Process Writing

Knowing the acceptable features of specific genres, having an extensive knowledge about subject-matter, and developing ability in logical thinking are crucial in perfecting learners' proficiency in writing. Recent research indicates that a process-oriented approach of teaching writing which emphasizes the rationale of the genre, according to Swale (1990b:58 cited in Connor 1996:127), can be more effective than the end-product approach that stresses the end result of the writing.

Process Writing
The process approach does not treat writing or composing texts as a pure skill-based language activity. It is considered to be a process of exploration. Writers need to explore and challenge social reality while creating their texts. The approach emphasizes the need for cognitive or intellectual ability in developing and organizing ideas into discourse or texts. The processes of writing can be summarized in the following diagram:

Generating ideas, organizing them in a logical manner, selecting relevant ideas, drafting, and revising a draft are the stages usually adopted by process-oriented writers as their writing strategy. Obviously, the processes of generating, selecting and organizing idea stress on the importance of having the relevant and good content expected by the discourse community.

References

Connor, U. (1996). Contrastive Rhetoric, Cross-cultural aspects of second-language writing. USA: Cambridge University Press.

Holland, V. M., Kaplan J. D. & Sams M. R. (1995). Intelligent Language Tutors. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers. (pp 99-120).

Nunan, D. (1991). Language Teaching Methodology. U.K.: Prentice Hall. (pp 83-99).

Tomlinson, B. (1998). Materials Development in Language Teaching. UK: Cambridge University Press

Warschauer, M., Kern R. (2000). Network-based Language Teaching. UK: Cambridge University Press.

Intonation Teaching and Training in Hong Kong

Intonation Teaching & Training in Hong Kong
The teaching of intonation has its focus on interactive communication training. The interaction emphasises the need to act and communicate with each other. To Hong Kong speakers of English, they need to create for themselves the urge to communicate in English as English is the commonly used for daily communication. English is mainly learnt and studied in schools.


The communicative approach gains its support in the instructional design of the pronunciation teaching materials which is mainly achieved through kinds of role plays activities in the classroom.


The teaching of intonation takes the notion to negotiate meaning in conversation. In other words, speakers and hearers must co-operate, make joint efforts to understand, and repair misunderstanding. There are at least three approaches suggested by Kenworthy (1992). They are attitudinal approaches, functional approaches, and discourse approaches.

David Crystal's Scales of Linguistic Constrastivity

According to Crystal (1969:203), intonational units are 'more distinct and linguistically more replicable than others'. He illustrated the point with some figures that 'when native speakers were presented with the task of repeating an utterance, there was maximum agreement (84.8%) over the location of tone-unit boundaries, agreement over tonicity was 81.6%; onset locaiton yielded an agreement of 77.3%, and the exponent of nucleus an agreement of 74.4%.

Tone Unit Identification
Tone units are difined by Crystal (1969:204) as an audio description of grammatical contrast. A semantic approach works on the amorphous notion of the sense group. As the extra-linguistic phenomenon, it is treated as somewhat like a 'breath-group'.

Each tone unit consists of onepeak of prominence in the form of a nuclear pitch movement. the tone-unit boundary is indicated by two phonetics factors: a perceivable pitch change, rise or fall; the presence of junctural features at the end of each tone. The decriptors of the internal structure of the tone unit includes: prehead, head, nucleus, and tail.

The tonal system, i.e. nuclear tone is divided into three main types: simple, compound, and complex. The simple tone shows unidirectional pitch movement: rising, falling and level. Complex tone consists of fall-rise and rise-fall. Compound tone is known as correlative or binuclear tones. They are combinations of two kinetic elements of different major phonetic types acting as isngle unit.