Thoughts On Drafting

Having only been a few days ago, the drafting process of my QRG is still fresh in memory. Here I will evaluate the advice given by the book, "A Student's Guide To First-Year Writing" and its effectiveness as a tool for QRG drafting through my experiences.

It is important to preface this by pointing out that I am no stranger to writing QRGs. I wrote my first in seventh grade and did so many more times through middle and high school. Because of this, the book did not provide me as much aid as it may have to others. Thus, I will try to evaluate its usefulness from a more objective perspective.

The thing that provided the most insight was what the book referred to as "PIE," standing for: point, illustation, explanation. If you read my previous post, then you might remember how I emphasized that a QRG must effectively convey information in a brief, digestable matter. PIE is a powerful tool to achieve this end. It allows the writer to take a specific point of a subject, and illuminate it through scaffolding. In my first post I already spoke of the many uses and solidity that scaffolding holds. It allows the learner to get a picture in their head of what the subject is, and then explains it in further detail - giving the reader a well-rounded understanding.

The rest of book's section on drafting was helpful, but not quite so directly. The illustration made mirrored more of a rhetorical analysis or just essay writing as a whole rather than a QRG. Because of this, only the basic fundamentals of each topic as really effective. Teachings like paragraph order and thesis statement building are useful tools for the writer of a QRG, but they are useful tools for any other writer as well. These, for the most part, are not new information, but reminiscent of high school or even middle school english class.

I am not new to QRGs, nor am I new to anything within the drafting section of the book. But I can say with certainty that I have used all of these concepts continuously with success, and that they are a powerful tool in any writers arsenal, QRG or not.