The 5 Steps of Essay Writing

PrewritingPlanningDraftingRevisingEditing

Understand the Assignment

What exactly does the prompt request?

Key Words/Wording in the prompt:

Summarize the reading

Analyze the reading

Research a Topic

Take a Position

Compare and Contrast

Explore the Causes/Effects

What if the assignment is not clear?

Ask for clarification while the instructor introduces the prompt, or ask later. Do not wait till the day the essay is due to state your lack of understanding!

Confused?

ResearchIs Research Required?

Personal Experience

Academic Sources -- Library Research

Interviews and Questionnaires

Length and DesignIs there a page/word requirement?

Format Required?

MLA, APA

Audience

Who are your readers?

How well informed are they about the subject?

What do you want them to learn?

Deadlines

Note DeadlinesDraft Due Date?Final Draft Due Date?

Make a Schedule: Find a time frame and specific places where you concentrate best

Find a class peer to work with to help keep you motivated.

PrewritingPlanningDraftingRevisingEditing

Step 1: Prewriting

Prewriting is a “no pressure” way to generate ideas. It’s usually done for 2 reasons:

• To focus a broad topic into a specific one Art

• To figure out what you want to say about your topic.For example, whatever you want to express about street graffiti . . . perhaps that it is a political statement.

Street Graffiti

Step 1: PrewritingTypes of Prewriting.

Discussion

Note-taking

Listing/Brainstorming

Clustering

Freewrite

Journalist Questions (who, what, when, where, how, why)

Step 1: PrewritingAsking Journalist Questions

What point do I want to make about my topic? What do I need to tell my audience so that they will get my point? What is my topic similar to/different from? What causes it? What are the effects? Why is the topic important? Who does this topic affect? How does the topic affect people’s lives, or my life? What particular attitudes or opinions about my topic do readers have? If applicable, where and when does my topic occur?

Step 1: Prewriting

Free-writing is a very useful way to narrow a general subject or assignment.

Write for a fixed period, perhaps 5 or 10 minutes, without stopping and without paying attention to spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Your goal is to get your ideas down on paper so you can react to them.

Step 1: PrewritingA Student Writer’s Example of Freewriting:

Write about a time when you could have spoken out in protest but chose not to. Would you make the same decision today?

Student freewriting:

Write for ten minutes ... ten minutes ... at 9 o'clock in the morning — Just what I want to do in the morning — If you can't think of something to say, just write about anything. Right! Time to get this over with — An experience — should have talked — I can think of plenty of times I should have kept quiet! I should have brought coffee to class. Damn. I wonder what the people next to me are writing about. That reminds me. Next to me. Jeff Servin in chemistry. The time I saw him cheating. I was mad but I didn't do anything. I studied so hard and all he did was cheat. I was so mad. Nobody else seemed to care either. What's the difference between now and then? It's only a year and a half.... Honor code? Maturity? A lot of people cheated in high school. I bet I could write about this — Before and after, etc. My attitude then and now.

Step 1: Prewriting

Brainstorming is a fancy word for making a simple list. Quickly writing down every fact, idea, or association you can think of that relates to your topic. See example below.

Topic: Write About an Initiation

Driving My First Job at Starbucks Joining the Marines/Basic Training Getting lost during that hiking trip in Arizona, 2006 Heather dumping me First apartment

Step 1: PrewritingClustering is a way of visually arranging your ideas so that you can tell at a glance where ideas belong and whether or not you need to generate more information.

Step 1: PrewritingPrewriting Practice: Narrow these broad topics

top college demands

the effects of social networking sites

your most influential peer

the top environmental issue for your generation

the best method for getting out of debt

the benefits of moving out at 18