Writing

Before contemplating the various subskills of writing consideration must be given to what lies behind ‘the structural and organizational patterns that characterize written language’. Obviously, these patterns must be based upon what the writer has in mind to write. Hence, preceding each attempt to compose a written text, there must be a stimulus of some nature. It may be a story heard, a book read, an action undertaken, an event experienced or an interaction or its possibility with another person. From this stimulus thoughts will occur alongside which there will be some attempt at ordering those thoughts so that some degree of sense is made of the stimulus and its resultant thoughts. Frequently, this will result in the reproduction of those thoughts in their ordered sequence in the form of oral speech or, at later stages of development, in the form of written language. In the early years and well into the junior school children will produce an oral response before committing their thoughts to print.