The Four Major Communication Skills

PARAGRAPG WRITING FOR UNDERGRADUATES

―Reading maketh a full man, Conference a ready man, and Writing an exact man.‖ (Sir Francis Bacon1561-1626).

Of all the four major communication skills, it is the writing skill, which plays a major role during the course of the study of undergraduate students as they are required to write in English effectively. ‘Writing’ well is probably the most technically difficult form of communication. It requires skill and understanding and a good deal of creativity. According to Bacon writing only makes a man perfect, so a learner has to practice a lot in order that he produces a good piece of writing. He has to be equipped with this skill in order to communicate his ideas.The focus of this paper is on ‘Writing

Norrish (1983) emphasized that writing is of course, not easy and in some way, more difficult than speaking. While speaking we can use simple, repetitive words and incomplete sentences. Speaking does not have a standard form. But written language has standard form of grammar, syntax and vocabulary, etc. Usually writing is less spontaneous than speaking. As writing is a permanent record of knowledge accessible to any reader, the writer has to be cautious all the time about whatever he writes.

The second language learners have to learn phonology, grammar, vocabulary and idioms of the language besides learning the mechanics of writing. So writing proves to be a challenge to these learners. They have to focus on these aspects while they are writing a text. It needs lot of effort on these learners.

PROCESS AND PRODUCT APPROACH

In the earlier decades, various approaches have been used to teach writing. In order to be a successful writing instructor, the teacher needs to have a better understanding of the rationales and critiques of these approaches. Over the last few years, two major approaches have been adopted in the teaching of writing by teachers. These are the two popular approaches: i.Process ii.

Rajatanun(1988) stated that a paragraph is a unit of writing which expresses a central idea and consists of two kinds of sentences, a topic sentence and a number of supporting statements. The topic sentence introduces the paragraph and it will give clear idea about the content of the paragraph. To maintain the unity in a paragraph, supporting ideas should be expressed in a paragraph. O’Donnell and Paiva(1993) gave more details about the essential parts of paragraph writing. The ideas in the paragraph should be presented in a logical order by using transitional words or connecting words, which indicate the relationship between ideas. A paragraph may have a concluding sentence, which restates the main idea in a different way.

According to Reid (1994) the concluding sentence summarizes the material, offers a solution to the problem, predicts a situation, makes a recommendation or states a conclusion. The main components of a paragraph are unity and coherence. One way to achieve coherence is the use of connectors called transitional words or phrases, sequential words that link one sentence to another (Wyrick 1999). Without the correct arrangement of words, a sentence cannot be meaningful and without the correct arrangement of sentences a paragraph cannot be meaningful. This