Written Spanish: idea and drafting E-Book

Pilar Úcar Ventura

• Herausgeber: Universidad Pontificia Comillas
• Kategorie: Fremdsprachen
• Serie: Biblioteca Comillas. Educación
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 117

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This text presents an explanatory synthesis of the main competence tools needed to create a written message in its different forms or models, while at the same time indicates not only correct linguistic patterns, but also the main mistakes made in writing, which have to be avoided for a precise essay. Outlines and mind maps are presented together with theoretical concepts, to try to sum up, as a graphic synthesis, the main steps to achieve correct communication in the writing process. Writing is not a survival tool, but a social value, especially in university and business worlds. More and more, graduates are asked for good writing skills, not only for their job interviews, but also for their future professional careers.

Leseprobe

Portadilla

WRITTEN SPANISH:IDEA AND DRAFTING

(Proposals for writing workshop)

Pedidos

Portada

PILAR ÚCAR VENTURA

MARÍA ANTONIA OLALLA MARAÑÓN

WRITTEN SPANISH:IDEA AND DRAFTING

(Proposals for writing workshop)

Translated and revised by

sonia velázquez leónmarta sierra amoedo

2017

Créditos

Servicio de Biblioteca. Universidad Pontificia Comillas de Madrid

UCAR VENTURA, Pilar.

Written Spanish, idea and drafting : (proposals for writing workshop) / Pilar Úcar Ventura, María Antonia Olalla Marañón ; translated and revised by Sonia Velázquez León, Marta Sierra Amoedo. -- Madrid : Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2017.

Libro electrónico (88 p.)

(Biblioteca Comillas. Educación ; 5)

ISBN 978-84-8468-670-1

1. Comprensión lectora. 2. Comunicación escrita. 3. Escritura. 4. Lengua española. 5. Redacción. I. Título. II. Olalla Marañón, Mª Antonia.

Esta editorial es miembro de la Unión de Editoriales Universitarias Españolas (UNE), lo que garantiza la difusión y comercialización de sus publicaciones a nivel nacional e internacional

Original title in Spanish:

Español escrito: idea y redacción

© 2013 Pilar Úcar Ventura & María Antonia Olalla Marañón

© 2017 Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Universidad Comillas, 3

28049 Madrid

© 2017 Sonia Velázquez León & Marta Sierra Amoedo, for the translation

ISBN edición electrónica: 978-84-8468-670-1

Reservados todos los derechos. Queda totalmente prohibida la reproducción total o parcial de este libro por cualquier procedimiento electrónico o mecánico, incluyendo fotocopia, grabación magnética o cualquier sistema de almacenamiento o recuperación de la información, sin permiso escrito de la UNIVERSIDAD PONTIFICIA COMILLAS.

Dedicatoria

To those who still have hope in writing

Citas

Poetry was already there even before writingwas invented (…) Sit down to glimpse this other world, Where… we will have the best time. («Ya existía la poesía», en Historia de Gloria, Amor, humor y desamor, Madrid, Cátedra, 1980, Gloria Fuertes)

While it is true I am poet by the Grace of God –or devil– it is also true I am so thanks to the grace of technic and effort. (Poesía Española. Antología 1915-1932. Selección de Gerardo Diego, en Obras Completas de Federico Madrid, Signo, 1932)

