- Hey, everyone. In this video, I'm going to talk to you about prewriting. Prewriting is part of the writing process. In fact, it's the first part. So let's imagine you have to write an essay for a class, and you don't even know what you want to say. You know what the prompt is. You know what you're supposed to write on. But you have no idea where to start. And this is a common problem that I think a lot of writers have, even me. 

I'm going to demonstrate with you right now in this video how hard it is to come up with ideas but also how important it is to take this step of the process and think about what you want to say before you start writing. It will save you time in the end. I know it doesn't seem like it, but it will. 

So imagine you're given an assignment where you have to write an essay about the importance of people's names or how much their names reflect who they are. Let's just imagine. So you have a variety of different strategies for prewriting that you can use. The first one that I like is free writing. So free writing is when you just write freely about the topic, and you have no idea what direction you're going to go in. 

You're basically having a storm inside of your brain, and it's coming out through your hand, and you're writing as quickly as you can. You could do it on a computer, or you could do it on a piece of paper. But whatever the case is, you should write for at least 5 to 10 minutes, without stopping, without erasing, without worrying about grammar or anything like that. 

In fact, I always tell my students, to not worry about that stuff, why don't you grab a piece of paper, crumple it up, crumple it up, and then open it up, and then start writing on it. Why do you do this? Because now you can see this paper is not perfect. You're not going to turn this in. It's not beautiful. It's all messed up. And that's the point of prewriting. It's for you to have messy ideas. 

You are going to write your ideas on a crumpled-up piece of paper or in your computer or wherever. And you're not going to worry about how you're spelling things, your grammar, how you're saying it. You're not judging yourself. You're just writing. Because later, you're going to use these ideas and put them in your paper. You're not going to turn this in. So let me demonstrate that as an example. 

So now I'm going to show you on the computer. But let's say I'm completely free writing right now. I have no idea what I want to say about this topic. I'm just going to give you an idea, an example of my free write. I'm supposed to write about names and how people's names show their identity. 

I think that people's names sometimes show who they are, but other times, that's not always true. Hmm, what do I really think about this? I have some friends whose names are really important to them, like Jill, whose mother had the same name. 

This is important for her because she's really close to her mom, and they are very similar. So in Jill's case, her name reflects her family, a person she loves, and someone who has similar characteristics. 

Another example of someone is da da da da. OK, so this is an example of a free write. I'm kind of all over the place. It's messy. I misspelled some words. It was hard for me not to go back and fix them. But this is an example of me just letting my thoughts that are in my mind about that topic flow. 

Now, I only did that for a minute. You would want to do that for about 5 to 10 minutes. And then what you want to do is you want to look at your ideas and look for pattern-- or not even look at anything. Maybe just writing it out helps you focus and get an idea. 

OK, another step you can take for prewriting or another strategy you can use for prewriting is something that involves asking questions. So asking questions. So I'll show you-- again, you could use a crumpled-up piece of paper to really get you to not worry about how it looks or how organized your ideas are. You don't need to have it be beautiful. 

So let me show you an example here of the question strategy. So we have questions like who? What? When? Where? Why? How? These questions, you might not be able to answer all of them, but you can try. So think about your topic names. How do people's names reflect who they are? Do people's names reflect who they are? 

So I can think of who in my life I think does have a name that reflects who they are? And I wrote about Jill in my free write. Jill and her mother, my kids. Who else? Oh, my nephews. They have the same name as their dad. So I'm thinking of whose name reflects. So now later in my paper, I can use these people as examples, maybe. 

What? What do I want to say? What do I want to say about this topic? Or what is my opinion? Yes, I believe that some people's names reflect who they are, and it's important to respect their names because of that. That's what I believe. That's what I think. When? I might not be able to answer this question. I don't know. I'm going to skip this. 

Where? I think this is important at work, at school, and families that we recognize this. Why? Oh, that's a good one. This one I could probably write a lot about. Why? Why is it important? This is important-- or recognizing that some people's names reflect who they are is important because their names connect to their family, their culture, their past somehow. There's many ways. 

