Brainstorming and Outlining

Brainstorming is a thought process that helps us generate ideas for writing.

Steps to brainstorm ideas

Step 1: Write down everything – everything that comes to your head that is connected to your topic.

Example 1: You are asked to write an essay on “The Effects of moving to a new country”. You can start by asking yourself:

What will happen if I move to a new country?o Will I miss family and friends?o Will I be lonely?o Will I find myself in a completely new environment?o Will I get more life experience?

At this stage, you don’t have to worry about writing a paragraph. All you have to do is, listing down everything connected to your topic.

Step 2: Go through your list of words or phrases and then cross out anything that is repeated and that is not directly related to your topic.

Example 2: Write an essay on the advantages of “Reading”.

Advantages?

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Entertainment Language Expensive Knowledge Education

Now, looking at the above list of words, which one is not directly related to your topic? Is there a repeated idea? Yes, there is!

Not directly related = Expensive : since the topic is about the advantages of reading, the expense of reading materials is not relevant here; it should be crossed out.

Repeated = knowledge and education: since both of them mean the same, you have to choose one and cross out the other.

Step 3: Mapping: it is grouping your ideas together in order to organize your thoughts for the development of your paragraphs:

Example 3: Look how mapping is done for the topic ‘Environmental Issues my city’.

As you can see two main points are connected to the topic. Under the first main point, i.e. “nearby freeway exchange” there are two sub-points while there are three sub-points for the other main topic ‘growing population’.

Mapping helps us see which point goes under which paragraph. In other words, it helps us logically organize and develop our ideas into a paragraph.

Outlining: Time order or order of importance

At this stage, all you have to do is decide which box should be the second (third or fourth) paragraph. REMEMBER, your essay always need to have an introductory paragraph, which states what you want to talk about in the essay.

You can decide on the order of your paragraph based on either time or importance.

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(taken from: http://apessay.com/order/?rid=998e5608bad59369)

Time: What is the first effect of moving to a new country that people feel? Is it loneliness? Or Excitement?..... It’s up to you to decide which effect should come first!

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Importance: What is (the most, more, the least) important effect of moving to a new country here? Is it meeting new people and learning new culture? Or is it missing family and friends? You can also reverse the order, i.e. you can move from the least important to the most important.

[Introduction Paragraph]

Body Parg. 1: Positive Effects Excitement about meeting new people/new culture/new environment

Body Parg. 2: Positive Effects (…cont’d) Getting more life experience

Body Parg. 3: Negative Effects

Missing family and friends Experiencing loneliness

[Conclusion Paragraph]

Exercises

1. Brainstorm and organize ideas on at least two of the following topics. Then prepare an outline. Use a rough paper that shows the steps you followed.

Wearing an uncomfortable pair of shoes

Managing stress

Scoring high marks in school

Impacts of positive thinking

Advantages of on-line degrees