WRITING IN GENERAL

(BASIC UNDERSTANDING ABOUT WRITING)

• Types of Writing

There are only five main kinds of writing: expository, descriptive, persuasive, narrative, and journal or letter writing. Each writing genre has its own unique purpose and requires different skills. 

• The Importance of Writing

Writing is important because it allows students to: Improve their understanding of class material and seek clarification. Develop their critical thinking skills and make connections. Communicate ideas, opinions, persuade others, and express feelings. 

The most popular purposes are to inform, to entertain, to explain, or to persuade. However, there are many more including to express feelings, explore an idea, evaluate, mediate, problem solve, or argue for or against an idea. Writers can combine purposes in a single piece of writing.

• The Benefit of Writing

Study or study confirms that students who process course material through writing retain that information longer, improve critical thinking skills, and become more nuanced readers and writers. The more writing done in a course, the more the student engages with the material in the course. 

It has been demonstrated, across a variety of investigations, that writing activities yield a number of intellectual, physiological, and emotional benefits to individuals. These bene- fits include improve memory function, decreased symptomatology, and greater feelings of happiness. 

• Relations Between Writing & Reading

Since writing is the act of transmitting knowledge in print, we must have information to share before we can write it. Therefore reading plays a major role in writing. At the same time practice in writing helps children build their reading skills. 

The basic connection between reading and writing is thinking: thinking about the meaning of what you read and what you say, and thinking about the

connection between what you read and what you write. To fully realize the connection between reading and writing, you need to be an active and focused thinker. 

by UKBA UNP