CHAPTER 1

Writing as a Process

Researchers' first attempts to understand what

is now called the writing process began in the early
1970s. Now a key concept in the teaching of writing and
in the research of composition studies, "process"
scholars were instrumental in shifting the focus of
teachers' attention from students' written products to
students' writing processes.

Composing process research was pioneered by

scholars such as Janet Emig in The Composing Processes
of Twelfth Graders (1971), Sondra Perl in "The
Composing Processes of Unskilled College Writers"
(1979), and Linda Flower and John R. Hayes in "A
Cognitive Process Theory of Writing" (1981).

Since writing interrelates with external

pressures, students benefit most from writing
instruction when it provides them with a sense of how
what they write can be connected to the world outside
of the classroom. The job of a teacher is to design
sequences of assignments which let our students

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discover what language can do, what they can do with
language.

The rest of this page will focus on the writing

process as a term used in teaching. In 1972, Donald M.
Murray published a brief manifesto titled "Teach
Writing as a Process Not Product", a phrase which
became a rallying cry for many writing teachers. Ten
years later, in 1982, Maxine Hairston argued that the
teaching of writing had undergone a "paradigm shift" in
moving from a focus on written products to writing
processes.

For many years, it was assumed that the writing

process generally operated in some variation of three to
five "stages"; the configuration below is typical:

 Prewriting
 Drafting
 Revising
 Editing: proofreading
 Publishing

What is now called "post-process" research

demonstrates that it is seldom accurate to describe
these "stages" as fixed steps in a straightforward
process. Rather, they are more accurately
conceptualized as overlapping parts of a complex whole

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or parts of a recursive process that are repeated
multiple times throughout the writing process. Thus
writers routinely discover that, for instance, editorial
changes trigger brainstorming and a change of purpose;
that drafting is temporarily interrupted to correct a
misspelling; or that the boundary between prewriting
and drafting is less than obvious.

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 STAGES IN THE WRITING PROCESS

 
Prewriting

Prewriting is the first stage of the writing process,

typically followed by drafting, revision, editing and
publishing. Elements of prewriting may include
planning, research, outlining, diagramming,
storyboarding or clustering (such as mind-mapping).

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  Motivation and audience awareness

Prewriting usually begins with motivation and

audience awareness: what is the student or writer
trying to communicate, why is it important to
communicate it well and who is the audience for this
communication. It helps you put your thought out onto
the paper on what you want to write about. Writers
usually begin with a clear idea of audience, content and
the importance of their communication; sometimes,
one of these needs to be clarified for the best
communication. Student writers find motivation
especially difficult because they are writing for a teacher
or for a grade, instead of a real audience. Often
teachers try to find a real audience for students by
asking them to read to younger classes or to parents, by
posting writing for others to read, by writing a blog, or
by writing on real topics, such as a letter to the editor of
a local newspaper.

 Choosing a topic

One important task in prewriting is choosing a topic

and then narrowing it to a length that can be covered in
the space allowed. Oral storytelling is an effective way
to search for a good topic for a personal narrative.

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Writers can quickly tell a story and judge from the
listeners' reactions whether it will be an interesting
topic to write about.

Another way to find a topic is to freewrite, a method

first popularized by Peter Elbow. When freewriting, you
write any and every idea that comes to mind. This could
also be a written exploration of your current knowledge
of a broad topic, with the idea that you are looking for a
narrow topic to write about. Often freewriting is timed.
The writer is instructed to keep writing until the time
period ends, which encourages him/her to keep writing
past the pre-conceived ideas and hopefully find a more
interesting topic.

Several other methods of choosing a topic overlap

with another broad concern of prewriting, that of
researching or gathering information. Reading process is
effective in both choosing and narrowing a topic and in
gathering information to include in the writing. As a
writer reads other works, it expands ideas, opens
possibilities and points toward options for topics and
narrates specific content for the eventual writing. One
traditional method of tracking the content read is to
create annotated note cards with one chunk of
information per card. Writers also need to document

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music, photos, web sites, interviews, and any other
source used to prevent plagiarism.

Besides reading what others also make original

observations relating to a topic. This requires on-site
visits, experimentation with something, or finding
original or primary historical documents. Writers
interact with the setting or materials and make
observations about their experience. For strong writing,
particular attention should be given to sensory details
(what the writer hears, tastes, touches, smells and
feels). While gathering material, often writers pay
particular attention to the vocabulary used in discussing
the topic. This would include slang, specific terminology,
translations of terms, and typical phrases used. The
writer often looks up definitions, synonyms and finds
ways that different people use the terminology. Lists,
journals, teacher-student conference, drawing
illustrations, using imagination, restating a problem in
multiple ways, watching videos, inventorying interests –
these are some of the other methods for gathering
information.

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  Discussing

After reading and observing, often writers need to

discuss material. They might brainstorm with a group or
topics or how to narrow a topic. Or, they might discuss
events, ideas, and interpretations with just one other
person. Oral storytelling might enter again, as the writer
turns it into a narrative, or just tries out ways of using
the new terminology. Sometimes writers draw or use
information as basis for artwork as a way to understand
the material better.

 Narrowing the topic

Narrowing a topic is an important step of prewriting.

For example, a personal narrative of five pages could be
narrowed to an incident that occurred in a thirty minute
time period. This restricted time period means the
writer must slow down and tell the event moment by
moment with many details. By contrast, a five page
essay about a three day trip would only skim the surface
of the experience. The writer must consider again the
goals of communication – content, audience,
importance of information – but add to this a
consideration of the format for the writing. He or she
should consider how much space is allowed for the

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communication and how can be effectively
communicated within that space?

