Thesis Notes

After having carefully selected and limited your topic, and determined your purpose, audience, language, tone and point of view, your next step is the writing of a first or preliminary draft.

Write this draft rather quickly, without pausing or stopping over details so as not to allow anything to interrupt your thought flow.  Put down everything you know about your topic and write as quickly as you can even if you are not sure of what to say.  Do not try to write and edit at the same time.  The important thing is that you first get all your thoughts down on paper. During draft writing, forget about the spelling grammar and other issues instead focus on any idea that may later be incorporated with the final draft. It is a mental process that takes place before put it on writing.

Writing of the draft is the second stage in the process of writing.  This tentative or first draft will by no means be a final one.  First draft will be the basis of your writing.  It is important to write a draft before writing the final copy of your writing because this will allow you do editing and revising as well as catching any mistakes you might not have caught if only writing a one copy.

Point of view is the position from which a writer looks at his subject.  While pertaining specifically to description, point of view is nonetheless necessary in all writing in order to stay within a context that will insure unity in the paragraph or essay. A spectator sport, for example, could be written from your point of view as a rabid fan; but it could also be written from the viewpoint of a game official, a reporter, or a player’s girlfriend.  You may want to tell us about a trip you took during the holidays or that lovely beach outing you had last summer.  Decide if you want to tell us about it in the present or in the past tense, in the first person or in the second.

Your works as a writer is to establish a point of view early on and to remain in that point of view without unnecessary shifting of tense, number, or person.  Any shift will result in jolting your readers or at the very least, will distract or confuse them.  It is important to have a point of view in your writing to establish order and unity of thoughts.

The writing purpose of the writer should communicate thoughts and feelings with conviction and enthusiasm and provides the overall design that is to govern what the writer has set out to do.

For example, you want to write about pollution.  Why do you want to write about it?  Do you want to inform the reader of some important but little known facts concerning pollution?  Do you want to describe what the city looks like under the smog?  Maybe you want to communicate or share some strong feelings about the dangers posed by excessive pollution.  Knowing why you want to write about a subject will help you to focus and will lead you to organize the data to suit that purpose.

When you sit down to write, ask yourself: who am I addressing?  Who do I want to reach?  It is good to remember that all writing must be directed to a specific audience, for instance, your teacher, a hobby club, a magazine or newspaper editor, or a group of students like yourself  Addressing a specific group of readers will give your writing an immediacy that will catch and hold their interest.

If you have a topic, be sure to learn how to restrict your topic.  Your topic should be specific.  If you have broad topic, you will have to cut it down to manageable proportions. Always limit your topic into specific one.

For example your topic is all about traffic.  It is a huge problem and you will not want to deal with the problem entirely.  Instead, choose the part of the problem that you can write about with some confidence.  All topics can be viewed from different angles and this one, too, can be subdivided into several minor aspects, any one of which can become a topic for a paragraph.  Like for example: (1) describe what streets looks like at peak hours; (2) show how a traffic jam forms at an intersections; (3) focus on possible causes of the problem on the street in front of your school and;  (4) narrate an incident caused by driver behavior; and so on.

If you have topic about television shows, you can cut it into several topics such as noontime shows, noontime shows on Channel 5 or Sunday noontime shows on channel 2.

Let us define what is journal; it is a written record of your thoughts over an indefinite period of time.  To keep journal, you must write as often as you can, paragraph a day, at the very least, schedule journal writing at about the same time everyday, preferably just before getting into bed, so that it becomes a habit and finally, keep all entries in a notebook rather than on loose sheets in order to avoid losing them.

Don’t waste your time by recording your daily activities as if you were writing a diary.  The diary is a record of your daily events while journal is a record of your response to life experiences and events. Journal is use to record thought and ideas such as think of some interesting point brought up in History or Theology or other classes; comment on your other subjects in school; describe your professors and your friends.

Journal writing is a technique is can be used as topic generating devices because it can be used to generate ideas for your paragraphs and later on, for longer compositions.  It can be helpful at any point during the writing process, whether you are writing a paragraph or essay.

