HOW TO START WRITING
Abdullah
Farih, M.Pd
In some
case, some of people feel difficult to start writing. In this good occasion, The
writer would like to give some steps in writing. According to Alice Oshima and
Ann Hogue (2007) there are four steps in writing, they are: (a) Prewriting; (b) Organizing;
(c) Writing,
and (d) Polishing:
Revising and Editing.
Prewriting
The First step
of writing process is prewriting. Prewriting is a away to get ideas, In this
step you choose a topic and collect ideas to explain the topic. There are
several techniques you can use to get ideas. one of the common one is Listing.
Listing is a prewriting technique in which you write the topic at the top of
paper and then quickly make a list of the words or phrases that come in to your
mind. Don’t stop to wonder if an idea is good or not. Write it Down! Keep on
writing untuil the flow of ideas stops.
In the
following example, the assignment was to write a paragraph about a people who has
made a difference in the world, in the community, or in the writer’s life.
First, the
writer made a list of people who have made a difference, e.g Mother, Mother
Teresa, Albert Einstein. Then he decided which person to write about and
circled his choice.
The second,
The writer looked his list and decided to write about how his mother helped her
community. He circled that idea. Then he thought how his mother helped her
community.
Organizing
The second
step in the writing process is to organize the ideas into a simple outline. Decide
which idea will go first, second, third, and so on. Make a simple outline
listing the ideas in the order you will write about them. Use the outline to
guide you as you write. The writer of our models wrote a sentence that named the topic and
told the main idea.
Writing/Drafting
The third
step is Writing or drafting. Writing is the writer’s first attempt to capture ideas on paper. write the
rough draft at the top of your paper. Quantity here is valued over quality. If done correctly, the
draft is a rambling, disconnected accumulation of ideas. Most of the writing
activities in the classroom involve just these first two steps. Only those
drafts that students feel are interesting or of value should be taken to the
next step.
From the previous statement, it
is clearly that drafting is the stage where the writers focus on the fluency of
writing. They transform the ideas and information they want to say into written
form without worrying yet about grammar, punctuation, spelling and
capitalization.
Polishing : Revising and Editing
The fourth
is Polishing. Polish the rough draft. Exchange papers with a classmate and ask
him or her to check your rough draft using Peer-Editing Worksheet, then discuss
the completed worksheet and decide what changes you should make. Write a second
draft.
This is the heart of the writing
process. Here a piece is revised and reshaped many times. Revising is where you
shape the blob, adding parts, taking parts away, adding parts, and continually
molding and changing.
In this step, the writers
recheck, rethink, and refine the content of their writing to see what works,
what might need developing, changing, or deleting in order the content can be
delivered more effectively to the readers.
This step also
checks
grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors are corrected. If writers are editing
or worrying about mechanics at the prewriting, organizing, writing, and polishing steps, the flow of ideas and the
quality of writing suffers.
Publishing and sharing
This is where students’ writing
is shared with an audience. Writing becomes real and alive at this point.
Publishing can involve putting together class books, collections of writing,
school or class newspapers, school or class magazines, or displaying short
samples of writing in the hall or out in the community.
In this stage, the students’
writing should share and publish to the audience. It also increases the
students’ wiriting experience become more powerful by having students read
their work out loud in small groups, to another classmate, or in a large group
setting.
From the previous explanation,
it can be stated that writing is not a simple task which can be done in short
time. The writers, unconsiously, do some processes when they are writing. They
plan or prewriting their writing by determining their purpose to write, and
gathering idea and information they want to write. Next, they make a draft by
writing their idea. Then, they revise what they have written. They also check
or edit their writing from the aspect of grammar, spelling, and vocabulary and
the last stage, they share and publish their own writing to an audience.
Writing becomes real and alive at this point. Each of those stages can occur or
recur at any moment during the production of a finished piece of writing.
