WHY SHOULD TEACHERSOF ENGLISH FOCUS ON WRITING SKILLS?

WHY SHOULD TEACHERSOF ENGLISH FOCUS ON WRITING SKILLS?

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words”. I daresay this quote written by Mark Twain was intended to be ironic and I will consider it as such. Writing for EFL students has never been an easy matter. Teachers of English aiming at developing students writing competence have always been confronted with a long, hardening process which requires considerable theoretical background, rigorous planning, constant practice and substantial feedback, all these combined with valuable texts books and teaching experience. This difficult context of writing I had to cope with while trying to improve my students’ writing competence was my foremost motivation to tackle with the intricacy of this topic.
The importance of writing in general springs from the fact that it lies at the very foundation of communication. We need writing when we send a text message, an email or an application letter etc. Writing can be transformed into a powerful tool which is extremely flexible and as a consequence, we can make use of it when we give information, when we express our opinion, when we make a complaint or a proposal etc. The words that we use when writing say a lot about the writer, they can show who we are, the education that we received and even the personality that we have. Life cannot be conceived without writing; today’s society cannot be imagined without writing. All sorts of contracts, agreements, peace truces or business deals are written and signed. The ability to write well is essential and can influence our chances to success; writing can help people develop on a personal level and undoubtedly in their relationship with other people around.
On the other hand, writing can have the effect of a boomerang and it can turn against ourselves if we do not know how to manage it correctly. Bad writing can also show who we are, how ignorant we are, the lack of training that we have. Bad writing can lead to miscommunication which can prevent us from advancing in our career; an employee who cannot express himself clearly cannot get ahead. “Texts are places where power and weakness become visible and discussable, where learning and ignorance manifest themselves, where the structures that enable and constrain our thoughts and actions become palpable.” (Scholes, 1985, p. xi).
Nowadays writing skills are thought to no longer be in the pipeline due to the digital technology which seems to make things simpler than ever before. As paradoxical as it may seem, digital technology is the one that puts emphasis on writing competence. Professionals and academics have always considered writing abilities as being of vital importance but the internet raises writing to a different level and it makes unequalled use of text. People may no longer read printed type newspapers, but they read news websites; people may no longer read printed books as they used to in the past, but they discovered eBooks. Text messaging, web forums, blog entries, social networking, emails, they all rely on written words and they all lead to a better communication.
Teachers need never forget that they are the most important guides to learning and that guiding our students to acquire communicative competence in order to enable them to interact with society should be the main purpose of language teaching. (Hedge, 2000)

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hedge, Tricia, Teaching and learning in the language classroom, Oxford University Press, 2009
Scholes, Robert, Textual Power, Yale University Press, 1985