Writing Process : Analyzing Your Audience

The chapter also goes into explaining the writing process itself in greater detail. Writers are encouraged to first make sure they fully understand their assignment, before then moving onto throwing around ideas (such as by brainstorming, clustering, ect), developing a thesis statement, and scheduling

In Joseph Harris’s chapter “Revising” which was originally published in his book, Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts in 2006, Harris emphasizes the importance of the revising process, how to revise and improve effectively, and informs us about the fact that revising is overlooked and rushed by writers today. He shares tips on how to effectively revise and demonstrates using excerpts within his chapters.

Within the past eight weeks, I have realized my strengths and weaknesses within the writing process. I have realized that I do not utilize the first step within the writing process of prewriting. However, for the drafting, revising, and polishing steps of the writing process, I am very familiar and use additional resources to strengthen the writing assignment. I create multiple drafts, which includes revising and polishing in each step. Therefore, I use all three of these steps in multiple drafts as I reach the final product for

Prewriting- Explain to the students that the first step in the process approach to writing is prewriting which includes choosing a topic, planning and rehearsing.

Annotating fiction means “to add critical or explanatory notes to a text” (Encarta). Specifically, it requires you to do the following types of things:

Brainstorming- To brainstorm is a prewriting tool used to generate topics and subtopics for writing.

Chapter 2 defined three stages in the writing process which are Writing for an Audience by Linda Flower, Getting Started by Anne Lamott, and Writing to Change the World by Mary Pipher which are all important articles as narrated by each author. After I have read all these three steps, I chose getting started in writing as the most important stage and I will show you the readers how I came about this statement through Anne Lamott’s article. Lamott provided knowledge, references and experiences on the way to get started and how to be at ease on what to write for students and would be writers.

Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst – Notice and Note introduces six “signposts” that alert readers to significant moments in a literary work. It encourages students to read closely and enables the reader to explore the text at a deeper level, by finding evidence from the text to support their interpretations. Using this Notice and Note method allows students to become more responsible, independent readers. This book is available for purchase in many different stores or online, at websites such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

In Tim Parks’ essay, A Weapon for Readers, Tim Parks explains that we as readers understand better when we are writing with a utensil in our hands annotating on every page of the literature we are reading. Parks firmly believes that annotating in literature brings a huge advantage to the reader understanding of the language and concept of the piece. Tim first saw a difference when it was brought to his attention that his students could not differentiate the original text from the translation. Park led his students to be more careful and attentive to their reading by instructing them to mark every page with a comment, question, or highlight something they enjoyed or hated. The pen became his strategy to encourage his students to change their

The general purpose of both authors is to provide a resource that defines, states the purpose of, and explains annotating. "How and Why to Annotate a Book" and "Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension" are both titles that explicitly state the author’s purpose. Otten provides steps and tips for students to inform them how and why they should annotate, whilst O’Donnell gives a more in depth analysis of the importance of annotating. She also writes to persuade her

The active reading process begins with the act of annotation. The act of annotating helps the reader break down the paper in order to make it easier to understand the

BODY: (The breakdown below, of main points and sub points, are merely a sample and not necessarily a suggestion. The amount of main points and sub points you use will vary and be dependent on your topic. You may use roman numeral outlining like the example below, or traditional block paragraphs).

Although, during class, we reviewed it so it was much clearer when we read the story. For my annotations I read the bulleted summary and wrote down questions. Then I went through once and highlighted words that I did not know. Afterwards I went back through with different colors and annotated for thematic topics, epic digression, and figurative language. Then at the very end, I divided the chapter based on the bulleted summary at the beginning. I did have to annotate in seventh and eighth grade, but we did not have to think critically. It was a lot easier to annotate back then because our teacher just looked and how many annotations we had and if the pages were colorful. I have gotten better at annotating things that are important, and not just making the pages look like a rainbow. I still, however, need to think more critically when I explain themes and epic conventions. As I was reading the book, it sometimes got boring and it was intense for me to have to annotate for long periods, so I took breaks in between. It was also somewhat difficult for me to annotate because I did not know what things to look for. I asked friends about scenes in the book and what they thought of it or if it had a deeper meaning. Sometimes, I Googled things such as definitions and an analysis of each book so I can understand the story better. It was very helpful because it pointed things out that I did not catch and made

During the course we studied two main texts in 1984, and Hamlet. I was able to annotate both of them to help myself better understand the text. In 1984 I properly annotated, to help myself go back and find specific evidence to help my understanding of the text, for example on page four of 1984 I annotated the paragraph that had explained what all the ministries did. This was helpful because if I ever forgot during the book I could look back and see what I annotated. During Hamlet annotating was also a helpful strategy because of the log assignments we had. The logs required us to find important quotes, talk about the value of the scene, as well as discuss character’s relationships. Annotating was a helpful strategy for this because I could look back and find what I needed right away, for example in Act 4 Scene 7 I annotated the part where Claudius and Laertes devised a plan to kill Hamlet. Annotating this was helpful because it showed how relationships were developing throughout the play. Not only did I annotate to help comprehend a text, but I also paraphrased parts of the text to better understand it. During the soliloquy assignment I found a soliloquy and paraphrased the entire thing so i could better understand what the character was saying. In Act 3 Scene 3 King Claudius gave a soliloquy on how he murdered his brother and the pain it has brought with. I paraphrased this so I could properly present it to the class while understanding what I was saying. This

Although proofreading and revising are two useful tools when editing writing, they greatly differ from one another. While proofreading has to do with the surface errors in writing, Revising deals with larger scale concepts such as audience and overall organization. Proofreading focuses on correcting spelling and word choice, which ultimately