Janene van Loon, Arnoud Thüss, Nicole Schmidt and Kevin Haines - Academic Writing in English

1.3 Perspectives on the writing process

In order to give you a better understanding of each part of the recursive writ ing process, we now briefly summarise the modes presented in the diagram above. We refer those readers who would like a more detailed explanation to the original article (Haas, 2009). ■■ Exploring: includes pre-writing activities like searching for literature, finding a topic, reading or refining a research focus etc. ■■ Structuring: includes moves at the global text level (e.g. outlining) and at paragraph and sentence level (e.g. choosing structures that will be appro priate to the audience) ■■ Polishing and publishing: adding layout and design features that make the text aesthetically accessible to the reader (e.g. typeface), including il lustrations (e.g. tables, diagrams, etc.). ■■ Incubating: setting aside one’s books, notebooks, or computer, and let ting one’s brain work on the writing; for instance, you may have a great idea while out riding your bicycle and you may decide to record it using your mobile phone. ■■ Unloading: transferring ideas to written language without worrying about whether the resulting text is attractive or grammatically correct (brainstorming is one approach: see Section 2.3 below). The Developing your text Section towards the end of each chapter explicitly aims to allow you to process your writing in this recursive way, but we hope that you will consider the recursive nature of the writing process throughout each section of this book. TASK 4a Reflect on the writing process. Write a paragraph of about 200 words advis ing a friend on how to write an academic paper. You can base your advice either on your past experience or on how you imagine that you might write a paper if you have never done it before. You may also make use of the modes described in one of the models above. If the names used in the model do not work for you, you might like to come up with your own names for modes in the writing process. TASK 4b Share the paragraph that you have written for the previous Task with a group of at least two other learners and compare your text with theirs. Then try to combine the best ideas from each paragraph and agree on one “ideal writing process timeline” in which those ideas can be brought together. Share the timeline with the rest of the class.

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