 Organizing content

At this point, the writer needs to consider the

organization of content. Outlining in a hierarchical
structure is one of the typical strategies, and usually
includes three or more levels in the hierarchy. Typical
outlines are organized by chronology, spatial
relationships, or by subtopics. Other outlines might
include sequences along a continuum: big to little, old to
new, etc. Clustering, a technique of creating a visual
web that represents associations among ideas, is
another help in creating structure, because it reveals
relationships. Storyboarding is a method of drawing
rough sketches to plan a picture book, a movie script, a
graphic novel or other fiction.

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  Developmental acquisition of organizing skills

While information on the developmental sequence

of organizing skills is sketchy, anecdotal information
suggests that children follow this rough sequence:

1) sort into categories,

2) structure the categories into a specific order for

best communication, using criteria such as which item
will best work to catch readers attention in the opening,

3) within a category, sequence information into a

specific order for best communication, using criteria
such as what will best persuade an audience.

At each level, it is important that student writers

discuss their decisions; they should understand that
categories for a certain topic could be structured in
several different ways, all correct. A final skill acquired is
the ability to omit information that is not needed in
order to communicate effectively.

Even sketchier is information on what types of

organization are acquired first, but anecdotal
information and research suggests that even young
children understand chronological information, making
narratives the easiest type of student writing.
Persuasive writing usually requires logical thinking and

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studies in child development indicate that logical
thinking is not present until a child is 10–12 years old,
making it one of the later writing skills to acquire.
Before this age, persuasive writing will rely mostly on
emotional arguments.

 Writing trials

Writers also use the prewriting phase to experiment

with ways of expressing ideas. For oral storytelling, a
writer could tell a story three times, but each time begin
at a different time, include or exclude information, end
at a different time or place. Writers often try writing the
same info. but using different voices, in search of the
best way to communicate this information or tell this
story.

 Recursion

Prewriting is recursive, that is, it can occur at any

time in the writing process and can return several times.
For example, after a first draft, a writer may need to
return to an information gathering stage, or may need
to discuss the material with someone, or may need to
adjust the outline. While the writing process is

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discussed as having distinct stages, in reality, they often
overlap and circle back on one another.

 Variables

Prewriting varies depending on the writing task or

rhetorical mode. Fiction requires more imagination,
while informational essays or expository writing require
stronger organization. Persuasive writing must consider
not just the information to be communicated, but how
best to change the reader’s ideas or convictions.
Folktales will require extensive reading of the genre to
learn common conventions. Each writing task will
require a different selection of prewriting strategies,
used in a different order.

 Technology
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 Technological tools are often used in prewriting
tasks, including word processors, spreadsheets and
publishing programs; however, technology appears to
be more useful in the revision, editing and publishing
phases of prewriting.

 Writing tests

Teaching writing as a process is accepted

pedagogical practice, but there is increasing concern
that writing tests do not allow for the full writing
process, especially cutting short the time needed for
prewriting tasks.

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  Drafting

Drafting is the
preliminary stage of a
written work in which the
author begins to develop a
more cohesive product. A
draft document is the
product the writer creates
in the initial stages of the
writing process.

In the drafting stage, the author:

- develops a more cohesive text

- organizes thoughts
- explains examples/ideas
- uncovers transitions
- discovers a central argument/point
- elaborates on key ideas

In a book that became popular in the 1950s, The

Elements of Style, famed authors Strunk and White
describe the first draft as being a less edited version of
the final draft. In their book, Strunk and White say, “the
first principle of composition is to foresee or determine
the shape of what is to come and pursue that shape.”

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This shape is the draft that eventually becomes the
finished work.

More recently, Peter Elbow, in his book Writing

Without Teachers, presents a very different view of the
drafting stage in the writing process. He describes his
stance on the writing process, saying “Writing is a way
to end up thinking something you couldn’t have started
out thinking.” According to Elbow, the best way to
accomplish this is a series of drafts which come together
to produce an emerging “center of gravity” that then
translates into the main focus on the work. This process
should be a holistic process, not a linear process.
Elbow’s reasoning behind this concept of multiple drafts
follows the idea that, “if he learns to maximize the
interaction among his own ideas or points of view, he
can produce new ones that didn’t seem available to
him.”

Whether being used as the creation of a less-edited

final product (Strunk and White) or as a tool during the
prewriting stage (Elbow), drafting is a necessary stage
for the writer in the writing process. Having created a
draft, the author is then able to move onto the revision.

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  Revision

Revision is the stage in the writing process where

the author reviews, alters, and amends her or his
message, according to what has been written in the
draft. Revision follows drafting and precedes editing.
Drafting and revising often form a loop as a work moves
back and forth between the two stages. It is not
uncommon for professional writers to go through many
drafts and revisions before successfully creating an
essay that is ready for the next stage: editing.

In their seminal book, The Elements of Style, William

Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White acknowledge the need for
revision in the writing process: “Few writers are so
expert that they can produce what they are after on the
first try. Quite often you will discover, on examining the
completed work, that there are serious flaws in the
arrangement of the material, calling for transpositions...
do not be afraid to experiment with your text.”

Successful revision involves:

Identification of thesis. The purpose of the essay

should be re-considered based on what has been
written in the draft. If this purpose differs from the
original thesis, the author must decide from which
thesis to continue writing.

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 Consideration of structure. The author should
identify the strengths of the draft, then re-consider the
order of those strengths, adjusting their placement as
necessary so the work can build with auxin to a
crescendo.

Uncovering weakness in argument or presentation.

Once the strengths of the draft have been identified and
placed in the strongest order, the author can re-
examine the work for weaknesses in argument or
presentation. Faulty logic, missing transitions, and
unsupported or poorly supported assertions are
common weaknesses. Identifying these weaknesses
during revision will inform the next draft.

