Writing Strategies
Writing is communication. Any writing you do communicates something, to a particular audience, for a particular reason.
Before you start to write, it is important to assess the writing situation (ask)
What are you writing for?
How will it be presented?
Subject
What are you required to write about? (specifics)

Purpose Why are you writing? 1. To entertain 2. To express your opinion 3. To explain something (exposition) 4. To persuade (argument)
What do you want your work to accomplish?

Audience
Your audience will influence what you say and how you say it, this includes how much information you give and whether you adopt a serious or friendly tone Who will read your writing? What do they know about your subject? What do they need to know? How do you want them to respond? What do you want them to think or do

Pre Writing
There are several techniques that can help you generate ideas and information about your subject or find a subject to write about

Journaling – keeping a diary of ideas. This can be done on paper or on a computer. The idea is that you write for a few minutes every day, keeping notes about anything that you see hear or experience. When you take a look at what you have read, you will probably come away with some good ideas to write about.

Observation
You can find a good subject or ideas by paying attention to what is going on around you.

Freewriting
This involves writing without stopping for a certain amount of time. Write down the name of your subject at the top of a page. Then list any ideas that come to mind when thinking about your subject. The goal is to generate ideas and information from within. Concentrate on what you will say and not how you will say it. You can write sentences, phrases or words, it doesn’t have to make sense or have any logical order.

Brainstorming
Focusing intently on a subject for a fixed period of time, list every idea and detail about a particular subject that comes to mind.

Clustering
Uses the free association technique, but creates a diagram of ideas. Write your subject in the middle of the page and draw a circle around it. Diagram ideas by branching outward

Asking Questions
List the things that you don’t know or need to find out about your subject and then writing out the answers.

Writing Reasonably
To establish common ground between you and your reader it is important to demonstrate logical thinking and fairness toward the opposition.

For your argument to be successful:
It must not: * Misjudge reader’s actual feelings * Raise emotional issues that are irrelevant to the claims and evidence.

Instead, you should: * Write concisely using correct spelling and grammar * Maintain a sincere and balanced tone.