Essay Writing Steps

Phase 1: Prewrite
Carefully read the prompt. Spend time prewriting on the topic to generate information and to work out a plan to organize your essay.

• Circle or underline ideas that could form the main points for your essay.
• Establish an order for them and generate details for developing these ideas into paragraphs.
• Decide on a lead-in for your essay that engages the reader and focuses on the topic.
• Write a clear thesis statement stating your position on the topic.

Phase 2: Draft
Draft the essay. Make your paper believable and sensible. Support your main ideas with specific examples and details.

Phase 3: Revise
Take a mental break: five minutes if taking the T-COM; more if you are taking THEA.

Read over your draft carefully and make sure your ideas are easy to follow for someone unfamiliar with the topic. Add any details and transitions that would make your meaning clearer. Delete any details that don’t clearly develop your main points. Move information that is in the wrong place.

Phase 4: Proofread
Read through your essay watching for omitted words, sentence fragments, comma splices, and run-ons. Cross out information you don’t want readers to see.

Before you go take the test, review papers your instructors have marked and make a list of the kinds of errors you typically make and ways to identify those errors. By doing this, you will know what kinds of error to look for in your final essay.

Try reading your paper from the last sentence to the first sentence. Reading your sentences out of sequence is a good strategy for locating errors.

The TSI writing criteria place more importance on how well you organize and express your ideas than on how you handle the mechanical aspects of writing. Be as precise and correct as possible, but focus your attention on making sense and on saying exactly what you mean. It is okay to use a word that expresses just the right meaning even if you aren’t 100% sure of the spelling.

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