討論:English Writing News Articles

出自香港新聞網 - 樹仁新傳系學生實習習作

How to be a columnist

              - Sharing of Tao Kit 

Tao Kit had a share about writing with journalism students at Shue Yan College yesterday.

Tao Kit, known as a wit, shared his writing experience with journalism students of Shue Yan College. He pointed out that, writing in news paper need to be understandable by most of the audience. This is because news paper is a mass media, writing in news paper needs to communicate with many kinds of audience, there also different literacy level of audience. Therefore, easy to be read is very important. When a message can be communicated through simple wording, consensus thus easier to be formed. Tao continued to say: Consensus with audience is difficult to form now due to political differentiation. He stressed even audiences don’t agree with the writing, there must some attractive point in the passage to keep audience.

Tao stated commentary and sentimental writing are two main writing styles in his columns. Commentary is a kind of intellectual writing, writer needs to have stand, no ambiguity. When writer can use simple wording to explain or demonstrate some difficult theory, this is a good writer. To do that, writer need to use example and Tao like to use Chinese history as metaphor in his writing.

For sentimental writing, this is a perceptual writing. Perceptual is something can’t be explained, only feeling of the writer. Writer needs to be subtle, the metaphor here is no more history, but everything in this world. Tao mentioned food is good to be a metaphor; his example was man as sushi and Korean pickles.

To make the writing to be interesting and profound, example is a must. To accumulate more example (knowledge), Tao suggested students to read more books and do traveling. History and literature is worth to study, they help student to know a culture deeper.

‘No matter commentary and sentimental writing, what I want to write is the conflict between Chinese and western culture, I started this 10 years ago.’ Tao believes writing need to be controversial, since this can attract audience to read, even after several decades or even longer, audience will still willing to discuss about such controversial and conflict writing. ‘Dare to write’ Tao said.

Tao also mentioned there was a traffic accident 10 years ago, he nearly back to the past. Affected by this incident, Tao regard fame and wealth as nothing. He only insists what he believes.