ENG 12 Comp 01: page 1

The Writing Process in Five Steps

1--Prewriting: Choosing a topic and gathering details

  • Search for a meaningful writing idea—one that truly interests you and meets the requirements of the assignment.
  • Use a prewriting strategy (listing, webbing, clustering, free writing, outlining, and so on) to identify possible topics.
  • Learn as much as you can about your topic.
  • Decide on an interesting or important part of the topic—yourcontrolling idea—to develop. Express your controlling idea in a sentence to help map out your writing.
  • Think about an overall plan or design for organizing your writing. This plan can be anything from a brief list to a detailed outline.

2--Writing the Rough Draft: Composing

  • Write the first draft while your prewriting is still fresh in your mind.
  • Set the right tone by giving your opening paragraph special attention.

Introduction/Opening Paragraph: should help clarify your thinking about your topic and accomplish three things: (1) GAIN YOUR READER’S ATTENTION, (2) INTRODUCE YOUR TOPIC, and (3) IDENTIFY YOUR THESIS.

Thesis Statement: identifies the focus for your academic essays. It usually highlights a special condition or feature of the topic, expresses a specific feeling, or takes a stand. This is your controlling idea in sentence form.

Middle Paragraphs: should support your thesis with many examples, details, and evidence. Make sure to use your pre-write (outline, list, cluster) as a general guide for your writing.

Conclusion/Closing Paragraph: allows you to tie up your essay neatly. Discuss your topic again in general, then emphasize your main idea by stating your thesis in a different way, and then refer back to your introduction and/or attention-getter.

Any of the following can be used for your Introduction and Conclusion:

  • Share some thought-provoking details about the subject.
  • Begin with an interesting quotation
  • Provide a dramatic, eye-opening statement.
  • Open with an engaging story.
  • Identify the main points you plan to cover.
  • Refer to your plan for the main part of your writing but be flexible. A more interesting route may unfold as you write.

Don’t worry about getting everything right at this point; just concentrate on developing your ideas.

3--Revising: Improve your writing, focusing on content - addinformation, delete information, reorder material, rework material, add transitions.

Review your rough draft, checking the ideas, organization, voice, word choice, and sentence fluency of your writing.

  • Ask at least one classmate to react to your work.
  • Add, cut, reword, or rearrange ideas as necessary (you may have to change some parts several times before they say what you want them to say).
  • Make sure you have used transitions within and between paragraphs.
  • Carefully assess the effectiveness of your opening and closing paragraphs.

4--Editing and Proofreading: Checking for accuracy

  • Edit your revised writing for conventions—punctuation, spelling, grammar, “small stuff.”
  • Ask a reliable editor—a friend, a classmate, a relative—to check your writing for errors you may have missed.
  • Proofread the final draft for errors before submitting it.

5--Publishing: Sharing your work

  • Share the finished product with your teacher, writing peers, friends, and family members.
  • Decide if you will include the writing in your portfolio.
  • Post your writing on your personal or class Web site or elsewhere online.

Audience and Purpose

Before you begin writing, it is a good idea to think about your audience—whom you’re writing for. Think about the audience’s age, race, level of education, where they live, what experiences they might have had, etc. Try seeing your topic from their perspective. It is very important to use language that fits your audience and matches yourpurpose—the reason, or why, you are writing. Inappropriate language or word choice can damage your credibility, undermine your argument, or alienate your audience.

Levels of Formality: Writing in a style that your audience expects and that fits your purpose is key to successful writing.

In-Group Jargon: Jargon refers to specialized language used by groups of like-minded individuals. Only use in-group jargon when you are writing for members of that group. You should never use jargon for a general audience without first explaining it.

Slang and idiomatic expressions: Avoid using slang or idiomatic expressions in general academic writing.

Deceitful language and Euphemisms: Avoid using euphemisms (words that veil the truth, such as "collateral damage" for the unintended destruction of civilians and their property) and other deceitful language.

Biased language: Avoid using any biased language including language with a racial, ethnic, group, or gender bias or language that is stereotypical

Paragraphs

A paragraph is a group of sentences that develops one main idea. A paragraph is the building block of writing; a series of paragraphs is called an “essay.”

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialog. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Main idea: That violence as a way of achieving racial justice is impractical and immoral. The main idea is presented in the first sentence. The other sentences provide reasons that develop and support that idea.

