THE ESSENCE OF WRITING 1

What Is Writing?

What is writing? When you are asked about this question, what first comes into your mind?

Some might have their own definition about writing, and others might share a commonly understood meaning or a dictionary one. All make sense in their own unique way. However, to understand and discuss what writing means, we can think of it from the perspective of its purpose. The genuine purpose of writing is to communicate.

To write is to communicate with others. It is certain that “others” include the writer, herself. She is composed of two selves: one self is the writer, and the other self is the reader. That is, “others” indicate all of the readers, including the writer. Judging from the standpoint of communication, writing is similar to speaking since we speak to communicate like we write to communicate.

Moreover, the different ways in which talking and speaking occur have much in common with writing. We talk with others in different contexts and constructs. For instance, we narrate or tell a story when meeting people, vacationing, taking business trips, etc. In the story, characters, events, places, time and some other factors appear. When talking, we evaluate, for example, books, TV programs, recent movies, restaurants, or even people around us. Our daily life is full of evaluations. We explain items and words. In the present era, we are bombarded with new technologies, objects, and words. To catch up with the present times, we are updated with the meanings of new words in our daily conversation. We often find ourselves making an argument with others in our normal everyday lives. An argument does not have to be a debate. Persuading others gently, as well as aggressively, is an argument. Likewise, when communicating, we also suggest, describe, define, compare or contrast, cause and effect, or analyze a process. The organizational frames above are commonly presented in many of the English writing textbooks for non-native English speakers, as well as native English speakers.

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Writing is used to communicate, regardless of what language we use. To communicate effectively, we should be able to take into account the context, purpose, organization, words, grammar to be used in writing. These elements of writing for effective communication can be acquired in the process of writing. L2 writing is the same to carry out the writers’ thoughts effectively. With these ideas in mind, the Essence of Writing 1: Paragraphs with Infographics, one of the sequels for L2 writing that we co-projected, has been made.

On top of that, we have added a new concept, an infographic to visualize information, to this writing book, in order for L2 learners to practice effective communication. If writing teachers and learners follow the steps demonstrated in the book, they will be able to learn all of the writing elements and create an infographic. Learners can create their own infographic with PowerPoint, or with Piktochart, a tool to create infographics, which is free to use and easy to pick up. What matters is how we organize our thoughts to visualize effectively. Hopefully, this process can help learners to organize their thoughts, which is really important in writing.

At this point, we hope writing teachers and learners discover what we want them to know and more as they use this book.

We have learned publishing one book is a really challenging task. However, in the process, we have realized there are so many different ways to teach and learn L2 writing. We hope this book can guide both teachers and learners to an effective way to

understand L2 writing.