烤蛋糕，烤纸

你试过烤蛋糕吗? Whether you bake a cake from scratch or use a boxed recipe, cakes take a lot of work! From finding and measuring out the ingredients to mixing them together to putting the batter in the oven, 做蛋糕需要时间, 耐心, 并努力使. Writing is similar to the process of baking a cake. Whether it be a poem for your creative writing class, a research paper for your core history class, 甚至是学术展示, all forms of writing require these three main ingredients: time, 耐心, 和工作. By comparing the process of baking a cake to writing, we can understand the importance of each step in the writing process.

第一步:收集材料. Ingredients for cakes may include eggs, 面粉, 和糖, but ingredients for our papers may include a main idea/argument, 一篇论文, 两个主体段落, 支持的证据, 最后是结论. 有时, the ingredients might be a little different depending on what kind of cake we are baking or what kind of writing we are completing, 不过没关系! Just be sure you pay close attention to the recipe and assignment prompt to know what ingredients you will need. 结合时, the ingredients for a cake create that spongy goodness we all love, and the ingredients for the paper create an outline for a well-rounded idea or argument.

Step 2: Combine ingredients and bake. After mixing your ingredients together, you put the mixture into an oven. For our writing, this is where we write the final main ideas of our paper and finish our rough draft. 此时此刻, our cake is not decorated and our papers may not have many details, but we have the foundation for adding those details later.

第三步:放凉. When you take your cake out of the oven, you have to let the cake sit and cool before you take it out. Otherwise, the cake might collapse and fall apart. When it sits, the cake is allowed to become one solidified unit. We can apply this concept to our writing as well! 有时, our writing needs to sit for a day or two in our minds before we begin to edit. We might think to ourselves, “What do I need to possibly change? Are there any necessary ideas I forgot?” That way, we can plan what we will do next.

第四步:涂上面包屑. Now that our cake is out of the oven and our rough drafts are done, it is time to focus on the crumb coat. A crumb coat is when we first frost our cake and the frosting has specks of cake crumbs in it requiring touch-ups. 类似的, 在我们的草稿中, we may notice organizational issues, 需要加强的想法, 或者论文中的缺陷. While addressing these issues may be messy as we move things around and delete or add information, it is necessary to ‘clean up’ our papers and adjust as needed.  

第五步:装饰. As we add the final touches to our cake, we can add final touches to our papers. This step will help ensure we fine-tune any lingering issues such as weak sentence structure, 可怜的, 词的选择, 语法错误. While decorating cakes may involve frosting, 洒, 和蜡烛, final touches for writing include using 语法 (an online site that identifies grammatical errors within your paper), a thesaurus (helpful for finding synonyms and antonyms), the Purdue OWL (an online website that has explanations and guides for various writing strategies), and handouts from our own 写作工作室 here 在欧文的康考迪亚大学.

第六步:享受! Now that our cake is done and we have finished our papers, it is time to eat and relax! The writing process is very similar to baking as there are necessary steps to consider as we transfer our ideas from brain to paper. While some liberties may be taken, having a guideline to follow is always helpful. 通过一个指导方针, you can ensure that your writing goes through various stages to continually develop and mature. 还记得, writing is a multi-step process involving both work and time, but it can also be fun and enjoyable. Just like eating a good piece of cake.

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Ingrid Becker is a senior 在欧文的康考迪亚大学. She is majoring in liberal studies, elementary education with a concentration in Christ College. As an avid procrastinator, she is often reading (her favorite book is Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë!), hanging out with her friends, grabbing some boba, or going on spontaneous adventures. Writing has always been a passion of hers, and her love for writing led her to join Concordia’s speech team. It gives her great joy to be able to write about and perform topics that are of importance to her. She has experience working with MLA, APA, and CMS formats. She loves tackling papers head on like she’s heading into a battle, so she is here to assist students in any way that she can!