UNIT 6 WRITTEN COMMUNICATION.

DIFFERENT TYPES
OF WRITTEN TEXTS. STRUCTURE AND FORMAL
ELEMENTS. ROUTINES AND STANDARD
EXPRESSIONS.

1. INTRODUCTION

Under the LOMLOE students are now expected to be able to

communicate in the foreign language. The focus on fluency has tended to
give priority to listening and speaking skills. But there seems to be no
general consensus as to the order in which the four skills should be taught
as can be seen in a review of the literature on language teaching
methodology. Currently the trend is to integrate all four skills since, as we
shall see writing is not simply speech written down on paper given that
there are some important differences which should be taken into account.
This unit concerns written communication and explains all its implications,
so first of all the concept of communication is going to be briefly reviewed

2. WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

COMMUNICATION

Communication is defined as the exchange of meanings between

individuals through a common system of symbols. It is very complex, but it
fulfils some characteristics which seem to apply to every situation.
According to Harmer, communicative teaching fulfils these characteristics:
• A person speaks because he wants, it’s his decision
• He has a communicative purpose, he wants to get a result
• He selects from a store, choosing appropriate language for a purpose
These factors enter in the classroom with the arrival of the Communicative
Language teaching.

ORAL VS WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

Anyone who uses a language properly has a number of different

abilities. In the most general way we can identify 4 major skills: listening,
speaking, reading and writing. These major skills can be classified in 2 main
ways:
• In relation to the MEDIUM:
- Speaking and listening: related to the oral medium.

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 - Reading and writing: related to the visual/written medium
• In relation to the ACTIVITY of the PARTICIPANTS:
-Listening and reading: are receptive skills as the user is receiving
oral/written language
-Speaking and writing: are said to be productive skills as they involve
some kind of production of the part of the user.

Very often the language user is involved in using a combination of skills

since, for example, on oral communication the participants are involved with
both listening and speaking (flow of conversation), or a person in a lecture
can read something and then speak about it. So it's very important to
integrate these skills in our lessons but in order to achieve a proper
learning, it's necessary to follow an order:
listening > speaking > reading > writing

WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

I’m going to concentrate now in written communication and some

features, described by Tannen and Chafe, that distinguish it from oral
language
• Spontaneuos language is usually related to oral exchanges that show
interpersonal involvement. Some features of interpersonal
involvement are: collaborative completitions, clarifications, examples
demonstrating understanding, overlap showing encouragement and
mimicking voices (Tannen)
• However written texts show features of detachment, that is
morphological and syntactic forms, which are: relative / complement
clauses, passive voice, nominalizations, attributive adjectives,
complex morphosyntax, sequences of prepositional phrases and
subordinate conjunctions (Chafe)

READING
Our curriculum does not place too many reading demands on our
pupils: everything they might read must be related to their needs and
interests. Reading in English in the early stages will usually remain at the
word level. where our students play simple games and do activities such as
labelling, matching, drawing... which will help them become familiar with
word combinations, and to recognize key words in a written text
Little by title, we can present our pupils longer texts based on words
they orally know. It's often difficult to convince students that texts in

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English can be understood, even though there are vocabulary/structures
they have never seen before.
Moreover, the reading text is static so students are often tempted
to read slowly, worrying about the meaning of each particular word. If they
do this, they will never achieve the ability to read texts but in a slow way.
To avoid this, the teacher should try to develop in the students 6 subskills
which are the same skills as the ones used in listening (both are receptive
skills):
The job of the teacher is to train students in these skills that will
help them to understand reading texts. The first 3 subskills concern the
treatment of the text as a whole, used when they deal with it for the first
time. The rest are concerned with a more detailed comprehension and
analysis of the text
When choosing the reading material the teachers must have several
points in mind:
-Content must be motivating, suitable for students' interest, authentic
material.
-Visual aids are important to support the comprehension of the content
-Lead-in must be the first activity to do, it helps student to understand
the text
-The reading should be task-oriented, that is a clear-goal task.
-We must give limited amount of time to avoid long periods of silent
reading.
-Whenever possible, reading should be integrated with other skills.
During the first stage in the reading-writing process the activities
remain at the recognition of words and sentences: to relate words with
drawings, to relate sentences with drawings. After the first stage of
learning in the reading-writing process there are a variety of activities to
do in order to get the meaning of a text: complete sentences, order
sentences mixed in a paragraph, unit 2 halves or answer questions.
These activities to develop the previous skills can be divided into 3
categories:
Pre-reading: during the warm-up, we get knowledge of the previous knowledge of the
student about the topic we are going to deal with; but the main function of the lead-in is
to motivate our students to arouse their interest.
• Using titles and covers: teacher chooses a book in which the drawing of the cover
is related to the title, student guess the title by the cover.
• Using the headlines of chapters: teacher give student headlines of chapters to put
in order.
• If we are going to read something about holidays, we can show them a picture or
photograph to guess where it is, where would they go.
• Guessing tit /e of the reading
• Guessing the content by giving them the title

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While-reading: most while-reading activities practice the skills of "skimming" (consists of
reading to get the gist of a text, discarding irrelevant, redundant of not important
information), "scanning" (consists of extracting specific information from the text) or a
combination of both.
• Ask questions, salve problems, complete the drawings, compare a text with the
drawing, prediction what is going to: happen, summaries.
• Read and do activities
• Complete a chart, classify under different headings, tick in a list objects of the
texts,.,
• Fill in the gaps
• Matching titles with texts, suggesting a title for a text
Post-reading: the main aim of these activities is to enable our pupils to acquire, internalise
the language of the text; we normally use reading integrated with other skills. .
• Prepare a similar text,
• Make a crosswords based on the text
• Continue the story
• Prepare a survey
• Make a drawing
• Participate in a role play based on the text

WRITING
Writing is the fast skill to be taught after reading as students must write
only what they have previously read and listen (from comprehension to the
production). Writing is also a special skill which does not spring naturally
from the ability to speak a language since both skills share different
features (writing has standard syntax, no hesitation, it uses visual features
different from spoken language: it uses abbreviations, underlying, bold type
In the early stages of learning English, the pupils will generally write very
little. They are most likely to be engaged in some form of guided copying to
produce words or simple sentences. Initial guided writing activities may be
directed at both word and sentence levels.
Let's see what activities are suitable for each stage. Whenever we
talk about writing, we tend to think about free-writing or composition.
however, before students are able to compose, they
-Must first acquire competence in controlled writing to move then to free-
production writing going through some semi-controlled activities.
-Guided writing: Writing should begin with guided writing at word level. It's
a consolidation of oral knowledge at the same time as they practice hand-
writing, spelling and vocabulary: copying words, sentences, or small texts
from a model; reproducing learnt sentences in writing.
-Semi-controlled writing: Students will be given more freedom in the
selection of vocabulary and linguistic exponents. They act at word and
sentence levels.

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 • At word level: making lists, personal dictionaries, working out
anagrams, completing crosswords, matching labels to pictures,
classifying words under headlines.
• At sentence level: writing captions for pictures, speech bubbles for
cartoons, sequencing sentences, matching halves of sentences,
answering questions, correcting mistakes in several sentences,
writing about a set of pictures.
These activities will promote our students' construction of sentences in
order to write paragraphs. For paragraphs we must provide a model from
where students start writing, and we must also help our students organize
their writing clearly and coherently.
-Free-writing: So far, the activities have been tightly controlled. In this
stage of writing, our students will decide themselves what vocabulary,
language structure is more suitable for what they want to express in a
specific context, receiving little help by the teacher. Students may face
some difficulties when writing by themselves without the help to the
teacher; to linguistic difficulties (organization of a paragraph, use of
linkers...) can be added the cognitive ones, that is, when students don't
know what to write for lack of ideas; visual and verbal stimuli, and
brainstorming will help our students to contextualize and develop
imagination.
At this educational stage free-writing should take the form to
letters, invitations, instructions, writing messages, story construction
(pictures to write a story), writing reports and advertisements, writing
games, writing descriptions of VIP and guessing who described it, writing
clues for a crosswords...
Whatever the activity may be, teachers must be sure their students
are writing for a purpose, not just writing for writing's sake, for being
corrected by the teacher.

WRITING SKILLS. Therefore, a summary of different subskills must be

developed in our students (by MATTHEWS):
-Graphical or visual skills: students must write the spelling of a word
properly, paying attention to these words similar to the mother tongue:
favourite, harmony. Students must also stick to the convention of writing:
capital letters for school subjects; punctuation; layout in letters, CV,
memorandum.
-Grammatical subskills: refer to students' ability to use successfully a
variety of sentences patterns and constructions.

