Paragraphing

Cohesion

Spelling

Punctuation

Checking Advice

Writing Skills

How do you approach exam classes for the Writing paper? Do you begin by thinking about the exam tasks and the preparation required by students in order to complete the tasks successfully in the exam situation, or do you begin by thinking about how the exam tasks (and the necessary preparation) relate to real-life business writing skills?

Here, we look at the most important features of real-life business writing and how these skills are reflected in the Writing paper. Preparing your students for the Writing paper should help them develop business-writing skills.

What do you write in your everyday business life? Make a list of all the things you've written over the last few days?

Questions

Think about the following, then look at the information below.

1. Who are you writing for?
   
   
2. Why are you writing?
   
   
3. How can you learn to write appropriate texts?
   
   
4. How can you learn to organise your writing?
   
   
5. How can you improve a written text?

Answers

1. Writing is a form of communication between the person who writes and the person who will read the text. Therefore, there are always a minimum of two people involved - the writer and the target reader. In the Part 2 of the Writing paper, students will be asked to produce a piece of writing with a specific target reader in mind.
   
   
2. We write for a variety of reasons: to request, to complain, to inform, to recommend, to propose, etc. The wording of each question in the Writing paper makes the reason for writing clear.
   
   
3. There are established writing conventions which most writers normally follow. These affect layout, style, register, etc. (for example, formal letter conventions or business reports). We learn these conventions at college or work, and often learn by following guidelines and models. Students can and should be taught the conventions for each type of writing by being shown good models and guidelines and by practising the different types of writing which may appear on the exam.
   
   
4. Before writing (as opposed to speaking), we usually have time
   
   

   to plan what we want to say to organise the information in a logical manner to decide how we are going to express ourselves

   Students should be made aware of the importance of these different stages and to use them to their advantage
   
   
5. After writing, we should build in time to edit our texts (e.g. make improvements and corrections). Students should be given the opportunity to learn and practise this skill