All too often international graduate students become paralyzed when asked to write in a Western academic context. They are concerned about their grammar and formatting and they lose sight of the assignment's meaning and purpose. In addition, the students, who already have an undergraduate degree related to their field of graduate study, often forget about their content area expertise in their concern for producing "correct" work for their professors in their graduate classes. In the beginnign phases of recognizing writing as a process, researcher Peter Elbow examined the uses of freewriting in his classrooms, calling it the best way to get out ideas in a disorganized fashion so that the editing and organizing can go on later in the writing process. (Elbow 1973) He likens the freewriting process to the use of voice; a writers voice must be formulated and created before it can be molded and shaped (Elbow 1973). Therefore, freewriting is one of the biggest gifts to give international students so they can find their voice and create authentic text in later drafts. Remind the students of their expertise in the field via allowing for free expression of ideas through the use of free writing. It is a first step for the students in creating the academic texts that will be necessary throughout their academic careers.Resource: Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford UP, 1973