INDEX

INDEX

Cubierta

Portadilla

Pedidos

Portada

Créditos

Dedicatoria

Citas

CHAPTER I: COGNITIVE AND PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PROCESSES. WRITING

1. COMMUNICATION. GRAMMAR. FUNCTIONS. CONTENT

Grammar

Functions

The content

2. ORAL AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE

3. TEXT AND REALITY FOR WRITING

CHAPTER 2: MOMENTS OF CREATION

1. INTRODUCTION. MOTIVATE TO WRITE

2. DIFFICULTY OF WRITING. WORKING IN CLASS

3. PHASES OF WRITING

a) Pre-writing

b) Writing

c) Post-writing

4. CORRECTION

5. CREATION INSTRUCTIONS. MATERIALS

CHAPTER 3: WRITING WORKSHOP

1. CORRECTION AND ADEQUACY. USE AND NORMATIVE

a) Avoidable mistakes

b) Proposals

2. MAIN IDEA. SECONDARY IDEA. IDIOMATIC REGISTER

3. THE SUMMARY. THE TEXT COMMENT

a) The summary

b) Text comment

4. EXPOSE, ARGUMENT, NARRATE

a) Expositive texts

b) Argumentative texts

c) Narrative texts

d) Essay or review

CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANNEXES

Contraportada

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

Nobody can doubt today that we are immerse in a social context where rapid communication is specially valued. That is why written expression is the communicative skill that has fallen behind in the learning and teaching processes. On one hand, writing is considered a minor importance activity, and on the other hand, it has a bigger difficulty to be taught and to be learned.

Moreover, writing is in many occasions subordinated and used at the service of other skills. Students write to take notes in class, to make vocabulary lists, to create outlines of grammatical structures, amongst other functions; but they also use writing to be evaluated in many tests. Hence, students are usually more worried about showing their competences than about composing texts in a satisfactory way.

In addition to these factors, we have to take into account today’s use of emails, which conditions the written messages style to which young people are used to.

Due to this obvious difficulty, many students show certain resistance to the fact of start writing as such. The same way professors feel disoriented when they face this duty; disoriented not only about how to frame and impulse this activity, but also about how to develop, correct and evaluate it.

However, at the same time, we hear the desire and the need of knowing how to write in a clear and precise way to have a real communication between sender and receptor.

Nevertheless, comprehension and written expression are fundamental pillars to achieve certain reputation and consideration in our society. Writing is not only a tool for survival, but a social value, especially in the academic and business worlds.

As teachers of Spanish language in different arenas, such as Erasmus programs, Exchange programs with United States of America and in the Degrees of Translation and Interpreting and International Relations, we are aware of the importance of unravelling the written linguistic message, the importance of de-codifying it. The step between oral and written is due to cognitive and psycholinguistic processes which are in many cases unconscious… and is the analysis of those processes the one which allows to create a message perfectly elaborated for its understanding and later diffusion.

There are books of normative, grammar and texts… but with this book we want to go a step further in a very specific aspect and also a very pragmatic one: we are now presenting written communication.

A written message, correctly formulated, gets to the receptor with more effectivity and also avoids polysemy and ambiguity, all in all, avoids communicative confusion.

We are therefore going to review the process of writing in its different phases: planning, creation and reviewing-correction.

We are also going to pay attention to the adequate way of drafting and presenting to have the best effectivity and applicability we can.

This text presents a clear synthesis of the main tools needed for creating a written message in its different expressions or models; while, at the same time, offers correct linguistic patterns, showing the main mistakes in writing, which should be avoided for a precise essay.

Through comparisons, we achieve a useful and modern proposal for written language users.

Next pages will we configured by the work and the activities prepared for students, therefore those really interested in understanding writing management will be the ones shaping the book we are now presenting.

The reader will find a series of simple instructions, easy to apply, in the shape of structured notes resulted from different given lessons about drafting and writing.

Together with theoretic concepts, there are notes and mind maps which try to sum up in a graphic and synthetic way the most relevant parts in writing process. It should be pointed out that this book promotes the importance of critic and autonomous development and creation, which allow to judge and question, to solve and actively participate in every teaching-learning processes in which the student is the main participant.

The student has just in front of the eyes a very valuable material which can be included to his cultural and linguistic background thanks to referential texts and to the pragmatism and synthesis of the text.

We share the opinion that the written summary allows the student to have an effective and efficient mechanism to decode the textual message, to detect the complexity of information and to prioritize and structure information in a coherent way regarding contents and shape.

On the other hand, we have to guarantee that our instructions allow the student to join the job market, even in a small scale, we have to reassure that we have taught students the tools they need to be able to write with accordance and security. But we also need to make them capable of investigating, exploring possibilities of searching and finding solutions to the problems and difficulties they may have in their way, all in all, in the process of writing.

