, affirmative to negative, active to passive,..

- Substitution: nouns by pronouns, subject/complement by wh- particles, etc.

- Expansion: introducing premodifiers and post-modifiers in noun phrases, etc.

- removing information, to be completed by the pupils.

- Using subordinators and logical connectors.

- Punctuating a text.

- Rewriting sentences.

- Completing incomplete sentences.

- Word order activities: putting words in their correct position, jumbled/scrambled words.

- Jumbled/scrambled paragraphs to form a narrative.

- Gapped dictation.

- Dictation.

b) Guided activities is the next step, once the basic mechanisms of word, sentence and paragraph have been mastered. It can
take two forms: either providing students with written models of content or form for imitation (parallel writing), or giving
them some guidelines in order to orientate them in writing. Anyway, these guidelines are starting points and the students
have a certain freedom to create their own text. The prompt can take the following formats:

- Main ideas to be included.

- Paragraphs to be used or parts in which the writing should be divided.

- Sections in a letter.

- Parallel writing, but encouraging creativity.

- Useful words, expressions.

- Prompt pictures. "vignettes".

- Summary of the intended writing.

- Questions to direct the pupils (e.g. What was the weather like? Where was Mr Brown driving? Etc.

- Part of a story (either the beginning or the ending) students have to complete.

c) Free activities deal with what has been called creative, expressive writing, composition or writing for fluency. This is the most
difficult assignment but it can be easier if preceded by controlled and guided activities. Free writing should at least be guided
as far as purpose, context, and potential reader(s) are concerned. These are some of the possible activities:

- Note taking.

- Writing summaries, essays, reports, brief (auto)biographies, letters, postcards, telegrams, invitations, thanking,
apologies,

- Narrating. Describing. Comparing.

- Giving opinions on topics of interest.

- Literary writing: poems, short stories, novels, plays. Looping or quick writing.

6. CONCLUSIONS

Firstly, as we have seen, the process of writing is a complex one, as we should make an attempt to express our message as
clearly as possible given that the recipient has to understand it without any assistance from us. To achieve this aim we must deal
with cohesion and coherence devices as well as with rules and conventions governing the written language.

Secondly, in spoken communication there are factors that help communication: body language, repetition, etc. By contrast,
in written language, the writer is alone in the production of the message and the reader alone in the reception. For this
reason, signposting (via connectors, punctuation, paragraphing, etc) is essential.

Besides, current research on Applied Linguistics shows an interest on writing skills, such as on the pragmatics of writing,
narrative fiction and frequency on cohesion devices in English texts, among others. We may also find research on
intercultural communication where routines and formulaic speech are under revision of contrastive analysis between English
and Spanish. However, the emphasis is nowadays on the use of multimedia and computers as an important means to promote a
foreign language in context.

Finally, we must say that written communication will be the fourth step in the acquisition of the L2; so, we should be
patient in this acquisition because writing appropriately with coherence and cohesion is a very difficult task. It must also be
remembered that, though neglected somehow by a certain number of ELT recent approaches and sub-approaches, who have
become dazzled by the relevance of other language skills, the reading and writing process in L2 still constitutes a quintessential
step in achieving a sufficient level of communicative competence in the target language.

8. CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS /

C.D. 1105/2014, of December 26, which establishes the basic curriculum on Compulsory Secondary Education and Post-
Compulsory Secondary Education.Annex I, Section 30. Syntactic-discursive contents. Four blocks of contents: WRITTEN
PRODUCTION AND COMPREHENSION, oral production and comprehension

Order 65/2015, of January 21, by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports of Andalusia , which describes
relations between competences, contents and evaluation criteria in Primary , Secondary Education and Post Compulsory
Education. Competence in linguistic communication, learning to learn competence, social and civic competences.
CEFRL, the Communicative Approach: all skills should be worked on equally.

RELEVANCE TO THE CLASSROOM:

Do reading + writing about matters related to pupils’ interests /reality (emails, text messages, blogs, job appl)

Use different support (paper / digital)

Before macrotexts, micro skills (+texts) eg linkers, paragraphing, punctuation, use of synonyms, spelling
Prepare via: brainstorm > selection > organise > link> edit

9. BIBLIOGRAPHYAND REFERENCES

COUNCIL OF EUROPE. 2001. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

BREEN, M. P. 2001. 'Syllabus design'. In Carter, R. and D. Nunan (eds.) The Cambridge Guide to 'S

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge: C.U.P.

ELLIS, R. 1997. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press

HARMER, J. 1991. The Practice of English Language Teaching. New York and London: Longman HARRIS, M. and
McCANN, P. 1994. Assessment. Oxford: Heinemann.

HOWATT, A.P.R. 1984. A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

KRASHEN, S. 1982. Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon. NUNAN, D. 1988. Syllabus
Design. Oxford University Press.

PIAGET, J. 1986. Psicología y pedagogía. Planeta Agostini. Barcelona.

WILLIS, J. 1986. A Framework for Task-based Learning. London: Longman. WILLIS, J. 1988. Teaching
English through English. Longman.