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The pre-writing stage basically consists of five activities:
Determine the purpose of writing What is the objective of writing - is it to persuade, describe, explain, narrate, discuss, analyse, or compare and contrast? Knowing your purpose will help focus the writing and different approaches to writing can be adopted to help you get started. Audience analysis Start with the questions - Who will read my report? How much knowledge of the subject-matter do they have - are they experts or layman? What do they expect me to do in my writing - persuade, describe, explain, narrate, discuss, analyse, or compare and contrast? By answering these questions can help determine the suitable tone and style to fulfil certain level of formality in meeting certain expectations. Brainstorming & Topic development Topics can be decided by the teacher or yourself. Once it has been decided, make a list of possible ways to fulfil the topic. List related ideas, notions, thoughts, or opinions on the topic. Brainstorming with peers can also help in thinking about the topic from different angles and perspectives. Library search Time to search for relevant materials. But first identify the keywords of your topic to maximize search time and minimize time wasted on irrelevant materials. Engage the help of your librarian to do this - perhaps can teach you how to use Boolean search techniques. Resources can be in hard copy or virtual from online databases and search engines. Again identifying keywords are vital! An important note: Keep track of your resources. For hard copy materials always keep information on the title of the book/ journal, year published, volume (if journal), publisher. For virtual materials always keep the exact web-address safe. A reference system is essential so as to avoid plagiarism or not being able to use the material for lack of complete references. Outline of essay Use a table, mind map, spidergram or whatever that simplifies for you this activity. You should best organize the information according to the sections that you have to write - e.g for this report you should organize according to introduction/ background of problem, objective(s), scope of project, literature review/ theoretical foundation, methodology, and results. By orgainizing this way you can easily identify areas that need additional information, and see how everything/ every idea fit together. Adapted from: English for Academic Communication (Azian, et al, 2006) Although going through this process may seem like a burden to some students, it will help clarify the issues that you'd like to project in your writing. |