Courseware for GNS 111

Professor Abdullahi Kadir Ayinde

Topic: Writing Skills

Introduction

This chapter concentrates on the techniques for writing all form of essays, letters, reports and

other academic course works requiring a step-by-step method of pre-writing, writing and re-

writing. Of all the skills of communication, writing is the most difficult because it demands

meticulous effort and painstaking commitment to accomplish. Writing essays does not mean

using long words and lofty phrases. Matthew Arnold cited in Collinson (1986, p.144) advises

that “Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can”. There is no single, universal and

exclusive set in which an essay should be written, but certainly, writing requires a form or shape

for it to be meaningful.

Writing is of various categories. Its dominant characteristics are the audience, subject matter, and

purpose. The different kinds of writing include essays namely: (Narrative, Descriptive,

Argumentative, and Expository), letters (Formal and Informal), creative writing, business

correspondence, news reports, feature articles, editorials, advertisements, press release, technical

and research reports among others. For effective communication, all learners must be adequately

familiar with the skills of writing already enumerated above.

The purpose of this chapter is to deal with some of the main conventions and techniques for the

scholarly presentation of written work. The chapter provides a working knowledge of the main

conventions for effective written communication.

The basic form of writing may nearly be derived from the kind of the discourse in question. The

basic form must be developed into a coherent plan that can be given content. Writing, according

to linguists, is a dual interaction and interface between the writer and audience. A good writer

must, therefore, have a firm grasp of the various steps required for presenting a good piece of

essay. These steps have been simplified into pre-writing, writing and post-writing.

Pre-Writing

Pre-writing is the first major stage of presenting a good essay. It is the preliminary stage where

the writer assembles relevant ideas that could serve the purpose of developing a coherent

discourse. The activity at this stage is brain-storming. The writer prods his thought to generate

cogent ideas that can support the essay. The writer also reads widely to gather materials needed

for content development. At this era of information and communication advancement in

technology, the writer can also take advantage of the internet and emerging artificial intelligence

platform to research ideas that can concretely help to develop a meaningful report. The golden

advice is that when you read through an essay question for the first time, you may immediately

find ideas about the topic crowding into your head or you may have to do quite a lot of reading

and thinking before you start writing. Preparatory reading for gathering ideas and brain- storming

is what the linguists referred to as the pre-writing stage. The recommendations for preparing an

essay at this stage include:

1. Assemble the materials you will need for the writing

2. Develop an outline plan that will deal systematically with the essay
 3. Read the topic carefully to see exactly what it requires you to do. Devise a basic form for

the writing, noting key words in the topic

4. Jot down the main points that you think should be included in the essay and fit them into

the plan

5. Refer back to the topic to check that you are actually doing what is required of you

6. Write a short opening paragraph to the essay embodying your main idea, conclusion,

argument or claim

A word of warning at this stage is that one must be aware of the danger of assembling a

large number of books and notes at the same time. The writer may find him or she

bogged down in reading and searching for materials and so confused in starting the essay.

Resist spending a disproportionate amount of time on this stage.

Writing

Writing is the second stage that launches the writer into the real business. This is also the

segment where the writer arranges ideas in logical paragraphs. Essay must be developed

coherently in such a way that there is a free flow of thought from one level to another. The stage

requires the writer to prepare a meaningful draft that follows the order of the beginning, body

and conclusion.

The beginning is the introductory paragraph where the writer sets the tone of the essay in a way

that is highly captivating for the reader to develop a strong interest in reading the content.

The body is where the writer communicates the rest of the ideas systematically in a stream of

coherent paragraphs. Writing involves combining a sequence of ideas until they form a cohesive

whole. The advice is that the writer must avoid an haphazardly combined string of sentences
with disjointed paragraphs and ungrammatical expressions that make mutual intelligibility

difficult to achieve. Writing requires the rules of meaningful expression be carefully done. It also

involves an avoidance of the pitfalls that typify bad writing. The basic rules is that the writer

must be guided by the following signposts to make the writing reader-centred:

1. What am I trying to communicate to my audience?

2. What is the better way to achieve mutual intelligibility?

3. What image or word choices will make the communication have the desired effect?

4. Is the general expression good enough to have an effect?

5. Have I avoided unnecessary digression?

6. Are there superfluous preambles to be removed?

In the words of Collinson (1986, p.157), the good writer is someone

who has paragraphs varied in length, development and organization. He lets me

know where he is going, moves quickly through the simple materials, and explain

and illustrates more difficult points. His paragraphs are carefully connected, and

when there is a marked change in thought, there are enough indications to help me

follow the shift. He does not repeat unnecessarily or digress; instead, he covers

his subject thoroughly and briefly. While I am still interested, he completes his

work in a satisfactory final paragraph and leaves me wishing that there were more

writers like him.

Post-Writing

The post-writing stage is where the writer carefully edits, reviews and proof readings the

draft generated at the writing stage. The idea is that since the mind travels faster than the

pen while writing, the possibility of mistakes, omissions and grammatical infelicities are
 inevitable. This stage requires two levels of editing namely: structural and stylistic.

Structural editing involves the overhauling of the entire structure of the paragraphs to

achieve an effective organization of ideas and adequate logical and coherent forms.

Stylistic editing involves paying attention to grammatical expressiveness, mechanical

accuracy and relevance. Basic rule here is that:

1. Check back the topic to be convince of appropriateness of the ideas

2. Mark and remove any words, phrases and sentences that do not relate directly to the

argument

3. Remember to make sure you edit, review and proof read

4. Improve the sentence structure

5. Have an eagle eye to spot mistake and effect corrections

6. A careful editing and revising reduces mistakes of grammar, lexical choices, bad

organization and several other inappropriateness

References

Collinson, D.J.(1986) Writing English: A Working Guide to the skills of written English,
England: Wildwood House