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The Parts of The Writing Process

The writing process consists of seven subprocesses: considering goals, understanding the audience, gathering and organizing ideas, turning ideas into text, reviewing, and editing. Techniques for gathering ideas include brainstorming, questioning, and using diagrams, while organizing ideas can involve ranking or classifying them. Reviewing and editing are crucial for improving coherence, flow, and correctness in writing, and these steps can occur in a non-linear fashion.

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39 views4 pages

The Parts of The Writing Process

The writing process consists of seven subprocesses: considering goals, understanding the audience, gathering and organizing ideas, turning ideas into text, reviewing, and editing. Techniques for gathering ideas include brainstorming, questioning, and using diagrams, while organizing ideas can involve ranking or classifying them. Reviewing and editing are crucial for improving coherence, flow, and correctness in writing, and these steps can occur in a non-linear fashion.

Uploaded by

Amira Nedjar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Parts of the Writing Process

One way of focusing attention on different aspects of writing is to look at writing as a process.
One possible division of the writing process contains the following seven subprocesses.

• considering your goals


• having a model of the reader
• gathering ideas
• organising ideas
• turning ideas into written text
• reviewing what has been written.
• editing.

However, they do not necessarily occur in a certain order. For some students, organising ideas
may occur after they have been written. For many students there is movement from one stage to
another in a continuous cycle.

Considering the Goals, Audience:


Written work is usually done for a purpose and for a particular audience. For example, a friendly
letter may be written to keep a friend or relative informed of you and your family’s activities.
When a letter like this is written, you need to keep the goal in mind as well as suiting the
information and the way it is expressed to the person who will receive it.

Purpose
• to learn
• to convey, signal
• to inform
• to convince, persuade
• to entertain
• to maintain friendly contact
• to store information
• to help remember information

Role
• write as yourself
• write as some other person

Audience
• self specified
• individual
• specified group
• classmates
• general public

Type of writing
• a note or formal letter
• a formal letter
• résumé, summary, paraphrase
• narrative
• description
• exposition, analysis, definition, classification
• narrative, description, with evaluative comment
• argument
• literary
• advertisement, media
• journal writing

Gathering Ideas
Leibman-Kleine (1987) suggests that techniques for gathering ideas about a topic can be
classified into three groups:

1. Brainstorming and quick writing: it consists of open-ended, free-ranging activities


where all ideas are considered, or you follow whatever path your mind takes.
➢ Brainstorming: It is the process of generating ideas, concepts, or solutions to a
particular writing task or problem. It involves a free-flowing exchange of thoughts
and ideas without judgment or criticism. During brainstorming, writers often use
techniques such as quick writing (freewriting), mind mapping, or listing to
explore various angles, perspectives, and possibilities related to their topic.
➢ Quickwriting: It has three features, you concentrate on content, you do not
worry about error or the choice of words, and you write without stopping (Jacobs,
1986). You can keep a record of your speed in words per minute on a graph.
2. Questioning: Asking questions (who, why, where, when . . .) or filling in an information
transfer diagram. In all cases you have set steps to follow to make sure you consider all
the important parts of the topic
3. Using tree diagrams and concept diagrams or maps: techniques which help you
gather and organise ideas at the same time. These all involve arranging ideas into
relationships, particularly according to importance and level of generality. One of the
biggest blocks in writing is a lack of ideas. Techniques which help you gather ideas will
have good effects on all other aspects of your writing.
4. List making: Before writing, you make a list of ideas to include in the writing. After the list
is made then you attempt to organise it, and this may lead to additions to the list.
5. Looping: is when you write as quickly as possible on the topic for 4 or 5 minutes. Then
you stop, read what you have written, think about it and write one sentence summarising
it. Then you repeat the procedure once more.
6. Cubing: is when you consider the topic from six angles: (1) describe it; (2) compare it; (3)
associate it; (4) analyse it; (5) apply it; (6) argue for and against it. You note the ideas that
each of these points of view suggest and decide which ones you will use in your writing.
Other similar procedures include asking, “who, what, when, where, how, why”. So, for
the topic “Should parents hit yourchildren?”, you work in small groups and (1) describe
what hitting involves, (2) compare it with other kinds of punishment, (3) associate it with
other uses of physical force such as capital punishment, (4) analyse what cause–effect
sequences are involved in hitting, (5) apply the idea of hitting to various age levels, and
(6) make a two-part table listing the pluses and minuses of hitting. After doing this you
should have a lot of ideas to organise and write about.
7. Using topic type grids: Information transfer diagrams based on topic types are a very
useful way of gathering information before the writing is done (Franken, 1987). They can
also be used as a checklist during writing.

Organising Ideas
The way you organise your ideas gives you a chance to put your own point of view and your own
thought into your writing, particularly in writing assignments and answering examination
questions. Often the ideas to be included in an assignment do not differ greatly from one writer
to another, but the way the ideas are organised can add uniqueness to the piece of writing. Two
possible ways of approaching the organisation of academic writing is to rank the ideas according
to a useful criterion or to classify the ideas into groups. The use of sub-headings in academic
writing is a useful check on organisation.

Ideas to Text
Some students are able to say what they want to write but have difficulty in putting it into written
form. That is, they have problems in translating their ideas into text. Some students can do this
but are very slow. That is, they lack fluency in turning ideas to text. Some others will find
problems even in saying what they want to write. One cause may be lack of practice in writing.
Reviewing
An important part of the writing process is looking back over what has been written. This is done
to check what ideas have already been included in the writing, to keep the coherence and flow of
the writing, to stimulate further ideas, and to look for errors. Poor writers do not review, or review
only to look for errors.

In peer feedback you read your incomplete work to each other (classmates) to get comments
and suggestions on how to improve and continue it. You can work in groups and read each
other’s compositions. You make suggestions for revising before the teacher marks the
compositions.

Editing
Editing involves going back over the writing and making changes to its organisation, style,
grammatical and lexical correctness, and appropriateness. Like all the other parts of the writing
process, editing does not occur in a fixed place in the process. Writers can be periodically
reviewing what they write, editing it, and then proceeding with the writing. Thus, editing is not
restricted to occurring after all the writing has been completed.

You can edit through the feedback that you get from your classmates, teacher, and other
readers.

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