Techniques IN Selecting AND Organizing Information, Module

READING AND WRITING SKILLS

TECHNIQUES IN SELECTING AND ORGANIZING

INFORMATION
“Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

To whom did you relate—Peter or Matthew? Either way, this scenario makes it clear that writing well is

Peter and Matthew dropped by the faculty room to submit their respective papers to their English
professor. When the professor checked their outputs, Peter was praised for his paper’s relevant topic, in-
depth explanation, logical organization of ideas, and impeccable grammar. Matthew, on the other hand,
was shocked when his professor returned the paper he submitted. The professor noted that his paper was
very hard to read because the explanation was disorganized, shallow, and not direct to the point. Matthew
reflected on what happened and realized that the reason for this unfortunate event was that he failed to
follow the proper procedure in writing the paper.

important. It is easy to think that writing is a one-step activity, but, in truth, it is a complex process which involves
preparation, planning, researching, writing, revising, and editing. Skipping one of these stages may be detrimental to
your written output. To successfully produce a paper, make sure to follow the writing process.

Nowadays, we are bombarded with different kinds of information from books, newspapers, magazines, and of
course, the Internet. Going through this amount of information is not only the challenge; we also have to come up
with effective ways of processing them. Hence, one important ingredient to successful reading and writing is our
ability to generate, select, and organize ideas. These can be done through brainstorming, making a graphic
organizer, outlining, and many more.

THE WRITING PROCESS

The writing process has the following general steps: prewriting, writing, and post writing. This process can be
further broken down into the following sequence:

✓ discovering ideas by prewriting;

✓ finding a thesis statement;
✓ developing a thesis statement with supporting details;
✓ organizing the details using an outline;
✓ writing paragraphs in the first draft;
✓ revising the draft; and
✓ editing and proofreading

Understanding the writing process can help improve your writing skills, because being aware of how each part
works can make writing more manageable. It also allows you to save time and be more confident as you take on
writing assignments.

PREWRITING

Writing, as a process, occurs in stages. Prewriting is considered the preliminary stage. Prewriting means
planning before you begin to write. It pertains to different techniques that help you discover ideas before writing the
first draft of a paper. In this stage, it is important to refrain from critiquing your ideas while they have not yet been
fully formed. You should approach it with a relaxed and open state of mind. This stage is where students consider the
Three Main Factors in Writing: Topic, Audience, and Purpose.

1. Topic or Theme – What will I write about? The topic is the subject or the specific issue that your paper will
discuss. One of the hardest tasks in writing is finding the topic to write about.
• This is the central purpose or the workable idea of the paper.
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• Explore your thoughts about the topic.
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• Your topic should be one that interests you, so that you can be passionate, personal, and comfortable
when writing about it.
• Your topic should be one that you know so well that you can be credible and convincing to your
audience with your message.
• This can be a compelling idea derived from personal experiences, recent facts, old ideas, amusement,
and hobbies.
• Will you need to do research?
• Remember: It is always best to limit your topic, because if you write about a broad subject, your essay
will lack focus. It must be something that you know or are willing to learn about, since you must
establish your credibility by showing you have enough knowledge on your topic.

2. Audience – Who will read what I am writing? The audience is your target reader; the audience is the
receiver of the message.
• The knowledge, experiences, gender, and culture of the readers should be considered for written
communications to be effective.
• Why is it important to know your readers or your audience? The knowledge, interests, attitudes, and
needs of your readers will give you an idea as to how you will organize your points and claims in such
a
way that you can establish a common ground with your readers. This will make it easier for you to
convince them and sustain their attention. Remember that reading is engaging in a dialogue with the
writer of the text. In order for you to effectively engage in a dialogue with your reader, you have to
make sure you consider them when you write. Knowledge of who your audience is, what they need,
and what their interests are will help you adjust your language, tone, and style.
• How will the audience (readers) benefit from the written material?

