GENRES OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE

Here, we do the same for types, or genres, of reading and writing. In our highly literate society,
there are literally hundreds of different types of written texts, a much larger variety than found
in spoken texts. Each of the types listed below represents, or is an example of, a genre of written
language.

That is what your students may encounter when they read an L2, so part of your job as a teacher
is to enlighten your students on features of these genres and to help them to develop strategies
for extracting necessary meaning from each. There are quite a number of salient and relevant
differences between spoken and written language. However, some characteristics of English
writing, especially certain rhetorical conventions, may be so different from the students’ native
language that reading efforts are blocked.

Processing Time

Many reading contexts allow readers to read at their own rate, especially reading for pleasure .
They aren’t forced into following the rate of delivery, as in spoken language, and so somewhat
«slower» readers are not always at a disadvantage, especially when they are in complete control
of the amount of time needed to read a text. Learners studying in an L2 can feel frustrated by
what they feel is an extremely slow rate of reading or the necessity to reread a text multiple
times in order to achieve comprehension. Some have claimed that L2 readers ought to strive for
250–300 words per minute as an ultimate goal.

Distance

The task of the reader is to interpret language that was written in some other place at some
other time with only the written words themselves as contextual clues.

Orthography

In spoken language, most languages have phonemes, stress, rhythm, juncture, intonation,
pauses, volume, voice quality settings, and nonverbal cues, all of which enhance the message.
In spite of its reputation for being «irregular,» English orthography is highly predictable from its
spoken counterpart, especially when one considers morphological information as well. Yet, even
for literate learners of English, our spelling system presents difficulties, especially for those
whose native languages have quite different systems . On the other hand, most of the
irregularity in English manifests itself in high-frequency words .

Among native English speakers, there are «poor» spellers here and there.

Complexity

Spoken language tends to have shorter clauses connected by more coordinate conjunctions,
while writing has longer clauses and more subordination. The shorter clauses are often a factor
of the redundancy we build into speech . Because of the frequent ambiguity that therefore is
present in a good deal of writing, readers must do their best to infer, to interpret, and to «read
between the lines». The cognitive complexity of version , the written version, is no greater than
version , the spoken version.

But structurally, four sentences were used in version to replace the one long sentence of
version .
 Formality

Writing is quite frequently more formal than speech. The reason that you can both recognize a
menu and decide what to eat fairly quickly is that menus conform to certain conventions. Until a
reader is familiar with the formal features of a written text, some difficulty in interpretation may
ensue.

Microskills

Discriminate among the distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English. Retain
chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory. Comprehend written language at
an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.

Macroskills

Recognize cohesive devices in written discourse and their role in signaling the relationship
between and among clauses. Recognize the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their
significance for interpretation. Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a
context of the appropriate cultural schemata. Develop and use a battery of reading strategies
such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words
from context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of texts.

STRATEGIES FOR READING COMPREHENSION

Following are ten such strategies, each of which can be practically applied to your classroom
techniques.

Identify the Purpose in Reading

Whenever you are teaching a reading technique, make sure students know their purpose in
reading something.

Use Graphemic Rules and Patterns to Aid in Bottom-Up Decoding

In many cases, learners have become acquainted with oral language and have some difficulty
learning English spelling conventions. They may need hints and explanations about certain
English orthographic rules and peculiarities.

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