Now, just this part right here, where I'm saying why, I can do more questions and answer more questions about who, in this case, things like that. So this is another technique. As you can see, I'm still kind of lost. I'm still kind of confused. I don't have a great-- I still don't have a grasp, but I have a little bit more clarity about what I want to say about this topic because I've used the questioning strategy. 

All right, another strategy that you can use is just listing, making a list or writing messy things on your paper. Again, if you're using a piece of paper, mess it up. Make it all messy. But if you want to use a computer, and I can show you here, you can make a list. 

So here, I'm just going to make a list of people whose names reflect their identity. This is just people I know. So my friend Jill, my nephews, my cousin. And I'm-- this is for me. I'm thinking of people whose names have a deep connection with their identity because, later, I can use them as examples and elaborate on these examples. 

Another list I could make is I can make ways that names reflect who people are. What are those ways? Well, they reflect our culture. They might reflect someone's religion. They might reflect someone's family. They might reflect someone's language. They might reflect somebody's-- it could be so many things. 

I'm brainstorming. I'm thinking right now. So I clearly don't have all the answers. I really don't. But by doing this, I'm getting ideas. I'm getting ideas. I can say, wow, yeah, actually, there's a lot that I can say just about how names reflect culture because in that, we can see language also. We could see religion. So all of these parts actually are part of culture. I can say a lot about this. 

And then finally, a last and then probably my favorite brainstorming or free writing-- or sorry, prewriting activity is just making a word map or a cluster map or idea map. There are so many ways you can call it. But it looks like this. 

So you put your topic in the middle. You make a circle on your paper, and you put your topic. So let's just say ways people's names reflect their identity. OK. How do people's names reflect their identity? This is my topic. OK, so what I can do is I have my topic in the middle. I'll just draw lines outside of that circle, maybe like three or four. And then at the end of them write other circles. Let's write more circles, draw more circles. 

So ways that people's names reflect their identity is their names can reflect their religion. Their names can reflect their family. Their names can reflect their language. And just in general, they can reflect their culture. So I can come up with more, but I don't have to. Now, from these smaller little circles, I can come up with even more. So here, I can come up with examples. Or I can come up with reasons or anything I want to say. 

Maybe I can find examples of people whose names reflect their religion. And if those people really do have a connection with their religion. Like my friend John, that name reflects-- it's a Christian name. OK, is John close to his name? And I could give more details in even smaller circles here. 

Language-- different names are from different languages. Just by seeing somebody's name written down, even if you've never met them, you might notice that they might speak another language or not. They just have a different name that comes from a different language, and that can give you information about who they are or not. Maybe they don't speak that language, but there is some connection perhaps. So Spanish or any other language. There could be any-- Vietnamese, all these different names. 

Or family. Maybe they have a name that has-- they have multiple last names. Well, that can reflect their family. So they might have multiple last names. Or maybe they have a name that reflects their mother's last name, their father's last name. Whose last name do they have? 

Or maybe they were named after someone. Maybe they were named after someone, so like a namesake. Maybe they're named after their dad. OK, so I'm coming up with lots of ideas here because I am brainstorming, and I'm using this cluster map. Now, I might not have everything I want here, but at least I might have three ideas. And I think three is a magical number. I always tell my students, think of three. 

If you've been able to grab three ideas from doing any of those prewriting strategies, now you can start writing your outline. So you can come up with a plan for what you want to say. So you might say something on a scratch outline-- I like to use scratch outlines. So you might say people's names reflect their identity. 

Now, this is a draft. It's a very simple sentence. But this is my thesis right here. This is my point. This is my answer to the question. People's names reflect their identity. Now, all I need are three ways that their names reflect their identity. In one way, their names can reflect their culture. 

And more specifically, their names can reflect their family. And then even more-- and also, their names can reflect their religion. So this is a scratch outline. And I've gathered these three points just from doing all that prewriting. And I've also gathered even more specific details like people's names and examples and things like that from my prewriting, which I'll bring in to each body paragraph as I'm writing the paper. 

But this is now my outline, and I kind of have a plan thanks to the prewriting that I did. I hope that was helpful for you. Bye bye.