I have never done any prewriting. The writing I have done has been sending emails to friends and family. I have kept a journal off and on over the years but, truthfully, its been more off than on. I have written letters and cards to people but that was usually from living such a distance from friends and relatives. Growing up in Montana, with family from Canada and Texas (my mothers and fathers side, we were stuck in the middle) we mostly wrote letters.
In the textbook there are several exercises, on prewriting, which showed me how to get an idea. One of the exercises was on brainstorming. When ever I have been put in a brainstorming situation, my mind goes blank. When working on the brainstorming exercise in the book, I was all alone and sat for 10 minutes and thought of random ideas to put down on paper. That actually worked!!
I also enjoyed the looping exercise. Writing a paragraph about a subject, going back and highlighting something in that subject, writing another paragraph, highlighting again and writing again. It's amazing how different ideas flow from one thing to another.
I can see where prewriting helps to give you ideas to put down on paper. So far everything I have been learning in English 101 has been interesting and very useful.
You may find that it's more helpful as you get into more complex writing situations, but it's great that you are able to keep a lot of ideas organized mentally before and during composing the writing you've done so far. Letter writing is a great exercise for all other sorts of writing. :-)
ReplyDeleteDid you recently change your blog set-up? It is much easier on the eye.
ReplyDeleteThis whole blog is new to me, so I may have "accidentally" changed something, who knows...but it does look different.
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