9.6 THE WRITING PROCESS

THE WRITING PROCESS
9.6

Your writing tells others how well you think and understand the ideas you are learning in your courses. In college, you are required to write often. Students have to write lab reports in science courses, reflection papers in response to readings in several courses, and journal entries and one-minute papers in writing courses. Like research, writing takes practice, and it is always a good idea to ask for help. This section will get you started by walking you through the writing process with step-by-step guidelines for effective and efficient writing.

Steps to Good Writing

The writing process typically includes the following steps:

  1. Prewriting

  2. Drafting

  3. Revising

Now, let’s look more in-depth at each one of these steps.

Step 1: Using Prewriting to Discover What You Want to Say. Engaging in prewriting activities is the first step in the writing process. Prewriting simply means writing things down as they come to mind based on the information from the sources you found through your research along with your own ideas, without consciously trying to organize your thoughts, find exactly the right words, or think about structure. It can involve filling a page, whiteboard, or screen with words, phrases, or sentences.

The most commonly used prewriting activity is called freewriting. Freewriting is a powerful process for discovering ideas you didn’t know you had! Freewriting simply means writing without worrying about punctuation, grammar, spelling, and background. It helps you avoid the temptation to try to write and edit at the same time. It’s impossible to write well and simultaneously organize, check grammar and spelling, and offer intelligent thoughts to your readers. If you are freewriting on your computer or tablet, turn off the grammar and spell checkers.

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When you freewrite, you might notice that you have more ideas than you can fit into one paper, which is common. Freewriting helps you figure out what you really want to say as you make connections between ideas.

YOUR TURN > WORK TOGETHER

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Think briefly about your writing processthe steps you go through when you write a major paperand share them with another student. Do the two of you use the same process? If not, what can you learn from each other?

Step 2: Drafting. When you have completed your research with the help of your librarian, gathered a lot of information sources and ideas, and done some freewriting, it’s time to move to the drafting stage. Before you start writing your draft, you need to organize all the ideas you generated in the freewriting step and form a thesis statement, a short statement that clearly defines the purpose of the paper (see Figure 9.2).

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Figure 9.2: Figure 9.2 > Example of a Thesis Statement
In the example provided, you can see that the student made notes about what she needs to address in her paper to support the thesis.

Most students find that creating an outline helps them organize their thoughts, resulting in a clear structure from the thesis to the conclusion (see Figure 9.3 for an example). Once you’ve set the structure for your paper, you’ll add analysis and synthesis of your research findings, and you’re well on your way to a final draft. If you have chosen the thesis carefully, it will help you check to see that each sentence relates to your main idea. When you have completed this stage, you will have the first draft of your paper in hand.

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Figure 9.3: Figure 9.3 > Example of an Outline
An outline is a working document; you do not need a complete outline to begin writing. Note how this author has a placeholder for another example; she has not yet decided which example from her research to use.

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Step 3: Revising. The key to good writing is rewriting or revising, which is the stage at which you take a good piece of writing and do your best to make it great. After you draft your paper, read it once. You may need to reorganize your ideas, add transitions such as therefore or however, cut unnecessary words from sentences and paragraphs, rewrite some sentences or paragraphs, or use stronger words.

After you revise your paper, put it aside for at least a day and then reread it. Distancing yourself from your writing for a while allows you to see it differently later. You will probably find and correct more grammatical and spelling errors, reorganize your written ideas, and make your writing stronger as a result.

It also might help to share your paper with one or more of your classmates or a family member to get their feedback. You should also check to see if your college provides any writing or editing assistance. Most colleges do in the writing center or a learning center. Once you have talked with your reviewers about their suggested changes, it will be your decision to either accept or reject them.

At this point, you are ready to finalize your writing and turn in your paper. Reread the paper one more time, and double-check spelling and grammar.

Know Your Audience

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Before you came to college, you probably spent much more time writing informally than writing formally. Think about all the time you’ve spent writing e-mails, Facebook posts, texts, and tweets. Now think about the time you’ve spent writing papers for school or work. The informal style that you use in writing an e-mail, a text, or a post can become a problem when you try to write a formal research paper. Be sure that you know when you can use abbreviations and when you have to write out an entire word or phrase. When you write research papers in college, you should assume that your audience includes instructors and other serious students who will make judgments about your knowledge and abilities based on your writing. You should not be sloppy or casual when writing a formal paper.

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Write. Review. Revise. Good writers spend more time revising and editing their written work than they spend writing the original version. Never turn in your first draft; spend the necessary time to reread and improve your work.
© Radius Images/Corbis

The Importance of Time in the Writing Process

Many students turn in poorly written papers because they skip the first step (freewriting) and last step (rewriting/revising) and make do with the middle one (drafting). The best writing is usually done over an extended period of time, not as a last-minute task.

When planning the amount of time you’ll need to write your paper, make sure to add enough time for the following:

Writing for class projects might be a challenge at first. It is important to leave time to get help from writing center staff or trained peers in the learning center. Also, ask your instructor for examples of papers that have received good grades. You might show your instructor a draft of your paper and ask for his or her comments for improving your paper.

Citing Your Sources

At some point, you’ll present your findings whether you are writing an essay, a formal research paper, a script for a presentation, or a page for a website. Remember that you must include a complete citation, a reference that enables a reader to locate a source based on information such as the author’s name, the title of the work, and the publication date.

Citing your sources serves many purposes. Source citations show your audience that you have based your conclusions on good, reliable evidence. They also provide a starting place for anyone who would like more information about the topic or is curious about how you reached your conclusions. Most important, citing your sources is the simplest way to avoid plagiarismtaking another person’s work or ideas and presenting them as your own. Plagiarism can be a problem on all college campuses, so instructors are now using electronic systems such as Turnitin (turnitin.com) to identify passages in student papers that have been plagiarized, as shown in the image below. Many instructors routinely check their students’ papers to make sure that the writing is original and that sources are cited. Some students consider plagiarizing because they think that doing so will help them get a better grade, but you can avoid the temptation if you keep in mind the high likelihood of getting caught.

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To avoid plagiarism, you should pay careful attention to source citation, which includes many details and can get complicated, but it all comes down to two basic rules you should remember as you write:

  1. If you use somebody else’s exact words, you must give that person credit.

  2. If you use somebody else’s ideas, even if you use your own words to express those ideas, you must give that person credit.

Your instructors will tell you about their preferred method for citation: footnotes, references in parentheses included in the text of your paper, or endnotes. If you’re not given specific guidelines or if you simply want to be sure that you do it right, use a handbook or writing style manual. One standard manual is the MLA Handbook, published by the Modern Language Association (mlahandbook.org). Another is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (apastyle.org). You can also download MLA and APA apps on your mobile devices from Google Play or iTunes.

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A Speed Trap for Plagiarizers If knowing that plagiarism is wrong isn’t enough of a reason to prevent you from doing it, how about knowing that you will probably get caught? Turnitin’s Originality Check compares submitted papers against billions of Web papers, millions of student papers, and leading library databases and publications. Just as known speed traps usually get you to slow down when you are driving, knowing about systems like Turnitin can help you resist the urge to plagiarize.
Courtesy Turnitin