The writing process: complete overview - Virginia EOC Writing

The writing process is the first half of the Virginia EOC Writing SOL, tested through multiple-choice and technology-enhanced items on a student draft. You plan, organize, develop, and revise, the same moves you make when you write your own composition. This site breaks the writing process into five skills that prepare you for the selected-response section and feed the direct-writing Short Paper. This overview maps the five skills, how the EOC tests them, and how to study them.

The five writing-process skills

Each skill is a stage of producing or improving a composition.

• Planning and organizing. Setting a clear focus and ordering ideas into an introduction, body, and conclusion. See planning and organizing a composition.
• Developing and elaborating. Supporting a point with specifics and explaining how they prove it. See developing and elaborating ideas.
• Revising for unity and coherence. Cutting off-topic sentences, ordering ideas, and choosing transitions. See revising for unity, coherence, and transitions.
• Word choice and sentence variety. Choosing precise, vivid words and varying and combining sentences. See word choice, tone, and sentence variety.
• Revising and editing item types. Understanding the selected-response formats and what each tests. See revising and editing item types.

The thread through every skill: writing is a series of choices

The habit that runs through the writing process on the EOC is treating every element, focus, support, order, transitions, words, sentences, as a deliberate choice that serves the reader. A focus statement makes a clear claim; development answers the reader's "in what way?"; unity keeps every sentence on topic; transitions signal how ideas relate; precise words and varied sentences read smoothly. The selected-response section asks you to recognize the most effective choice in a draft, and the Short Paper asks you to make those choices yourself. Either way, good writing is purposeful, not accidental.

How the EOC tests the writing process

• Multiple choice asks for the best focus, developing detail, order, transition, or word.
• Drop-down embeds choices inside a sentence (transitions, word forms, punctuation).
• Hot text asks you to click a sentence to delete or a word to change.
• Drag-and-drop asks you to order paragraphs or sort ideas.
• Fill-in-the-blank asks you to type a short answer.

How to study the writing process

1. Start every piece with a clear focus, then group and order ideas before drafting.
2. Develop with specifics and elaborate, answering "in what way?" and "so what?".
3. Revise for unity and coherence, cutting strays and signalling relationships with transitions.
4. Sharpen word choice and vary sentences, combining choppy ones without creating run-ons.
5. Practice the item formats with released VDOE items so the online tools never slow you down.

For the official exam materials

VDOE publishes the 2017 English Standards of Learning, SOL practice items, and writing resources on its website. See the 2017 English Standards of Learning, the SOL Practice Items (All Subjects) page, and the English SOL Online Writing Resources. Always practice from released items and study the current standards, because the item types are set by VDOE.