Writing Process and Text Construction
Writing Process and Text Construction tests whether you can plan, draft, revise and edit for a stated audience, purpose and form - and whether you can repair a weak paragraph placed in front of you. Most items are applied: choose the best revision, the best transition, or the sentence that should be added or deleted.
Know the mode before you plan
- Narrative: tells a story through scenes, sensory detail and change.
- Expository/informative: explains through a thesis, topic sentences and evidence, in an objective tone.
- Argumentative: takes a position - claim, reasons, evidence, counterclaim, rebuttal.
- Descriptive: paints a picture for a purpose.
- Procedural: ordered steps in the imperative, with materials and cautions.
Planning tools
- RAFTS - Role, Audience, Format, Topic, Strong verb. Settling these five first prevents most tone problems.
- Organizers: a web for generating ideas, a timeline for narrative, a T-chart for compare–contrast, a claim-and-reasons chart for argument.
Paragraph architecture
Topic sentence → evidence → explanation (the "so what") → link. An unintegrated quotation ("The article says 'students who garden eat more vegetables.'") earns nothing until you state what it shows.
Transitions by job
- Addition: moreover, in addition, likewise
- Contrast: however, nevertheless, in contrast
- Cause–effect: consequently, therefore, as a result
- Sequence: first, subsequently, finally
- Example: for instance, specifically
- Conclusion: ultimately, in short
Revising is not editing
- Revise for ideas, organization, voice, word choice and sentence variety (Add, Remove, Move, Substitute).
- Edit for conventions (Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation, Spelling).
- When a prompt says revise, an answer that only fixes a comma is almost always wrong.
Worked example
Original: "I think school gardens are good. In the article it says students who garden eat more vegetables. Also it's fun." Reasoning: there is no topic sentence carrying a claim, the evidence is dropped in without a frame, no explanation follows it, and "Also it's fun" delivers an opinion as a fragment. A strong revision names the claim, frames the source, interprets it, and varies the opening: "School gardens do more than decorate a schoolyard; they change what students eat. A district report on garden programs notes that participating students ate more vegetables at lunch - a shift that matters because habits formed at twelve tend to hold." Notice what the revision does not do: it invents no statistic and does not switch the claim.
Traps that cost marks
- Answering an editing question when the prompt asked you to revise.
- Adding evidence and never explaining it.
- Stacking "also" and "another" instead of choosing precise transitions.
- Ending with a conclusion that merely restates the introduction.