UNIT FOUR ACTIVITY ONE- PRE-WRITING

In the earlier posts of these blogs, I made mention of the Product vs Process Approaches to writing. We delved into the importance of both stages and I concluded that personally, I prefer to use the process approach both as a teacher and as a learner. In using the process apporach, writers generally make use of The Writing Process. The first stage of the Writing Process is known Pre- Writing.

Prewriting is the first stage of the writing process. It is at this stage that we explore our ideas about a subject. Prewriting helps to put ideas in a written form which may not be organised but help with out drafts. It is of paramount importance that as teachers and writers we engage our students and ourselves in the pre-writing process to help generate our ideas. There are a variety of ways to help with generating those ideas, known as pre-writing strategies. Everyone may not employ the same strategy but here are a few which can be very useful when engaging in the first stage of the writing process.

Pre-writing is geared towards getting students to form a topic. This can be done through:

• getting one to respond to literature or music
• listing
• brainstorming

PRE- WRITING STRATEGIES

Some useful pre- writing strategies are:

Freewriting: one uses this strategy to write all the ideas he possesses on the subject. The focus is not on the sentence structure, grammar or the mechanics of the English Language. Free- writing is usually done in five to ten minutes and the aim is to gather all the ideas one has on a topic ranging from the least important to the most important. 

Brainstorming: Similarly,to free writing brainstorming involves putting  all the ideas one has on paper. Usually, free writing takes the format of a paragraph while brainstorming appears as a list.

However, the aim of both strategies is to write all that you know on the subject.

Clustering:  this strategy usually begins with a circle in the middle containing the main idea. Smaller circles then branch off from the main circle with ideas which the writer possesses in relation to the topic. It is advisable that similar ideas are grouped together.

 These are only a few strategies which can be used in the pre- writing stage. The following link wil; provide you with many other strategies which you can use.

http://www.writing.ku.edu/guides/prewriting.shtml 

The following video is aimed at supplementing the above reading. Enjoy!

After using the above strategies, it is advisable that you use a graphic organise to represent your ideas. Graphic organisers will be explored in s subsequent post.