Page 29 - BRIDGES - ISSUE 7

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INTRODUCTION
DIFFERENCES OF SPOKEN
The aim of this paper is to provide AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE
some insights to the teaching of writ-
ing skills taking into account the re- Assaid earlier, language exists tocom-
cent approaches towriting. municate meaning but written lan-
Writing has often been described asa guage hasfeatures that make it differ-
painful process and the writer as a ent from spoken language. Spoken
lonely figure. If learning to write co- and written language differ in function
herently is difficult even in one’s na- and process.
tive language and writing a skill many Written language is primarily used to

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Theteachingof writingskills

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Helen Bindaka adult native speakers never achieve a transmit information. Thus the pri-
high level of performance then writ-
mary function of the written form of
ing in a foreign language is far more language is transactional while spoken
difficult. language is primarily interactional and
Writing, among foreign language focusesontheestablishment and main-
teachers,always had pride of place but tenance of social relations. Of course
for most of them it was used as a spoken language is also used to trans-
means to teach the language and not mit information and written language
as a goal. For most of the history of is used interactionally as well.
language teaching, writing has been Once written and spoken language
synonymouswith the teachingof gram- fulfil different functions, they exhibit
mar.At the earlystages learners were different characteristics Written lan-
expected to master the language at the guage compared with spoken exhibits
level of the sentence and at more ad- higher lexical density, more complex
Helen Bindaka has been teaching vanced stages they practised in pro- syntax, a higher degree of organisa-
Englishsince 1977insecondaryedu- ducing paragraphsor textsthrough the tion in the development of ideas and
cation and has also worked as a ml techniques of controlled and guided information and a more accurate vo-
teacher trainer at Patras PEK in writing. Nowadays a key principle of cabulary.
1992-93. She holds a BA from the language teaching is that language ex- An important difference between
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki ists to fulfil a number of communica- speech and writing is that writing is
and hasattended Athens SELME in tive functions.This principle makes us context-independent. When writing,
1984-85. She has also attended aware of the differences between spo- the writers are distant in time and
courseson Teacher Training, Meth- ken and written language and leads us place from their readers.So they have
odology and New Technologies in to study the functions and processes to makeassumptionsabout their read-
Cambridgeand Brighton.She iscur- of written and spoken language and ers’ knowledge of the subject and an-
rently doinganMAdegree in Meth analyse their implicationsfor language ticipate possible difficulties that might
I odology with theHellenic OpenUni- teaching in general and teaching writ- cause misunderstanding. Because of
versityandisteaching at Peiramatiko ing in particular.Furthermore itguides lack of direct contact there is no im-
Lyceumof Patras , 1 our decisionsfor the development of mediate feedback which is the charac-
ISSSBlfifW a framework for teachingwriting and teristic of speech. Therefore coher-
kostabin@otenet.gr theselection of writing tasks and ma- »»
m Slllla terials.

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