Abstract:

The article focuses on the development of the productive skill of writing with reference to Bachman’s (1990) communicative competence model at the Faculty of Informatics and Management of the University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. Moreover, it shows how the use of ICT blurs boundaries between written and spoken language in terms of text genres and its dynamics. Students encounter these multimodal texts in their real lives, and may be required to create them in their working lives—making web-pages, say, in careers in tourism. However, their university study requires that the students learn formal writing, too. Furthermore, Czech culture is oral—students answer exams orally, and so they have negligible experience in writing even in their native language. Therefore, the first-year students have to learn how to express their ideas formally, clearly, precisely and accurately in order to be able to write professional essays, business letters, reports or later their thesis in the English language. In addition, the article demonstrates how the knowledge of ICT can be exploited, for example by writing an article for Wikipedia. Because the students are creating an authentic article for Wikipedia from scratch, they are not only motivated to write but begin to recognize the usefulness and necessity of the formal writing aspects of their course, e.g. the importance of attending to errors and checking facts when writing to be published.

Keywords:

Communication skills, writing, English.