Successful revision is not improving grammar or

diction. Those will be the focus of later editing.

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  Editing and Proofreading

You can begin the process of editing after you’re

satisfied with the structure, content, and coherence of
your document (as a whole and in specific parts).

Editing and proofing both focus on the sentence

level. Editing is different from proofreading because it
involves questioning and analyzing sentences, whereas
proofreading only involves checking them for error.
When editing:

- read each sentence carefully and identify its

function in the paragraph; ask yourself how you
might redesign the sentence to more effectively
accomplish that goal
- analyze the sentences that precede and follow
the sentence you’re focusing on. Are the
connections between these sentences clear, or
do you need to insert transitions between them?
- evaluate the design of each individual sentence;
in doing so, employ the following principles:

1. Manage Sentence Length: Short

sentences clearly communicate individual ideas, but
often leave connections between them unmade. Long
sentences make connections between ideas, but can

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obscure individual ideas. Vary sentence lengths
according to needs of section.

2. Strengthen the Grammatical Core of the

sentence (Subject-Verb-Object): The subject (actor), the
verb (action), and the object (what the actor performs
the action on) constitute the grammatical core of the
sentence, but the real subject, verb and object is often
buried by complex or elaborate sentence structures.
Whenever possible:

- Elevate the verb, so that the real action of the

verb occupies the role of verb in the sentence
(especially in passive voice).

- Find the real subject (the thing actually

performing the verb), and allow it to occupy this role in
the sentence

Evaluation of the material was performed on the

basis of strength, flexibility, and cost.

In the above sentence, the “real action” is

evaluation, but it appears in the form of a noun here.
The real subject of the sentence – the person(s) doing
the evaluating – are the researchers, but they don’t
appear in the sentence at all. A revision which fixes
both problems might look like the below.

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 We evaluated the material of the basis of
strength, flexibility, and cost.

Position the verb closer to the beginning of the

sentence, because the verb is key to reader’s ability to
process information:

The influence of physiochemical properties of

microbial floc, namely extracellular polymeric
substances (EPS) and hydrophobicity, on ultraviolet (UV)
disinfection of sequencing batch reactor effluent was
studied.

In the above example, the verb doesn’t arrive

until the end of the sentence. That means that readers
need to store three lines of information in memory until
they get to this verb, which gives them the information
needed to process the long noun phrase.

This thesis studies the influence of

physiochemical properties of microbial floc, namely
extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and
hydrophobicity, on ultraviolet (UV) disinfection of
sequencing batch reactor effluent.

3. The ASAP Principle: Avoid elaborate sentence

structure, unless necessary. Good technical writing is

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always “As Short as Possible,” while containing the
necessary amount of detail. Cut away unnecessary
phrasing whenever possible.

It is evident that this thesis provides a

foundation from which engineers may astutely
intervene for the betterment of the circuit board
manufacturing process

Yikes! If it’s evident, then you don’t need to say

it. And “astutely intervene for the betterment” of?
What about:

This thesis provides a foundation for improving

the circuit board manufacturing process.

 Proofreading

When proofreading, you may want to try the

following strategies.

 Read each sentence aloud as you visually inspect

the spelling and sentence structure; sometimes,
reading the sentence aloud will allow you to spot
mistakes that your eye can’t always see.

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  Allow enough time for several close readings of
the text, with some break time in between to
give you a fresh perspective on your document.
 Ask friends to read over your work to check for
errors as an additional strategy; sometimes,
outside readers can spot errors that the writer
can miss. However, don’t rely on this as a
primary proofing strategy: your proofreader
doesn’t have anything invested in your report.
You do, and are the one ultimately responsible
for errors.
 Don’t rely on your computer’s spell check to
correct all the spelling errors for you. Why?
1. Because Canadian and British spelling
standards are different from American ones
(standard on most spell checkers)

2. Because when you intend to sue “through,”

but forget the letter “r,” your spell check will not
register an error. (Can you see another small mistake in
the above sentence that wouldn’t register? “Use,”
misspelled as “sue”)

3. Because the spell checker cannot ensure that

the correct ending (agreement) has been used. “We
ends the paper by . . .” doesn’t register a spelling error,
but “ends” should be “end.”

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 4. And finally, because spell checkers often do
not account for many of the specialized terms that are
commonplace in engineering contexts – the spell check
will identify many technical terms as errors simply
because they are not in its dictionary.

Don’t rely on your grammar checker to correct all of

the grammatical errors for you. Why?

1. Because the rules implemented in the grammar

checkers are rudimentary and simple, and don’t always
allow for complex sentence structures. They may
identify errors where there are none.

2. They often don’t catch simple and straightforward

errors, such as the “We ends” example above (no error
was reported by Microsoft Word).

3. Their suggestions will often substantially change

the meaning of the sentences.

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 CHAPTER 2

Describing Written Text

Genre
A literary genre is a category of literary
composition. Genres may be determined by literary
technique, tone, content, or even length. Genre should
not be confused with age category, by which literature
may be classified as either adult, young-adult, or
children's. They also must not be confused with format,
such as graphic novel or picture book. The distinctions
between genres and categories are flexible and loosely
defined, often with subgroups.

The most general genres in literature are epic,

tragedy, comedy, novel, short story, and creative
nonfiction. They can all be in the genres prose or poetry,
which shows best how loosely genres are defined.
Additionally, a genre such as satire, allegory or pastoral
might appear in any of the above, not only as a sub-
genre, but as a mixture of genres. Finally, they are
defined by the general cultural movement of the

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historical period in which they were composed. In
popular fiction, which is especially divided by genres,
genre fiction is the more usual term.

