The process of writing
In 1657 The French philosopher Blaise Pascual ended a letter with these words “I have made this letter longer than usual because I didn’t have enough time to make it shorter”.
Anybody can write and write and write ….but if you want to write something that makes sense, that is coherent and pleasurable to read, you need to spend time getting your thoughts together, organising your ideas, editing and rewriting. Writing isn’t just about putting words on paper, it is a process. And as with all processes there are steps that need to be taken. That is the key to any successful piece of writing, whether it is a letter, a report or an article about the Beijing Olympic Games.
Where to start

• The title

There are various ways to plan an article. The first place to start is with the title. In this case the title you are working with is: My Beijing Olympics and our greeting to London 2012. If you underline the prominent words in the title you’ll get an idea of what you need to include. “My” is significant because the article has to be written from a personal point of view. “Beijing” is important because this is the city which has been given the honour of hosting the event. You should include some details about the city. “Olympics” is another key word because after all, this is the event that is being organized. Then there are the words “greeting” and “London”. It is important not to forget to include an appropriate greeting to the hosts of the next Olympic Games and to mention something about the city of London.

• The readers

At the same time as you analyze the title of your article you should ask yourself an important question: who is going to read what you write? Identifying your readers will help you to adopt an appropriate style. If you are writing a business report for a Managing Director you will need to use a very formal register, taking care not to use contractions or idiomatic expressions. In the case of this article the words “My Beijing” in the title indicate a personal touch; a more informal style. This will affect the language you use and will allow you to include colloquial expressions that you might know.

Planning

• Brainstorm

When you have a clear idea of what you need to include in your article you can start brainstorming ideas and vocabulary. Some people like to use spidergrams for this stage. A spidergram starts off with a word in the centre and branches out to include other words that interrelate between each other. A spidergram resembles a spider’s web – a web of ideas. Another way to brainstorm is to simply note down all of you ideas and then see how those ideas fit together into a logical order. Sometimes it’s a good idea to write each idea on a separate piece of paper so that you can move them around easily and see how concepts and vocabulary items link together.

• Organise

Every piece of writing needs a beginning, a middle and an end – and that is the best way to divide up your initial ideas. When you have brainstormed ideas of what you want to include in your article – and useful language that you’d like to use, it’s time to organise them into some kind of logical order. Decide how you are going to divide the information. Some ideas will clearly belong in the introduction to your article. Others will go at the end. Everything else will form “the middle”. At this stage you need to decide how many paragraphs or sections your composition will have. There are no strict rules for this but in an article of 400 words it is probably a good idea to have an introductory paragraph , an ending paragraph and then two or three paragraphs in the middle.

• Structure

While you are considering the structure of your article and deciding where one paragraph should end and the next one start, you should also be thinking of how you are going to link your ideas together. This is where linking words come in. Used correctly they will help you to achieve a more cohesive result. Linking words are words like but, meanwhile, whereas or they can be expressions such as to sum up, what is more or on the other hand.

Writing

• Draft

When you write the first draft of your article don’t worry too much about how many words you are writing or whether you are making spelling mistakes. The whole point of a first draft is to have a text which you can work from. The finished article is unlikely to look anything like your first draft. Write a first draft quickly and make sure you include all of the points in a logical order. When the draft is finished you can count the words to have an idea of how much more you need to write or (and this is much more likely) how much you need to delete.

• Edit

When you have finished your first draft you need to examine it very carefully and make the necessary changes. It is a good idea to use a checklist at this stage. You can write your own checklist based on the typical mistakes that you usually make. It’s a good idea to look back at writing that you have had corrected in the past and see what type of mistakes you normally make. That way you can avoid them when you write your article. Look at this example of a checklist. The list is quite general. You can add more personal items such as “check the articles” or “check capital letters for place names”.

Checklist
Have I included a title?
Have I checked the spelling?
Have I divided the text into logical paragraphs?
Is my introduction appropriate?
Is the ending ok?
Have I included all of the information?
Have I used the correct verb tenses?
Is the style appropriate?
Is my punctuation correct?

This is also the time to look carefully at your choice of vocabulary. Have you used the same word three or four times? Repetition will bore your readers so try to find an alternative word or expression. An online thesaurus like http://thesaurus.reference.com/ is ideal for finding synonyms.

Style

• Topic sentences

The way your article looks on the page is important. Readers are attracted to texts that appear to be well structured. One way to make an article look more appealing is by adding topic sentences or sub-headings at the beginning of each paragraph. Topic sentences summarise the content of the section while sub-headings need not be as detailed. Going through the process of writing these sentences or headings will also help you to clarify your ideas – so they serve a dual purpose.

• Opening and closing statements

Don’t underestimate the importance of your opening and closing statements. The opening statement will give the readers their first impressions of your writing. The closing statement will leave them with a final impression that will forgive any minor errors that they came across in the body of your text.

All that remains is to wish you good luck with your article. Take your time, do your best and most important of all, enjoy the challenge!

Katherine Bilsborough [《英语沙龙》杂志社版权所有 未经许可 禁止转载]