Chapter 2 - The Writing Process Lecture Notes
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nwright_besterChapter 2 - The Writing Process Lecture Notes
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nwright_besterChapter 2 The Writing Process Lecture Notes For many students, the writing process consists of sitting at a computer,
, typing until the page meets the assignment requirements (five paragraphs, ten pages, etc), hitting spellcheck, printing, and turning it in. But a little more thought should go into composing a well-written paper. The steps in the writing process should consist of: 1. Prewriting formulating an idea of how you will proceed with your topic 2. Writing the first draft at this stage, dont worry about how the information is written, just get the ideas from your head onto the paper or computer screen. Dont worry about spelling, grammar, flow, etc. Just get the ideas out of your head before someone or something interrupts you and you forget what you were going to write. 3. Revising now its time to make sure you have added support for your points. Also at this stage, take out words or sentences that dont make sense or that seem to ramble or stray from the topic. 4. Proofreading/editing this is where you go back to make sure all words are spelled correctly and that sentences are complete and are punctuated correctly. Do not rely on the spellcheck feature to be your proofreader. It can actually introduce errors into your paper if you select the wrong word from the list of choices. It also does not catch words that are spelled correctly but used incorrectly. 5. Writing the final draft now youre ready to turn in your neat, well-written work for an A. This may seem like a lot, but it actually is not more than you do already; its just broken down into steps so that you can give more thought to what youre writing. There are five techniques of prewriting (refer to pages 23-30 for examples): 1. Freewriting spend a few minutes writing whatever comes to mind; it doesnt matter if your thoughts dont relate to your topic. Somewhere within all of this, there is possibly a topic waiting to be explored. 2. Questioning ask questions about your topic that you would like to know more about. 3. Making a List (also known as brainstorming) jot down everything you can think of about a topic to figure out what direction you would like to proceed. 4. Clustering for more visual people, this involves drawing a center circle and writing your topic within the circle. Branch out from the center circle with supporting ideas and then branch out details from those supporting ideas. 5. Preparing a scratch outline use the Roman numeral outline system to list your supporting ideas and use alphabets under the Roman numerals for details.