In literature, genre has been known as an intangible

taxonomy. This taxonomy implies a concept of
containment or that an idea will be stable forever. The
earliest recorded systems of genre in Western history
can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle.

Cohesion
Cohesion concerns the flow of sentences and
paragraphs from one to another. It involves the tying
together of old information and new. When we write
academic essays, particularly in the humanities, we
work hard to foster cohesion structurally, which
enhances a reader's understanding of our ideas.

Essay organization

The first paragraph should include a thesis statement,

which announces the main idea or argument of the
paper. The rest of the sentences should lead up to or
anticipate the thesis, either directly or indirectly. The

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body paragraphs should support the thesis statement
and should be arranged in a clear hierarchy. Readers
should be able to understand how each paragraph
relates to what has come before it. This can be
accomplished by the use of transition sentences.

Repetition

Repetition helps to enhance a reader's

understanding of what the author has written. Pointers
are used as a tool in sentences to use repetition for
better understanding. Pointers are words, phrases, or
ideas that appear in a sentence, and are repeated in the
next.

Example: Epilepsy is a brain or neurological disorder

where excess electrical energy causes seizures. Seizures
result when the brain's nerve cells, or neurons, produce
an excessive or abnormal amount of electrical activity.
Depending on this activity…

To prevent repetitions from becoming dull, an

author may use:

 Variations of the word (golf, golfer,

golfing)
 Pronouns (doctors…they)
 Synonyms (jump, hop, bounce)

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  Transitions

Transitional words and phrases, also known as

“tags,”are used to hold a paper together. They can be
simple conjunctions, like and but, or they can be more
complex.

Coherence
Coherence is product of many different factors,
which combine to make every paragraph, every
sentence, and every phrase contribute to the meaning
of the whole piece. Coherence in writing is much more
difficult to sustain than coherent speech simply because
writers have no nonverbal clues to inform them if their
message is clear or not. Therefore, writers must make
their patterns of coherence much more explicit and
much more carefully planned. Coherence itself is the
product of two factors — paragraph unity and sentence
cohesion.

Paragraph Unity
To achieve paragraph unity, a writer must ensure
two things only. First, the paragraph must have a single
generalization that serves as the focus of attention, that
is, a topic sentence. Secondly, a writer must control the
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content of every other sentence in the paragraph's body
such that (a) it contains more specific information than
the topic sentence and (b) it maintains the same focus
of attention as the topic sentence.

This generalization about paragraph structure holds

true for the essay in particular. The two major
exceptions to this formula for paragraph unity are found
in fiction (where paragraph boundaries serve other
functions, such as indicating when a new speaker is
talking in a story) and in journalism (where paragraphs
are especially short to promote 'visual' ease by creating
white space).

Register and Style

Academic writing has a level of formality, and it is
sometimes difficult for the non-native speaker of English
to recognize the differences in register and style of the
language. When discussing the register of a word, we
refer to the use of language for a particular purpose or
in a particular social setting, that is, its level of formality.
The English language is no exception when it comes to
language variation and style and it is important to

28
 recognize the differences and just as important to know
the differences.

Consider the table below and the grade differences

ranging from very formal to casual in salutations and
closures in both spoken and written discourse.

Very formal Formal Neutral Informal Very informal, casual

How do you do Hello Hello Hi What's up! / Hey!

An important feature of writing is its style and

register. The choice of register for a particular text or
part of text will vary depending on the genre and who
will be reading the text. Therefore, knowing the
targeted audience before starting the writing process,
will have an impact on the stylistic choices.

When referring to register in writing, the choices

are usually 'familiar', 'informal', 'formal' and
'ceremonial'. However, the two registers that are
commonly crossed in academic writing are generally
between formal and informal; therefore, a standard
guideline of the stylistic differences between the two

29
have been provided, plus a simple guide of cross
registering examples.

CHAPTER 3

How to develop better writing habits

There’s only one way to become a better writer,

and that is through lots of practice. Some people are
born with talent. Writing comes easily to them, but
even the most talented writers have to work at the
craft. After all, nobody’s born knowing how to write.

Fostering good writing habits accomplishes two

things. First, good writing habits ensure that you write
regularly, and as we all know, the only way to become a
writer is to actually get the writing done. Second, by
writing regularly, you get plenty of writing practice, and
your work improves. In other words, good writing habits
are essential.

Below you’ll find a list of beneficial writing habits

that you can adopt. Try introducing one habit into your
routine each month. By the end of the year, you’ll be

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well on your way to becoming an expert in all things
writing.

 Establish a writing schedule and write

daily if possible: Whether you write for
three hours a day or fifteen minutes a
day, daily writing is the most critical of
writing habits. It’s better to write for
fifteen or twenty minutes every day than
to binge for five or six hours over the
weekend, but if you can establish a daily
writing schedule with longer sessions on
weekends, then all the better!
 Don’t forget to read: I can’t stress how
obvious it is when a writer is not well-
read. Lack of reading will be apparent in
every sentence. The importance of
reading cannot be overstated: read as
much and as often as you can.
 Finish what you start: One of the worst
habits a writer can acquire is to never
finish anything. Shiny new ideas are
always tempting us away from our
current projects. Don’t give in to
temptation! Unless a project is absolutely
going nowhere, wrap it up before you
move on to the next one. Otherwise,

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 you’ll end up in a vicious cycle and have
nothing to show for all the writing you’ve
done.
 Show your work: Speaking of finishing
what you start–once it’s done, share it
with others. Post a scene on your blog,
send a poem around to a few friends,
round up some beta readers and let
them assess your project and help you
improve it. And if you’d like to be a
professional author, always keep your
eye on the goal: publishing your work to
the marketplace.
 Know your craft and industry: As a writer,
it’s important to understand things like
grammar, spelling, and punctuation as
well as the importance of editing and
polishing your work before you show it
around. It’s just as important to
familiarize yourself with the industry–
from publishing to marketing. Make it
your business to understand the craft
and trade by working good habits into
your schedule: edit everything you write,
consult grammar and style guides when
necessary, learn to properly format your

