Full of anxiety,

You might receive feedback from more than one reader as you share different stages of your revised draft. In this situation, you may receive feedback from readers who do not understand the assignment or who lack your involvement with and enthusiasm for it. These differing opinions most commonly occur when students ask people outside the classroom to review their writing.

Peer review can feel scary because you may feel uncomfortable sharing your writing at first, but remember that each writer is working toward the same goal:

A formal outline is a detailed guide that shows how all your supporting ideas relate to each other. This outline helps you distinguish between ideas that are equally important and ones that are less important.

When you write, it is helpful when your ideas are presented in an order that makes sense. The writing you complete in all your courses exposes how analytically and critically your mind works. In some courses, the only direct contact you may have with your instructor is through the assignments you write for the course. You can make a good impression by spending time ordering your ideas.

Once you have the structure of your paper figured out, and the main idea you will support, you can start with the introduction and conclusion.

Each point you choose will be incorporated into the topic sentence for each body paragraph you write. Your primary supporting points are further supported by supporting details within the paragraphs.

Your main research question should be substantial enough to form the guiding principle of your paper—but focused enough to guide your research. A strong research question requires you not only to find information but also to put together different pieces of information, interpret and analyze them, and figure out what you think. As you consider potential research questions, ask yourself whether they would be too hard or too easy to answer.

Just as you need a recipe, ingredients, and proper tools to cook a delicious meal, you also need a plan, resources, and adequate time to create a good written composition. In other words, writing is a process that requires following steps and using strategies to accomplish your goals.

Purpose. The reason the writer composes the paragraph. Tone. The attitude the writer conveys about the paragraph’s subject. Audience. The individual or group whom the writer intends to address

In college, your instructors are under the impression that you understand the material, and they would like you to deal critically with the material. For that reason, figuring out the academic purpose of an assignment is important.

After reviewing Figure 1 and the descriptions of various types of writing assignments, watch the following video about the writing process. No matter what type of assignment you are writing, it will be important for you to follow a writing process: a series of steps a writer takes to complete a writing task. Making use of a writing process ensures that you stay organized and focused while allowing you to break up a larger assignment into several distinct tasks.

For example, you update your status on a social networking site with the awareness of who will digitally follow the post. If you want to brag about a good grade, you may write the post to please family members. If you want to describe a funny moment, you may write with your friends’ senses of humor in mind. Even at work, you send e-mails with an awareness of an unintended receiver who could intercept the message

Tone identifies a speaker’s attitude toward a subject or another person. You may pick up a person’s tone of voice fairly easily in conversation. A friend who tells you about her weekend may speak excitedly about a fun skiing trip. An instructor who means business may speak in a low, slow voice to emphasize her serious mood. Or, a coworker who needs to let off some steam after a long meeting may crack a sarcastic joke.

Once you’ve decided on the most appropriate voice and style for your document, you will want to continue enhancing your writing to engage your reader. The writing process requires many steps, and in order to ensure you have created a style that meets the needs of both the assignment and your reader, spend some time enhancing your word choices, developing your descriptions, and clarifying your sentence constructions.

When you interact with your classmates in your English class and learn the language of writing processes, for example, determining your rhetorical situation, you are participating in a specific discourse community

Many students think contacting their instructor shows that they weren’t paying attention or that they are the only student did not understand something, so they often keep quiet and go on trying to do work that they do not understand. Other students think that their teacher is their own private tutor, so they email or message the teacher several times a day to ask questions that likely have answers in the syllabus and in the learning module instructions.

The main purpose of communication whether it be email, text, tweet, blog, discussion, presentation, written assignment, or speech is always to help the receiver(s) of the message understand the idea that the sender of the message is trying to share

waiting until the night before the due date, writing until far past her bedtime, getting only three hours of sleep, and turning in the assignment. That is not an effective writing process!

In the previous chapters, we covered college writing at CNM and reading strategies

How deeply do I need to understand the reading

determining your rhetorical situation

You completed numerous assessments of your reading and writing skills in high school and as part of your application process for college. You may write on the job, too. Why is a college writing course even necessary?

When writing a personal narrative for class, first consider the prompt your teacher assigned you. Then, freewrite about topics that are of general interest to you.

Free-writing is an exercise in which you write freely about any topic for a set amount of time (usually three to five minutes). During the time limit, you may jot down any thoughts that come to your mind. Try not to worry about grammar, spelling, or punctuation. Instead, write as quickly as you can without stopping. If you get stuck, just copy the same word or phrase over and over until you come up with a new thought.