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munication. (Harmer:79) Reinforcement of acquired language ability Harmer puts “Reinforcement of acquired language ability” first because he believes that people can acquire their mother tongues in a purely oral / aural way, but students of a foreign language in college tend to rely more on the written form to have a sound command of the language. Most college students say that they benefit more from seeing the language written down by themselves as well as by others. The visual demonstration of language construction is invaluable for both understanding how it all fits together and as an aid to committing the new language to memory. Students often find it useful to write sentences using new language shortly after they have studied it. (Harmer:79) Further language development It seems, though Harmer himself cannot be for sure, that the actual process of writing (rather like the process of speaking) helps us to learn as we go along. The mental activity that we have to go through in order to construct proper written texts is all part of the ongoing learning experience. For college students of English as a foreign language, writing is an especially effective way of further developing their language ability since it is such an active (compared with reading, which is receptive) and direct (compared with multiple choice exercises, which are indirect) form of language practice. Learning style Although he admits it is possible for a few students to be fairly quick at picking up language just by looking and listening, Harmer argues that for most of the college students of a foreign language, it may take a little longer. To be more exact and to show greater elegance in communication, they have to learn how to write. Writing as an authentic means of communication One of the most important reasons for teaching writing, in Harmer’s opinion, is that it is an authentic means of communication. College students of a foreign language need to know how to write letters, how to put written reports together, how to reply to advertisements and, increasingly, how to write using electronic media in the foreign language that they are learning. They need to know some of writing’s special conventions (punctuation, paragraph construction, etc.) just as they need to know how to pronounce spoken English appropriately. They also need to know what is proper, effective and idiomatic writing in order to fulfil their communicative tasks. Writing as a good source of feedback information The research of writing test experts also helps us to understand the purpose of EFL writing from a different angle. Fred Genesee and John A. Upshur, in their book Classroom-based Evaluation in Second Language Education, and J. B. Heaton, in his book Writing English Language Tests, all mention writing as a good source of feedback information of teaching and learning results. The teacher, for example, can learn from students’ compositions how well they have been progressing with their study of the foreign tongue by assigning them writing tasks in or after class. Whether spelling, vocabulary, structure, grammar, or even phonetics (since the correct choices of a or an before a noun, and /–s/ or / -z/ suffixed to a verb depend on the knowledge of speech sound), nearly every aspect of language ability can be checked through writing. By this almost all-around feedback information from actual writing, both teachers and students of a foreign language can get to learn how well teaching an