What is Writing

1.Introduction
Writing has always been part of applied linguistic.
Even before the 1960s, when writing was
considered as a mere representation of speech, it
provided a way of monitoring student’s language
production and of providing linguistic material
because the technology for sound recording was not
widely available.
 For researcher, has always provided a source of
tangible and relatively stable data for analysis as
well as a way of recording speech. However, in the
early years of applied linguistic, writing was not
considered to be one of the proper goals of
language learning.
Writing was used only to extent that it assisted
the learning of speech .It was assumed that anyone
who had the knowledge of spelling and grammar
would be able to write.
 As we have seen ,writing is a complex
phenomenon because writers have negotiate all
above element of writer, reader, text, reality, and
construct written discourse accordingly .

In order to manage this complex process, writers

adopt, develop and use various strategies .
 2 Strategic Aspect of writing

Writers draw on various strategies to assess the

rhetorical situation and respond to it by developing
written text.
Those strategies are often internalized, some
writers may have acquired them so naturally through
practice that they may not even be aware of some of
the strategies they use. For most writers especially
less experienced one it is often helpful to have an
explicit understanding of some of strategies that can
be internalized through practice
. For most writers especially less experienced one
it is often helpful to have an explicit understanding
of some of strategies that can be internalized
through practice.
Understanding the strategic aspect of writing is
important for writing teachers because it enables
them to teach writing rather than teach about
writing.
 The writer may also identify and develop ideas for
writing by focusing on one or more of the element such as:
• Exploring or discovering what the writer already knows,
feels or believes through techniques such as clustering,
listening and free writing (focus on writer).
• Looking for dissonance or conflict(focus on the reader)
Examining reality through reading or observation (focus on
reality)
• Choosing a form of writing , such as sonnet, personal
narrative or conference proposal (focus on the text)
 Revision is an important part of the writing
process.
Writers often revise based on comments and
suggestion from peers and teachers.
The writer may also be able to revise the text
by letting it sit for a while, which allows the
writer to see the text from a somewhat different
perspective.
3.Textual Aspect of writing
We discuss the textual aspect of writing last,
not because it is least important but because it is
the material realization of the other two aspects
of writing.
It is through written text that the writer
constructs, represent and negotiates his or her
conceptions of the writer, the reader, the text
and reality.
 Whereas spoken discourse additional meaning
through prosodic features such as tone, pitch,
intonation, volume and pause, written discourse
achieves similar functions through typographical
features such as punctuation marks,
capitalization, italics, bold face, font sizes and
indentation.
 Although the ability to write presuppose
some level of morphological, lexical and
syntactic as well as idiomatic knowledge, such
knowledge alone does not quarantee the ability
to write well because writing involves much
more than constructing grammatical sentence.