Important Aspects of a Paragraph

-Topic Sentences

A topic sentence states the main idea of a paragraph. It is the most general sentence of the paragraph; all the other sentences serve to explain, describe, or support this main-idea sentence. The topic sentence is usually the first sentence, but it may come anywhere in the paragraph.

Identify the topic sentences of the following paragraphs:

Mountains of disposable diapers are thrown into garbage cans every day. Tons of water bottles, soda cans, and other plastic items are discarded without so much as a stomp to flatten them out. If the old Chevy is not worth fixing, tow it off to sit with thousands of others on acres of fenced-in junkyards. Radios, televisions, and microwaves get the same treatment because it is easier and often less expensive to buy a new product than to fix the old one. Who wants a comfortable old sweater if a new one can be bought on sale? No thought is given to the fact that the new one will look like the old one after a number of washings. We are the great “Let’s junk it!” society.

Anything can happen at a county agricultural fair. It is the perfect human occasion, the harvest of the fields and of the emotions. To the fair come the girl and her cow, the woman and her cherry preserves, the man and his prized green tomato pickles, each anticipating victory and the excitement of being separated from his or her money by familiar carnival games and rides. It is at a fair that a person can be drunk on liquor, love, or fights; at a fair that a passing horse will pick your front pocket of sugar, and the front of your shirt will be covered in powdered sugar from funnel cakes. Yes, the summer fair is a cultural sampler of the community it represents.

-Controlling Ideas

The controlling idea of a topic sentence is the point the writer is trying to make about the topic. The controlling idea of any topic depends on the writer’s focus. Consider:

TOPIC: backpacking

Possible topic sentences:

  • Backpacking trips are exhausting.
  • A family backpacking trip can be much more satisfying

than a trip to an amusement park.

  • Our recent backpacking trip was a disaster.
  • A backpacking trip should be a part of every teenager’s

experience.

-Common Errors in Topic Sentences:

Announcements—outright stating the topic.

  • I am going to be writing about gun control laws.
  • The topic of this essay will be criminal behavior.

Statements that are too broad—trying to cover too much information.

  • Animals are smart.
  • People often make stupid decisions.

Statements that are too narrow—not enough information.

  • The dog has brown fur.
  • My brother wears size 32 x 34 in jeans.

Vague or non-specific key words—to be effective, you should use specific, clear, key words to present your controlling ideas. Avoid flat, catch-all terms that lead nowhere in particular. Compare the following:

  1. My best friend is great.
  2. My best friend is reliable, helpful, and caring.
  1. California is pretty neat.
  2. California offers a lot of possibilities for the outdoor enthusiast.
  1. We shouldn’t do surface mining in the U.S.
  2. Surface mining erodes the soil, disrupts wildlife, and

leaves ugly scars in the earth.

-Supporting Details

A supporting detail is a piece of evidence used to make the controlling idea of the topic sentence convincing and interesting. Evidence can be in the form of examples, reasons, facts, statistics, description, anecdotes, etc.

Whatever evidence you provide, you must be specific and use plenty of detail!

Poor supporting details:

Many people died of a virus in the 1960s.

Effective supporting details:

In 1968 in the United States, seventy thousand people died of the Hong Kong flu.

There are many types of support and evidence you can use to develop your main idea:

Details: sight, sound, touch, hearing, smell, taste; specific and unique description of your topic.

Facts: statements that can be proven. Facts remain constant, regardless of the type of paragraph you write.

Statistics: present significant numerical information about a chose topic.

Examples: individual samples that illustrate a main point.

Anecdotes: brief stories or “slices of life” that helps you make your point. They can illustrate a point more personally than a matter-of-fact listing of details.

Quotations: words from another person that you repeat exactly in your writing. Quotations can provide powerful supporting evidence.

-Arranging your Details

A writer chooses supporting details according to what best fits the method of development:

  • Chronological order (time) is effective for sharing personal narratives, summarizing steps, and explaining events in the order in which they occurred
  • Order of location (spatial) is useful for many types of descriptions. Details can be described from left to right, from right to left, from top to bottom, from edge to center, and so on.
  • Illustration (example) is a method of arrangement in which you first state a general idea (thesis statement) and follow with specific reasons, examples, and facts.
  • Compare-contrast is a method of arrangement in which you show how one topic is different from and similar to another topic.
  • Cause-effect is a type of arrangement that helps you make connections between a result and the events that came before it. Usually, you begin with the cause of something, and then you discuss a number of specific effects.
  • Process writing explains how something is done, or how something works, through a series of steps.
  • Problem-solution is a type of arrangement in which you discuss a problem and explore possible solutions.
  • Classification is a type of arrangement that can be used to explain a term or a concept (a machine, a theory, a game, and so on). Begin by placing the topic in the appropriate class, and then provide details that show how your subject is different from and similar to others in the same class.
  • Definition writing analyzes at some length the meaning of a word or concept (such as “justice” or “democracy”).

