Category: Teaching Writing Process Strategies

Developing a Workable Plan, Talking out Ideas, Building Momentum, Incubation versus Procrastination, Narrowing a Topic, Developing a Thesis Statement, Topic-Restriction-Illustration, Developing Support, Threading a Thesis, Following Conventions, Working Outline, Formal Outline, Topical Outline, Audience Analysis

• Building Momentum – Modified Freewriting: Ask students to open a Word document, turn their monitors off, and write for ten minutes. If they can’t get distracted by sentence-level details, they may find an initial momentum to help them start drafting.

• Rhetorics as Resources: The Academic Writer (Chapter 10), Writing: A Manual for the Digital Age (Chapter 4), Harbrace Guide to Writing (Chapter 3)

Listing, Brainstorming, Freewriting, Cluster Maps, Looping or Focused Freewriting, Journalist’s Questions (Who, What, when, Where, Why, How), Topical Questions (Definition, Comparison, Testimony, Relationship/Cause/Motive/Purpose, Circumstance/Context), Researching, Discovery Draft, Writing Dialogue or Role-Play, Sketching, Mapping, Visual Brainstorming, Journaling

• Sketching or Mapping: Ask students to draw a picture or map of a concept or place. Who is involved? How and where do they interact? What’s nearby? Jessie uses this activity, for instance, when she’s introducing campus proposal projects. She asks students to draw maps of sections of campus or buildings related to their topics and then to add the people who occupy or interact with the space, adjoining spaces/things that would impact or be impacted by a change to the initial space, etc.
• Rhetorics as Resources: The Academic Writer (Chapter 9), Writing: A Manual for the Digital Age (Chapter 3), Harbrace Guide to Writing (Chapters 3, 10-13)

• “The writing process is a complex matter; it varies for each writer, on each writing occasion. The differences in individual learning styles make writing a very different task for each writer. So it’s hard to generalize about teaching techniques that ‘improve’ the writing process. Probably the best we can do is to help students develop a repertoire of strategies to use in writing and to help them learn when and where the strategies work best for them.”

Josephine Koster Tarvers & Cindy Moore, “Intervening in the Writing Process,”

Teaching in Progress: Theories, Practices, and Scenarios, 3^rd Edition, p. 99

• “Applying rigid rules, studying grammar or composition topics, or reading works of literature does not improve student writing. How wonderful if good writing could be reduced to a recipe. Students would just put the necessary ingredients together and have a readable paper. Instruction in the process-oriented classroom is different…. The process approach recognizes that writing is a very personal activity in numerous respects, which means not only that there are many behaviors that are not universal but also that there is variation within the universals.”

James D. Williams, Preparing to Teach Writing: Research, Theory, and Practice, 3^rd Edition, p. 101

• “We know that the act of composing through writing is a complex process…. We cannot say that there is one composing process invariably successful for all writers, for all purposes. Rather, we know that composing processes vary both as the same writer attempts different kinds of discourse and as different writers attempt the same kind of discourse, and that such variations may be necessary to success in composing…. Learning to write requires writing. Students cannot be expected to master such complex processes if they only practice them two or three times in a school term, or without a teacher’s guidance.”

Patricia Bizzell, “Composing Processes: An Overview,”

The Allyn and Bacon Sourcebook for College Writing Teachers, pp. 123-124

• The brief Thomson Handbook by David Blakesley & Jeffrey L. Hoogeveen

• Project Checklists:
  • “Using Self-Evaluation to Guide Revision” (p. 31)
  • “Revising for Context” (p. 32)
  • “Do You Have an Effective Working Thesis Statement” (p. 74)
  • “Questions to Ask about Your Reasoning” (p. 81)
  • “Questions to Ask about Your Ethos and Pathos” (p. 82)
  • “Revising for Standard Written English” (p. 399)
  • “Reviewing for Biased Language” (p. 406)

• Technology Toolboxes:
  • “Cutting, Copying, and Pasting Text and Images” (p. 35)
  • “Software for Editors” (p. 39)
  • “Tracking Changes in Microsoft Word” (p. 41)

• A Meeting of Minds: Strategies for Academic Inquiry and Writing, 2^nd Ed. by Patsy Callaghan & Ann Dobyns
  • Chapter 11: Revising. Offers strategies for “Revising for Compelling Ideas,” “Revising for Unity and Form,” and “Revising for Voice and Tone.” Includes several activities that could be conducted during class, including “Speak It/Tape It,” descriptive outlines, and revision plans.
  • Most chapters also include Strategy boxes that students could use to analyze their own writing to identify potential areas for revision.

• The Harbrace Guide to Writing by Cheryl Glenn
  • Chapter 3 includes a discussion about what happens during revising.
  • Most chapters include checklists that students can use to assess their drafts and to prompt and prioritize revisions.

• The Academic Writer by Lisa Ede
  • Chapter 12: Strategies for Revision. Discusses “revising through re-vision” and offers guidelines and questions to prompt revision.
  • Differentiates strategies for responding to peer feedback, Writing Center consultant feedback, self-assessment, and writing group responses.