After enrolling in college, you might wonder why many of your classes require a great deal of essay writing. Writing assignments allow you to acquire knowledge and practice many different critical thinking skills. For example, the research process helps you learn how to evaluate information for reliability and relevance. Writing a thesis statement lets you practice summarizing big concepts. Good paragraphing can give you practice in organizing ideas, building arguments, refuting counter-arguments, analyzing data, and many more important thinking skills. Plus, the process of completing a writing assignment can sharpen your project management skills.
Writing assignments are recursive in nature, which means that sometimes you might repeat previous steps with new ideas in mind. For example, research at any stage of the process might cause you to revise drafted pieces of the paper. Or, as you draft a section, you might brainstorm a new idea to include. This is normal and natural, and it should not be a cause for concern unless it keeps you from completing a project on time.
Click on the arrows below to learn more about the writing assignment process.
This includes a close reading of the assignment so that you understand the reader's expectations and the assignment goals.
This includes a timeline for research, drafting, feedback, and revision.
This is an idea generation process that might include mind-mapping, free-writing, or other open-ended tasks.
Early research is often performed with the simple goal of seeing what kind of information exists on a topic, and it can often help with brainstorming.
Prewriting activities include outlining, note-taking, and organization of ideas with the assignment requirements in mind.
Rather than open-ended and exploratory, this research is designed to find targeted source information to support a paper’s important concepts.
This is the process of writing sentences and paragraphs.
Also called a rough draft, this preliminary paper will usually change in significant ways as the paper is completed.
This is when a writer shows someone a paper draft with the goal of finding out how to make the paper better.
This is when a writer applies feedback comments to the draft with the goal of strengthening the paper.
This is changing a draft to make it better, and it can include large changes in organization and content or small changes in word choice or punctuation.
This is the final read-through to make sure everything is correct and complete.
This is the paper in its finished form.