Types of Classroom Writing Performance

While various genre of written texts abound, classroom writing performance is, by comparison, limited. Consider the following some major categories of classroom writing performance:

1. Imitative, or, writing down
At the beginning level of learning to write, students will simply "write down" English letters, words, and possibly sentences in order to learn the conventions of the orthographic code.

2. Intensive, or, controlled
Writing is sometimes used as a production mode for learning, reinforcing, or testing grammatical concepts. This intensive writing typically appears in controlled, written grammar exercises. This type of writing would not allow much, if any, creativity on the part of the writer.

3. Self-writing
A significant proportion of classroom writing may be devoted to self-writing, or writing with only the self in mind as an audience. The most salient instance of this category in classrooms is notetaking, where students take notes during a lecture for the purpose of later recall. Other notetaking maybe done in the margins of books and on odd scraps of paper.

4. Display writing
It was already noted earlier that writing within the school curricular context is a way of life. For all language students, short answer exercises, essay examinations, and even research reports will involve an element of display. For academically bound ESL students, one of the academic skills that they need to master is a whole array of display writting techniques.