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-Expressive or stylistic skills: students should be able to express precise
meanings in a variety of styles and registers (right vocabulary and right
linguistic exponents).
-Rhetorical-skills: it's students' ability to use cohesion devices
(connectors, reference words, ellipsis) in order to link different parts of a
text into logically related sequences.
-Organizational skills: we're conceived with the organization of pieces of
information into paragraphs and texts. This involves the sequencing of
ideas and the ability to reject irrelevant information and summarize
important points.

3. DIFFERENT TYPES OF WRITTEN TEXTS AND THEIR STRUCTURE

The multiplicity of situations in which a text can be produced entails

the existence of a wide range of connections among the elements in a text
and therefore the possibility of producing heterogeneous texts. In spite of
this apparent heterogeneity, speakers recognise texts as belonging to a
particular type and this allows for a classification into separate textual
structures which share a number of textual and contextual characteristics
(register, formal conventions. type of conjunctives, thematic progression)
Thus we can define the concept 'type of text' as each one of these
structures, which groups different texts having a series of global
characteristics in common. We distinguish four types of text:

3.1. NARRATIVE TEXT

The most universal type of text is the narrative text, because all
cultures have story telling traditions. They can be fictional (novels, fairy
tales, legends, etc.) or non-fictional ( history books, encyclopaedias,
autobiography, etc.)
When we get students involved in writing a narrative piece, this
means they will need a clearly defined plot with an aim in mind(e.g. frighten
the reader). In narrative, characters are essential, students must be
encouraged to create the suitable characters for the plot an the intention.
Structure is also important. There must be a background, which establishes
the setting. There must be also a complication, which deals with most of
the action and interaction of the characters; and an ending, which could
round up the plot or leave the crisis unsolved. This way, we can see that a
narrative piece is usually associated to description and even to exposition.
The progression is chronological, marked by the use of connectors.

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 3.2. DESCRIPTIVE TEXTS
The object of a descriptive text is to give a mental image of an
object, place, people, process, and personal or emotional situation. If there
is a mental image of the description by the part of the writer this means
that it’s the writer’s main goal to help the reader get the mental image too;
leaving of course some room for individual imagination. Students need to
know this in advance, to become conscious of the need to describe the
whole and the detail, the visual and all the other sensual aspects.
Therefore, the teacher should help student to have a clear aim and a sense
of audience.
Some characteristics of this kind of description is the use of copula
sentences, relative clauses, prepositional and adverbial phrases, adjectives
of colour, size, shape… There is linear progression and the relationship
between items of information is given by their spatial arrangement
through the use of connectors.

3.3. EXPOSITORY TEXTS

Under this heading we can also deal with argumentative and
instructive texts. The object of EXPOSITORY texts is to explain or
clarify, so they provide information and use strategies to widen the
reader’s knowledge about the topic. An ARGUMENTATIVE text aims at
convincing, so it uses strategies to modify the reader’s belief on the topic.
When the aim is teaching or instructing the reader we are dealing with
INSTRUCTIVE texts.
This texts often follow an specific structure:
• They have an introduction which may take different forms: a
definition of the subject; a specific example from which general
conclusions will be drawn; a general statement to be illustrated with
examples; a personal experience from which the topic develops; a
provocative statement or direct question to the reader…
• Then comes the body of the text, where one statement supports
another or it exemplifies it, contrast it… All the ideas must be
clearly set and repetition must be avoided
• The conclusion can also be varied: a summary of what has been said;
a suggestion for future dealing with the topic; a suggestion for
other cases to which the topic could be related; a personal
experience, anecdote, quotation…; a direct question to the reader
involving for instance his feelings or opinions.
Again all the elements which give coherence and cohesion to the text
are essential. At the same time, let us remember that an expository text is
also written with a specific aim and sense of audience in mind

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 3.4. CONVERSATIONAL OR DIALOGUIC TEXTS
Dialogue texts primarily refer to spoken modes of discourse (e.g.
face-to-face or telephone conversations), which are often characterised as
being unplanned, informal, interactive i.e., reciprocal and non-reciprocal.
This kind of text seldom exists on its own. Students will write dialogues as
part of any other text except when writing in a specific context such as a
playwright or a cartoon strip. These texts usually follow closely the
pattern of spoken language.

