Studies and assignments completed in this unit emphasize the following educational objectives:

Increasing Writing Skills
You will be able to:

• recognize that writing is a process involving creating, drafting, revising, and editing.
• write for a variety of audiences, not just your instructor.
• adapt your language, sentence structure, and organization to fit the audience, purpose, and topic of the writing task.

You will be able to:

• develop confidence in yourself as a writer.

In this packet you will find 

• detailed steps outlining a critical reading and a writing exercise,
• Notes on Insight: The Primary Element of Effective Expository Writing
• "Some Words About the Writing Process," 
• an example of the evolution of a brochure, 
• an example of a fully developed student exercise.

The Reading Exercise

Complete the Exercise in Critical Reading, following the instructions at the top of the short essay. 

For a fuller explanation of the nature of insight, read "Notes on Insight."

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The Purpose
Steps for Completing the Exercise
Inventing Ideas
Narrowing the Focus
Objectifying the Composition
Drafting the Paper
Revising Your Draft
Editing the Paper
Completing the Final Draft

This assignment will guide you through the four stages of writing an expository (explanatory) essay. Your work toward the completion of a final draft will serve the objectives identified for this unit.

The following remarks are your instructor's guidelines for the assignment. Should you miss class during the development of the assignment, ask your instructor to help guide you through the process outlined below. 

This exercise emphasizes the transformation of an idea from its origin as private insight to public insight, serving the need(s) of a specific audience.

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Steps for Completing the Exercise

Inventing Ideas

1. Read the four context topics. Select a word, phrase, or sentence in only one of those topics that sparks some interest in you.

2. Copy the word, phrase, or sentence from the topic onto a page of clean, lined writing paper (you will hand in all written work completed for this exercise). 

3. Starting with this statement from the topic, begin writing for ten minutes WITHOUT STOPPING. KEEP THE PEN MOVING FOR TEN MINUTES WITHOUT INTERRUPTION. It is not important to stay with a single idea; rather, you may ramble from idea to idea. What is important is to keep the pen moving. Correct grammar, spelling, organization, and other writing elements are not important in this exploration task. Your purpose is simply to get the mind and pen working--any ideas are suitable to write down. At the end of ten minutes, STOP. Draw a horizontal line across your page just below the text of your writing. 

4. Reread the composition you have just written. Underline the most important or most interesting idea you have developed. Copy that idea below the horizontal line. Now begin writing again, this time focusing your attention on the fuller development of this idea. Write for fifteen minutes. Try to compose at least one well-developed paragraph. At the end of fifteen minutes, STOP and draw a horizontal line across your page below your composition. 

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Narrowing the Focus

In this phase, you have been narrowing the range of your interest(s) for composition. Hopefully, you have developed an idea that you are excited or enthusiastic about. This idea, however, is still in the domain of private insight; in other words, you have been writing primarily with yourself as the source and perhaps as the audience as well.

The task now is to begin to objectify your composition, to begin the process of transformation of private insight to public insight.

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Objectifying Your Composition

5. The first task in objectifying your writing is to identify the subject you are writing about. Below the horizontal line, write the sentence, "This writing is about __________________," and fill in the blank.

6. Next, below this sentence, write the word "Audience." Identify an audience of two or more people (not including yourself) who you believe would be naturally interested in your subject. 

7. After you have identified the audience, then write, "What the audience knows about this subject: ___________" and list several ideas with which your audience is already familiar. 

8. Below these ideas, write the phrase, "What the audience feels about the subject:_________" and name the emotion(s) that your audience probably experiences when thinking of your subject. Examples might include interest, enthusiasm, fear, excitement, etc. 

9. After you have identified what the audience knows and feels about the subject, write "What I want the audience to know:__________" and list in brief words and phrases those new concepts and details you want to share with them. 

Now, to generate new and perhaps some better ideas, number a sheet of paper from "1" to "18." 

Beside numbers 1, 2, and 3 write the word "Who."
Beside numbers 4, 5, and 6 write the word "What ." 
Beside the numbers 7, 8, and 9, write the word "Where"; 
For numbers 10, 11, and 12, write "When"; 
For numbers 13, 14, and 15, write "Why"; 
and beside the numbers 16, 17, and 18, write the word "How."

Next, compose 18 questions--one for each of the interrogative pronouns. Circle the numbers of any questions that trigger new insight, new ideas to write about. Then, add these new ideas to your list of ideas above.

10. Then write the sentence "What I want the audience to feel: and write the name of the emotion you want them to experience after reading your essay. (NOTE: This feeling may be quite difference from that which you anticipated above they probably feel about the broad subject area before reading your essay.) 

11. Draw a line and write a general thesis statement that announces to the audience which you have selected what you plan to write about. If necessary, you may begin with the following phrase, "The following paper discusses __________." 

Here's an example: "The following paper discusses what high school students need to know about the differences between high school and college and how to finance the college education." 

