Good Writing A Predictor Of Academic Success English Language Essay

Good writing is important skill for young people, as it is a predictor of academic success, for successful career and a basic requirement for participation in civic life. (Murray 2004)

Most contexts of life (school, the workplace, and the community) call for some level of writing skill, and each context makes overlapping, but not identical, demands. Proficient writers can adapt their writing flexibly to the context in which it takes place. That is why all students need to become proficient and flexible writers.

Finding a good topic is one of the hardest parts of learning to write. And, unfortunately, every writer runs into it right at the beginning. that’s why it is necessary to know strategies that will always give many good topics to choose from. In all subject areas, a student needs to develop skills for getting what they know about a topic down on paper, and generating ideas or finding additional facts. He also needs skills to check whether their writing is on-topic and fulfills its purpose. Further, they need to be able to explain the writing assignment and the process they are following to effectively complete the assignment.

To write a good essay a student needs to know how to organize what they have learned about any topic or assignment into a well-structured whole. In longer writing assignments, he needs to know how to create a strong, focused introduction that catches the reader’s interest; how to link ideas in logically connected paragraphs that contain enough supporting detail; and how to conclude with a strong ending.

It is difficult to start writing an essay , for example, without a central idea and notes to support it. Often, the more detailed an outline, the easier is the writing. People frequently find that they can finish faster by writing a first draft quickly and then editing and revising this draft.

In my opinion students learn to write by writing, so they need regular opportunities at school and colleges to write in all subjects. A consistent approach to the writing process in all subject areas and explicit instruction on the writing process by the subject teacher help students become better writers. Models of good writing in the subject area, and feedback that is constructive and formative, are critical to students’ growth as writers.

The pre-writing strategies

Writing is the final step of several separate acts like note-taking, identifying a central idea, outlining, drafting and editing. The first step is pre-writing that is “the formulation and organization of ideas preparatory to writing”. (Murray 2004)

Speaking about the pre-writing strategies, I can say that pre-writing engages in activities designed to help them generate or organize ideas for the essay . and very important that it improves the quality of their writing. Pre-writing activities include gathering possible information for a paper through reading or developing a visual representation of their ideas before sitting down to write. (Pattison 2006)

There are many effective practices in the process of pre-writing. For me it was important to create a topic by using various methods, such as listing and brainstorming. My pre-writing activities included planning before writing, reading necessary literature, organizing pre-writing ideas, writing an outline to a topic and then plan the work in advance.

I have chosen the free writing strategy. It means that I set a time limit and wrote without stopping, and when the time was up, I looked at what I had written and determined which idea seemed most significant. After that I pointed the important insights and ideas with which to work.

The writing process

For the writing class I chose the topic of “Self assessment” because this topic is interesting for me and the audience for many reasons:

First of all because the self-assessment is important to define clearly the progress of personal development ;

The audience is interested in psychology because it is always interesting to get acquainted with one’s self-assessment to be able to avoid pitfalls of self-assessment made by others in the course of their own self-assessment;

process of self-assessment is always a challengeable task, because people always attempt to conduct a self-assessment but they do not always succeed, as it is closely connected with the inadequate self-esteem or self-awareness.

In the whole the writing process involves generating ideas, developing and organizing the ideas, and revising and editing them. Effective writers do all these stages for the best result, so that the writing achieves its purpose. (Murray 2004)

When writing the essay I had the next goals:

To write well-organized paragraphs for different subject areas, with supporting details;

·- to demonstrate a clear understanding of the topic;

to spot main ideas and support details.

Writing an essay is a very private process, as it shows your own writing style, your thoughts and vision of the topic.

It was very important not only to follow the topic, but also to show the right order of thoughts and material so that it flowed from one area, to follow a logical order. Each part of the essay should follow on the previous parts, and the whole body of the essay should clearly come to the conclusion.

I tried in my essay to Essay writing requires to use both creative and critical thinking. Creative thinking encouraged me to broaden my ideas, while critical thinking encouraged me to narrow the focus of my ideas on the main topic of the essay.

All these strategies helped me to organize my essay in the best way, so it would be interesting and understandable for the audience.