3. Purpose – Why am I writing? What do you want to accomplish? Why are you sending this message?
Purpose is the reason or motive that you have when communicating. When you think about your purpose,
you begin to make decisions about form, content, length, organization, support, and tone. Once you identify
your purpose, you need to specify your persona as a writer. Will you be a magazine columnist, an activist, a
politician, a university professor, or a lawyer? This will set the tone, language, and level of formality in your
paper. ( Tone refers to the attitudes and feelings you want your writing to reflect toward your purpose,
topic, audience, and yourself.) Your purpose might be:
• To inform, to explain
• To entertain
• To persuade, to argue/critique
• To describe
• To offer advice
• To solve a problem

Below are the different purposes of writing according to text types.

PURPOSES TEXT TYPES

1. Argue or persuade – express opinion
(argumentative or persuasive writing)
Argue – present arguments and pieces of Pro-con argument, editorial, column, speech
evidence (political), review, letter, advertisement, brochure,
Persuade – convince the readers to take and the like
action or to accept a belief
2. Inform, instruct, explain, describe – give
details, instructions, elaborate upon, or help
clarify something (expository writing)

News report, news article, email, note, presentation,

Inform – explain something, present facts, observation log, interview, speech, and the like
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provide information

Explain – elaborate the topic by providing Recipe, science experiment, instructions/manual,

details in explaining something safety procedure, health procedure, a writing
process, a fire drill, and the like
Instruct – tell the reader how to do
something (process) Advertisement, brochure, descriptive essay,
character sketch, feature article, and the like
Describe – paint a picture using words that
appeal to the senses
3. Analyze, review – is considered as the
reader’s response to the text
Analyze – examine or break down the Fiction (literature) – analytical or evaluative
whole into parts; offer judgement analysis, critical review, character study, analysis,
Review – assess the merits and weaknesses note, email, letter, and others
of a text
Critical review – assess a text in terms of Non-fiction – book review, article critique
its strengths and weaknesses after
summarizing its content section by section
in order to show the accuracy of one’s
understanding of what is being evaluated
4. Narrate – tell a story; draw the reader into Personal narrative, narrative non-fiction,
the sequence of events (narrative writing) news/magazine article, biography, autobiography,
diary, historical essay, photo essay, and others
5. Imagine, explore, entertain – something Poem, fictional narrative, short story, play or
original (creative writing) drama, literary essay, novel, and others

EXAMPLE:

Topic: Elections
General Purpose: To inform
Specific Purpose: To make the audience more familiar with the processes related to the
Target Output: elections Article in a brochure
Audience: Senior high school
Writer’s Persona: students COMELEC
Level of Formality: representative Semi-formal

Communication through writing requires a lot of thinking. In prewriting, writers are pushed to generate
ideas to produce a better piece of work. Prewriting activities exercise one’s ability to come up with many ideas as
quickly as possible. As such, one can gradually simplify, evaluate, and incorporate the ideas generated, segregating
the unnecessary from the useful ones.

Prewriting activities start with: Free writing, Brainstorming, Questioning, and Visual Representations
such as Clustering/Mapping and

Storyboarding. Freewriting

This is a writing technique that helps cure mental block. Freewriting is writing down your thoughts nonstop.
This is when students start to write freely within a given time period; simply let your ideas run. During the entire
free- writing period, one must continuously write without primarily considering grammar rules, punctuation,
capitalization, transitions, spelling, and style. This is a very good way to explore any given topic. One can go on
continuously until finding another idea to write on. As a writer goes over the material, he or she will find interesting
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and useful ideas. Free writing is not guaranteed to produce good material for an essay, but this will surely help
students avoid spending too much time thinking about what to write. What matters most in this free writing activity
is to generate and exhaust all possible ideas about the topic. Remember that when you freewrite, write your ideas in
sentences.

