3.2: The Writing Process- Planning and Writing an Essay
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- 293700
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\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)The Writing Process: Planning and Writing an Essay
Academic writing is a process; that is, it requires several steps to a successful piece of writing. No piece of writing is perfect on the first try! Good writers never sit down and write great essays without thinking about them and carefully planning them first.
As you learned in Unit 1, there are three major stages in the writing process:
- Pre-writing
- Understanding the assignment: One good technique to make sure you understand the assignment is to copy down the writing prompt in your notebook and circle the key words in the prompt. Some key words might tell you what topic your teacher expects you to write about. Other key words might give you information about how your teacher expects you to develop the topic (for example, by comparing or contrasting, giving the reasons for something, or explaining the steps in a process).
- Brainstorming: Whether you choose free writing, listing, or clustering, you can gather ideas about a given topic by writing whatever comes to mind about the topic. This is the idea-gathering stage. This might take five to ten minutes. Don’t worry about grammar or neatness!
- Outlining: In this step, you can use an assigned outline template or make your own outline that organizes the ideas and the details that you want to talk about in the essay. Some questions to ask in this step are 1. What are you going to say about the topic? That will be your topic sentence or thesis. 2. How will you support this topic with evidence? 3. In what order will you put your subtopics?
- Writing
- Drafting: This is a very important step: writing an organized response to the prompt. Use your outline to write your ideas into complete sentences. If you were assigned a paragraph, begin with your topic sentence. If you were assigned an essay, begin with the introductory paragraph.
- Post-writing
- Revising: In this step, you revise, or improve, your draft according to your own knowledge as well as feedback from a peer, a tutor, and/or your instructor. You may need to revise your ideas to make them clearer or more interesting. You may need to reorganize your ideas for unity and coherence.
- Editing: In this step, you will check for errors with sentence structure, grammar, formatting, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.
After you have completed all of these steps, you are ready to submit your assignment!
Attributions:
Content on this page was adapted from ESL Academic Writing(opens in new window), which was shared under a CC BY (opens in new window)license by Prince George's Community College