2. What is writing?
“If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about,
he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of
an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.”
Ernest Hemingway
3. Writing Skills
1) Grammatical Skills – the ability to write correct
sentence
2) Stylistic Skills – the ability to manipulate
sentences and use language effectively
3) Mechanical Skills – the ability to use correctly
those conventions peculiar to the written
language
4) Judgment Skills – the ability to write in an
appropriate manner for a particular audience in
mind, together with an ability to select, organize
and order relevant information
5. Different Types of Writing
1. Academic writing
- Persuasive/ Argumentative such as position
paper, critique
- Expository/ Explanatory such as review article,
research report, scientific report
2. Expressive writing
- Creative such as poem, play, story
- Personal such as personal letter, diary
3. Practical writing
- Prescribed such as questionnaire, formal letter,
receipt
- Non-prescribed such as official report(police),
ads, letter to the editor, pamphlets, directions
6. Why are there various kinds of writing tests?
A wide variety of writing tests is needed to test the
many kinds of writing tasks that we engage in.
7. Ideas for Writing Tasks
• Taking notes
• Making lists
• Writing messages
• Writing letters
• Writing notes
• Writing articles
• Answering want ads from the newspapers
• Writing want ads
• Filling-in forms
• Writing diary entries
• Writing telegrams, greeting cards
• Writing poems, literary-type texts
• Writing descriptions of home, room, family, friends, scene, etc.
8. Factors to consider in Developing
Writing Tasks
• The type of writing
• The function
• The addressee
• Process
• Product
9. Characteristics of writing tests
• Authentic and communicative writing tasks place
emphasis on transmitting authentic/integrative
information in writing.
• Current writing tasks reflect the kind of writing
tasks that the students are required to do in the
L2 oral communicative situations. Thus, there is
emphasis on the type, and function of writing as
well as the addressee.
• Since current teaching of writing emphasizes also
strategies of writing, the process should get
attention in testing writing as well as the final
product of writing.
10. Characteristics of writing tasks
• Evaluating writing samples is generally done with
the aid of rating scales which define the writing
sample according to certain criteria – analytic
and/or holistic, considering also the type,
function and addressee.
• In order to obtain higher rater reliability, raters
are generally trained in rating written language
samples.
• There is a trend toward supplying students with
the content, so he will not be penalized for not
having what to write about.
