PROCESS WRITING
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2. Peer-editing |
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3. Self-editing |
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4. Editing |
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As
teachers, you might have come across this situation many times: a student
who had a lot of free time on the weekend comes to your class having
written three essays and she has made
the same three mistakes on all the essays she has handed in. Here comes the
question – is it the quantity or the quality of the papers which is important?
To provide an answer to
this question, we need to analyze tertiary level writing - what we generally do
when we write and what we ask our students to do when giving a writing
assignment in class. If we are not free-writing, or writing in the
stream-of-consciousness technique (a technique that records the multifarious
thoughts and feelings of a character without regard to logical argument or
narrative sequence as in "A Room
of One's Own" (1929) by Virginia Woolf), what we need to do is to plan what we are writing, who
we are writing to, how we write.
Once we have planned, we
start writing. What we write for the first time is never perfect. When we read
it for a second time, we see that some places need clarification, so we write
it again. We keep editing and proofreading our drafts until we reach a final
product. This is what a process approach is about. Though this process
seems linear, in the real world, we keep changing our ideas while writing; thus, we may need to go
back and forth between these stages.
Apparently, enthusiastic as
the above mentioned student may seem, she never went further than writing only
a first draft. Most probably, if she had proof-read and edited her draft, she
would have realized her own mistake and refrained from repeating the same
mistake.
There are scientific
reasons as to the benefits of process writing as well. Research has shown that
when feedback is given on the draft, it is more useful since the students find
the opportunity to correct their mistake by writing again.
With little effort, it is
possible to apply process writing in our classes. Instead of giving the writing
topic to the students and asking for the final product, we can help the
students go through the stages of process writing.
Process writing consists of the following stages:
As most of you would appreciate,
getting started is the most difficult task in writing. With the help of
brain-storming, we make it less painful for the students. In the brain-storming
stage, the student starts thinking about the topic given. This may be done as a
whole-class activity or in groups so that students benefit from each other as
well. The teacher writes on the board every idea that comes from the students,
without eliminating any. For example, if the topic is “Advantages of the World
Wide Web”, the ideas that may come are:
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In the brain-storming
stage, the ideas can be put in linear order or in mind-maps – it depends on the
ideas put on the board and the teacher. (For advantages of mind-maps, you can
refer to http://www.peterussell.com/Mindmaps/Advantages.html .)
Once the ideas are put
randomly on the board, it is now time to eliminate some and organize the rest
of the ideas as “main support” and “example”; in other words, plan the writing. In our example, the
plan can be something like:
Thesis:
I Time-saving
a) Search
b) Banking
c) Communication
II Economical
a)
Fee -none (in the
universities) or very little (from home)
b)
No need to be transported
– it is everywhere
c) Only requires a modem
a)
can be accessed from
everywhere via telephone lines
b)
no waiting in queues
c)
does not require many
accessories
Or like:
Thesis:
I Searching
a) easy
b) quick
c) cheap
II Shopping/ Banking
a) easy
b) quick
c) cheap
a) easy
b) quick
c) cheap
While producing the plan,
it is quite normal for the students to add or delete information. Actually,
they keep adding and deleting till the final product is reached.
By looking at the plans,
the students start writing their essays. They may change the order of their
main supports, or re-arrange their minor supports. If you have read myths about
people writing a perfect essay on their first try, it is time to face the
truth: there is always a mistake either in the organization or in the grammar
or the choice/ form of the vocabulary. This leads us to editing and proof-reading.
Here, we would like to
point out the distinction between editing and proof-reading. Editing refers to
“what you write”, whereas,
proof-reading refers to “how you write”.
The distinction is very important in process writing since we need to focus on
one thing to correct at a time. If we try to provide feedback on both the
student’s grammar mistakes and the wrong organization of her ideas, she might
get confused and not be able to correct all her mistakes. Correcting everything
at the same time is also hard for the teacher as the grammar mistakes keep
interfering while trying to concentrate on the organization mistakes.
To avoid such confusion, we
have divided the correction stage into two; editing and proofreading. It is
logical to start dealing with the paper’s organization and content (editing)
since the sentences may change with the help of the feedback.
As we have mentioned
before, editing deals with “what you write”. While giving feedback on the
student paper, we look at the content and the organization. A student essay is
expected to have the following basic features:
If the essay lacks enough
examples to support the thesis, or if there is redundancy, this is the time to
add or delete. Once the content and the organization of the ideas satisfy the
student, she writes a second draft and the paper is ready for proof-reading.
Proof-reading deals with
“how you write”. While proof-reading, the paper is checked for any spelling,
punctuation mistakes, lack of parallelism in the structures, flaws in the style
(formal/informal), and grammar mistakes. To be more precise, we look for:
10. style
inappropriate for the audience
It is better to leave
proof-reading to the last since the text may change many times before the
writer is content with her essay.
It is quite clear that
writing the paper once is never enough. Now that the student has feedback on
the spelling and grammar mistakes, she writes the essay again. This means, the
same essay needs to be written at least three times (first draft, second draft
after editing, final product after proof-reading) before a final product can be
reached. Current technology (word-processors) enables us to rewrite the same
essay without spending much time. Word-processors also provide spell and
grammar checks – though they do not give hundred percent correct feedback. To
be on the safe side, one still needs to check it oneself.
There are three ways of
giving feedback to the students:
For a beginner student who
starts writing essays towards the end of the first term, it may be difficult to
do the self and peer editing; the teacher may provide more guidance during
editing or she may do the editing and proof-reading with the student to set an
example.
Here, the texts are
interchanged and the evaluation is done by other students. In the real world,
it is common for writers to ask friends and colleagues to check texts for
spelling, etc. In the classroom environment, the students can exchange their
papers and comment on each others’ papers.
As you may also have
encountered, it is very common for the writer to miss her own mistakes. This is
why it is recommended to sleep on it
for a night. After putting the paper aside for some time, emptying the mind and
dealing with some other work, the writer is able to approach her paper with a
clear mind. In the classroom environment, we can have the students write their
essays one day, collect the papers, and have them edit and proof-read them the
next day.
There are excellent web
sites that guide the students while editing and proofreading their or their
classmates’ papers. You can have the students check these web sites or if you
want to make sure they read them, download the checklists and take them to the
class. Here are some addresses for editing:
http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/writing-lab/goproofreading.html
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_proof.html
Gardner
and Johnson (1997) describe the stages of the writing process:
Writing is a fluid process created by writers as they
work. Accomplished writers move back and forth between the stages of the
process, both consciously and unconsciously. Young writers, however, benefit
from the structure and security of following the writing process in their
writing.
Basically, we would like to
see our students acquire the basic academic skills. Once the students get used
to the stages of planning, drafting, and evaluating their papers, we will feel
content that they can survive in their departments. As writing teachers, we
need to encourage our students to consider their audience and the rhetorical
norms of English while developing their papers.
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T. (1988). Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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the
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Written by Oya Ozagac, July 2004