The Writing Center can help you to improve individual essays and papers, but it can also help you to improve your overall writing process. Taking a "process approach" is usually much more beneficial than taking a "product approach," because it gives you the opportunity to refine your skills as a reader, a critical thinker, a planner, a writer, a reviser, a proofreader, and an editor. Instead of simply bringing in a complete draft (a product), students are encouraged to visit the Writing Center during each phase of the writing process.
During the Pre-Writing Stage, WITs can help you to...
- Better understand an assignment or prompt
- Form a response to a reading or topic
- Brainstorm and generate ideas
- Organize and focus your ideas
- Craft a working thesis statement
- Revise and develop your thesis statement
- Create an outline or a concept map
- Plan out a research agenda
During the Drafting Stage, WITs can help you to...
- Review your assignment, thesis, and outline before you begin writing
- Develop strategies for overcoming writer's block
- Create a schedule for your drafting process that leaves time for subsequent drafts and revisions
- Break your assignment down into stages
- Develop strategies for being flexible and improvising as your paper develops
- Consider different patterns of development for your supporting paragraphs
- Assess your textual evidence and make informed decisions about when to quote, paraphrase, and summarize
During the Revising Stage, WITs can help you to...
- Get a fresh perspective on what you have written
- Offer constructive feedback on your draft
- Assess the content and organization of your argument
- Refocus your paragraphs toward your thesis
- Improve the coherence of your argument
- Incorporate more transitional words and phrases
- Achieve greater precision with your word choices
- Outline structural and substantive changes
- Assess the unity and coherence of your individual paragraphs
- Analyze and improve your evidence
- Make macro-level changes to the paper
- Eliminate unnecessary words, sentences, or paragraphs
- Create a reverse outline
During the Editing Stage, WITs can help you to...
- Improve your skills as a proofreader
- Slow down and assess the quality of individual sentences
- Identify patterns of error
- Increase sentence variety
- Improve your sentence structure
- Identify and eliminate punctuation errors
- Check your citations, both in-text and bibliographical
- Create a list of priorities before you turn in the final draft
During the Evaluation Stage, WITs can help you to...
- Read through and understand your professors' comments
- Set goals for your next assignment based on these comments
- Reassess and improve your writing process
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