An approach to successful English writing.docVIP

An approach to successful English writing Ladies and gentlemen,First of all, I’d like to extend my sincere congratulations to yoursuccess of sitting here as a candidate of Master degree whichresults from your great efforts of years.This is the first time that we have met here for my Englishwriting course. It is also a beginning of new experience, a new leafof your life, of which you may have good reasons to cherish manywonderful wishes and expectations.It is pleasing that you are no longer to be supposed to learn justfor passing some kind of compulsory exam, such as CET Band 6,though all of you will have to write a conventional composition inyour finals. You come here mainly for something practical, usefuland necessary in your future career, written skills of Englishcommunication. You come here to learn more about English writing,to polish what you have commanded and to enhance your currentwriting proficiency. You may want to be able to write an Englishmedical paper to publish your findings, an English abstract for yourChinese article, or an English report to your foreign colleagues onyour recent project. Some of you will sit for the English entranceexamination for medical doctoral candidates. I will try to meet thesedifferent needs with something that I call essential notions andfunctions （意念功能）of English writing.The proficiency of English writing is a very broad concept whichinvolves not only many notions （ 意念） but also countlesscommunicative functions. If we say someone is good at Englishwriting, we actually mean that he is capable of expressing somenotions and his English writing skills are just sufficient to perform theneeded functions. In this sense, to learn English writing is to learnthe skills needed to express one’s specific notions and functions.From the point of view of linguistic communication, to write is toperform many specific communicative tasks of expressingnecessary notions and completing necessary functions. It seemsthat communicative notions an