32
 documents, study the publishing
industry, and make sure you understand
the many ways that authors can market
their work to a reading audience.
 Don't try to change everything at once. If
you want to write every day this year ...
awesome! If you want to do it at the
same time you fix your diet, start
exercising, quit smoking, and do daily
stretches ... you're doomed. Studies have
translated the wisdom of simplicity into
mathematical figures: You will develop
habits about 33% faster and with as
much as double the chance of success if
you focus on just one habit at a time. And
despite what infomercials have taught
you, each major case study of people
who have successfully made radical
changes in their lives has shown that
those changes didn't happen all at once:
The changes started with a single change.
 Give yourself time. Lots of time. How
long does it take to form a habit? If you
answered "21 days" or "28 days," you're
completely wrong. Despite how
commonly those numbers are thrown

33
 around as "common wisdom," there's a
large body of evidence that directly
contradicts the "28-day" claims. The
correct answer is this: It varies,
dependent on the type of habit, but it
takes an average of just over 55 days.
 Define writing. What sort of writing do
you want to be doing? I'm not going to
tell you what the appropriate definitions
are for you. However, I know that if I
were to let myself count academic
writing, revising my creative work, doing
promotions, or researching, I would
never get any new writing done. So I've
defined my target habit as "writing new
creative work."
 Define a reasonable minimum duration.
You know those people who haven't
gone to the gym for sixteen years but
spontaneously want to come in every day
for two hour sessions? You know how
they always burn out? The same applies
to writing. Decide what counts as
"writing" for a given day. I chose 20
minutes as my target because it's enough
time to get into the writing process but

34
 not so much time that I feel stressed out
about it. Usually, I wind up writing more
than 20 minutes. This minimum duration
is about what counts for habit tracking,
not about your imagined ideal. So pick
something that doesn't seem too
difficult.
 Don't choose a word count goal. If you
only write 10 words a minute for 20
minutes, you will still write a 73,000-
word novel by the end of the year.
Focusing on word count can trap you in
anxiety, as I discuss in my look at the
neuroscience of writer's block. At any
given moment, it's difficult to know how
to write the next 500 words—but it's
easy to know how to write as much as
feels natural and appropriate for the next
15 or 20 minutes. Studies have also
shown that focus on process is far more
effective for staying motivated than a
focus on results—and that means "more
effective" for both forming a habit and
getting the results you're looking for.
 Determine a habit trigger. Studies have
also shown that focus on process is far

35
 more effective for staying motivated than
a focus on results. If you're going to
program a habit, that habit must be a
habitual response to a specific trigger. If
you're the sort of person who works well
on a clock, that makes this simple: You
can just set a time of the day as your
trigger. If you're like me, however, your
schedule lacks the consistency to allow a
consistent time-slot. Instead, add the
habit to your regular sequence. For
example, Stephen King is famed for
writing two pages before breakfast each
morning. For him, "I'm about to have
breakfast" would serve as the trigger for
writing. If you're like me and think of
your day in terms of sequence as
opposed to schedule, then consider
writing your habit goal like this: "After
___________ but before ____________, I
will write for _____ minutes."
 Write out your likely barriers. Where are
you going to mess up? Come on, you've
been living with yourself for the last few
decades. You've got a pretty good sense
of what's likely to keep you from

36
 succeeding. Rather than pretending you
can just "do better this time" or "will
through it," acknowledge and accept
these barriers. Are you likely to sleep in?
Feel burnt out and unable to write? Will
your kids distract you? Write out the
most honest possible descriptions of your
likely obstacles
 Write out strategies for overcoming
those barriers. Studies on successful
habit formation have often been done in
the field of recreational therapy or
geriatrics, where enabling healthy
routines can mean the difference
between a high quality of life and a
disaster. In those studies, the most
successful intervention for habit
formation is a simple write-up of, first,
the barriers likely to be faced (like you
just did with) and, second, specific
planned responses for those barriers.
Oddly, it didn't seem to matter much
what those planned responses were.
Even if it was simply "I'll remind myself
this is important and get to work," the
intervention seemed to effectively short-

37
 circuit inaction. By planning the response
in advance, habit-seekers no longer had
to expend extra willpower or mental
energy when the anticipated obstacles
arose.
 Keep coming up with strategies. You
won't be perfect. You won't predict all
your obstacles. You will find all kinds of
new ways to mess up over the course of
this year. Want to know why? You're a
human. Sorry about that. My apologies if
this is news to you. But now that we've
gotten that out of the way, maybe you
can stop berating yourself for not
magically being perfect? Instead, simply
do a new planned response write-up for
each unexpected obstacle you discover.
 Disconnect effectively. For me, the
specific habit goal is "After waking up but
before plugging in the router, I will write
for 20 minutes." Yeah. Before plugging in
the router. As I note in my article on how
unplugging helps us plug away at our
writing, getting offline is one of the most
important ways to get productive.

38
 Develop an annotation system. Our
retreats to the internet often start with
legitimate excuses, like the need to do
further research. Instead of doing
research right away, use an annotation
system to remind yourself that further
research or fact-checking is needed. I also
strongly recommend using similar notes-
to-self for situations where you don't
have the best word or phrase in place.
This can prevent unproductive habits of
perfectionism (like spending your entire
writing session working on a single
sentence that you may just end up
deleting later anyway). I use [brackets] to
let Future Rob know that a word or
phrase needs extra tinkering, and I
use //double slashes to write myself
notes//. Of course, you can always use
your word processor's comments for
even fancier and more visible notes, use
highlighting, put text in an alternate
color, or use anything else that works for
you. I use the [brackets] and //slashes//
purely because they're easy to put in on
the fly.

