What is process writing?
Process writing involves taking students through a series of steps to produce a text. The same process can and should be use for every type of text students produce – for example, poems, letters, reports and blogs.
During process writing, students think about what they are going to write, draft and revise, while they give and receive feedback in order to complete their final piece.
Below, we take you through the stages of process writing, including a downloadable poster that you can use with your class. You can also watch our process writing webinar from author Eoin Higgins below. We can only apologise that the sound drops out in places! Hopefully, you can still follow what Eoin is saying.
Benefits of process writing
Using a carefully planned writing process with a variety of scaffolding techniques, we can:
- Provide students with a structure to follow
- Motivate students to write
- Help to boost confidence
Pre-writing stage
- Give students model texts
- Ask them to analyse the text, paying particular attention to any features within the text type
- Ask them to analyse the language. Is it formal? Informal? What do they notice about the language chosen?
Model texts give students an example that they can analyse and then replicate. It gives them a structure to follow.
If you were looking at a poem, you might first analyse the text by looking at the form and structure. What is the verse structure? What is the sentence structure? Why has the poet decided to write the line in this way?
You can then analyse the language: what kinds of words does the poet use? Do they use metaphors? What is the effect?
Let’s look at an example from Grammar and Writing series, Learner’s book 7:
The Frog Pool
Week after week it shrank and shrank
As the fierce drought fiend drank and drank,
Till on the bone-dry bed revealed
the mud peeled;
But now tonight is steamy-warm,
Heavy with hint of thunderstorm.
And hark! hark! hoarse and harsh
The throaty croak of frogs in the marsh:
‘Wake! wake! awake! awake!
The drought break!’
But no, that chorus seems to me
More a primeval harmony.
The thunder booms, the floods flow
Blended with deeper din below,
And every time the skies crash
The swamps flash!
And the whole place will be tonight
A pandemonium of delight.
James Devaney
Writers often use short poems to capture a moment from the natural world, rather like taking a quick camera shot or short video. How well are you able to picture the scene that the poem creates? What helps you to experience it?
Learners should pick out the visual details of the dry bed of the river and the storm as it breaks. The experience comes from the vivid descriptions (‘bone-dry’), metaphors (‘fiend drank and drank’ and ‘chorus’ of frogs) and the sound words in the poem (‘croak’, ‘boom’ etc.).
Analysing both the text as a whole, as well as the language, helps students understand how to create something similar when they come to the writing stage.
Thinking and planning stage
- Think
- Plan
- Organise
When it comes to thinking and planning, many teachers will jump to splitting students into groups and brainstorming. However, once you have introduced the task to the class, you might find it useful to give them some time to think individually before asking students to discuss with a partner or in a small group. This allows every student to form their own ideas before developing them in a group.
Visual aids are another scaffolding technique that you can use to help students to plan. For example, if the writing task involves describing a place, you could ask students to draw it before going on to write about it.
And of course, questions will also help students to think and plan. Here is an example from Grammar and Writing Learners Book 4.
These questions come after students have read a blurb from the non-fiction book, Let’s go Diving.
Writing and editing stage
- Draft
- Revise
- Redraft
Once a student has written a first draft, it’s time to revise. Even as adults, reading through your own work can be difficult – we tend to be over or under critical – and it is even something professional writers struggle with. However, it is important to the writing process, and it needn’t be a chore.
Once a student is happy with their draft, they could share it with a peer for assessment. This is very effective, but you need to give students careful guidelines for giving feedback – you cannot allow them to say whatever they want!
You could use the 3-2-1 method:
3 things that they liked
2 things that they would change
1 thing they liked the most
Process writing: what next?
The process writing framework is a great way to help students develop confidence with all styles of writing. If you would like extra help with creative writing, you’ll find advice and guidance on every stage of process writing throughout our Cambridge Grammar and Writing series, including ideas for scaffolding, differentiation and more.