-Avoid restating the topic sentence—develop your topic with details instead

Writers need to recognize the difference between a genuine supporting detail and a simple restatement of the topic sentence. Consider the following. Which is easier to “picture” as you read?

The wedding day was the highest point in a girl’s life—a day to which she looked forward all her unmarried days and to which she looked back for the rest of her life. All the events of the day were unlike those of any other day in her life before or after. Everyone would remember this day. Each event was unforgettable. The memories would last a lifetime. (generalities)

The wedding day was one of the high points in a girl’s life. The splendor of the old, stone town church, the smell of the carnations and lilies lining the pews, the elegance of her sparkling white gown and veil, the cutting of the three-tiered layer cake, thedancing at the reception, the departure in a limousine amid a shower of rice and confetti, all gave her a feeling of utter excitement to which no previous event could compare. Until recently, all brides’ books and magazines prescribed exactly the same ritual they had prescribed fifty years before: the etiquette governing wedding presents, bridesmaids’ dresses, tuxedos, flowers, invitations and decorations were all specified. Today, almost anything goes; it is completely up to the tastes of the couple getting married…and that is what makes it truly memorable. (specificsdetails)

-How do you make supporting details specific?

In writing effectively, the ability to go beyond the general statement and get to the accurate, specific pieces of information is what counts. A writer who uses a color, a quote, an anecdote, a historical example, a descriptive detail, etc. has the advantage and can make the writing real and interesting. Consider the following:

Doctors are terrible. They cause more problems than they solve. I don’t believe most of their treatments are necessary. History is full of the mistakes doctors have made. We don’t need all those operations. We should not ingest all those drugs doctors prescribe. We shouldn’t allow them to give us all those unnecessary tests. I’ve heard plenty of stories to prove my point. Doctors’ ideas can kill you. (generalities)

Evidence shows that “medical Progress” has been the cause of tragic consequences and even death for thousands of people. X-ray therapy was thought to help patients with tonsillitis. Now many of those people are found to have developed cancer from the X-rays. Not so long ago, women were kept in bed for several weeks following childbirth. Unfortunately, this cost many women their lives because they developed fatal blood clots from being kept in bed day after day. One recent poll estimates that thirty thousand people each year die from the side effects of drugs that were prescribed by doctors. Recently, the Center for Disease Control reported that twenty-five percent of the tests done by clinical laboratories were done poorly. All this shows that it would be foolish to rely totally on the medical field to solve all our health problems. (specificsdetails)

-Unity

In order for your paragraph to make sense to the reader, your supporting sentences should somehow all relate to your topic sentence. Irrelevant, unclear information will simply confuse the reader. Consider the following. Which stays more on topic and includes more specifics?

My mother is a wonderful person. She is always there when I need her, and she supports me in everything I do. When I was growing up, she taught me many things about life. Whenever I wanted something, she was always there to get it for me. She is five feet four, has black hair, and speaks with a slight Dutch accent. She always emphasized the importance of education and wanted us to become bilingual speakers.

My sister is the most systematic organizer I know. She runs her day like clockwork: up at 6:00, showered and dressed by 6:30, finished with breakfast and out the door by 6:45. She is always at least ten minutes early for work at the bank, and arranges her desk so that she can start off the day’s work without a letter or memo out of place. She even knows where to go on her lunch break to avoid waiting in line. When she gets home in the evening, she already has the food and utensils arranged so that her dinner never takes more than thirty minutes to prepare. Then, it’s early to bed, to start all over again.

Notice that the more effective paragraph, the second one, has very specific key words in its topic sentence: “systematic organizer.” On the other hand, the key word in the disorganized paragraph is vague and non-specific: “wonderful.”

-Closing or Clincher Sentence

The clincher sentence wraps up the paragraph by re-emphasizing the main idea. Sometimes the topic sentence is simply restated in a different way. In a longer essay, however, a transition might be used at the end of a paragraph to move smoothly into the next paragraph.

PARAGRAPHS PRACTICE WORKSHEET