1.5 GETTING STARTED: Submitting a Writing Sample

Many writing instructors will want you to provide a writing sample. Why? Well, a writing instructor can look at your writing sample and quickly see what you already know about the common rules of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. They can also get a good feeling for your natural range of vocabulary as well as a clear picture of how you organize your ideas. And if a writing instructor asks for a writing sample during class, then they can also judge your level of fluency, that is, how much and how accurately you can write within a certain time. So you can see that instructors can learn a lot about a student’s current abilities, and that will help to guide the instructor when choosing topics to focus on during the course. For example, if students demonstrate that they can already write clear topic sentences, then the instructor will focus on other things. Finally, it’s very useful to compare a writing sample from the beginning of the course with a writing sample from the end of the course in order to show improvements in your writing over time.