Brainstorming

By definition, brainstorming is a group creative technique by which efforts are made to find a conclusion for
a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas spontaneously contributed by its members. Simply put, it is the listing
of ideas based on the given topic. This is useful to talk about a topic, exchange of thoughts, or even debate on it with
fellow students. Examples of brainstorming questions are: “What are your ideas about…?” or “What do you think
about…?” Brainstorming can be done individually. In fact, some studies show that individual brainstorming produces
more ideas. This is partially so because in group brainstorming, people focus too much on other people’s ideas that
they are unable to generate ideas of their own. However, group brainstorming might be a better option in solving
more complicated problems because it produces ideas that are wider in range and greater in depth. This is largely
attributed to the fact that the experiences and knowledge of each group member augment those of the other
members’. Hence, it is better practiced as a group activity wherein participants are asked for a “brainstorm” of
random ideas on a given question, problem, or topic.

Unlike freewriting, brainstorming requires students to collaborate and to explore on the given topic and to
develop ideas further. Through brainstorming, we are able to develop ideas further by associating several other
concepts to the main concept. The primary aim of this technique is to collect as many ideas as possible which will be
sorted, organized, and used in the writing process. Again, like freewriting, the more ideas that are “brainstormed,”
the better. The aim of a brainstorming exercise is not to produce a logical flow of ideas but to provide yourself with
as many choices for your topic as possible.

As a general rule, a brainstorming session starts by having a facilitator, group leader, and participants.
Students draw their ideas from the topic and list down important points of a discussion. A time limit is set at the
start of the brainstorming. The leader of each group should make sure that all participants contribute to the
discussion to generate as much ideas as possible. Make sure not to criticize during brainstorming, so as to create a
free and open environment. All members of the group including the leader will then go over the list and discuss the
reasons for writing each item. Each written item may be marked as important or irrelevant. “In addition to
contributing ideas of their own, participants should suggest how ideas of others can be turned into better ideas; or
how two or more ideas can be joined into still another idea” (Osborn, 1953).

GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

According to McKnight (2010):

Graphic organizers are teaching and learning tools; when they’re integrated into classroom experiences,
students are better able to understand new material. Creating a strong visual picture, graphic organizers support
students by enabling them to literally see connections and relationships between facts, information, and terms.

Graphic organizers are visual representations of concepts that help us structure information into
organizational patterns. They present essential information and connect these pieces of information into a coherent
framework.

Graphic organizers show the relationship between and among facts, concepts, or ideas using visual symbols.
They help you increase recall, arrange information, interpret and understand learning. The main purpose of a
graphic organizer is to provide a visual aid to facilitate learning and instruction. Praveem and Premalatha (2012)
proved in their study that graphic organizers are legitimate ways to improve one’s reading comprehension.
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The following are examples of the most common graphic organizers.

1. Venn Diagram – this shows the common characteristics of two ideas or concepts. This diagram uses two or
more overlapping circles to show similar and different attributes.
2. KWL Chart – this helps students organize information before, during, and after a lesson.
3. Topic Generators – allow students to think of associated topics based on the main topic or central idea. An
example of this is clustering/mapping.
4. Series of Events Chain shows the arrangement of events in chronological order. Plot Diagram or Story Map
and Flow Chart are examples of this.
5. Flow Chart – this displays the steps or stages in a process.
6. Cycle – this describes how a series of events interact to produce a set of results repeatedly. Some examples of
events that require a cycle are water cycle, metamorphosis, poverty cycle, etc.
7. Network Tree – this is used to represent hierarchy, classification, and branching, it is useful in showing
relationships of scientific categories, family trees, positions in organizations, and even lineages.
8. Spider Map (also known as Semantic Map) – this is used to investigate and enumerate various aspects of a
central idea, which could be a concept, topic, or theme. This central idea is placed at the center of the map.
The main idea is placed along its diagonal line, which details of the main idea are placed on the sides of the
diagonals.
9. Problem-Solution Map – this displays the nature of the problem and how it can be solved. This map usually
contains the problem’s description, its causes and effects, and logical solution/s.
10. Timeline - used to show how events occurred chronologically through a long bar labeled with dates and
specific events.
11. Vocabulary Map – this promotes vocabulary development. It usually asks students to define a word or
provide synonyms or antonyms.
12. Persuasion Map – is used to map out arguments and evidence that prove a viewpoint. This map is especially
useful when processing persuasive or argumentative texts.

