Preview Questions

1. How would you describe your experiences as a learner of English?

2. What kind of writing have you done in English?
3. What is your approach to writing an essay (in any language)? What steps do
you go

through as you plan and then write a paper?

Before you begin writing, you must ask yourself the following questions:

 ● Why are you writing?

 ● Who are you writing for?
 ● What are your reader’s expectations from you?
 ● What type of writing are you going to do?
 ● What difficulties are you going to face while writing?
 ● What is your main point?

 Importance of Context
 In academic writing the context is a school, college or university, and readers
include your teachers and peers. The genre you use is determined by your
purpose for writing and your intended audience. Each genre has specific
features and traits that help you fulfill your purpose, and as a student you
need to know the particular requirements of each genre. Once you know the
genre requirements, you need to focus on the theme you want to write about,
the supporting details, and the art of presentation. Correctness is an important
ingredient of second language writing, so the grammatical and syntactical
accuracy must be prioritized.
 Steps in the Writing Process
 Writing is a step by step process which includes planning, prewriting,
organizing, drafting, revising, editing and proofreading (see
Fig1).

 Planning
 The planning phase includes identifying your topic, audience, purpose and
genre. Suppose it is your first English class in college and your teacher asks
you to write about “Your Journey of Learning the English Language". In that
case, you can narrow down your topic to “My Experiences of Learning English
in High School,” “Challenges of English Language Learning,” “Barriers to
Improving English Writing Skills,” and many more. As mentioned above, in
college or university the audience is usually your teacher and fellow students
and the purpose is most likely to share or report on what you have learned
and know about your topic.

Brainstorming
Brainstorming is the process of generating ideas. It can be used to select a topic as
well as find details about the selected topic. It can relieve anxiety and uncertainty
about what and how to write. It can improve writing efficiency through using different
techniques.

a. Asking Questions
Asking questions is a good brainstorming technique to begin with. Ask yourself
questions about your topic and try to narrow down the ones you want to answer in
your essay.

b. Keywords Clustering
Think about the key words or phrases that you want to include in your essay and
make a cluster of them that shows connectivity between the ideas.

c. Listing
You can also think about the main ideas that you have about your topic and make a
list of those ideas on a piece of paper or word file.

d. Free Writing
Freewriting is a technique in which one writes for a set time period without stopping
and without bothering about grammar, syntax or even sequence of ideas. It helps in
expressing subconscious ideas without succumbing to

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anxiety about the conscious process of writing correctly. Freewriting helps in

generating ideas and moving past writer’s block.

Activity A1. 4

For this activity, go to Reading B1.4 and read the given text carefully. When you are
finished, discuss with your classmates and complete the following steps:

Read what you wrote earlier. Underline ideas that you might want to include in your
essay.

Free write about your experience of learning English. With this topic in mind, write
without stopping for five minutes. Include ideas you have already shared with your
classmates on the topic, or add new ideas. Do not worry about correct grammar,
vocabulary, organization, etc. Try to fill up the page with as many thoughts and
experiences as you can.

Consider whether free writing helped you generate ideas, overcome writer’s block,
reduce the fear of writing, or generate vocabulary.

In order to put your ideas in a logical sequence, read the following text for
understanding the process of writing an essay

Organizing
After brainstorming and free writing, the ideas must be organized to be put into an
essay form. In this unit, two techniques of organizing will be discussed: idea mapping
and outlining. Read the following content in order to understand the organization of
an essay.

Idea Mapping

Idea mapping is a good technique to organize ideas because many people learn
visually. They can use different shapes, like circles or squares, and connect them
with lines or arrows. As the ideas are grouped together in clusters, it is also known
as clustering. Idea mapping not only helps draw connections among different ideas
but also subdivides each idea into its supporting details. To draw an idea map the
main topic should be written in a central circle or shape and specific ideas are
spread around and connected by arrows or lines. The figure below (Fig. 2) shows
how an organizing cluster looks like.

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a. Outlining

Figure 2. An organizing cluster (idea mapping).

