The Importance Of Writing In Education

Writing is one of the macro skills that students need to develop in order to survive the rigors of formal education. It is for this reason that teachers continue to insist that students write papers, keep journals, or create a blog where they can publish their work even in courses that are not traditionally thought of as a writing course. Students are asked to write for various purposes. And because of its complexity, many students shun away from this task.

Writing involves composing, which implies the ability to either tell or retell pieces of information in the form of narratives or description, or to transform information into new texts, as in expository or argumentative writing (Hadley, 1993). Writing requires conscious effort and practice in composing, developing and analysing ideas. By putting together concepts and solving problems, the writer engages in “two-way interaction between continuously developing knowledge and continuously developing

This is on top of instruction in English rhetorical patterns and style. Explicit knowledge denotes a conscious awareness of grammatical rules and the appropriate meta – language for labelling and verbalizing this knowledge (Ellis, 2004).

Further, Ferris explained that treating errors is not so simple, advocating explicit grammar instruction. She explained that most second language writers make a multitude of errors in their writing, from incorrect verb tense to article misuse to improper word choice. The teacher must first decide which errors in a student 's paper most adversely affect meaning, the global errors as opposed to the local errors. Then, the teacher must identify which of those occur most frequently. These are called patterns of error (Ferris, 2002). The teacher may decide to address two or three of these at a