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Writing as one of the four basic skills of language
Writing is an art. It is one of the basic four skills of language learning. When mastery over other skills is achieved, then comes the place of writing. It aims at compactness, precision and elegance in expression keeping in mind all the grammatical rules and beauty as well as flexibility of the written words and sentences.
Learning to write means excelling in all other skills and then applying them jointly to express one’s ideas, views and creative thinking. Writing means expressing something with accuracy and fluency.
The main motive/objective behind writing is to train the learner to express himself effectively in good English. This course of writing includes training them to write in both formal and informal ways. It may include all kinds of compositions, letter writing, creative writing, report writing, writing about different places and objects, describing or writing life – histories of various persons, precis writing, summarizing and so on.
Let us consider some of the forms of writing here:
Describing Persons
It is the form of writing used for long a back. We keep describing different persons off and on without being even conscious of the fact.
For example simple compositions like My favourite teacher, My best friend, Our school peon Our headmaster, My father, My mother, My neighbour, The postman, My favourite actor, My favourite actress, My favourite leader, My dearest uncle, My sister/brother, Myself and so on. We describe different personalities using the third person- like she, he, they, etc.
Either the teacher can just give a topic and ask the students to write about it or he/she may give a brief outline On which the students will formulate an essay.
Describing Places
This sort of description again strengthens the art of writing. Here, the children can write about various places they have visited, read about, or wish to visit. They can even describe the places of great importance and value in our daily lives or the places they have had a first hand expert-hand being it, in real-life situations. It may include the topics like, “Agra – the city of the Taj, My school, the Mughal Gardens, the Dal Lake, our Country, A visit an exhibition, and so on.
Describing Events
We witness many events in our daily lives – be they pleasant ones or unpleasant ones.
For example A house on fire, My birthday celebration, the cricket match, Our annual day in school, My first day in a new class, An accident and so on. Many more events can be described by children. Of course, the teacher has to keep in mind the mental age and class of the children while assigning them some topic/event to write about it.
Describing Objects
Here, different objects can be described differently like a simple description of things or giving an autobiographical touch to things.
For example; describing My Watch, A Coin, My storybook, A rose. A pen, My Barbie doll, My teddy, the blackboard and so on.