In your English class, you will learn the importance of total writing process as a key to the development of the writing skills you will need in order to cope with the demands of collegiate studies. Writing process involves finding a topic, writing your draft and re-writing the final copy. The end result could be a research paper or a three page essay or 5 to 10 sentence paragraph.

In your pre-writing, you will need to find a topic. Sift through a number of ideas in order to find a topic that interest you to write about. Clustering is another technique that can help you when you are trying to find a topic for writing. It is a nonlinear brainstorming process created by Professor Gabriel Lusser Rico of San Jose State University of California.

In clustering, you will begin with one word in the middle of a page and draw a circle around it. Then, as brainstorming, allow your mind to flow freely and write any word that comes to you or anything that the preceding words bring to mind. Each word must be circled and connected to the word that suggested it. When the given time is over, look at the cluster as you allow your mind to go over the words until you find one that seems interesting or that you think you can discuss with some competence or that you can feel strongly about. This technique has an advantage over brainstorming in that you may not only find a topic but supporting points as well.

Brainstorming is a most common and popular as well as time-tested means to explore the mind for ideas and an invaluable aid in discovering topics for writing. It is one method to choose a right topic for your writing.  It is an effective technique to generate lots of ideas for the specific issue to determine the best idea and it should be performed in the relaxed environment. Everyone brainstorms before start writing to get more ideas in their writing.

Prepare a blank page and start at the top and write down as many words and phrases that come to mind to begin brainstorming. After a given amount of time, let say 5 to 15 minutes, stop and go over the list and select the subject that appeals to you the most. The topic you will be chosen should be dictated by your personal interest, background and knowledge.  Always remember to select what you are most comfortable with and what feel most about and what you know best.

After choosing the topic, you will begin your pre-writing. Have fun!

One of the most difficult tasks in Technical Writing subject is finding a topic for your research paper.  At first, you are excited for your research because you choose a topic that is popular but after a few days, you will change another topic because although this topic is popular, you can’t find enough information and data for your research. It is totally a wasted of time and effort so make sure that your topic is interest you.

Always remember that to select a topic; it should something that interests you personally so that you can project some enthusiasm and emotion in your writing.  Also, you should be knowledgeable about your topic so that you can have something worthwhile to say to your readers.

Your experiences, family, ambitions, goals and dreams are the best source of topic.  And if there are topics outside yourself that you may find interesting but which you are not confident enough to discuss, you will have to make an effort to gather information by interviewing the right people, reading books, magazines, journals and newspapers or consulting references books in the library.

1. Choose a subject that interests you but from which you can still learn much.
2. Choose a subject that is not broad.
3. Choose a subject not too difficult, one for which you can find materials from popular magazines or books aimed at general reading.
4. Choose a subject that has some interest for the average reader.

Once you have settled upon a subject, you are now ready to gather materials.  Begin by defining the specific problem with which you wish to deal. Select only materials related specifically to your problem.

The sources of materials are the following: observation or experience, interview, library and special bulletin and reports.

If your source of materials is books, you will need to take note the following: the author or editor, title of the book, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, and call number. If you use magazines as source of material, you will need to the author and title of the article, name of magazines or newspaper, volume number, date of issue, and page number.

1. Prevention of unnecessary duplication. The problem must not have been investigated before. If the problem is investigated before, it may be the subject of another study but with different assumptions, different methods, or different ways of analyzing data.
2. Practical value of the problem. The result of the research study should use to improve practices and concepts.  It can use of those who may want to make use it.
3. Researcher’s interest in the problem. The researcher should select a problem not because of research popularity or someone wants him to investigate it but because it appeals to his interest.
4. Availability of data on the problem. A fruitful results yield if data on the problem is available.
5. Special qualification of the researcher to attack the problem. The researcher whose field is medicine is eminently qualified to investigate problems in medicine; we cannot say that he is qualified to undertake research in other field.
6. Time required to investigate the problem.  The research should be conducted within a reasonable period of time.
7. Cost of investigating the problem. Conducting a research project needs the expenditure of money such as questionnaires, tools, xerox, etc. The cost should be reasonable meaning it is within the means of the researcher.