Part I: First, you’ll need to determine – very specifically – what the school, department, and program wants from its applicants/future students. For instance, the English department of a university will most likely emphasize that applicants ought to write a statement of purpose that “… explains the applicant’s reasons for applying to our graduate program, ...
Below are some common questions to consider when reviewing a peer's paper as well as when reviewing feedback from peers:
Something seems wrong
A few days ago, I tweeted something that wasn’t particularly funny, but I got this response:1
I don’t know anyone named Cory Folse, and I don’t know who this @jokesallnight person is, either. So I ignored the tweet, kind of glad I had made someone happy, but kind of confused.
Ideally, you should find a quiet place where all your needed writing resources—such as a personal computer, dictionary, and paper—are set up. To help you focus on the work at hand, you may need a place that is reasonably free of distractions.
"In fact I think the best regimen is to get up early, insult yourself a bit in the shaving mirror, and then pretend you're cutting wood, which is really just about all the hell you are doing—if you see what I mean." Lawrence Durrell
Literacy practices are undergoing major transformations. Thanks to new writing spaces, today's college students are redefining reading, research, collaboration, writing, and publishing practices. In addition to altering writing processes, new writing spaces are stretching the boundaries of academic writing, creating new genres and new conventions for structuring texts.
While playing the believing game–setting aside doubt and overly critical comments–is crucial during the writing process, playing the doubting game is equally important, especially during the latter stages of the writing process. Successful writing partially rests on being critical and reflective about your rhetorical situation, the quality of your evidence, and the best way to ...
Consider the Document Planner to be a living document. It's a snapshot of a fluid process. As you write, your ideas about audience, purpose, media, context, voice, tone, and persona will change, becoming clarified.
1 . Context
Beyond fulfilling a course requirement, what motivates you to explore this project? What are the unique elements of this writing situation? Is your context formal, semiformal, informal? Is this a class assignment; a Web site; a workplace document; an online communication; a text for a community, service, or special interest group; an essay for a magazine, newspaper, or journal; a letter to family and friends? How does the context influence what you need to do next?
Writers use critical questions to find cracks and crannies, places where they need to develop or clarify their thinking. In their relentless pursuit of clearly expressed, well-developed ideas, they find soft spots—that is, passages that need to be developed or discarded and sections that just don't feel right—that feel mushy like cereal that has been sitting for too long in sour milk.
You can be more productive and make writing less adverse if you write in brief daily sessions. By keeping a log of your writing efforts, you can:
Schedules are extremely important to writers. Documents can almost always be improved with additional revisions, so some writers need deadlines, a line in the sand, to say "Enough is enough!" For writers who tend to procrastinate, schedules can provide an incentive to get started and keep writing.
