3. 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
4. Confused?
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!
5. Length and Design
Is there a page/word requirement?
Format Required?
MLA, APA
Research
Is Research Required?
Personal Experience
Academic Sources -- Library Research
Interviews and Questionnaires
6. Audience
Who are your readers?
How well informed are they about the
subject?
What do you want them to learn?
7. Deadlines
Note Deadlines
Draft 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.
9. 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 Street Graffiti
• 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.
11. Step 1: Prewriting
Asking 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?
12. 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.
13. Step 1: Prewriting
A 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.
14. 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
15. Step 1: Prewriting
Clustering 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.
16. Step 1: Prewriting
Prewriting 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
