Research suggests that most students perceive writing assignments as difficult. Some types of writing, those that are unrelated to one’s school or job, are easy, for example, e-mail and text messaging. Writing e-mails is easy and pleasant even when it is job-related. In this section we will talk about the writing tasks that your job or school requires. This is the kind of writing that you have to do, not the kind of writing that you want to do for fun. Writing tasks involve active creation of information or documents by typing or by writing with a pen/pencil. Some job- or school-related tasks may involve both reading and writing. For the sake of simplicity, those tasks where writing constitutes 25% or more of the total time spent belong to the category of writing tasks (this is an arbitrary cutoff). The following are some examples of writing tasks: writing of term papers, scientific articles or research grant proposals, writing of software, performance of certain types of calculations, and preparation of slides for a presentation.
