The writing process is most successful when they write from the deep knowledge of their own rich cultural, community, and school learning experiences. Discussing a topic before putting it in print facilitates clarification of ideas and the building of rich descriptive words in a collaborative social dialogue before actual writing takes place. The first draft of the e-mail message focuses first on content ideas and then on organization of ideas, on sentence syntax, and on spelling. The first draft can be typed on the computer using a word processing program. The conferencing process is an important time for clarifying meanings and talking together about the ways words could make the text more descriptive.
Careful attention needs to be given to define vocabulary indigenous to a culture or context.
The writer does the final editing. After conferencing, the writer then does a final editing of the e-mail message with careful attention to clear sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation. The spelling feature of a word processing program is an important tool for final editing. How much of what is described in the transmissions needs explanation or description for an audience from a different culture. This makes for interesting class discussion prior to transmission.