First-year English Writing

[Adam Ricardo]

Natural Way of Academic Writing

This essay focuses on academic writing in English. Through my explanation in the following paragraphs, I hope that students can acquire and improve their skills in writing. Writing is highly related to reading because we are unable to write good essay without reading at all. In other words, “Reading and Writing” is one integral part, not two separate components. Through plenty of reading, not only can students build up their vocabularies, but also they can naturally assimilate the knowledge of grammar and usage by imitating the masterpieces such as A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Literature in Victorian period) and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Literature in Romantic period). As a writer, we do not need to know the terms such as “Subjunctive” and “Apposition”. If Charles Dickens were still alive, he would definitely fail in the Hong Kong Certificate Examination, especially the usage section in paper II ! In fact, I have already used the subjective tense, but I think 99% of the students do not know it. Fortunately, it does not matter! The most important thing is that you can use the correct words putting in the correct position. This is the basic criterion for a writer. Without it, the following skills are nothing but wasting your time. Let me analyze this topic in depth.

Clouse (2004) mentions that the inter-relationship of reading and writing is rooted and significant. Academic students are always required to read a lot of materials. For instance, the students in department of English are asked to read plenty of fictions and then write in response to their reading. Through the reading and writing processes, writers and readers can communicate with each other. In addition, when you read enough materials, you will establish the sensitivity of what a reader wants. Therefore, when you write, you will match the particular sensitivity to your particular readers. I see eye to eye with Clouse. No matter what types of essay you prepare to write, you should think about your readers.

“The more writers know about their readers, the more successful their writing will be. That is, writers are responsible for considering the needs and expectations of their readers (Reid, 1994, p.1)”. The idea of writer-reader connection has been continuously re-mentioned in academic field for ten years from Reid (1994) to Clouse (2004).

Cre'me and Lea (2003) use the title “Reading as part of Writing” in one of the chapters of their book: Writing at University. They suggest that:

If you want to be able to make the best use of what you read, you will need to learn strategies for University. One of the techniques of writing successfully in an academic environment is to be able to integrate the important points of what you have read into your own writing. To do this it is necessary to have a clear picture of what you have read… (P.52)

After analyzing the reading and writing relationship, I try to step forward to the next level of an academic writing. Vocabulary and grammar are vital part of effective communication in English academic writing. A Command of tremendous glossaries will make you a super writer. According to the rumor from British society, the late British prime minister, Winston Churchill (1874-1965) had effectively memorized 22,000 vocabularies and been labeled the champion in the English history in the 20th century. I do not want to find out how many vocabularies they should be memorized, but what I want to point out is which methods they should be used to increase our word power and this point is more crucial than how many words we need to learn by heart. I think the most effective way is through plenty of reading.

Langan (1987) suggests the same, traditional way to build up vocabulary. Although the idea was seventeen years ago, it still works today. “Through reading a good deal, you will learn words by experiencing them a number of time in a variety of sentences. Repeated exposures to a word in context will eventually make it a part of your working language” (Langan, 1987, P.367).

The grammar is also an important part of writing. Why I put grammar together with vocabulary is that vocabularies express meanings, but we have to put the right words in the right positions in sentences. Linguists name this technique “Syntax”. When it comes to such point, grammar is definitely dominant in writing. Stott and Chapman (2001) claim that with a view to fitting words into sentences successfully, words should have different jobs to perform different functions, like “division of labor”. Using a wrong word in the wrong position means grammatically incorrect. In the first chapter of Stott and Chapman’s book, “making sense of sentences”, they state that “A closer knowledge of grammatical structures will help you to structure, edit and polish your own sentences more effectively (Stott and Chapman, 2001, P.5)”. They also mention the famous English novelist in early 20th century, Virginia Woolf. Woolf uses the word “tasting” to describe an action that picking a novel randomly from her bookshelf and trying “a sentence or two on tongue”. It “ reveals the infinitely variable and subtle stylistic effects that individual writers create”.

From the above literature review, I have no doubt that the importance of the relationship between reading as well as writing and the significance of word power as well as grammar. Those writers’ points of view are all important. In my opinion, what I would like to emphasize is that I should not build up glossaries by studying hard in those vocabulary books or word power builders where we can easily buy in many bookstores. Instead, I should learn it from the essays or fictions etc… According to statistical research, you will never see vocabulary books selling in native English countries such as Great Britain and USA. Instead, we can see them selling in Asian countries, especially the Greater China Region (Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.) A lot of Taiwanese students and students in Mainland China like to memorize vocabularies individually. The result shows that it is ineffective. Sometimes, it even induces negative effect: You may dislike learning English. From time to time, Asian people always use the wrong words in the wrong places or they only know one meaning of a word but not the other meanings of the same words when they are reading. A lot of native English speakers mention that it is very easy for them to recognize the Chinese writers’ essays because Chinese writers use the vocabulary in a queer way. My second point of view is that when Chinese write, they like to think about the grammatical terms and try to put the usage in their essay unnaturally. I think this is unnecessary. I agree that Grammar is extremely important for an academic writing, but I do not agree that as a writer, I need to learn a lot of terminology such as Gerund and infinitive. What one does need is to use it correctly and naturally. As far as I am concerned, the most effective way to learn grammar and build up vocabulary is: learning through reading and writing. On the other way round, academic writing can be enhanced only if you are continuously increasing your word power and polishing your grammar through reading the masterpieces again and again. I name the process a “Natural Way of Learning Writing” which is also the topic of my essay.