Class 11, Language Development, Unit-2 Communication

 

Unit-2

Communication

 

“Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone’s head.”

-Malcom Gladwell

(An English born, Canadian journalist, author and a public speaker, born in Hampshire, England on 3 September 1963.)

 

The explanation of the above given quotation by a Canadian author Malcom Gladwell is that on the basis of convincing and persuading power or lack of it, any writing cannot be measured of either success and failure. Instead of persuasion capacity, any writing becomes successful and failure, if it is making the reader engage to think or not or it makes us present our view on the writer’s mind or not. In other words, writing must make any reader engaged on thinking process on something that is in writer’s mind.

 

Free writing

Peter Elbow

Before you read:

a. What do the following images indicate? What comes to you mind when you see them? What do they communicate to people?

The images indicate the means of communication. The first picture is messaging using social networking sites, second one is writing letter, third one is use of internet for communication and last is a piles of newspaper.

 

What do the following quotes mean?

If writing is easy, you are doing it wrong.

According to the line, any writer must not take writing an easy task. Even raw writing cannot be created in a matter of minutes or hours. If this is so, anybody could be great writers easily. To be honest, writing is a difficult task. It is really difficult to fill your papers with emotions and feelings with your pen. Selection of appropriate words and arrangements of those words in a well organized manner is really difficult. It is like pouring inner feelings, emotions, and experiences on the paper with ink. Writing most certainly isn’t easy and it’s a falsified myth if anyone has ever said it is.

 

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

Everybody knows what the tasks of the human tongue are. Besides taking the taste, it helps us to speak our language or thoughts of your mind. In the same way pen writes those thoughts on the white sheet of paper. On expresses thought is sound form and anther expresses in written form. So the works of both, tongue and pen are same i.e. to illustrate the thinking of your brain.

Key points from the Essay Free writing:

v The most effective way to improve and increase fluency  on second language (English)

v It is an exercise doing at least three times a week for 10 minutes without stopping, looking back, correcting, or in other words writing freely continuously

v It is also called 'Automatic Writing', or babbling or jabbering,

v It is not edited, like a garbage to throw, has no comments, feedbacks, and evaluation,

v Very incoherent (no order, illogical, inconsistent) writing for gaining coherent writing,

v Unlike speaking, writing permits more editing, but the very editing is the downfall of writing because we do it while writing which hampers spontaneous overflow of writing,

v The fear of spelling mistakes, mistakes in sentence pattern, fear, nervousness block the natural verbal product,

v Writing and editing must not go together. We are doing the very mistake and we give up writing.

v Editing is needed but only at the time of producing a final product. Editing on while writing makes the producer nervous, jumpy and inhibited,

v It is for improving out habit of deeply rooted habit of editing while writing, and makes us write freely

v The difficulties in writing at the being encourage us to quit writing. Even our speech becomes powerful and coherent after a long efforts, same as the writing,

v Unnecessary editing makes our writing dead even we don't have our clear voice which is the main thing in writing,

v The vacuums on our mind are filled with instant rewriting exercises.

 

Ways with Words

A. The words in the crossword puzzles are from the text. Find them in the text to solve the puzzle on the clues given below.

Down:

1. to be preoccupied with a single topic or emotion - obsess

3. to move slowly and quietly in a particular direction - creep

4. orderly, logical, and consistent - coherent

 Across:

2. to utter rapidly or unintelligibly- jabber

5. to insert something between other things- interpose

6. an unreadable handwriting- squiggle

 

B. Use the following words in sentences of your own.

Massive- He died of a massive brain hemorrhage.

Consciousness- I lost my consciousness when I got my bike accident.

Catch-as-catch-can - We went hitchhiking for a week and lived catch-as-catch-can.

Give up - I have given up my smoking habit.

Abandon - They had searched an abandoned ship.

Lousy - I promised to make you happy, Carmen, and I'm doing a lousy job of it

Editing - Edit your article before submitted to the publication.

 

Comprehension:

Answer the following questions:

a) Why is free writing also called automatic writing?

Ans:- Free writing is also called 'automatic' writing because it is the writing process of bringing words on the white sheet of paper automatically without any interruptions by editing and without following the restrictions of writing to become a perfect writer.

