Ideas to Help Students With Writing Text

When i am not a writing teacher? there are a variety of things you can do that do not require expertise as a writing teacher, as well as ways of creating assignments and assessments that will aid students in this academic endeavor. How to write an introduction, how to research relevant sources are not at all obvious to our students. And yet, these issues arise so frequently that there are resources available for us to share with our students. For example, the library offers workshops on various topics such as conducting literature searches and evaluating sources that can be scheduled during class time so students all get the chance to learn these basic skills before they need to be applied in writing assignments.

In addition, there are several sources of information on the web that we can share with our students on basic writing tips and strategies: for general advice on the various steps in writing a term paper, see princeton university 39 s writing center. For strategies in writing introductions and conclusions, see mit 39 s writing center. For a checklist to help students edit their own writing for grammatical errors, see university of wisconsin at madison. Use examples of good student writing to discuss with your students what makes these pieces of writing effective. This helps students identify the elements of good work for particular assignments within particular disciplinary domains that, in turn, helps them become conscious of these elements in their own work. Diverse models of student work also illustrate that there are different ways to approach the same assignment, thus offering students some sense of creative scope. It may also be helpful for you to share with students your process in approaching writing tasks.

For example, you can tell students: what questions you ask yourself before you begin you might, for example, ask: who is my audience? what am i trying to convince them of? what do i want to say, and what evidence can i use to back it up?. How you go about writing do you sketch out ideas on scrap paper? write an outline? hold off on writing your introductory paragraph until you have written the body of the paper?. Do you ask a friend to read and comment on your work? do you step away from the paper for a day and return to it with fresh eyes?.

This is not always easy: it means we must become aware of and then make explicit the processes we engage in unconsciously and automatically. However, illuminating the complex steps involved in writing and revising to both you and your students is a useful exercise. Of course, one of the best ways for students to become better writers is through practice. However, as our learning principle on practice and feedback shows, not all practice is equally effective. An important way to help students develop as writers, even in a course not solely designed for this purpose, is to match the writing assignments to the students 39 skill level and offer practice with feedback on the aspects of writing where they can benefit. See more information on designing effective writing assignments and on responding to student writing. It is also helpful to include milestones into an assignment so that students submit either preliminary drafts so they can incorporate feedback in their subsequent revisions or components of a larger paper so they avoid leaving the entire assignment to the last minute.

For example, you could require your students to read and comment on at least two other classmates 39 early drafts by a specific deadline for information on peer review, see the university of wisconsin 39 s writing center . For most people, good writing requires rereading, rethinking, and sometimes fairly extensive revising. Many students, however, misconstrue or underestimate what good writing involves, believing that it 39 s a simple linear process when, in fact, it is complex and iterative. Many students leave writing assignments to the last minute, expecting to be able to sit down and rapidly turn out a good paper.

Thus, they may not give themselves enough time to re examine premises, adjust the organizational scheme, refine their arguments, etc. Requiring drafts forces students to build in appropriate time frames for their work. A detailed scoring guide or performance rubric helps students to recognize the component parts of a writing task and understand how their competence will be assessed in each of these areas.

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A good rubric helps students to see what comprises high quality writing and to identify the skills they will need to perform well. You might want to provide your rubric to students along with the assignment so they know what the criteria are in advance and can plan appropriately. Besides the differences between skilled and unskilled writers, there are cultural differences that often manifest themselves in the written work of non native speakers of english. For example, arabic speakers may develop their arguments by restating their position rather than stating rationales. Japanese speakers are inclined to argue both for and against an issue, and to be more tentative in their conclusions.

Some non native speakers generally provide lengthier treatments of historical context, minimizing their own arguments. For more information about this area, contact the intercultural communications center 39 s writing clinic for non native english speakers. Understanding the behavioral differences between skilled and unskilled writers can help us work more effectively with students, even to warn them in advance of potential pitfalls to be avoided.

For some students, it is important that they go slowly and take time to think about what they want to say before writing. In general, students should be taught that writing is not an emergency event and that the processes of planning, thinking, and organizing are just as important as the final product. Students' ability to generate and organize their ideas can impact the richness of their final piece of writing. In order to generate and organize ideas well, students must be able to get started and concentrate on the task and monitor the quality of their work.

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Depending on the type of writing task, students also may need to be able to present their perspective and think creatively to come up with new ideas. For example, students may need to decide what to write about, develop a topic, research a topic, produce original thoughts, elaborate on ideas, use prior knowledge, think critically, and apply new and learned concepts. All of these skills can help a student with generating organizing their ideas when writing. This chart describes some important skills related to generating and organizing ideas. Learn how to model a range of prewriting techniques and introduce several mnemonics to help students organize their writing. Students can and should customize the writing process to suit their own style, but in a writing course, introducing students to various options helps expand their repertoire. In the interest of true understanding, you should introduce the strategies below, model them, and then help students to practice.

After a few practice sessions, you might suggest to students that they pick one of these strategies to use on their next prewriting task. Writers, especially struggling writers, are often discouraged about the quality of their writing even before they put anything on paper. This attitude keeps them from the fluid, almost unconscious act of putting words on paper that is so important to many writing tasks. Writers often write to find out what they think, not just to transcribe what they know they think. Because free writing requires that students write without monitoring their thoughts, without doubting themselves, they are free to explore words, phrases, and ideas that they might never access in a more constrained context.

This period should be short initially maybe 5 minutes and can gradually increase over time as students become more comfortable. Students put pen to paper or finger to keyboard and write with as little monitoring as possible. As students are learning to free write, you will want to ask them to keep their writing going at any cost. If a student is stuck, he or she can write the last word repeatedly until new words come. Free writing done in preparation for a particular assignment or writing task might start with some focus mdash maybe a word or two at the top of a page mdash or it may be entirely open. If they are surprised at what they've written, they have really mastered this technique.

Sometimes they find a seed of an idea that they may want to pursue other times they find nothing worth pursuing and move on to another free write or another prewriting technique. Students will likely need significant scaffolding to see this kind of writing as generative. Part of your teaching will be helping them to mine their free writing for kernels that have promise. Help them analyze their own free writing without preconceptions about what it does or does not have. Brainstorming is like free writing: the goal is to take away the barriers that keep people from thinking creatively. This technique relies on either verbal or written lists of components mdash students create lists of words or ideas related to a topic, then choose the best ideas to use in their writing. Juniors beginning a paper on responsibilities and rights generated the following list of topics while brainstorming ideas: commonly used as a tool to help begin the writing process or a research assignment, webbing is a brainstorming method that provides structure for ideas and facts.