There are more graphic organizers you may use depending on the nature of the text or the nature of your writing
activity – you may even device a graphic organizer of your own!

Clustering or Concept Mapping

This is another technique that you can use to find your writing topic. Concept map shows relationship
associated with the concept you are studying. Clustering is a technique that uses visual representations to show
connections between ideas. Clustering is also called mind mapping or idea mapping. It is a strategy that allows you
to explore the relationships between ideas. Start by writing a word or phrase at the center of the page and encircle it;
this becomes your main topic. Then, think of other words and phrases related to that main topic, write them down,
encircle them, and draw lines connecting them to the main topic. These become your subtopics. From there, you can
branch off the subtopics with other supporting ideas, or you can think of new subtopics related again to the main
topic. Just make sure that each word or phrase you write down is connected to the word or phrase that suggested it.
When you are done drawing your cluster, browse through all the ideas and pick one that you would like
to talk about. If you want to expand on your chosen idea, you can also use the words and phrases you wrote around
it. The beauty of this pre-writing method is that it teaches you how to dissect an idea, or how to develop it further.

Questioning Strategy

Questioning is a technique that requires you to write down all questions that you may think of about the
topic. A journalist who would want to successfully start and end a news report or news article will not depend solely
on one’s own prior knowledge but will generate topic-related information by asking the standard five W’s (Who?
What? Where? When? Why?) and one H (How?). This prewriting technique can again help students be more focused
in their writing through asking questions. Answering these questions later on serve as a guide to start a research, a
platform for an outline, or as an introduction to an essay, since answers can branch out and can activate further
questions.
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Questions can aid in any writing situations. To begin with, writers should ask who the readers of their
material are. As previously discussed, it is best for writers to be familiar with the three factors in writing. knowing
the audience’s knowledge or lack of knowledge on a topic will be a guide if too much information was given or if
important information was neglected.

When readers ask questions as they read, they are not only interacting with the text to make meaning of it,
but they are also monitoring their own comprehension of what they are reading. The simple fact that a reader is
asking questions as s/he reads is evidence that the reader has a purpose in reading. Reading with a purpose
increases reading comprehension because the reader is making a personal connection with the text. Questioning
facilitates this personal connection.

Talk to other people. If you have strong opinions on a topic, you might want to discuss the topic with
someone whose views are different. If you are unfamiliar with a topic, ask an expert or talk to several people to
collect information.

Questions can help widen one’s knowledge on any given topic. The more questions are listed down, the more
information are generated.

QUESTIONS ANSWERS
WHAT
1. What are the health benefits of Zinc?
2. What is the main function of Bangko
Sentral ng Pilipinas?
WHEN
1. When do we say that a person is
considered a tax evader?
2. When did APEC start as an
organization?
WHERE
1. Where can we find visa free countries to
Filipinos?
2. Where can we find three of Juan Luna’s
famous painting displayed in the Phils?
WHO
1. Who is behind the success of Jollibee
food chain?
2. Who is considered as the Father of
History?
WHY
1. Why is breastfeeding considered the
best milk for babies?
2. Why is it that most Philippine typhoons
are named after women?
HOW
1. How did scientist prove that garlic has
an antibiotic potency?
2. How can touch and emotional
engagement between mother and child
boost early childhood development?
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For a more critical questioning, the following may be asked:

✓ What type of audience is addressed?

✓ What are the writer’s assumptions?
✓ What are the writer’s intentions?
✓ How well does the writer accomplish these?
✓ How convincing is the evidence presented?
✓ How reliable are the sources? Are they based on personal experience, scientific data, or outside authorities?
✓ Did the writer address opposing views on the issue?
✓ Is the writer persuasive in his/her perspective?

OUTLINING

Dadufalza (2008) provided a comprehensive definition of what an outline is:

An outline provides a rapid grasp of the fundamental aspects of an entire expository piece. It shows, through
its standard format, how these parts relate to each other as sections of equal importance or units of subordinate
rank which merely support, clarify, or illustrate the main headings under which they are classified. An outline,
furthermore, reveals how, seen together, all these main and subordinate parts of the outline contribute 𝑓inal
relevance to the central idea of the entire composition. An outline, therefore, ultimately yield the inner logic from
which the coherence of an entire body of though springs (p. 303).