As we have previously said, some texts consists of smaller texts of a

different type. Narrative usually includes description and dialogue. That is
why J.M. Adams proposes the term “sequence” and he considers that a text
is a unity made up by a certain number of sequences inserted one into
another. However, there is always a sequence which exerts a dominant role
and texts are classified according to the sequence that dominates

4. FORMAL ELEMENTS

There are three stretches of written language formally recognised

that can be visually identified: the paragraph, the sentence, and the word.
The paragraph is a thematic unit, it can be deductive if the thesis
statement is at the beginning or inductive if it is in final position. Text
sentences are linked with cohesive devices and coherence provides unity to
the whole text. The choice of words, vocabulary, is also important. The
vocabulary used in written texts is often more elaborated than in spoken
texts; the register will be chosen according to the social context.

5. CONVENTIONS OF WRITTEN TEXTS

Social practices inevitably generate debates about their proper

language use i.e., "correctness". There is considerable debate and
disagreement concerning the role of conventions in writing and language use
• PUNCTUATION: Though punctuation tends to follow strict
conventions of usage, there is considerable hesitation as can be seen
by the fact that publishing houses impose their own house styles.
Punctuation may serve broad purposes: Separation, Specification,
Cohesion and Hierarchy
• ORTOGRAPHY: The rules of word formation (morphology) and
orthography are important for three main reasons. First, they guide
students as to the spelling of words which in English is notoriously

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 problematic. Secondly, they help students to make intelligent
guesses about the meaning of unfamiliar words by identifying the
word class through morphology. Thirdly, knowledge of word-
formation will help students to expand their vocabulary and foster
lexical creativity.
• LINGUISTIC AND STYLISTIC CONVETIONS: the use of linguistic
and stylistic features differ according to the different text types,
including the use and effects of passive voice, first person, topic
sentences, topical and functional headings, verb tense, attributive
tags, qualifiers, and rebuttals. Connectors: must be able to identify
the logical organisation of a text by understanding the meaning
relations between parts (cohesion) of it and their relation to the
whole (coherence)
• DEICTIC FEATURES: Deictic words serve to denote personal, spatial
or temporal reference in relation to the context of communication
Deictic expressions are used to make anaphoric or cataphoric
reference
• SUPRALINGUISTIC CONVENTIONS: help readers to identify
different text types and to predict the type of information and
where they are likely to find it even before they have read the text
e.g., a characteristic of newspapers is the use of headlines,
vignettes, and photographs, and that the TV timetable is to be found
in the last page

6. ROUTINES AND FORMULAIC EXPRESSIONS

Part of communicative competence involves speakers knowing how to

distinguish different text types by identifying patterns of standard
phrases and expression (conventional, formulaic, standard expressions,)
which are both grammatically correct and appropriate to the rhetorical
genre (e.g. formal or informal letter, business correspondence, scientific
essay etc). For example 'Once a upon a time' and 'they lived happily ever
after' are associated to a particular genres i.e., a children's story. The
expressions "Dear Sir/madam" and "Yours faithfully" are standard phrases
used in formal letters of correspondence. As discourse markers, formulaic
expressions also serve to signal the structure of discourse
Greetings: Dear Sir/Madam
Topic nomination : First, Second, Moreover
Turn-taking: However
Leave taking: The End, In conclusion

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WRITTEN FORMULAS
SALUTATIONS:
UNKNOWN ADDRESSEE: Dear Sir/ Madam
FORMAL: Dear Mrs Smith
INFORMAL: My dearest Amy
CLOSING SALUTATION:
UNKNOWN ADDRESSEE: Yours faithfully
INFORMAL: Best wishes; kind regards
CLOSE RELATIONSHIP: love; Kisses; XXX
COMMON FUNTIONS:
APOLOGY: We were sorry to receive your complaint that…
REPLY: With reference to your advertisement in…
REQUEST: I would be grateful if you would…

7. CONCLUSION

In conclusion, our aim as teacher is to help our students to become

communicatively competent in the foreign language. In order to achieve
that, we should make them aware of the different text types, their
structures, functions and formula, so that they can understand and produce
written texts. We should also promote writing and reading activities for
them to get in touch with written language. Apart from that, integrating
the skills mentioned in this unit with listening and speaking will help them to
use and understand language better

8. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Some of the books I have checked to elaborate this UNIT, all of

them published in the 2nd half of the 20th century, are the following:

• HALLIDAY,M. 1987. Spoken and written modes of meaning

• HYMES,D. 1972. On Communicative Competence
• TANNEN,D. 1982. Spoken and Written Language
• CRYSTAL,D. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language
• Collins English Dictionary,1992

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