Here are suggested answers to the Think About It items in this chapter of the Online Learning Center website.

1. In your own words, summarize the three main processes involved in writing: planning, transcribing, and reviewing.

Teacher’s Note: Response should include the following:


• After defining the rhetorical problem, three main processes can take place: planning, transcribing, and reviewing. Planning involves brainstorming, ordering ideas, and “focusing” the writing. Put another way, with planning, thoughts about the topic are generated and organized, and the writer’s goals are set. Transcribing is simply realizing your plan onto the page; this is simply the mental/physical act of converting each thought into written words. Finally, to review means looking over one’s writing and making the necessary changes and additions to improve it.

2. Communication has been defined as “the expression, interpretation, and negotiation of meaning.” With this definition in mind, can writing be considered “communication”? Why or why not?

Teacher’s Note: Response should include the following:


• Although writing might not seem, at first glance, to be communication since in most writing situation there are not two people simultaneously present and exchanging messages. However, writing can still be considered communication in that writers express their meaning, and unseen readers interpret that meaning. When a spouse quickly jots down a grocery list or “to do” list for his/her partner, meaning is expressed and must be interpreted. In that sense, then, communication is occurring. It could even be argued that a “negotiating” of sorts is occurring as the author’s writing interacts with the readers’ schemata.

3. In your view (and based on the discussion in this chapter) what are the principal contributors to improved writing? Why are these so important?

Teacher’s Note: Response may include the following:


• Nothing improves writing as much as writing does. In other words, having opportunities to transcribe thoughts to paper as much as possible will help learners develop their ideas for writing and generate a more organized, “polished” product. In addition, reading supplies learners with the type of input they need to become better writers. SLA research has shown that those who are good readers tend to be good writers. Finally, many learners need help with the processes that precede writing. Teaching writers to define the rhetorical problem, brainstorm, organize their thoughts, and plan better in general will result in better writing.