Divanny Rodriguez
2/28/13
Writing Process and the 6 Traits
Writing is a process and it has many steps. In chapter 2, in the Spandel’s book, it was presented
a diagram that perfectly connect the six traits in writing to the writing process. The writing process has
many steps that are: prewriting, drafting, sharing, revising, assessing, editing, and publishing. While,
there are six important traits that every good piece of writing should have, and these are: idea,
organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions.
The first step in the writing process is the prewriting, but writing really begins with our life’s
experiences. We get our ideas from our daily life based on our interest and what we see, so we then
start the prewriting. Here, we start brainstorming once we have an idea by either making a list, a
diagram, free writing, talking to someone about it or even just thinking about it and jot it down in a
piece of paper. We then move on to the second step that is drafting. In this step, we begin to write our
first draft. We start writing everything that comes to our mind without worrying about any conventions,
in order to write our idea down and organize it into paper. We write and write, so that later there is
something to revise. It is important to be specific and get everything down, so that later we can see if
details are missed or if there is any gaps. It is important to share our piece and add voice to our writing.
We need to read it and make sure that it sounds like us and the best way to do this, it is by sharing it
with someone.
After that, we move on to the Revision part of it and it is important to understand that everyone
with no exceptions need to revise. Here, we then start to worry about our voice, word choice, and
sentence fluency as well as our ideas and organization. We start to expand our ideas by adding
information, rearranging and taking thing out that are not necessary. We look for words that might have
been to repetitive and we should replace them. We start to organize everything and even change our
point of view, if it has changed, to make it sound like it is our voice. Also, we start to see if our writing is
working or not and if we are not sure, we can share it with someone else and ask them for their
feedback. It is also a good idea to read it aloud because it helps us find out whether the message makes
sense or if the voice is true. It is a good idea that the teacher starts modeling the revision to the
students. Teachers should revise a piece as a group and the students should take notes. So that the
students can have a model and see the type of changes they need to do. Students should also work in
pairs and assess each other works and give feedbacks.
We then move on to the editing part of the process. In this step, we start to worry about the
conventions and the presentation part of the paper. We read our paper line by line to check for missspelling, punctuations, verbs agreement, and if the sentences are to complex or difficult to understand.
Every piece of writing gets edited and writers should be the one doing it, if not our readers will do it for
us. Students should use resources like handbooks to see what is currently correct, use dictionaries, ask
another qualified editor to look over it, leave wide margins and double space so that there is enough
space for corrections and so on. We need to look if the document is appealing to the reader and if not
we need to make some changes based on who are going to be our readers.
Last, we get ready for the publication. We need to finalize our conventions and presentation.
Our piece should be ready to be shared we our intended audience; it will go public. We need to add any
citations or bibliography if needed. Our work should be format and ready to be published. We need to
pick the appropriate font style and choice, use of color, charts, drawing, and graphics, cover design, etc.
Publishing sometimes requires other people assistances so, it is important to give credit to those who
help us; especially if it is something big like a book. Publishing our students work is important because it
gives importance to their work and they will feel satisfy for the work they have done.