Most teachers say that their students lack confidence and quality in their writing. Sometimes it is because the students do not know how to plan it properly. Now let`s look at some sugestions about pre- writing stage.

PLANNING (PRE-WRITING) Pre-writing is any activity in the classroom that encourages students to write. It stimulates thoughts for getting started. In fact, it moves students away from having to face a blank page toward generating tentative ideas and gathering information for writing. The following activities provide the learning experiences for students at this stage:

GROUP BRAINSTORMING Group members share ideas about the topic. Spontaneity is important here. There areno right or wrong answers. Students may cover familiar ground first and then move off to more abstract or wild territories.

CLUSTERING Students form words related to a stimulus supplied by the teacher. The words are circled and then linked by lines to show discernible clusters. Clustering is a simple yet powerful strategy: Its visual character seems to stimulate the flow of association. . . and is particularlygood for students who know what they want to say but just can’t say it.

RAPID FREE WRITING Within a limited time of 1 or 2 minutes, individual students freely and quickly write downsingle words and phrases about a topic. The time limit keeps the writers’ minds tickingand thinking fast. Rapid free writing is done when group brainstorming is not possible or because the personal nature of a certain topic requires a different strategy.

WH-QUESTIONS Students generate who, why, what, where, when and how questions about a topic. More such questions can be asked of answers to the first string of wh-questions, and so on. This can go on indefinitely.In addition, ideas for writing can be elicited from multimedia sources (e.g., printed material, videos, films), as well as from direct interviews, talks, surveys, and questionnaires. Students will be more motivated to write when given a variety of means for gathering information during pre-writing.