An outline arranges ideas hierarchically (showing which are main and which are sub-points), in the desired
sequence and shows what will be talked about.

By locating the thesis statement, claims, and evidence, and then plotting these into an outline, you can see
how the writer structures, sequences, and connects his or her ideas. This way you will be able to better evaluate the
quality of the writing.

An outline shows how an article is organized, or how it is constituted (including how its main and supporting
ideas relate to each other). A good writer, whether technical or not, uses an outline to serve as a skeletal
framework for his composition. Ideas are well-organized when an outline is made prior to collecting information or
writing the draft. Indeed, an outline helps the writer present his ideas in an orderly fashion.

But how do we come up with an outline? Do we just choose random sentences and ideas and “outline” them?

Crucial to a good outline is an excellent understanding of the source material. The first thing we need to do
is to identify the text’s thesis statement or central idea—what is the author talking about? Then, we locate the main
ideas in the text that directly supports the central idea—these are the text’s main ideas. All other information that
are subordinate to the main ideas are the supporting details. An outline is so essential to clear and effective writing.

We must remember that when outlining, there should always be at least two items for each level. Hence, a
main idea should always have at least two supporting ideas.

An outline may take any of these two forms: sentence (formal) outline or topic (scratch) outline. As the
terms suggest, a sentence outline consists of complete sentences. The sentences state the crucial point of each stage
of the paper. You use this outline when the topic being discussed is complicated and requires details. On the other
hand, a topic outline contains words and phrases as its entries. Remember that a topic outline lists words or
phrases. This type of framework is sufficient for short papers. Do NOT place periods after any of the points in a topic
sentence. Also, make sure that each point is stated in the parallel grammatical form.

There are four principles that need to be followed in making an effective outline. These principles are
coordination, subordination, division, and parallel construction. The principle of coordination requires ideas of the
same relevance to be labeled in the same way (see I and II in both sample outlines that follow). The principle of
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subordination shows that minor details have to be placed under their respective major details (see I and A in both
sample outlines). The principle of division requires that no cluster should contain only one item. In short, if you have
subheading 1, there should be subheading 2. Lastly, the principle of parallel construction requires all entries in
each cluster to use the same structure and format. For example, the words promotes and improves in sample topic
outline below use simple present tense.

An outline is used not only as a prewriting strategy but also as a postreading activity.

SAMPLE OUTLINES:

Topic Outline

I. Positive effects of uniform policy

A. Promotes school identity
B. Improves school security
II. Negative effects of uniform policy
A. Inhibits learning
B. Curtails individuality

Sentence Outline

I. Students should not be mandated to wear uniforms because wearing a uniform does not improve
behavior nor does it facilitate learning.

II. Wearing a uniform does not improve behavior.

A. Van de Laan confirms that wearing a uniform does not have direct positive impact on behavior.
B. Dr. Wallin confirms that the perceived positive impact of uniforms on students’ behavior is just a halo
effect.

III. Wearing a uniform does not facilitate learning.

A. A study of Seamon (1995) shows that there is weak connection between academic performance and
uniform policy.
B. Dr. Badger (2008) claims that a standardized uniform policy does not improve school performance.
C. Dr. Brunsma (2006) confirms that there is no positive correlation between wearing a uniform and
academic achievement.

IV. On top of being insensitive to the individuality of students, implementing a uniform policy does not have
useful advantages as well, as it does not present sufficient evidence that links to positive influence on
students’ behavior and academic performance.

Understand that an outline is a writing aid that will show you how to present your points from start to end,
but it should not dictate the form or style you want to use in your writing. Outline only if it will help your writing,
and outline in a way that will help you best. The helpfulness of an outline will all be up to you. Remember that the
key to outlining is distinguishing between main ideas and supporting ideas.
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