In addition to enabling students to discover ideas and providing them with raw materials that they can shape into polished drafts, free writing can give students experience, thus making them more comfortable with writing. Beginning each class with free writing activities on topics of enough interest that they distract reluctant writers from self-consciousness can be a very successful activity. Formats such as self-analysis, role playing, description, or argumentation may vary, but the instructions for free writing are basically the same: write rapidly, whatever comes to mind, without worrying about spelling, mechanics, or awkwardness. Feel free to experiment, there is no right or wrong; free writing will never be corrected or graded. Free writing is a process, not a finished product. One reason why some students write poorly is that much of their previous instruction emphasized correct surface features rather than the steps real writers follow toward their finished product. Volunteers reading their writing aloud and students responding to each other's writing are among alternatives to grading. Free writing can create conditions like those in which children acquire language: through trial and error they succeed in constructing an expanded and more competent grammar, and their joy in the process is both an end in itself and a means to further achievement. (HTH)