The writing process is composed of three distinct stages. Identify and explain these stages and suggest teaching methods that are useful at each stage

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The Writing Process
(i) Prewriting consists of what the writer considers prior to the act itself. Input includes the various forms of stimulation that assist in forming a basic intent to write, such as environmental experience, reading, listening, and media exposure.
Instruction taking place during this stage should reflect the reality of the way students present themselves for instruction.
Strategies to teach prewriting include:
• Brainstorming—generate ideas to write about
• Explicit instruction—set purpose, model how to plan for writing.
• Stimulation techniques—Teachers should strive to provide opportunities to expose students to varied experiences through listening and reading; provide them with a chance to discuss and clarify ideas on a given topic, thus encouraging active thinking about the task at hand; promote brainstorming with peers; develop story pictures, outlines, and webs with students to organize ideas; and establish a conducive, supportive classroom atmosphere.
(ii) The writing or drafting stage incorporates the craft and content aspects (see below) of written language. Considerations include vocabulary usage, sentence form, paragraph sense, the overall sequence of ideas, consistency, clarity, and relevance.
Strategies to teach writing include:
• Sentence combining—help students combine short sentences into compound sentences to improve quality of the writing.
• Graphic Organizers—examples include story frames and explanation organization form
• RAP—Read a paragraph, ask yourself what the main ideas and details in the paragraph were, and Put the main idea and details into your own words.
• Self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) —two key SRSD mnemonics used in story writing. The first is POW—pick my idea, organize my notes, write and say more; this mnemonic is intended to lead students through the process of writing (across genres). The second SRSD mnemonic is W-W-W What-2 How-2—“Who is the main character? When does the story take place? Where does the story take place? What does the main character do or want to do; what do other characters do? What happens then? What happens with other characters? How does the story end? How does the main character feel; how do other characters feel?”
(iii) The post-writing stage includes the editing of the craft aspects of writing and the revising of content, with both emphases having the goal of improving the written product. The term proofreading also has been used to refer to post-writing concerns.
Strategies to teach post-writing include:
• COPS
o Capitalization—Have I capitalized first word and proper nouns?
o Overall appearance—Have I made handwriting, margin, messy, or spacing errors?
o Punctuation—Have I used end punctuation, commas, and semicolons correctly?
o Spelling—Do the words appear to be spelled correctly?
• REVISE—Reread your paper to confirm overall purpose achieved; edit using COPS; vocabulary selected to be appropriate for purposes; interesting and lively topic developed; sentence written to be complete and varied; evidence provided to support your points.