Make an update of 300 words or more: Find an approach to learning to write that you have encountered, used, or would like to know more about. Describe and analyze the approach using the concepts introduced in this section.

I have chosen Research report writing where I have experience with. The writing here follows rigorous scientific approach. The author needs to be clear about the intended readers before he begins to write. The template to be followed has a title, topic of study, an introduction about the theme chosen for writing, methodology of the research and references. Under introduction we have the conceptual framework, problem statement, literature review, justification/significance of the problem, objectives of the study, hypotheses statement, operational definitions, limitations and delimitations of the study. The methodology has the research design, sampling, tools and techniques use in the research, data collection procedure, data analysis, (tabulation), interpretation, inference and a concluding statement. The references are to be written following certain commonly accepted formats viz. American Psychological Association (APA) template or Modern Languages Association (MLA) template. The cross references must be provided properly in appropriate places where evidences are needed. Accuracy plays a major role in deciding whether the write-up is scientific and professional in nature. If we do not cite anything it implies that those sentences written are written by the author of the current document. This means that the author bears responsibility for plagiarism found in the report. Ethical report writing is the demand of this business. It is imperative that the author follows the guidelines given by the journal publisher before beginning to write the report. The writing style of research reports does not usually involve writing in first person (though exceptions may be there). The picture and graphics provided should be originally produced in high quality. If images are taken from other sources, prior consent should be obtained from the source authors and also the source of the image must be mentioned in the current document. The language should be as simple as possible, with appropriate articles and determiners but must also stick to the maximum number of words and characters allowed as per publisher guidelines. The article content should avoid bias towards certain race, gender, religion or nationality. Foot notes and end notes must be provided wherever necessary. It is always better that proof reading is done many times before submission. Tables and graphs must be given appropriate captions and titles. Some journals and businesses may need a short abstract in the beginning. Redundant words must be avoided and this can be avoided by determination to write a concise article.

In this part of the course on writing we have seen the following contents:

The nature of writing -- Writing is not just transcription of speech.Speaking and writing were compared.Speaking was said to be in time and writing in space.Examples were that speaking occurs instantaneously, as a set of continuous clauses with sometime no proper sentence completions, aligned along with gestures, contents gets repeated, more errors are prevalent and is linear in process.On the flip side, writing occurs in space.What is written now can be sent to others for perusal later.Writing involves form, organization and structure.It has to be brief and concise, errors are generally not tolerated, multi-linear processing and is aligned with image.I felt that “Audio Podcasts” are written and stored for later listening.These podcasts are digital speech files.

Chomsky

Halliday

Photo Courtesy Wikipedia pages of Chomstky and Halliday

Traditional grammar covering parts of speech, degrees of comparison, components of language were covered but it was said that the grammar’s usage is only within the sentence. Rules are to be applied to maintain the structure of the sentence and hence the meaning as a whole in a paragraph is evaded or omitted.Following this Chomsky’s translational grammar was introduced wherein his views that language is hard wired in the brain already was presented.Chomsky said to oppose B.F.Skinner’s behaviorism theory.All children are said to have this universal grammar and learning organ or device in their brain and they somehow could fill in details and learn the language by themselves and no verbal behavior modeling is needed.This is true when we see how children learn the local accents at a rapid phase without it being taught at home or in school.For example, a Spanish kid could learn French (local dialects) very easily is the Spanish family lives in Paris.Such local French dialect may not even be taught in a formal school. Halliday’s functional grammar was introduced which lists 3 meta-functions field (description of worldly objects and scenes), tenor (I am doing with tenor – my relationship with the reader) and mode (coherent formal structural speaking or writing).The activities and occupations of real life scenarios decide such grammar.All these meta-functions are there in use in all these real life scenarios.
The grammar of multi-literacy was introduced where we aim to use text, image and other multi-modal sources.Such a system involves 5 questions.It should:

Know what the talk or theme of writing it is referring to
The dialogue involved between two parties (could be readers and author also)
Over all meaning in the material with a formal structure referring to situations
With a purpose or intend.

Last, the publishing (internally designed by course team) system available in Scholar was described where in a full-fledged writing process/mechanics is possible with stages of writing viz. planning, drafting, reviewing, revising and publishing.On the left side on Scholar social media, one can plan, organize his own multimodal literature (with pictures, music, hyperlinks, citations and other cues) and on the right side an appropriate rubric will help the writer use a multi-linear writing process by constantly modifying and updating his drafts.A social feedback model is there on the right side wherein the peer reviewers can assess using rubrics, suggest feedbacks and even the course instructor can look and comment on those peer reviews asking for more evidences.The social participation becomes a key feature on the right hand side.The left side involves cognition whereas the right is thinking about the cognition process that leads to that piece of multi-modal literature.The students can use this platform to edit, create their multi-model literature and also publish it.

Bibliography

Vivian J. Cook, Mark Newson, (2007). Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction (3rd Ed), Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN: 978-1-405-11186-7

Halliday, Michael, Matthiessen, Christian, (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3rd ed), Hodder Edcuation