 

b) How do you differentiate writing from speaking?

Ans:- Both writing and speaking are the important skills to be needed for mastery of any language however these two skills are different to each other. In speaking there is no change of editing, but writing allows you more editing.

 

c) What are the biggest obstacles in the writing process according to the Elbow? Do you agree with him? Why? Why not?

Ans:- According to Peter Elbow, While writing editing is the biggest obstacle in writing process. I agree with this, because if we try to edit while write any piece of writing, it blocks out spontaneous overflow of words or patterns on the white sheet of paper and even it compels us to abandon writing process.

 

d) How can free writing overcome 'writer's block'?

Ans:- Free writing helps to quit deeply rooted habit of editing while writing and lets the writer to write more easily and freely in a relaxed mood as well as helps to increases the flow of ideas and reduces the chance that you’ll accidentally censor a good idea.

 

e) What do you mean by 'Voice' in writing?

Ans:- The term 'voice' in writing means a clear message, concept or idea the writer wants to impart to his/her readers.

 

Critical Thinking:

a. How does the author persuade readers in this essay? What is he trying to communicate to the readers?

Ans:- According to Peter Elbow, doing free writing exercises at least 10 minutes, at least a week is the most effective way to improve writing and be able to deliver our voice effectively to the readers. The writer wants to set his idea 100% true to the readers by bringing many supporting ideas and even an example of a piece of free writing. He also explained why we could not become a good writer. Writing itself is a difficult task and lack of proper practices and deeply rooted habit of editing while writing blocks our potential to become a good writer. According to him, writing must be done automatically without any restrictions, correcting spellings, sentence patter, and crossing out words, sentences because such acts blocks our mind for spontaneous flow of words. The main hindrance of our writing is the nature of editing. It is also downfall of our writing, because the fears of mistakes block the natural verbal product. We must learn that editing needs when we are giving a final output. Freewriting must be no edited, without feed backs, without evaluation and without correction as a result the writer feels easy in writing. Once we improve the unnecessary habits of editing through Freewriting, we become a fluent writer giving a clear voice to the reader.

 

b. Elbow said, freewriting "is an exercise in bringing together the process of producing words and putting them down on the page." Do you agree with his statement? Why? Why not?

Ans:- "Freewriting is an exercise in bringing together the process of producing words and putting them down on the page." This line is taken from Elbow's essay "Freewriting". I agree with this statement because it done to correct our writing habit. Because of lack of words and writing habit and unnecessary editing while writing, we are unable to produce a good piece of writing. Freewriting is just an exercise of habit formation and regular practices ultimately give us mastery over writing skill. It makes us able to fight against nervousness, unnecessary habit of editing, and lack of vocabulary and sentence pattern. First is makes us feel easy in writing, secondly it makes us overcome many obstacles in writing and finally makes us able to impart a clear voice of our writing. It is like brainstorming in which we explore ideas through writing without any worries.

 

Key Points of Freewriting by Peter Elbow:

      ·       Do Freewriting exercises regularly (thrice a week)
·Automatic writing/babbling(foolish or meaningless chatter/jabbering (incoherently talking/chatter) for 10 minutes each time
·       Don’t care about mistakes, word, grammar, spelling, and word selection,
·       Write down what comes on your mind; write such as “I can’t think what to say, I can’t think of it” etc.
·       Write whatever you can, or repeat, and never stop,
·       No feedback is necessary for Freewriting from anybody even if from your teacher, it has no discussion, no comment and no evaluation; no rules of writing is applied here, you are free of restrictions,
·       Writing permits more editing, the fear of mistakes makes us awkwardness, wordiness
·       Editing in writing can have chance to try to get them write which is not in speaking
·       But editing must not be done while producing, nobody should edit while the producer is producing to make him nervous, jumpy, inhibited,
·       On the spot editing blocks the production of the words
·       Much more practice is needed for coherent and powerful writing same as in speech,
·       Don’t try to write just right, think before writing
·       The interruptions, changes and hesitations make our writing dead,
·       You must have a voice-a sound, a texture, or rhythm 
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