Complexity in Planning a Formal Writing Assignment

Complexity can be defined as something being difficult to do or a complicated process. In writing, there are many complexities involved, such as, the role of the working memory, planning a formal writing, sentence generation, and the revision phase of writing. Working memory plays a major role in writing. Working memory can be defined as using the memory that you already have stored in your brain on what you are currently trying to process. While in this process, there are three components of working memory that should be active in order to be successful: the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and the central executive. The phonological loop stores a limited number of sounds for a short period of time.

When writing, there is a discovery that it takes people more time to remember all the syllables, which made writing difficult. In the visuospatial sketchpad, visual and spatial information is being processed. In this aspect, people are required to remember certain visual shapes, which made writing difficult. The spatial part was not an issue because writing doesn’t require you to remember your location. In the central executive (executive function), both the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad are put to use, on top of including the episodic buffer. These three together plays a huge role in planning, attention, and coordination, which is essential for writing at all times.

When planning a formal writing assignment, it is important to prewrite. Prewriting is when you make an outline of what you are going to include in your paper. This is difficult because it requires you to really think and process what your paper is going to be about. If you don’t normally write, then this is the step that you will most likely spend most your time on. When generating a sentence, you must go back to that outline and translate those ideas to create a sentence, which can be very difficult if you had a problem with that section to begin with. Many students believe that if they use intelligent words such as exquisite instead of beautiful, then it will make their paper sound ten times better. However, according to research by Oppenheimer (2006), people actually judge writers to be more intelligent if their essay uses shorter words.

When revisiting your writing, students make sure that everything in their paper makes sense and is grammatically correct to their ability. This can be difficult because it’s time consuming and you will be more likely to rush and get it over with. For example, college students in one study estimated that they had spent 30% of their writing time on revising their papers, but observations of their actual writing behavior shows that they consistently spent less than 10% of their time on revisions (levy & Ransdell, 1995). An explanation for this is because many students write their papers last minute and think that it’s okay. However, if someone else reads your paper then they will be more likely to find mistakes that you overlooked.

I am not a good writer. Every time I have to write a paper, I am discouraged. I always start by just staring at the passage and trying to understand it, but my mind is most likely blank. I normally start and stop my paper and just find information as I go. While writing papers, I should try to come up with an outline, but I just be too overwhelmed. While generating sentences, I try to use words that I know the definition to. I feel like if I can’t tell you the definition off the top of my head then I shouldn’t be using it, so I think I’m good in that area. When revising, I am in that 10% category that takes the least amount of time to revise the paper, but my papers are not written last minute. Just like others, I feel that’s my paper and I know what I am doing or trying to say. In reality, I should have at least one person revise my paper because I tend to overlook a handful of mistakes. I don’t realize them until I have already tuned in an assignment. After completing this assignment, I now understand what it takes to write a successful paper and I need to do better to advance my skills.