Unit 1: The Importance of Writing and Getting Started
Writing is an essential part of our daily lives. Whether you are writing a cover letter to a potential employer, making a shopping list, writing a blog about your favorite hobby for people who share that interest, emailing a coworker, or writing an essay for a class, writing is an important skill. When it comes to being a college student, you will find that writing effectively will be a key skill for success. In your classes, you will be asked to write journals, responses to texts, essays, and research papers, in addition to the writing you will need to do when you take notes while reading or listening in class. However, let's face it: not everyone enjoys or feels comfortable expressing themselves through writing. This course aims to help improve your writing as well as your confidence in your writing. You may find that as you improve as a writer, you will enjoy it more (or at least dislike it less)! After all, it is understandably frustrating when you have all these great ideas in your head, and they just don't seem to come out the way you want on the page. It's hard to like something you don't feel any good at! As you begin this course, brainstorm about your feelings and experiences regarding writing. What do you like about writing? What do you dislike about it?
Completing this unit should take you approximately 3 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- explain the many reasons writing is valuable;
- distinguish the differences between speech and writing;
- identify purpose and audience;
- define the four keys to good writing;
- outline the basic structure of a paragraph;
- distinguish between personal and source-based writing; and
- apply prewriting strategies to plan and develop a piece of writing.
1.1: The Value of Writing
Read the lecture regarding how and why writing is important. Then choose one of the five items and do some writing that lays out examples that show how the idea expressed is true. What about this idea appeals to you? Discuss how this idea has created positive writing experiences for you, or if you haven't ever had very positive writing experiences, how it could make writing a more positive experience for you.
1.2: Speech vs. Writing
At its heart, writing is simply a form of communication that has many similarities to speech. But there are also some different rules to follow. Read this brief section on speech vs. writing.
Read this section and think about who some of your language communities are and how you change your language choices based on your environment.
Read this section about the primary difference between speech and writing and how it impacts the way you should approach your writing.
1.3: Purpose and Audience
When you sit down to begin any writing task, there are two questions to ask yourself. The first is: What is the purpose of this writing task? (You could also think of this as, "Why am I writing?" or "What am I hoping to achieve by writing this?") The second question is: Who is my intended audience? (You could also think of this as, "Who is going to read this?"). These two factors are central to effective writing because they will shape how you approach the task. Follow the instructions to complete the activity on identifying your audience and purpose.
1.4: Four Keys to Good Writing
This course will be based on the four keys to good writing. Read this section to get an overview of these key features of effective writing we will look at in greater depth throughout the course.
1.5: Paragraph Structure
Read this example of a good paragraph essay, and study the accompanying outline to see how it was put together.
Now that you have an idea of the basic structure, look at another paragraph and fill in the partially completed outline that follows it. After you are done, you can compare your outline to the answer key.
1.6: Personal Writing
This course will focus on personal writing because it will allow us to focus on just the writing. Using outside sources and research in writing is a separate set of skills covered in ENGL001. Read the following section for an explanation of personal writing.
Read about the importance of being specific and avoiding making general unsupported statements about other people.
Now that you have read about being specific in personal writing, practice rewriting the following topic sentences. Answers will vary, but you can check your responses against the answer key after you are done.
1.7: Prewriting Strategies
Before starting any piece of writing, it is best to do some planning. This planning will entail considering the audience and purpose and doing some prewriting. There are three basic steps to prewriting: generating ideas, focusing ideas, and organizing ideas. Read about these three steps and some techniques you can use to achieve them and look at some examples of prewriting that were done for the Corner Store paragraph you read earlier. You will also practice prewriting for a paragraph essay you will write later. As you move forward through the next units, plan to use what you learn to revise and improve this paragraph.
Unit 1 Assessment
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to see how well you understood this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.