Remember: Writing is not a natural talent; writing skills can be learned. Writing takes practice and patience; with practice, your skills will improve.

Good writers follow a writing process. Even people who write for a living need time to think about their topic, what they want to say, and how they will say it. They will make many drafts before they have a finished product. No one can write a perfect essay without any preparation and several revisions.

The writing process breaks down the writing activity into easy steps. It is a series of steps to help you write a paper. It is like using a map to get to an unfamiliar place.

Step 1: Pre-Writing. Begin by brainstorming ideas for topics, organizing an outline, and developing a plan. To do that, you can organize your ideas visually, using the mindmap or the logic tree to brainstorm ideas and prepare for Step 2.

Step 2: Writing the First Draft. Using your ideas, write a strong thesis statement/argument. In the thesis statement you tell your audience what you are going to talk about and what is your position/view of the topic.

Next develop an introduction to the topic, your main points and supporting details, and write a concluding paragraph. Be sure to use facts, examples, and details to support your argument/ thesis statement. 

Step 3: Evaluating, Revising, and Editing. Read your essay carefully. When you begin to evaluate and edit your paper, change from the role of writer to the role of a critic. Try to examine your paper through the eyes of a reader who does not know anything about your topic.

— Have you explained everything fully?

— Have you included enough facts and examples for the reader to understand?

— Are there spelling errors?

After you have made improvements you may want to have someone else read your paper and make comments. When writing you may go through Step 3 several times before you are ready to write a final draft.

Step 4: Write Your Final Draft. When you have corrected all errors including spelling, punctuation, and grammar, you are ready to write your final draft. When you have completed the final draft, proofread again to make sure you did not miss any errors, such as spelling, punctuation, and paragraph indention.

Step 5: Publish the Final Draft.

Writing task 8

The last assignment for the seminar is to write an argumentative essay (NOT compare and contrast essay; NOT advantages and disadvantages essay) on the topic of your choice (it can be connected to the field of your study, that is any aspect of education, learning foreign languages; or some current social or cultural events). The essay should be 5 to 8 paragraphs long, including an introductory paragraph, 3-5 body paragraphs and a concluding paragraph. 

To follow the writing process, you will start with choosing the topic, brainstorming the topic, and writing an outline of an essay. First, choose the topic that you find interesting. If the topic is too broad to be covered in a five-paragraph essay, try to narrow it down to create a precise and limited topic. Once you have chosen the topic, think about your position on the topic and write an argument/thesis statement. Once you have an argument, continue brainstorming: what kind of evidence will you submit to support your argument? Which ideas do you want to include? What are specific examples that support those ideas?

Evidence consists of facts, statistics, opinions of experts, clarifying examples. In each body paragraph you focus on one topic/ evidence, you present it (for example you summarize the data from the graph, you quote or paraphrase the opinion of an expert), then comment on it (you analyze the data, interpret the expert's opinion) and provide an explanation on how the given evidence supports your argument.

When brainstorming, you can find it useful to organize ideas and information visually, using mind maps  

or logic trees

Once you gathered enough information, write an outline of your essay. You don't need to write complete sentences, just a general structure that you think your essay will follow. Basically, you just need to think about how to put your ideas into a logical order.

Peer assessment of writing task 8 (2 points)

If you have submitted the writing task for this session, you can assess someone else’s writing. Read an outline of an essay and provide feedback as a reply to a particular forum entry. Please choose a contribution that hasn't been assessed by anyone else yet (if possible). Here are some criteria you can take into consideration:

• Is the topic well-chosen? Is it specific enough to be treated in a 5 paragraph essay?
• Does the thesis statement both announce the topic and give the author's opinion on the topic? Does it make a claim that others might dispute? Is the thesis statement specific enough?
• Do the ideas in body paragraphs connect to the thesis statement in a logical way? 
• Do you have any suggestions for improvement?

To get points for the feedback, you need to write at least 5 sentences.