By this step you have gathered most of the information based on prewriting activities
and organized it to a reasonable extent through clustering. Now you can identify the
gaps in their patterns (see Table 2). You should transform your ideas into an outline
form. Writing an outline is a two-step process.

b. Scratch Outline
A scratch outline lists ideas in an order that makes sense to you. After writing this
outline, the students should come back to it and edit it to give shape to a formal
outline.

c. Formal Outline

A formal outline is a sketch of the final sequencing of the essay. It not only reflects
the thesis statement but follows an order for arguments and their premises. It also
uses numbers and letters to indicate the levels of supporting details, distinguishing
ideas of more importance from the less important ones. Look at the formal outline
structure given below:

Formal Outline
1. Introduction
2. Thesis statement

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3. Main point 1 → becomes the topic sentence of body paragraph 1 3.1. Supporting detail →
becomes a support sentence of body paragraph

1. 3.1.1. Subpoint
2. 3.1.2. Subpoint

3.2. Supporting detail 3.2.1. Subpoint 3.2.2. Subpoint 3.3. Supporting detail 3.3.1. Subpoint 3.3.2.
Subpoint

4. Main point 2 → becomes the topic sentence of body paragraph 2

4.1. Supporting detail 4.1.1. Subpoint 4.1.2. Subpoint 4.2. Supporting detail 4.2.1. Subpoint 4.2.2.
Subpoint 4.3. Supporting detail 4.3.1. Subpoint 4.3.2. Subpoint

5. Main point 3 → becomes the topic sentence of body paragraph 3

5.1. Supporting detail 5.1.1. Subpoint 5.1.2. Subpoint 5.2. Supporting detail 5.2.1. Subpoint

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5.2.2. Subpoint 5.3. Supporting detail 5.3.1. Subpoint 5.3.2. Subpoint

6. Conclusion

Drafting

Before the drafting stage, you should be clear about the main thesis, division of the
essay into introduction, body and conclusion. In the body part, the thesis of each
paragraph should be supported with supporting details. The formal outline organizes
thesis and supporting details in a logical sequence. After that, the drafting process
begins. By this stage due to prewriting, one must be clear what will fill out the blank
pages.
Alicia, J. (2020). Step by Step Guide for Writing Short Essays: Accessed at:

https://bestessaywritingservice.org/blog/guide-to-write-short-essay/

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While writing, the purpose and audience must not be forgotten. Based on the theses,
the paragraphs which are the basic structural units of an essay, should be given
shape. Each paragraph should be a continuation of the previous one. Topic
sentences not only give structure to paragraphs but also make it easy for the reader to
locate the writer's basic argument.

While drafting paragraphs, the outline should be revisited again and again. When
you draft paragraphs you will realize that a topic sentence can be placed in the
beginning, middle or end of the paragraph based on the suitability of the placement.
The paragraph length depends on the length of the essay i.e., long essays afford to
have long paragraphs whereas short essays may allow room for succinctly
presented information in short paragraphs. The length also depends on the number
of supporting details. If there are too many supporting details, a thesis can be spread
over two or more paragraphs in long essays.

Activity A 1.7: Exchange your first draft with a classmate and complete a peer review
of each other’s draft in progress. Do not forget to give positive feedback and be
courteous and polite in your responses. Focus on providing one positive comment
and asking questions for clarity or more information

Peer Review of First Draft

Peer reviews, done properly, can give writers objective feedback about their writing.

It is the writer’s responsibility to evaluate the results of peer reviews and incorporate
only useful feedback. The experience of peer reviewing can also help you get better
at reviewing your own writing and becoming a better writer

Peer feedback is constructive criticism of your essay. Your peer reviewer acts as the
first real audience, and provides you the opportunity to analyze what delights or
confuses a reader. This can be really helpful for you to improve your work before
sharing the final draft.

Editing and Proofreading

Editing is different from revising as it is more concerned with the mechanics. You can
improve your sentence structure, expression, choice of words and grammar and
punctuation at this stage.

The essay must also be edited for coherence, clarity and conciseness. Transitions
may be revisited. Wordy expressions may be replaced with simpler ones. Colloquial
expression may be replaced with formal ones and specific words may be used for
general ones. It is good to use a checklist for editing your essay. For example, have
a look at the one given below:
With the help of the given checklist, self-check your essays and after completing
each step, place a checkmark next to it.

1. Proof reading:

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Proof read your essay to remove any surface errors. Read the following
paragraph to see why proof reading is important.

Proofreading

The last step of essay writing is proofreading. It focuses on surface errors like
misspellings and grammar errors. Proofreading needs patience because it’s
easy to overlook a mistake.

You can also ask a professional proofreader or a friend to proofread your

work. However, in this class, you should proofread your own papers.

End of Unit Quiz

1. How is revising different from editing?

2. What is coherence?
3. Whatisathesisstatement?
4. Howlongshouldaparagraphbeinanessay?
5. Whatisthepurposeofpeerreviews?