A learning tool which has proved to be extraordinarily helpful for my students is metacognition.  What is metacognition?  Look at the roots of the word.  Meta has many meanings, but for our purposes we will use this one:  "going beyond or higher, transcending; used to form terms designating an area of study whose purpose is to examine the nature, assumptions, structure, etc. of a (specified) field."  Cognition means "the process of knowing in the broadest sense, including perception, memory, and judgment" (Webster's New World Dictionary). Putting these two meanings together, you can see that metacognition means examining "the nature, assumptions, structure, etc." of thinking and learning.  You will be studying your own process of knowing -- about writing and your role as a writer -- by keeping track of what you do and how you do it this semester.  Developing your ability to analyze and change what you are doing and how and why will help you succeed both in college and in life.

At each state in the writing process, you will think about -- and try to learn from -- what you are doing.  At the end of the semester you will write an "autobiography or case study of your [reading and] writing . . . throughout the semester.  You will draw heavily on your process [writing] for this assignment."

"The best time to do process writing is right after you have been writing.  The goal is to find out what really happened -- the facts of what occurred on that particular occasions.  Don't struggle for conclusions; trust that they'll come."

Your process letter may take "the form of a story of your writing session.  Another good approach is to plunge into an exploration of what was most  difficult or frustrating for you in that session.  Explore what happened.  What led to this difficulty?  How did you deal with it?  Tell everything you can.  Interesting insights often come.  In short, you can use process writing as a way to get some power over what is difficult for you in your [reading and] writing.  As you explore difficulties or frustrations over a number of sessions, you will begin to figure out how to avoid trouble" (Elbow, Peter and Pat Belanoff.  A Community of Writers, Third Edition.  Boston:  McGraw-Hill, 2000, 14-15).