39
 Track your progress. There are two
reasons that tracking is valuable: First, it
keeps you accountable for the habit
itself. And second, it gives you credit for
the habit. We have this funny tendency
as humans to give ourselves lots of credit
for things that are difficult (even if they
don't do much good) and give ourselves
very little credit for things that are easy
(even if they're doing a great deal of
good). Well, the point of forming a habit
is that it gets easy. It starts to feel
natural. Actually, it starts to feel harder
not to do the habit. And if you're not
tracking your success, it's easy to
undervalue the habitual action and to
lose the drive to fully ingrain it.
 Go public. My own experience has shown
mixed results with publicly tracking my
progress on goals, but science does not
lie. Multiple studies have demonstrated
that making your results public improves
the odds of success by bolstering
motivation and increasing the likelihood
of peer support. Further, if you have
friends who are trying to develop a

40
 similar habit and are further along in the
journey, seeing their success can help
remind you that success is ... you know,
possible.
 Set your habit trigger in the final parts of
the habit itself. In studying the science of
habit formation, my first target habit was
daily meditation. I struggled for a while
when trying to do morning meditation.
Then I started doing evening meditation
as well, and it all got easy. Why? Each
meditation session flowed naturally into
the next, and I was able to leave myself
habit reminders at the end of each
session. Dependent on when you want
to write, there are a lot of ways you can
make the next habit trigger part of the
habit itself. You could write every
morning and night. You could add a habit
trigger to some other part of your daily
routine (e.g., putting your computer
keyboard in front of your coffee maker
when you shut down for the night) or
insert the trigger into the routine for the
time of the day when you plan to write
(e.g., setting your computer to

41
 automatically open your writing
document when you boot it up if you
want to write in the morning).

What Are Your Writing Habits?

Improving your writing is hard work. Maintaining

a regular writing schedule is even harder, especially
with so many distractions that are vying for our
attention. Adopting these writing habits might mean
making major changes to your routine. If you love to
write, the work will be fun at times. Other times, you’re
just going to have to grin and bear it, knowing full well
that the ends make the means completely worthwhile.

42
 CHAPTER 4

Creative Writing
Creative writing is any writing that goes outside
the bounds of normal professional, journalistic,
academic, or technical forms of literature, typically
identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character
development, and the use of literary tropes or with
various traditions of poetry and poetics. Due to the
looseness of the definition, it is possible for writing such
as feature stories to be considered creative writing,
even though they fall under journalism, because the
content of features is specifically focused on narrative
and character development. Both fictional and non-
fictional works fall into this category, including such
forms as novels, biographies, short stories, and poems.
In the academic setting, creative writing is typically
separated into fiction and poetry classes, with a focus
on writing in an original style, as opposed to imitating
pre-existing genres such as crime or horror. Writing for
the screen and stage—screenwriting and playwriting—

43
are often taught separately, but fit under the creative
writing category as well.

Creative writing can technically be considered

any writing of original composition. In this sense;
creative writing is a more contemporary and process-
oriented name for what has been traditionally called
literature, including the variety of its genres.

44
 Collaborative Writing
The term collaborative writing refers to projects
where written works are created by multiple people
together (collaboratively) rather than individually. Some
projects are overseen by an editor or editorial team, but
many grow without any oversight. Collaborative writing
is also an approach for teaching novice authors to write.

Practical approaches

In a true collaborative environment, each

contributor has an almost equal ability to add, edit, and
remove text. The writing process becomes a recursive
task, where each change prompts others to make more
changes. It is easier to do if the group has a specific end
goal in mind and harder if a goal is absent or vague.

Using collaborative writing tools can provide

substantial advantages to projects ranging from
increased user commitment to easier, more effective
and efficient work processes.

45
 It is often the case that when users can directly
contribute to an effort and feel that they've made a
difference, they become more involved with and
attached to the outcome of the project. The users then
feel more comfortable contributing time, effort, and
personal pride into the final product, resulting in a
better final outcome.

In addition, collaborative writing tools have

made it easier to design better work processes. These
tools provide ways to monitor what users are
contributing and when they contribute so managers can
quickly verify that assigned work is being completed.
Since these tools typically provide revision tracking, it
has also made data sharing simpler. Users won't have to
keep track of what version is the current working
revision since the software has automated that.

Furthermore, because this software typically

provides ways for users to chat in real time, projects can
be completed faster because users don't have to wait
for other users to respond by asynchronous means like
email.

Other advantage is that since this software

makes it easy for users to contribute from anywhere in
the world, projects can benefit from the inclusion of
perspectives from people all around the world.

46
 It is important to point out that to be able to use
collaborative writing in the classroom we need
something to use with and for this we have "Wikis".
They are an exceptionally useful tool for getting
students more involved in curriculum. They’re often
appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same
time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration,
and interaction. Although the wiki software can be used
in many ways, most wikis share some basic
characteristics that distinguish them from other social
and collaborative technologies: they are unique,
collaborative, open editing, simple coding and evolving.

Collaborative writing strategies

Collaborative writing has been the subject of

academic research and business for over two decades. A
number of authors have written on the subject, and
each have slightly different views on the strategies for
collaborative writing.

