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Information Collection Process

Decent Essays
Joseph Williams and Lawrence McEnerney, in the second chapter of Writing in College, discuss the writing process, addressing how to collect of evidence, draft, and revise. Evidence in the form of data, which comprises “all the information related to your assignment” (8), provides the specific support for an argument. In college, “Every assignment will ask you to look at your readings in a different way” (8), write Williams and McEnerney. Thus, key in the information collection process is properly “selecting and analyzing data” (8) in a manner relevant to the assignment. Williams and McEnerney suggest some basic methods to collect data, including reading and re-reading the material, while highlighting any relevant information and then narrowing…show more content…
The introduction, although usually written first, can be subject to great change during the revision stage (the last step in the writing process). However, while the first draft introduction does not require perfection, Williams and McEnerney list practices to avoid when writing it. These bad practices include repeating the language of the assignment, offering a history of the writer’s thought process, explaining something with a general dictionary definition, and making grand or obvious statements. Williams and McEnerney also warn that inexperienced students sometimes have the tendency to “lapse into a long narrative summary” (11) of what they have read following the introduction. While writing a summary can serve as an aid in the writing process, Williams and McEnerney write, a summary should not remain as the main focus of a paper, but transform into a proper argument during revising, the last major step in the writing process. In a completed draft, there will often exist room for improvement. The revision process provides a step to make changes to a written work. However, this step should not begin immediately after
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