Research confirms what most of us know when we reflect on how we, as professional writers or scholars, use writing to complete an article, report, or project: we use writing at almost every phase of the process . Unlike many of our students, very few of us simply "write up" our findings for an essay, book, or grant proposal at the very last minute.

We use writing to generate ideas, either while we are reading or just thinking and planning an early draft. We use writing to organize our plans for a piece, and we often share what we write with our peers. While writing, we often think about other similar pieces we've seen and ways we want to depart from those models.

Sharing Our Writing Tools with Our Students

WAC / WID teachers assign writing throughout the semester, not just for midterms, finals and end-of-semester term papers. This does not mean that they assign more writing, but that they assign different types at different times. They often break large paper assignments into parts, or assign shorter exercises that culminate in major projects.

Click on the buttons at the top of this page to find examples of different aspects of WAC/WID teaching developed in the City College Writing Fellows Program -- how to use writing during class to focus discussions; model workshops on writing while reading, to annotate texts; help in sequencing assignments across a semester, and more.