According to Lowry et al. there are five

collaborative writing strategies:

- Single-author writing occurs when one team

member writes as a representative for the entire

47
 team. Single-author writing usually occurs when
the writing task is simple.
- Sequential single writing. In sequential single-
author writing, one group member writes at a
time. Each group member is assigned a portion
of the document, writes his or her portion and
then passes the document onto the next group
member.
- Parallel writing is the type of collaborative
writing that occurs when a group divides the
assignment or document into separate parts and
all members work on their assigned part at the
same time. There are two types of parallel
writing: horizontal division parallel writing
occurs when group members divide the task into
sections, each member being responsible for the
development of his or her assigned section;
stratified division parallel writing occurs when
group members divide responsibility of the
creation of the product by assigning different
members different roles. Some examples of roles
that a member could be assigned are: author,
editor, facilitator, or team leader.
- Reactive writing occurs when team members
collaborate synchronously to develop their

48
 product. Team members react to and adjust
each other's contributions as they are made.
- Mixed mode. This term describes a form of
writing that mixes two or more of the
collaborative writing strategies described above.

Onrubia and Engel also proposed five main

strategies for collaborative elaboration of written
products:

a) Parallel construction—‘cut and paste’. Each group

member contributes with a different part of the
completed task and the final document is constructed
through a juxtapositioning of these different parts
without the contribution of other co-authors. "Divide
and conquer"

b) Parallel construction—‘puzzle’. Each group

member contributes with an initial document with the
entirely or partially completed task, and the final
document is constructed through the juxtapositioning of
small extracted parts of the initial contributions of other
coauthors.

c) Sequential summative construction. One group

member presents a document that constitutes an initial,
partial or complete, proposal for the task resolution,
and the rest of the participants successively add their

49
contributions to this initial document, without
modifying what has been previously written, hence,
systematically accepting what is added by other co-
authors.

d) Sequential integrating construction. One group

member presents a document that constitutes an initial,
partial or complete task proposal, and the other group
members successively contribute to this initial
document, proposing justified modifications or
discussing whether they agree with what has been
previously written or not.

e) Integrating construction. The writing of the

document is based on synchronic discussion through
the chat, with repeated revisions, where all group
members react to the comments, the changes and the
additions made by other participants.

50
 CHAPTER 5

Providing Feedback on ESL Students' Written

Assignments

Written feedback is an essential aspect of any

English language writing course. This is especially true
now with the predominance of the process approach to
writing that requires some kind of second party
feedback, usually the instructor, on student drafts. The
goal of feedback is to teach skills that help students
improve their writing proficiency to the point where
they are cognizant of what is expected of them as
writers and are able to produce it with minimal errors
and maximum clarity.

Common Practices

The most prominently used methods feedback

fall into two common categories: feedback on form and
feedback on content.

51
 The most common methods of feedback on form
are outright teacher correction of surface errors,
teacher markings that indicate the place and type of
error but without correction, and underlining to indicate
only the presence of errors. The first requires students
to copy the corrections and the latter two require
students to correct the errors on their own.

Feedback on content consists mainly of

comments written by teachers on drafts that usually
point out problems and offer suggestions for
improvements on future rewrites. Students are usually
expected to incorporate information from the
comments into other versions of their papers.

What Is Not Working

There are several faults that lie with traditional

methods of correcting grammatical errors. The outright
correction of surface errors has been found to be
inconsistent, unclear and overemphasizes the negative
(Fregeau, 1999; Cohen, & Cavalcanti, 1990). Moreover,
when this type of feedback is given, students for the
most part simply copy the corrections into their
subsequent drafts or final copies. The vast majority of
students does not record nor study the mistakes noted
in the feedback. Having students merely copy teacher
corrections into rewrites is a passive action that does

52
not teach students how to recognize or correct errors
on their own. Fregeau discovered that the method of
teachers indicating the presence or types of errors
without correction is also ineffective. Many times the
students do not understand why the errors were
indicated and simply guess the corrections as they
rewrite. Other ineffective aspects of the marking of
student errors are that it causes students to focus more
on surface errors that on the clarity of their ideas, and it
only stresses the negative.

Just as with feedback on form, many faults have

been found with standard practices of providing
feedback on content (Cohen, & Cavalcanti, 1990; Leki,
1990; Fregeau, 1999; Fathman & Walley, 1990).
Fathman and Walley, as well as Fregeau report that
teacher feedback on content in the form of teacher
comments is often vague, contradictory, unsystematic
and inconsistent. This leads to various reactions by
students including confusion, frustration and neglect of
the comments. Leki reports that when presented with
written feedback on content, students react in three
main ways. The students may not read the annotations
at all, may read them but not understand them, or may
understand them but not know how to respond to
them. Teacher comments on content are of little use if
students do not know what they mean or how to use

53
them productively to improve their skills as writers.
Finally, Fathman and Walley note, much like correction
of grammar mistakes, comments on content tend to be
negative and point out problems more than tell
students what they are doing right.

What Is Working

Despite these negative aspects, there are

effective points to some of the common methods of
teacher feedback. Fathman and Walley (1990)
discovered that when students receive grammar
feedback that indicated the place but not type of errors,
the students significantly improved their grammar
scores on subsequent rewrites of the papers. This idea
is echoed by Frodesen (2001), who notes that indirect
feedback is more useful than direct correction.

Written feedback has also been found to be

effective when it is coupled with student-teacher
conferencing (Brender, 1998; Fregeau, 1999). As noted
earlier, many students find understanding written
feedback problematic. Conferencing allows both
students and teachers a chance to trace the causes of
the problems arising from student writing and feedback,
and to develop strategies for improvement. During
these sessions, teachers can ask direct questions to
students in order to gain a deeper understanding of

54
student writings. Also, students are able to express their
ideas more clearly in writing and to get clarification on
any comments that teachers have made. Finally,
teachers can use conferencing to assist students with
any specific problems related to their writing.

