Page 434 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

422 | Model Question Papers

He communicates very efficiently though. He speaks and understands the local language. He
may even boast of a smattering of English. He does not know an alphabet of either language,
however and the receipt of his pay cheque needs his thumb impression.
As a mode of communication, writing has yet another interesting facet. We start
communicating through writing at a much later stage of our intellectual development.
The best empirical proof of this facet of writing would be observing a growing baby.
The phenomenon would prove to you undeniably that writing occurs at a much later stage
of human development. A cursory glance/at the history of pedagogy from Rousseau to
Piaget, too, proves to us that writing was neither the method nor the mode of transmitting
knowledge. Despite the rare handcrafted manuscripts, the primary mode of production
and re-production of knowledge has always, everywhere been the oral-aural method, at
least until Caxton popularized printing.
It is noteworthy that writing becomes a mode of communication only when a child enters
the social sphere beyond the immediate family, that is, the school. Interesting it is hence to
note that both these processes of socialization, schooling, and consequently writing, enter a
child’s life at the same time.
So let us re-capture the definition of writing. Writing, we must remember, is a unique
tool of communication that is neither innate nor natural, and this secondary type of skill is
acquired at a much later stage of development. Unlike speaking or listening, it is, moreover,
a more complex tool of communication. The co-ordination of mental processes and physical
organs involved in the actual execution of this skill is more elaborate than listening, for exam-
ple. It has, moreover, to be more precise than speaking. The formality/informality binary that
writing employs, for example, is far more precise than speaking.
Such a difference is more marked because, unlike speaking as a tool of communication,
writing is not temporary. Communication through speaking happens, and then literally van-
ishes in to thin air. The written mode of communication, on the contrary, is ever lasting,
permanently available across the barriers of time and space. So we have to be more specific
about its sub-skills that are listed below:

i. presenting ideas logically and coherently through organization and structuring of ideas
ii. connecting sentences in a cohesive manner
iii. being able to communicate effectively to perform different functions of writing that range
from entertainment to information.
A better understanding of these sub-skills of writing emerges once we look at the elements of
writing. Writing operates at three levels; namely, word level, sentence level and the discourse
level.
These three levels are inter-related interestingly. When we communicate through writing,
our word choice is determined by the sentence construction and by the larger discourse. In
fact, discourse, the largest unit of meaning, communicates the author’s intention to the reader
and determines the tone and the tenor of the communication. The way you would write your
science textbook, for example, is totally different from the way you would pen a letter to the
educational authorities for further grants. The discourses are different.

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