November 19, 2015

Jhoanie Marie P. Cauan

Ms. Mara Shari A. Malay
BSECE 1-1

ACTIVITY 1
Instructions: Provide comprehensive and concise explanation for the following
questions. Give your reference for your answers. (Book Title, Author, Year of
publication)

1. What is academic writing?

Academic writing means writing in a certain style, for a certain purpose, and
to a certain audience. The style is formal, the purpose is to persuade or to inform,
and the audience is your lecturer and the wider community of researchers including
fellow students. While there are no rules for writing academically, there are many
conventions. Five of these are formality, impersonality, structure and specific, and
hedge.
2. Why planning in writing is essential?

Planning is an essential tool in developing your writing. It is likened to

architectural blueprint, since it serves as a framework in the preliminary evaluation
of the strength of your chosen topic. In this stage, you are selecting from the many
varied resources that you can possibly write about. It is at this phase that you are
confronted with crossroads. Topics are quite interrelated and relevant to the ideas
that you have in mind. It is, thus, imperative for you to know what to write about by
determining your purpose; by knowing your interests; by determining your
strengths and weaknesses in using the language; and by discriminating from the
many possible resources a focused topic for your composition.

3. Give the barriers in writing. Provide brief explanation for each.

Psychological barriers are a series of your accumulated significant

experiences that shape your frame of reference, belief system, biases, and
judgment that you bring with you as you select and develop a topic for writing. For
example, you were tasked to write about the famous line in the film, Wizard of Oz,
There is no place like home. This barrier emerges, especially if your experiences
at home are not pleasant.

Physical barriers are conditions in the environment that affect your state
at the time of writing. For example, the presence of loud noise and dim light in a
room certainly affect your concentration and focus.
 Cognitive barriers refer to your knowledge level, perceptions towards the
writing task, decoding and encoding skills, and critical thinking abilities that you
exhibit in the writing task. This becomes an obstacle since the process of
concretizing abstract concepts in your schema involves an intricate process. For
example, the topic on melancholy is too abstract. Writers may find it quite scary to
write about.

Affective barriers refer to your emotional preparedness while undergoing

a writing task. Your negative experiences like loss of a loved one, embarrassment
on a date, worry over problems, separation, failure, and elating events like
graduation, recognition, marriage and achievements affect the style and manner
of writing that you exhibit.

4. What is writing process?

The writing process is involved both in your composing and transcribing
skills. Composing engages you to think and to evaluate ideas, and to restructure
them into an organized manner (Christen, Searfoss, & Bean, 1984). Transcribing,
on the other hand, describes the mechanics of writing such as spelling, punctuation
marks, capitalization, handwriting, and tidiness of a written material.
5. What is assessment in writing?
Writing is a craft. It involves a series of stages which you may develop slowly
or fast. Thus, the last stage in the writing process is essential. In the course of
developing your writing skill, assessment tools such as teacher-assessment, peer
evaluation, and self-assessment are necessary to plot the progress or regress in
the writing endeavor. This assessment may come in various forms such as pen
and paper test, peer editing, and copy editing.

6. What is pre-writing techniques?

Develop ideas about the subjects
Involve activities as talking, doodling, and thinking
Identify your purpose and audience
Form the main idea
Organize information
Prewriting involves gathering details and ideas, but it takes the stress out of
beginning a writing project. This is done by freely scribbling away without worrying
about your topic before beginning. There are times when you have to do some
research. Even for a familiar subject, it helps writers to sort through their ideas or
memories.
 Talking with your classmates about your writing assignments, making a list
of some topics and reading from some sources are some examples of pre-writing
activities.
7. The following are list of pre-writing techniques. Describe each:
a. Free-writing
Write down all ideas on a subject for a period or time, say, 10 minutes.
You can discover possible writing ideas
One rule in free-writing: dont let your pen or pencils leave the paper
Write every idea that pops in your mind
Dont worry about making errors, making sense, or even sticking to the
main idea
It is okay to keep repeating yourself
Many find it liberating and relaxing to pour out ideas on paper.
You have to set aside all the rules of writing and to write fast without
stopping. You dont have to worry about capitalization and punctuation and
spelling; write whatever comes into your mind. There is also no room for editing
and reconsidering what you are writing. The rule to follow is: Let your pen keep
moving. Sometimes, you feel as if nothing is in your mind. Just write the last
words over and over again until new ideas come. Your main purpose is to keep
on writing for a sustained period of time (ten to fifteen minutes) without
stopping.
When you are done, choose a topic from your output to have a more
focused idea. Then you can start writing down about that particular idea which
can be narrowed down to even more specific idea that can be the starting point
of your writing assignment.