What Students Want

One important aspect of feedback that is often

overlooked is the desires of students as to the kinds of
feedback they wish to receive. Fregeau (1999) notes
that students want to participate in a process approach
to writing that allows for multiple rewrites as well as
conferencing of some sort. Brender (1998) asserts that
students want to take part in conferencing and find it
more effective than written comments. Leki (1990)
points out that students prefer error correction
methods that label mistakes and let them make
corrections on their own. Finally, Cohen and Cavalcanti
(1990) mention that students want to have some kind of
feedback pertaining to the content of their writings.

Suggestions for Appropriate and Effective

Feedback

Teachers have to come up with an effective

method of feedback that takes into account the
shortcomings of common methods of feedback, the

55
positive aspects of them and the desires of students.
The goals of a particular writing course are one of the
main factors that need to be considered when
determining how to provide feedback. Feedback that is
a mismatch with assignment or course goals may be one
of the factors contributing to students not knowing how
to properly respond to it. Among these are
consideration of course and assignment goals, the stage
of the writing process and the form of the feedback.

Aside from the aforementioned effectiveness of

marking errors for student self-correction, other
methods of feedback on grammar can be productive in
improving students' writing skills. To lessen student
confusion, teachers should consistently use a standard
set of symbols or markings to indicate place and type of
error and train the students in what kinds of corrections
to make based on each symbol. Lists of proofreading
symbols can easily be found in most writing textbooks,
or teachers can create their own. Furthermore, teachers
should familiarize students with the system so they will
not be surprised when new symbols occur.

Many of the same kinds of improvements that

can be made for feedback on form can also be made for
feedback on content. The failure of written comments
dealing with content comes from a combination of using

56
inconsistent, unclear comments along with not training
students in how to properly use the feedback to
improve. Teachers should consistently use a standard
set of clear and direct comments and questions to
indicate place and type of content feedback. These
types of comments and questions should focus
students' attention on the content of the composition
and the process they followed instead of merely
pointing out areas that the teacher found interesting or
lacking. As Leki (1990) points out, these kinds of
questions and comments can be used to create a dialog
between the student and the teacher in order to give
both a clearer understanding of how the assignment
was and should be conceived and executed.
Furthermore, teachers should, as with grammar,
familiarize students with the types of comments that
will be used and train students in how to make use of
the comments. Without training in how to use the
comments to better their writing, students are likely to
either ignore the comments, misunderstand them, or
fail to use them constructively (Cohen, & Cavalcanti,
1990; Kroll, 2001).

The comments that the teachers use and

training that they give students can be further
developed in individual conferences. Aside from using
conferences to determine if students understand and

57
are making use of feedback, teachers can also use them
to explain their comments to the students. Conferences
are an excellent time for teachers and students to ask
direct questions to each other and uncover any
misunderstandings by either party. One way to do this
would be to present students with pre-conference
sheets that allow them to prepare questions for the
teacher beforehand. Likewise, the teacher should also
prepare a list of comments and questions before the
conference.

Examples

I developed the following and found them to be very

effective in providing feedback to my EFL students and
fostering improvement in their writing skills.

Questions for Consideration when Giving Feedback

General Questions

 Is the feedback consistent with the goals of the

course?
 Is the feedback consistent with the goals of the
assignment?
 Is the feedback consistent with the goals for this
phase of the assignment?

58
  Is the form of the feedback consistent with the
three previous questions?

Form

 Is the feedback clear and easy for the students

to understand?
 Did I use the system and symbols that I made the
students aware of?
 Have I consistently marked the same error or
types of errors?
 Have I only marked errors that I told the
students I would or that I covered in class?
 Have I marked anything not gone over in class?
Why?
 Will the student know what to do with the
feedback?
 Did I correct the errors or mark it for the
students to correct? Why?

Content

 Is the feedback clear and easy for the students

to see and understand?
 Did I use the system and symbols that I made the
students aware of?
 Have I consistently marked the same error or
types of errors?

59
  Have I made only negative comments or did I
also add some praise?
 Did I rewrite student words? Why?
 Did I make any specific comments or ask direct
questions? Why?
 Are the comments I wrote specific to content
and problems that we are covering or have
covered in class?

Comments for Feedback on Content

 I usually insert the numbers instead of writing

out the comments.
 I like this very much.
 This is a good example.
 Tell me more about this.
 Can you think of another example?
 Do you have a personal example about this?
 Can you make this clearer?
 Can you think of another way to say this?
 Why do you think so?
 Is this paragraph complete?
 Do you think this is necessary? Why or why not?
 Should this paragraph be divided?
 Is your thesis clear?
 Are your topic sentences clear?
 You are repeating yourself here.

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  I am not sure what you mean.

Questions for Students

 Were there any comments or markings that you

did not understand?
 Were there any comments or markings that you
understood but were not sure what to do with?
 Were there any other things about the
assignments or class that you have questions
about?

Questions for Teachers

 What aspects of this course/assignment are the

student performing well on?
 What aspects of the course/assignment do the
student need to improve on? How?
 Are there any errors that are consistent?

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 Conclusion

To sum up, most of the frequently used and

relied on methods of teacher feedback on written
assignments are ineffective when it comes to
developing and promoting students' English writing
skills. Methods such as outright correction of surface
errors, inconsistently marking errors, unclear and vague
responses on content have all been found to have little
positive and some negative impact on student writing
skills. They can lead to feelings of confusion and
frustration as well as passive action and indifference on
behalf of the students. Teachers need to develop more
systemized and consistent forms of feedback that take
advantage of the process approach and make it clear to
students what the feedback means and what they are to
do with it. Moreover, teachers need to familiarize and
train students in how to effectively use the feedback in

62
order to make gains in their proficiency and
competence as English writers.

63