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MAY learners always make enquiries about speech presentations and writing. You need to speak clearly and to the point. Adapt talk to different situations and audiences.
O top of this use standard English. To be successful on this kind of work you must think what you are going to say and how you are going to say it before you actually give your speech. This is quite close to when writing a speech.
You can plan your speech, diving it into three parts. Greet your audience and introduce the title of the talk, explaining what it is about.
Give the key information in a clear order. If the aim of your presentation is to persuade your audience to do or think something, then you need to use persuasive language.
Choose the right kinds words and the right style of speech. Note that the impression I have created here between spoken and written language is that they share some similarity.
This is far from the truth. There are many important differences between these two except that one is heard and the other is visible.
Organising sentences into paragraphs. Most writing is organised into paragraphs. This helps the reader to follow more easily the points being made.
Each paragraph marks a new stage or idea in the writing. The first sentence of a paragraph is sometimes called the topic sentence.
This is because it often gives you the clue as to what the paragraph is going to be about.
Planning though unpopular with other learners is an important skill. You may need to plan a journey or a holiday or to progress in your career to mention but a few options.
You need to plan to ensure your writing does exactly what it is intended to do. Your plan is for your use, so you need to develop the form of planning that suits you best.
The first step in planning is to identify the intended purpose, audience and form of your writing.
The purpose is the reason or reasons you have for writing the text. The audience is the intended reader or readers for whom you are writing.
The form is the kind of text you are being asked to write. The next step is to gather ideas connected to the task. This is the thinking stage where you get as many ideas together as you can.
You do not need to use them all in your writing, but you can draw on them you will not get stuck for ideas halfway through.
Getting stuck halfway through as stated before leads to jerky pieces of writing. Your writing will lack cohesion and the flair.
The next stage is organising your ideas. Decide which ideas you are going to use and the order in which you are going to write them.
Have a second look at your idea and cross out any you no longer want to include. Group the others in the best order for writing. Decide if there is anything else you could add to improve your writing.
Learners need to pay special attention to comments made by their teachers on their pieces of writing. In most cases teachers take their time in writing comments on the learners’ piece of writing.
These comments act as a guide to learners for an improved performance in later work. You can then make improvements to your writing taking into account the comments your teachers made. Here are some extra questions specialists suggest to consider:
Have you used the form stated in the task?
Is your writing targeted at your audience?
Is your writing focused on your purpose?
How can you make it more interesting?
Should some points be developed further?
Can you make your opening and closing more effective?
Cross out things you no longer want to keep and in extras.
These are pertinent reminders since most of the time learners take these ideas for granted.
Whenever you write make your writing interesting and appealing to your audience.
Pay particular attention to writing effective introductions and conclusions.
Most frequently made errors in writing: We get an opinion that few writers get it right first time all the time.
They make mistakes and have to revise their writing for accuracy of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Learners take this timely advice and make sure you revise your work always.
The trick according researchers is to: develop your skill in spotting your mistakes. Be aware of your weak areas – the things you often get wrong. Develop your skills in correcting correctly.
Here are some tricky areas which need to be worked on: Verb-tense agreement.
A verb is a part of a sentence. We use verbs to express an action, for example: He chews food. We also use a verb to express feelings and states of mind. For example: She loves her children.
A tense is a verb form that indicates time. For example: he jumped (past).
He jumps (present). He will jump (future). To make clear sense in your writing, the verb form must be in the correct tense.
It is ignoring such aspects which appear very minor which make a different between a good and poor grade in
English language examinations.
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Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter