Prewriting

            In the past, I have successfully used a few different prewriting techniques. When I was in junior high and high school my English teachers wanted us to use prewriting when we wrote essays. I remember some of the prewriting techniques I used were listing, clustering/branching, and free writing.
            I remember using listing while writing some of my essays in junior high. It wasn’t my favorite type of prewriting, but one of my teachers liked us to practice using it. When I made lists for my essays I would just write down everything that came to mind that I thought I would be able to use somewhere in my essay.
            Another prewriting technique I successfully used is clustering/branching. This style of prewriting use to be one of my favorites. It made writing my essays a little bit easier. I think this helped me with my essays because I was able to think of ideas for each paragraph and visually see where they would fit into my paper.
            Lastly, I have also used free writing. When I was in high school one of my English teachers had us do free writing in journals every week. She would give us a topic and we had to write about it for a certain amount of time. I didn’t like having to write without being able to give it much thought first. I like to think about and plan out what I am going to write.