b. Questioning
Generate ideas and details by asking questions related to the topic
Questions include information questions like: why, when, where, who,
and how
Ask as many questions as you can
You can try directed questioning if you already have a topic yet you dont
know how to start with it. This will help you delimit your ideas. The following
questions may prove helpful: How can I describe the topic? How can I define
the topic? How does the topic resemble or differ from other topics? How does
the topic work? How does the topic affect other things? Can I argue for or
against the topic? Why does this topic interest me? What ideas are generally
associated with the topic?
c. Branching
Emphasize the connections between ideas
Begin by writing your topic on the left side of the paper
Write your ideas that are related to your topic
Connect them to the topic with a line
Sub-topics will bring to mind more related thoughts and details
Write these thoughts and details on the right side, letting the list branch
out across the paper.

d. Idea Mapping
Start with a wide-open activity that combines words and images such as
doodles, symbols, sketches, icons, and so forth
Write or draw one idea after another as your mind ranges freely from
word image and back again
Write your ideas anywhere on the pages
Underline and encircle ideas and images for emphasis.
Idea mapping is also known as diagramming or clustering which helps
generate ideas and details about the topic. You can make use of lines, boxes,
and circles to show the relationship between the ideas and the details that you
are trying to come up.

e. Keeping a journal
This is your idea book
Keep this as a separate notebook
Keep a record of ideas that interest you
Include or write about the topic you want to explore.
You can create ideas by keeping a writing journal. You have to
remember that this is not a diary. This may be as formal or informal as you
wish. The emphasis of your entry is less on recording but more on reflecting
about what you do or see, hear or read, learn or believe. This is a record of
your thoughts which shou1d be written as if you were addressing yourself or a
very close friend. You have to get things do on your paper as you think of them.
You have to finish first your entry before rereading it. The collected ideas can
be a basis for topics for your future writing prompts.

f. Clustering
This is done by starting a cluster with a nucleus word related to the
writing topic or assignment. Ideas are clustered or recorded around the nucleus
 word, each idea is circled, and a line is drawn to connect it to the closest related
idea.

g. Listing
Free listing of ideas as they come to mind is another technique for
finding a writing subject. This starts with an idea or a keyword related to the
assignment and simply begins with listing words. Brainstorming with a group is
an effective way to search for writing ideas.

h. Imaginary Dialogue
By creating an imaginary dialogue with someone else or between two
strangers, you can easily find an idea for a writing assignment.

i. Sentence Completion
You can complete an open-ended sentence in as many ways as you
can, but you have to try to word this sentence so that it leads to a subject you
can use for a particular writing assignment.

j. Reflecting, participating, and listening

Possible writing ideas can also be thought of while doing other things.
You can also watch for unusual events, persons, objects, or conversations. You
can participate in activities related to your writing assignment; interview
someone who is knowledgeable or experienced about a writing idea or talk to
family members and friends about potential subjects.

k. Preparing a scratch outline

It is a plan or a blueprint to help you achieve a unified, supported and
well-organized writing output where the items will be arranged.
Think carefully of the points you're making, the supporting details and
the order
It is the framework on which your writing task will be built.
You need to make an outline to help you organize your ideas. This
presents your ideas in a logical manner which shows relationships between
topics. This will help you remain consistent in your chosen topic. This is a
 formal system of listing down ideas to have an overview on how your ideas
look on paper, whether they are interrelated with one another.
Some may prefer to write first a draft before preparing an outline. But
creating an outline first will keep you more focused on your writing output.
There are different ways to organize your outline. This depends on the
length and level of difficulty of your writing task. You may explore on both
methods. You have to be consistent in choosing an outline. Whichever one
you choose, use it throughout your outline.
Kinds of Outline
1. Topic outline consists of short phrases; usually useful when you are
discussing a number of different topics.
2. Sentence outline consists of full sentences; particularly useful for
papers dealing with difficult details.
These two kinds of outline follow a format. The traditional format uses
Roman and Arabic numerals, along with capital and small letters of the
alphabet. You commonly use this for classroom papers.
As a rule, there must be a minimum of two entries in your outline. If
your first category is Roman numeral I, your outline must also have a
category labeled Roman numeral II. If you have a capital letter A under
category I, you must also have a capital letter B. Whether or not you then
go on to have a capital letter C, D, E, and so on is up to you and depends
on the amount of material you're going to cover. You are only required to
have two of each numbered or lettered category.

Reference: Writing Across Disciplines. Ma. Cecilia L. Lapitan, et al. (2015)