Let’s start with a definition of writing. Complete the sentence: Writing is _______.

How many of you have written it down that writing is a process? Probably not many. Why? If you are familiar with the TOEFL, IELTS, GRE, GMAT, or any other English language tests, you will not think writing is an iterative process, meaning that different parts of it are done and redone until they are high quality in a process. In those exams, you have to compose an essay within 30 or so minutes, which means you do not have the time to edit your paper. You may not even have the time to reread your writing after you drafted it. However, when you are in a college in the U.S., you will relearn what writing is. Most universities in the U.S. uphold that writing is a process, a series of writing steps that you need to be engaged in to reach a final writing product. The series of steps include brainstorming, drafting, receiving feedback, revision, editing, and reflection. How many of the steps are you familiar with?

Stressing the writing process is important because no matter which type of writing, going through a certain series of writing steps is helpful to enhance your writing skills; and it also guarantees writing quality. Particularly, through different steps, different layers of errors or problems will emerge, which gives you an extra chance to revise your writing. For example, during the process of receiving feedback, you can ask more experienced peers or professors to read your writing and give you feedback. International students from other countries with different writing conventions easily overlook written discourse in a specific field in the U.S.; therefore, having more experienced writers read their writing is beneficial. Giving feedback on others’ papers is also a learning process, through which you can review the content and reflect upon your own writing.

Although writing as a process is widely accepted in the U.S., not all steps are needed for each time when you write. It depends on the type of writing and the purposes of your writing. If you have never practiced writing as a process when you are in your home country, this will be a new learning experience for you. More importantly, you need to form your own writing habit that works the best for you. To begin with, your responsibility is to practice those practices and develop the skills in each step for your own benefits. Only when you internalize your own writing process or habit which works for you, you could probably utilize the skill in your future writing assignments, and more likely that you would adapt that process to new contexts.

Assignment:

The Assignment 1 Prompt Topic & Directions -2.docx Directions describe the essay you are developing over four weeks.  This week you will only be writing the outline for this assignment.

Grading:  Instructor comments will be made by Thursdays 12:30pm; make sure you read my feedback so you can improve on the next step. I will post my general comments in your grade book. Outlines and final drafts of essays will have editing corrections on the printed essay. Read link if you have trouble finding the comments. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Peer Review:  Each of you will complete one peer review on one group member’s writing.  Copy and paste the questions from the peer review into your reply of your classmate’s work. Always post a reply right before you begin reviewing someone’s work to announce to the group who you will be reviewing; this way you don’t accidentally have two people review one person’s work.  If that happens, the second reply will have to review a new member’s writing.

Adapted from: Empowering International Graduate Students through Writing Copyright © 2021 by Zhenjie Weng & Mark McGuire is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

ESL/Academic English II, by Crystal Louden, CC BY NC SA