Ch04 organizing your work and preparing for writing

NETA PowerPoint® Slides
to accompany
Copyright © 2015 by Nelson Education Ltd.
Mohawk
College
4-1

Organizing Your Work and
Preparing for
Writing
Chapter 4
4-2

Think about Your Subject
Make sure you have a satisfactory subject, one that
satisfies the basic principles of the 4-S test:
A satisfactory subject is significant, single,
specific, and supportable.
If it passes the 4-S test, your subject is the basis
of a good paper.
4-3

The Writing Process
Writing an essay typically flows through the following stages:
• Analyze your audience.
• Read carefully.
• Do some critical thinking .
• Find a good subject.
• Identify interesting main points.
• Start outlining your material.
• Discover your thesis statement.
• Organize the body of the essay.
• Write the introduction and conclusion.
• Revise and edit the essay.
4-4

Make Your Subject Significant
Significance is about meshing your
ideas, thoughts, and research with
a subjective focus that will elicit the
response you are hoping for.
4-5

Make Your Subject Single
Don’t try to crowd too much into
one paper. If you attempt to write
about two or three related ideas,
your readers will get only a
superficial and possibly confusing
overview instead of the interesting
and satisfying detail they expect to
find in a well-planned paper.
4-6

Make Your Subject Specific
Given a choice between a broad,
general topic and a narrow, specific
one, always choose the specific one.
You can narrow a broad subject and
make it more specific by applying
one or more limiting factors to it. Try
thinking of your subject in terms of a
specific kind, time, place, number, or
person associated with it.
4-7

Make Your Subject Supportable
Remember, your readers want
information that is new, interesting,
and thought-provoking—not obvious
observations familiar to everyone.
You must be able to include specific
examples, facts, figures, quotations,
anecdotes, or other supporting
details.
4-8

Organizing Subject Ideas into
Main Points
Bottom-Up Approach: Prewriting Strategies
Talking
Freewriting
Brainstorming
4-9

Talking
The prewriting strategy of talking can work for
writing, too, as long as you are clearly and tightly
focused on a specific subject. Focused dialogue
works best in groups of three or four students, all
of whom are interested in the subject.
4-10

Freewriting
1. Put a pad of paper on your desk or use your
computer. Write your subject at the top of the
page.
2. Start writing. Don’t stop until you have written
for three, five, or even ten minutes straight. Write
anything that comes to mind. If you get stuck,
write your subject over and over until something
new comes to mind. (Don’t worry,
it will!)
4-11

Freewriting cont’d
3. Write as quickly as you can. Don’t pause to
analyze or evaluate your ideas, and don’t scratch out
or delete anything.
4. When the time is up, stop and stretch. Then
read over what you’ve written. Highlight anything
that is related to your subject. Much of your
freewriting will be irrelevant but what you
have highlighted will be useful in the next step:
identifying the main points you will use to
explain your subject.
4-12

Freewriting cont’d
5. Turn the highlighted phrases, fragments, and
sentences into clear, understandable points. If you
don’t have at least 10 points, keep freewriting for
another few minutes.
6. On a separate piece of paper, list the points you
have identified. Study the possible relationships
among these points and cluster them under two
or three headings. These are your main points.
Now you can move on to the next step:
testing each main point to be sure it is satisfactory
for your essay.
4-13

Brainstorming
In brainstorming, you write down a list of every idea you
can think of about a specific subject. Work alone or in a
small group.
1. Write your topic at the top of the page. Check your
subject against the 4-S test. Decide how much time
you will spend on this exercise.
2. Write down in short form—words or phrases—
every idea you can think of that is even vaguely
related to your subject. Work quickly. Don’t
slow down by worrying about grammar.
4-14

Brainstorming cont’d
3. When the time is up, relax , then go over the list
carefully. Highlight the points that seem most
clearly related to your subject and cross out any
duplicates or any ideas that are vague. If you
don’t end up with three or four points that are
meaningful to you, brainstorm again.
4. Take your three or four most significant points
and rephrase them in clear sentences. Then
move on to the next step: testing your main
points to ensure that they are suitable for
use in your essay.
4-15

Organizing Subjects into
Main Points
Top-Down Approach: Prewriting Strategy
Questioning Your Subject (various strategies)
4-16

Questioning Your Subject
Questioning lets you “walk around”
your subject, looking at it from
different angles, taking it apart and
putting it back together again. Each
question is a probe that enables you
to dig below the surface and find
out what you know.
4-17

How to Question Your Subject
1. Begin by writing your proposed subject at the top
of the page.
2. Apply the 12 questions to your subject to see
which ones “fit” best. As you go down the list,
you will probably find more than one question
for which you can think up answers. Do not stop
with the first question that produces answers.
The purpose of this idea-generating technique is
to discover the best approach for your target
audience and writing purpose.
4-18

How to Question Your Subject cont’d
3. Go through the entire list and record your
answers to any questions that apply to your
subject. Ignore the questions that make no
sense in relation to the subject.
4. Finally, study the questions that produced
answers and choose the one that generated the
ideas that are closest to what your reader needs
to know and what you want to say.
4-19

The 12 Questions
4-20

Testing Your Main Points
Once you’ve identified main points using talking,
freewriting, brainstorming, or the questioning
approach, your next step is to examine the points
you’ve come up with to make sure each is going to
work as a major component in your essay.
Main points must always
be significant, distinct, and
relevant.
4-21

Are Your Main Points Significant?
Each main point should be worth writing and reading
about. If you can’t write at least one interesting and
informative paragraph about a point, it is probably
not significant enough to bother with. Don’t waste
your readers’ time with trivial matters.
4-22

Are Your Main Points Distinct?
Each main point should be worth writing and reading
about. If you can’t write at least one interesting and
informative paragraph about a point, it is probably
not significant enough to bother with. Don’t waste
your readers’ time with trivial matters.
4-23

Are Your Main Points Relevant?
The main points you choose must be clearly and
directly related to your subject. They all must be
aspects of that subject and must add to the
development of your readers’ information on
the subject.
4-24

Summary
• Coming up with main points can be generated in a
variety of ways.
• In the bottom-up approach, main points can be
generated using talking, freewriting, or
brainstorming.
• In the top-down approach, structured questions can
help you find out what points are of most interest to
your paper.
• Once you have your main points, make sure they are
significant, distinct, and relevant.
4-25

Ch04 organizing your work and preparing for writing

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