The advice that you will find at EssaysProfessors.com is absolutely free and is solely aimed to help you achieve higher results in your professional or study business.

This educational page was specifically designed to help students of all levels find relevant information on writing various research papers, term papers, projects or book reports. The advice that you will find at EssaysProfessors.com is absolutely free and is solely aimed to help you achieve higher results in your professional or study business. You can find different writing tips, step-by-step instructions, and guidelines on how to get prepared for any college, university, or high school assignment and task. We also provide you with an excellent opportunity to choose from a number of various professionally written term papers and essays, which are offered to endow you with a prospect of developing better writing and composition skills.

Stages of the Composing Process

The process model proposes that a finished paper is the result of the complex interaction of activities that include several stages of development: prewriting, drafting, pausing, reading, revising, editing, and publishing. Not every writing task passes through every stage, however. In some situations, a writer may not have an opportunity to do much planning, or a professional editor may do the editing. Nevertheless, these stages are believed to reflect in a general way how successful writing develops.

Prewriting

Prewriting activities help writers generate ideas, strategies, information, and approaches for a given writing task. They are processes that engage the mind with the writing task at hand. From this perspective, prewriting, in its broadest sense, is the thinking good writers do before they start composing.

The sections that follow describe some of the more effective ways to stimulate student thinking about a topic. It is important to stress that there is not one best way to go about prewriting. What works well for some students does not work as well for others; what works well for one assignment will not work well for another. Some writers use various combinations of prewriting activities, whereas others are only committed to one. Students should experiment to determine what works best for them.

Stages of Writing

DISCUSSION CHECKLIST

1• Who is the audience for this paper? What am I trying to do in this assignment? Interpret? Explain? Analyze? Compare and contrast? Am I writing a term paper that reflects everything I learned during the semester? Am I writing a paper that applies a single principle studied during class? Am I writing a research paper that demonstrates my ability to identify and interpret leading work in the field?

2• What effect am I trying to produce in those who read my paper? Am I writing as an inside or an outsider? Do I want to show the audience that I understand the topic? Do I want the audience to understand the topic better? Do I want the audience to accept my point of view?

3• What point or message do I want to convey? How should I begin? Where will I get information about my topic? Through library research? Through experience? Through background reading?

4• When explaining a point in the paper, what kind on examples should I use? How will the examples work to make my paper more readable, informative, or convincing?

5• If I make a claim in the paper, how do I support it? On the basis of experience? By citing authorities? On the basis of reason? On the basis of emotion?

6• What is the most effective way to organize the paper, to make sure that the various arts fit together well? What should the conclusion do?

Above is a checklist of questions students can use to stimulate and guide discussions; although they are not comprehensive, the questions illustrate the kind of thinking that is part of an effective discussion.

Outlining

Outlines can be a very beneficial prewriting device if used properly. Too often, however, the focus is on the structural details of the outline rather than its content. That is, students spend much effort deciding whether an A must have a B; whether a primary heading begins with a Roman numeral or an upper-case letter; whether a secondary heading begins with a lower-case letter, a lower-case Roman numeral, or an Arabic numeral, and so on. Such details are not important. Outlines begin when writers list the major points they want to address in their papers without worrying much about order. They become more useful when they acquire more features. In other words, outlines start with general points and shift to specific ones. The outlines that follow illustrate these principles. It is worth noting, however, that outlines appear to work most effectively when writers use them to generate ideas about topics and theses that they have already decided on.

Making Writing Meaningful

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the social-theoretic model is that it provides a goal that writing teachers can strive for with their students. The majority of students may not be able to see themselves as historians, musicians, accountants, or whatever, but at least they may stop seeing themselves merely as students and start seeing themselves as writers. Teachers are responsible for helping them attain this vision, and in most situations they can do so by making certain that every writing task be related to the real world. In practical terms, a real-world emphasis means that students' compositions will do something in the tangible sense of performing a social action.

The following anecdote suggests one way the pragmatic view may be translated into practice. Robert, a credential candidate with a degree in history, began his student teaching by asking his eighth-grade class for a writing sample. He felt very strongly that all teachers, not just those in language arts, should be dedicated to helping develop children's language. The class had been studying U.S. government, and one of the students, Joey, submitted the following:

The US consitution is an importent dokument. It give us many rites. Like speech and freedom. Witout the Consitution we might as well be rushans. What our president Raygin call the "evil empire." But sometime it seem that the consitution give us to much freedoms. Many time crimnals do not go to jail for doing bad things when they should go to jail. Thats not right and the consitution should change it.

In a conference 2 days later, Robert asked Joey to recall the things he had been thinking about when he wrote this paper. The purpose was to gain additional insight into Joey's composing process. Joey's response, which Robert recorded, was typical for a student who has come to believe that product is all important and who has come to see writing as a nonfunctional enterprise: "I was thinkin' I do not spell so good and was wonderin' if I had written enough."

Robert knew his work was cut out for him. According to the course guide, the next major study unit dealt with U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia . He asked his class whether they would like to have some pen pals from the Philippines who could give them some firsthand knowledge of life in one part of Southeast Asia . The students were enthusiastic, and a letter to a school principal in Manila began an exchange of letters that continued long after the unit on Southeast Asia was concluded.

Students on both sides of the Pacific were interested in learning more about the culture and lifestyle of their counterparts, and for the American children, the letters from Manila seemed to reinforce significantly what they were learning about history and government. Just as important, they suddenly had a purpose for writing. Written language had become meaningful. Composing the letters was always a collaborative project, with children working together in small groups, sharing letters they had received from abroad and also sharing the letters they were writing. The children were encouraged to include pertinent class experiences in their letters. Robert circulated among them as they composed, offering suggestions when necessary and answering questions when asked.

Giving these students a real reason to write had a very positive effect on their work. All the students improved, as the following letter shows. Like the previous sample, it was written by Joey, just over a month after the paper about the Constitution, at a time when Ferdinand Marcos, former dictator of the Philippines , was still in office:

Dear Emilio,

Thank you for your last letter. Since I got it we have been studying more about your country. And I have been thinking about what you said about how nice it must be to live in America . We seem to have more freedom than you and its easier for us to make money and buy the things that make life comfortable. I think things would be better for you if you did not have martial law. Then maybe the government would not have all the money. It must be tough with the army and the police telling you what time you have to go to bed and stuff. . . . I do not know why our president helps keep your president in power. I think he do not want to lose the navy base that keeps alot of our ships on one of your islands. . . .

What we see here is that when written language becomes meaningful, writing performance improves on all levels. For example, Joey's concern over the impression his spelling might have on Emilio motivated him (perhaps for the first time) to write with a dictionary close at hand.