ENGL000 Study Guide

Unit 1: The Importance of Writing and Getting Started

1a. Explain the many reasons writing is valuable

How can writing help us, both in and out of school?
What are some ways that writing has been valuable to humanity?
How is writing different from other forms of expression and other disciplines of academic study?

Writing has many benefits for both us as individuals and for society. Writing things down can help us remember things in our day-to-day lives, writing a good essay can help us get a good grade, and writing a good cover letter can help us get the job we want. However, on a grander scale, writing can be seen as a type of immortality. It has allowed us to connect with people and societies that are long gone. Reading about humans of the past has made it feasible to pass knowledge forward and help humanity progress. It is also fun to think about our words and how we can live beyond our short life spans.

Writing can also be revised and improved upon. Unlike speech, you can always go back to things you wrote and clarify or change them. In addition, writing allows you to develop your own unique style. And while in many disciplines, there is only one right answer, once you learn how to avoid errors in writing, there are about a million ways you can go about it, and as the author, you get to decide what you like best! Lastly, writing is powerful and empowering. Published works of writing have changed the world, but even on a personal level, being able to effectively express your thoughts, ideas, and opinions is empowering. Being able to write well can help you get where you want to go in life.

To review, see:

Five Cool Things About Writing

1b. Distinguish the differences between speech and writing

Why is interaction such an important difference between speech and writing?
What are you doing if you write in such a way that you anticipate reader questions?
Why is the environment in which we are communicating important to consider?

There are many things that writing and speech have in common, and reading written work aloud is a great way to catch certain types of errors. However, there are also some very important differences. The biggest is that you do not have the benefit of interacting with your audience when you write. This means that you must anticipate potential reader questions. When you write with your reader's needs and possible questions in mind, your writing will be more effective, and you can avoid readers getting confused or drawing incorrect conclusions from what you say.

Whether it is writing or speech, communication, by its very nature, is entirely based on the environment in which it is taking place – what we call language communities. A language community is a communication context (the group of people you are communicating with) that shapes your language choices. When communicating in college, for example, you will need to adapt to the expectations of a different environment than what you might be used to with your friends, family, or coworkers.

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1c. Identify purpose and audience

Why is it important to consider purpose and audience as you begin any writing task?
What are key questions you should ask that will shape your language choices?

As you begin any kind of writing task, it is vital to consider why you are writing and what you want to accomplish. It is also important to consider who will be reading your writing and what their needs and expectations will be. Ask yourself what knowledge level your audience will have and what their point of view toward the topic may be. Considering purpose and audience should be the first step you take before you start to plan out what you might want to say and how you might go about saying it.

To review, see:

Identifying Purpose and Audience

1d. Define the four keys to good writing

How can the four keys to good writing help you achieve error-free and effective writing?

When you are writing, there are four major factors that you need to consider to write in such a way that it makes the job of the reader easy. It is vital that:

you have unity (you stay on topic);
you support what you are saying with evidence and examples;
your writing has coherence (ideas are organized logically and are connected to one another); and
your writing uses correct sentence skills with effective word choices, sentence structure, punctuation, spelling, and consistency (but don't worry about this part until you are proofreading to create a final draft).

To review, see:

The Four Keys to Good Writing

1e. Outline the basic structure of a paragraph

What are some of the key features of an effective paragraph?
How can an outline help you see (in an existing piece of writing) or plan (in a piece of writing you are putting together) the structure of a paragraph?
Why is it important to understand the structure of a paragraph?

A paragraph will always open with a topic sentence, which will be the first sentence in a paragraph and will preview what the paragraph is about. It should also raise a question that will be answered in the body of the paragraph. After the topic sentence, most paragraphs should have three main supporting ideas that answer the question raised by the topic sentence. These main ideas should be introduced in shorter sentences that include a transition and raise additional questions. Main ideas should then be followed by specific supporting examples and details. Good writing is basically just swinging back and forth between general statements that raise questions and specific statements (examples and details) that answer those questions.

Question-based writing means that you are anticipating reader questions and getting to a level of specificity that your readers will no longer have questions. Outlines (which can be used to analyze how a paragraph is structured or which can be used in planning to write a paragraph) use letters and numbers to indicate main ideas and supporting details, with items that are more to the left being more general, while items that are indented (more to the right) are more specific.

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1f. Distinguish between personal and source-based writing

What is the difference between personal and source-based writing?
What kind of topics and messages would qualify as personal writing?
How can personal writing be powerful?

Personal writing is writing that does not require outside sources to support its statements because it is based on your experiences and opinions. Sharing your own stories and truths can help you reflect on your life and progress, allowing you to better understand and learn from your experience. An exciting way to think about personal writing is that you are the expert and are telling a story that no one else in the world can tell. It is important to state that you are writing about yourself when you do personal writing because otherwise, you may need outside sources to substantiate your statements.

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1g. Explain prewriting strategies to plan and develop a piece of writing

Why is it a good idea to do some prewriting before you start writing?
What are the key steps of prewriting?

Before you begin a piece of writing, it is vital that you think and plan, which is called prewriting. By generating ideas, focusing on those ideas, and organizing them before actually writing a first draft, you will make the writing process much easier and end up with a more effective piece of writing.

The prewriting steps are:

Idea generation: Producing ideas, examples, and details that may be used in the writing task, such as by freewriting, listing/brainstorming, or questioning.
Idea focus: Find a specific topic and message (what you want to say about that topic) and group your details and examples into three main supporting ideas.
Idea organizing: Organize your generated ideas and create a blueprint of how you will put them together, such as by clustering or outlining.

To review, see:

Prewriting

Unit 1 Vocabulary

This vocabulary list includes terms you will need to know to successfully complete the final exam.

coherence
language communities
prewriting
question-based writing
sentence skills
support
topic sentence
unity