WRITING AS COMMUNICATION

 

Writing

▣ WRITING AS COMMUNICATION

▶ THE INTERACTIVE APPROACH

■ When viewed as a language skill used for communication, writing has much in common with both reading and speaking.



■ Writing is the production of the written word that results in a text, but the reader must be read and comprehended for communication to take place.




■ The writer, in other words, communicates their ideas in the form of a written text from which a known or unknown reader will eventually extract the concepts and their meanings. 



■ Various rationales have been suggested for the relationship between speech and writing, with two conflicting positions.
(1) Writing is different from speech
(2) Writing is similar to speech



■ The former view reflects the observation that speaking is related to the "here" and "now" of a given speaker and is therefore firmly "context bound." The natural listener present in the communicative setting provides continuous feedback and interaction that becomes an integral part of speaking. Also, the speaker and listener can switch roles, and the interaction allows for clarification, negotiation, and co-construction of meaning.



■ The second school of thought takes a more social view of the writing process and therefore perceives it as similar to speech. Such an approach often compares writing to speech events that need to adhere to specific writing conventions. 



■ Perhaps the most significant similarity between the writing process and speech production is a concern with bridging the gap between producer and receiver. While the speaker needs to consider the listener's context, the writer has to consider the potential reader audience. 



■ Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) particularly emphasized the need to develop a "reader based" approach to writing to ensure the communicative power of the text. It is such a reader-based approach that focuses on the connection between reading and writing and views writing as aiming to produce a text that can be "read successfully." In such a view, the writer is responsible for creating a text that accommodates the potential reader(s). The writer needs to use language, content, and conventions of writing to enable the reader to extract the intended meaning effectively, even though the act of reading will be carried out at a time and place removed from and independent of the act of writing. 



■ The reader-based model of writing might be most typical of Western oriented discourse communities. However, within Western culture, there may be communities or specific writing contexts in which a writer-based style is preferred (for medical treatment or analysis, for instance).