Practical Tasks for Mastering the Mechanics of Writing and Going Just Beyond

By Manuel Espinal

The author is teacher and journalist 

The present chapter is based on the abilities and the capacity that learners must develop in writing since the first very moment they start to learn a particular language, English in this case.

Writing drills must be indicated for learners in their early stage of acquisition. In doing so, teachers help students to recognize important features within the language and develop some skills, as of the comprehension (reading and listening) and production (speaking and writing). Furthermore, through writing, teachers initiate a process that will help learners to accustom to developing an appropriate orthography.

Giving support to the above said, let us present in an outlined way some aspects related to the skill of writing according to Elite Olshtain.

Olshtain, while centering on a discursive approach about the language teaching in which the goal of interaction is the meaningful communication, concedes to the skill of writing a special status. It is through this activity we can communicate hundreds of messages for known and unknown readers and this compels us to be respectful of a series of aspects and rules involved in the process of writing.

The medium to communicate our thoughts through writing is the text, which is loaded with our intentions, so we have to take into account that our production must be clear, accurate, with no spelling error, and with no faulty punctuation. It means we have to give the chance to the readers to perceive clearly those underlying ideas or intentions. However, if we want to accomplish scripts with these qualities, we have to write as much as possible in order to develop the mechanics of writing.

Limiting the issue to our case, as teachers we have to encourage learners of English to produce, although minimally, meaningful sentences through exercises centered on the development of writing skills. As learners write, they start the process of recognition of elements conforming the English language system (letters or other graphic shapes), which provides students with support in the acquisition of the mechanics of reading.

It’s necessary to say that is very important for teachers to take into account the student’s level of linguistic and discourse proficiency for dealing with the development of the so called writing skills.  

  

Getting back into Olshtain considerations about the skill of writing, let us enumerate some of those elements or aspects that help students develop in writing as learners of English as foreign language (EFL).

Writing System and Early Writing in a New Language (English)

EFL learners usually acquire the mechanics of writing in English as an extension of their abilities to read and write in their first language. But, for obtaining positive outcomes in the teaching process we must be conscious of the writing system students already know in order to design an efficient program that suits their particular needs.

Students coming from countries where the writing system is based on meaning, such as the Chinese (the graphic signs is a unit of meaning in the real world and the direction of writing can be up and down, that of different from English) the process is much more slow than those students accustomed to using a linear system of writing such as those coming from western Europe and Latin America.

Learners whose first language employs a Roman alphabet (linear) need less effort at the beginning to recognize the direction of letters and the sound-letter correspondences than those who use an alphabet based on meaning. The latter learners first have to be trained for acquiring the graphic sign with a vocal sound and then recognizing the sequence of such graphic sound seeming more difficult for them in comparison with the first. 

The Mechanics of reading and writing

When using the term mechanics of writing we refer to the very early stage of letter recognition, letter discrimination, sound-to-letter correspondence word recognition, and basic rules of spelling. After the early stage, we center on expanding the spelling rules, focus on punctuation and capitalization, and cover the comprehension and production of sentences and short paragraphs. The time devoted to developing the mechanics of writing serves the acquisition of both reading and writing skills.

In the early stage, to learn to discriminate one letter from another while reading, learners need to practice writing these letters, to facilitate their perception of words and sentences during the reading process.

Sound-spelling correspondences

It is a difficult process for beginning English learners by means of which a sound or several sounds (allophones) correspond to a letter or grapheme. Consequently, it is only achieved via intensive practices.

Learners have to dedicate a lot of time to the process of acquiring and learning the rules of pronunciation (although there are consistent and predictable (regularities) rules on how to pronounce consonants and vowels, there are many exceptions to memorize (irregularities).

Classroom application

Before asking students to solve problems related to the mechanics of writing and reading, as teacher we need to consider the aims of them. Let us see:

a) They allow enhancing letter recognition in the early learning stage, especially when learners come from a different writing system.

b) Through practice we learn how to give the correspondent sound to graphemes (letters).

c) By developing intensive writing activities, we pass several stages in the process of mastering the mechanics of reading and writing: letters, words, sentences and larger units of discourse.

With this clearly in mind, the next steps are a series of classroom’s activities, such as: matching tasks, writing tasks,   sound-spelling correspondences tasks. Every one of these tasks has a specific objective.

Students, with the passing of time, get more involved in developing and acquiring the mechanics of writing and reading, and more complex tasks are indicated by teachers.

In conclusion, the activity of writing and reading develops the intellectual and communicative capacity of learners, since these activities encompass a great deal of specific topics or issues.