12. After you compose the general thesis, then rewrite the sentence, giving more specific detail, perhaps the major topics you plan to address that you listed above in Step 9. Drop the phrase, "The following paper discusses" and the interrogative pronouns ("what" and "how"). Essentially, your new, specific thesis will be a claim you make about the subject you identified in Step 5. It is specific to the extent that now it will include actual details you will develop, explore, or support.

Here's an example: "While high schools and colleges differ in important ways--the amount of work, the personal responsibility required, and the independence students experience, perhaps a more immediate issue is developing a financial plan to pay for several years of study."

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Drafting the Paper

13. You are now ready to begin writing a paper on a limited subject for a specific audience. 

Start by writing the specific thesis sentence below the line on your page. Then continue writing paragraph units that explore that thesis sentence.

At this stage, have fun. Concentrate on paragraph development. Don't worry too much about the broad organizational plan of the paper, even though you probably have at least a general idea in mind. Concentrate on the paragraphs.

When you have worked one paragraph to your satisfaction, then start another one. If you get a good idea related to the thesis, don't hesitate to start writing about it immediately before you forget it. You can always come back to the other paragraphs which you have already partially developed.

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Revising Your Draft

14. When you have finished developing your paragraph units, then begin the revising process. You will consider the following three elements during this phase:

* organization: arranging the paragraphs into a logical, purposeful sequence.

* coherency: making sure the paragraphs "stick together," that each begins (includes) a topic sentence that repeats key concepts from the thesis sentence.

* development: making sure that you have both sufficient primary sentences and secondary sentences to clarify the subject of each paragraph for your audience.

* voice: developing a sense of personality who "narrates" the essay to the reader. In shaping a voice, begin from a sense of "personal voice." "Personal voice" is characterized by a sense of honest, forthright communication that is void of pretension and arrogance. It employs words that are natural for its audience and is sensitive to providing sufficient support for its observations.

15. After you have finished the first revised copy of your essay, then rewrite the paper, dropping the use of first and second person throughout the essay. (First person: "I," "me," "we," "us." Second person: "you," "your.")

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Editing the Paper

16. Now you have reached the final phase of the writing process--the "fixing" or editing phase. 

To begin the editing phase, ask yourself, "What types of writing errors am I likely to commit?" Start with the most common problem you have as a writer; perhaps it's spelling, comma errors, or sentence fragments.

In order to edit effectively, concentrate on paragraph units. Reread each paragraph for each type of error you commonly make. For example, read it first for spelling errors, then for comma or other punctuation errors, then for major sentence construction problems. But remember, DON'T TRY TO READ A PARAGRAPH ONCE, HOPING TO SPOT ALL POSSIBLE ERRORS.

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Completing the Final Draft

17. Set the paper aside for a while, maybe even for several days. If you decide that limited use of first person and/or second person is important, you may revise the final draft accordingly. Make a photocopy of your essay and ask a friend who is a good reader to read the paper outloud to you as you follow silently reading your own copy of the manuscript. This exercise may suggest last minute changes you may wish to make. 

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Select one of the following topics as a focus for initiating an essay. 

TOPIC 1 

Perhaps one of the most fundamental social needs is developing personal control for one's own affairs. In an increasingly specialized and institutionalized society, fewer and fewer people seem to have real control over even such basic human needs as food and shelter. On the other hand, newspapers and other news media recount daily the stories of those few individuals who seem to take control not only of their own destinies but of the well-being of others--even in a global arena. A case in point is the South Carolina Baptist congregation that raised almost 3 million dollars for the African hunger relief effort. In such a complex and perplexing world, to what extent can we manifest personal control over our lives? Realistically, where and how can we assume responsibility for the well-being of a global community and expect to effect positive change?

TOPIC 2

Some popular art exhibitions are so controversial in the subject matter they include that it is difficult to appreciate artistic taste, style, and technique because of the overwhelming impact of content. A recent collection of art at Mountain View College included works with obvious sexual organs and homosexual references. For many observers, these subjects were only powerful distractions. Other exhibitions have included subjects and materials quite foreign to most students--technical/mechanical designs, abstractions with only a hint of the subject. Subject matter in art can be a problem for an audience.

TOPIC 3 

In the balmy days of John Kennedy's liberal "New Frontier" in the early 1960's, it seemed that the answer to racism in American society was only a few selective funerals away in an older, rapidly fading generation. Racial prejudice--whites for blacks, blacks for whites, the non-native American for the native American, etc.--all of it would pass away in the wake of rational, reasoned social legislation. But the re-emergence of radical groups among many American communities suggests that legislation alone is not the final solution to racism and that a new generation of American citizens must formulate its own answers to this social blight.

TOPIC 4

Everyone can point to someone--that special person who changed his or her point of view, perhaps even a major direction in life. These special people are called mentors. They are the guides who usher us into a fuller or larger understanding of our world. Explain the impact of such a mentor in your life. What unique contribution did that person make? How has your mentor changed your perceptions? your life's direction? In what ways was your mentor the right person at the right time?

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