Blog Post #2

Blog Post #2 Writing as a Process of Discovery -Consuelo Guayara Sánchez 

As a non-native speaker, I found the piece, “Serving ESL Students” very illustrative of the common difficulties non-native speakers encounter in their writing and speaking. The approach provided for the piece on how to effectively help non-speakers with their writing pieces is very helpful in understanding tutoring as a process of facilitating to identify the “logic of error” by the writer in a ‘collaborative negotiation and reformulation’ process. The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors’ Chapter 3 breaks down the ways in which we can help students to go through the different steps of writing maintaining the ownership of their work and reducing the level of frustration.

I whole heartedly agree that writing is a process of discovery, and as such is an exciting, vital process for my own writing. I spend a good amount of time preparing materials, reading peer-reviewed articles, transcribing interviews, highlighting central issues, exploring ways to organize ideas and to feel “ready” to start the writing process. I always want to keep reading new and related material.  Starting to draft always requires time for me to be able to set the tone for the paper. Once I have started the process it is very enjoyable the whole creative process with the expectation of what the final result will be. It becomes a testing process to be able to convey my thoughts in a concise and yet complete way. 
For many of my students writing a thesis statement that allows them to structure their paper is really challenging.

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