How do I know what I think until I see what I say ? —E.M.Forster

There is no question that in academic education you must be able to write well. As an academic, a considerable part of your life is spent writing and, if successful, publishing your work. As a student, developing your research skills is connected to writing, and you are judged on the basis of what you have written. As a student in the Netherlands, as in other European countries, you probably have to learn written composition by an instructional method that can best be described as “learning by doing” (Couzijn, 1995; EATW, 2001). You work on an assignment and, when you are finished, your teacher will judge it and write some comments in the margins. Such a method does not provide for process instruction, the feedback you get, if you get any, is often not well structured, and you almost certainly do not get that feedback when you need it most. As a result, you have little opportunity to evaluate and correct yourself (Couzijn, 1995).