Moreover, without forgetting about the active participation of the graduated student in civil society as such, and as we have just pointed out, we want our students to be conscious of the main moral, ethic, civil, deontological questions and to know how to accommodate to a criteria of citizen that affects today societies, and that is why we pay especial attention to the education of a useful and active society, a society which is able to take responsible decisions while facing questions in their professional lives. Writing will be the bridge and mediation for all these objectives.

The audience for this book is everyone interested in writing, in its process and creation: students of Spanish in levels B and C according to the European Reference Framework and students of first courses in the different degrees who want to improve their writing skills through a creative idea. It is therefore a book which can be used by students of every kind, from Translation and Interpreting to Theology, International Relations, Psychology or Business and Law. This book will also help to remember the bases of writing to the students of the Master of Secondary Education, for them to use what they learned in the teaching centres where they develop their internships.

We also hope this book to be helpful for teachers of 1º and 2º of Bachillerato for their courses of Language and Literature, Philosophy and History, as they will find instructions and proposals very useful for their classes, while they prepare their topics for each lesson and for the tests to access university.

From these pages we pretend to inculcate both the practise microcosms of each of ours students, using their academic profile as people interested in intercultural and inter-linguistic communication, and also a good level of Spanish language and a strong level of communication in their first foreign language.

Notes will be very interesting and useful to find common activities for their day to day context, to be able later on to articulate norms and conclusions formulating examples with the use of different idiomatic registers and therefore to know how they communicate with each other; we will present examples of distortion of communication and absence of unity of codes, as well as problems derived from lack of comprehension between sender and receptor.

We favour the fact of commenting, criticising and valuing linguistic expression through the contrast of cases and the analysis between them; all in all, the idea is to give students the necessary tools for a learning not only based on summing information but on a rational and formative learning, learning to change and learning to improve.

Everything in a context continuously receiving input by which we stablish interpersonal relations which will affect the processes of learning and teaching.

For its consecution we will need to stablish an important degree of motivation, stimulus and at the same time, we have to decide the level of depth with which we want to develop that learning and the communicative competences through writing expression.

We wanted to include an important and different bibliography useful for students and for experts in drafting that includes all processes of learning and teaching of languages, methods of learning, and strategies and tools for writing.

We would like to point out the annexes of the book, as it is composed of a varied list of texts and activities related to what has been exposed in previous chapters.

As the idea is to develop competence of writing expression and reading comprehension, we have proposed a variety of exercises and practice proposals according to an adequate progression planned to reach a higher and more complicated level of content, taking into account textual communication and cultural sphere to reach a real and authentic praxis. That is why we are offering linguistic material from a functional point of view: to observe communicative intentions in each situation, as language acts as vehicular and unifying element, but also respecting richness of diversity and multiculturalism of the offered texts.

We want to contribute by giving a series of activities variated and suggestive to facilitate the professor’s work, leaving margin of manoeuvre to his day to day work while working with all the components that create the language gearbox: from morpho-syntax units to supra-clauses.

Duties are organized in an open way and they allow the integration of the different profiles of the students and the different styles of learning. Each student may participate in the activity generated by the group according to his level of competence and academic objectives.

We are aware of the challenge we start now but also of the goal we want to reach: starting from an idea and its materialization through writing, interpersonal communication is favoured; to obtain this, skills must be learned and practised, skills that we make available for those interested in writing, because although we would like to pay attention also to orality and its ways of expressing… that will be another time.

We want to thank all those who have trusted us with these pages because they considered them necessary for the challenges of the global society in which we are immerse. Especially, we want to give our most sincere gratitude to the professors of Theology and Business, and also to those who are every day with our exchange students. Finally, of course, thanks to Belén Recio, for taking a chance once again on us.

CHAPTER I: COGNITIVE AND PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PROCESSES. WRITING

CHAPTER ICOGNITIVE AND PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PROCESSES. WRITING

1. COMMUNICATION. GRAMMAR. FUNCTIONS. CONTENT

The consequences of current globalization, which has been mentioned before, regarding languages and specially regarding the teaching of languages, are quite relevant and of extraordinary importance; serious studies show the prevalence of the student as main character of the learning process.

This way, we can conclude that how we express ourselves, the way we manifest and transmit our ideas will be determined in great measure by the language in which we communicate with our students.