writing assignments for first year college students

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Department of English

First-Year Writing Program

Classroom activities.

UConn first-year writing (FYW) courses teach students how to write and share their work through project-based learning.

Our courses emphasize collaboration and discovery. During class, students make progress toward an ongoing academic project. They consult with their instructors and receive feedback from their peers. Classroom activities also introduce students to important concepts and skills needed to complete their project, such as:

• Working with texts.
• Citing sources.
• Contextualizing ideas.
• Revising and reflecting.
• Presenting academic work to diverse audiences.

Because student projects provide the central focus of our courses, instructors should spend most class sessions working with students on their writing.

Below are examples of ways to promote student work and sample activities that instructors can use in their courses. 

Ways to Feature Student Work

Most class sessions should provide students with time to write and work on projects. Students should also practice giving and receiving constructive feedback by engaging with their instructors and peers.

Here are some examples of how to feature student work during class:

• Circulate drafts in process or portions of drafts in any number of ways.
• Ask students to characterize, frame, or situate each other’s work.
• Build things together in a shared online space (e.g., a course bibliography document; an annotation or glossary of key terms; a HuskyCT blog or discussion thread exploring potential extensions of the texts).
• Have students post drafts as discussion threads and assign a peer review process for group members.
• Build time for peer review in and outside of class (through email or course management software).
• Help students build “affinity networks” or writing groups around similar projects.
• Feature a particular project from one student to help work through a problem or issue.
• Share reflective writing and process notes.
• Assign cover letters, informal presentations, formal presentations, or remediation projects (putting the larger project into a new context).

When students do individual or group work in class, block time afterward for the whole class to come together to reflect on the work they completed. To avoid having students simply list what they discussed or found, it may be useful to structure that time as informal presentations or to have groups upload their findings/work to a common digital workspace.

Examples of Class Activities

Below are sample in-class activities, organized by topic, that instructors can use in their classes. Instructors are welcome to use these activities to facilitate writing and group work and to meet the day’s specific learning outcomes.

Working With Difficult Texts

Unpacking difficult passages.

Prepare a handout with difficult passages from the text, or have students identify difficult passages in the reading. Assign students to different groups based on a particular passage. In groups, have students trace how a term or concept is used in a particular passage and in the text as a whole. They should pull specific quotes that help them back up their understanding. Groups should use the textual evidence as a means to begin “translating” the passages. Afterward, they should go back to the text and reflect on why the author(s) used a specific term or concept in the text.

Visually Mapping a Text

A variation of this activity is to have students map the key terms visually. Together in groups, students should map and link key terms used by the author. Maps might not (and perhaps should not) be linear — students are encouraged to see the many ways the terms seem to interact in the text. Afterward, groups can compare maps to add lines or connections that they may not have noticed previously.

Exploring the Uses of a Text

Current, past, or future contexts.

Depending on your course inquiry and assignments, you may want students to consider how class readings can apply to and work in relation to different contexts, especially in the beginning stages of a larger assignment. Your specific learning goals will help determine which context will make most sense for your class to explore.

Current Context : Choose a current issue or have students work together to find a current issue that relates to your course inquiry and the text. Choose yourself or have students select key terms or concepts from the reading to help them examine or analyze the issue. Students will need to conduct research on the issue in groups. Then, on their own, in writing, students should draw connections between the text and issue.

Past Context : Ask students to bring a laptop or tablet to class, or divide them into groups (at least one student in each group should have a laptop). Using their devices, students explore the socio historical context of the reading in order to consider how it might have affected the text’s rhetoric (or vice versa).

Future Context : Have students consider how the text might be useful for future conflicts, issues, or developments in society or academia. The future context may be best paired with either the current or past contexts to demonstrate the development of ideas or movements over time. Students should explore self- or group-generated questions through individual writing, then discuss or otherwise share their ideas.

What’s Missing?

In small groups, students brainstorm for situations or concepts that the reading doesn’t seem to account for and why or how that situation or concept might be important to include or discuss in the conversation. The class makes a list of these various missing pieces, and then students individually reflect on how these choices reflect the priorities and rhetorical strategies of the author. What do their choices reveal about their aims?

What Is This Text? Who Is This Author?

Any assigned text can be accompanied with a small research component designed to help students place the text in a larger context. If you assign a text by Judith Butler, for example, students could be assigned roles to establish this context. One set of students could research Butler the person; another set could say more about what her influential writings are (and what they seek to do); a third set of students could trace the reception and influence of these texts. Based on this research, have students reflect in writing on the significance of these contexts and what these findings demonstrate about academic writing and this specific conversation. Next, use the contexts explored as a jumping-off point for students to begin exploring their next assignment.

Information Literacy and Handling Sources

Citation trail.

One way to begin the conversation about Information Literacy (InfoLit) and how to use sources effectively is to ask students to explore how other writers use sources. Working with the texts used in class, invite students to choose, in groups, one of the works that the author has cited. Have students locate that source, read it (in its entirety if it’s short or just the relevant section if it’s long).

After reading the source, ask students to free write on the source’s main idea, what kind of source it is, and why the author used it. Then, in groups, have students discuss how the author of the class text used the source and how the source is contributing to the class text’s author’s main claims.

After facilitating a brief class discussion of the groups’ findings, have students reflect, individually in writing, on the different ways a writer can use sources and how such choices can inform their own writing.

InfoLit Through Terms, Search Engines, and Databases

As a class, have students brainstorm a research question that engages with the next essay prompt. Afterward, have students brainstorm the kind of sources that may be useful for exploring said question, the fields that may already discussing or provide insight on the topic (like specific news sources or subject specific databases). Then, for each kind of source or each discipline, have students brainstorm key terms and discuss why certain terms are more useful than others in certain searches. After the list has been made, have students determine where to look for this information. From this point, you can decide whether to proceed with the search as a class or to have students to break into groups to explore different terms, search engines, and databases.

You may want to engage your students in a conversation about research questions before this activity or in a prior class period. Students will likely not be sure how to craft meaningful research questions. Be sure that you build in moments for students to reflect in writing on what the activity means for their own research processes.

Documenting the Research Process

As a take-home assignment, have students take screenshots of their research process for a larger project (including pictures of the key terms they use, the search results, the articles they select, etc.) or record their research process. Students can either save the images on their computer or print them (whichever is more convenient). If they took a video, ask them to bring in their computer with the video. In class, have students map out the process—from where they began to where they ended. It may be best to do this on large sheets of paper, index cards, or construction paper. As they map out the process, have students make connections through a freewrite between the choices they made (e.g., how one term led to a new term, how they followed several hyperlinks and where that led them). Once they have finished their map/web and their freewrite, have students pair up and talk through their process and connections. In pairs, students should help each other identify gaps in their research and brainstorm new terms, websites, databases, etc., to explore. At the end, have students write out a research plan for the next portion of their assignment.

Annotated Bibliography

Have students bring an annotated bibliography and the original sources to class. It’s important to stress that this research often includes a lot of excess—simply choosing the first hit is often not the right match for a research project. Have students write about the choices they made in selecting their sources and reflect on how these sources contribute to their developing projects.

An alternative or add-on to this activity is to make students’ in-class work multimodal. With their annotated bibliographies, have students use either Prezi or construction paper and string to create a web that represents connections between sources. Students can address these questions: How do the sources talk to each other? How do they agree or disagree or qualify each other’s discussions? After students create their webs, have them reflect on the gaps that seem to exist in their web or identify the outlying sources that no longer work in their developing projects.

Depending on your course, you may want to make the annotated bibliography a collaborative project, where students contribute the sources they have found to a class archive that other students are encouraged to draw on in their writing projects. Google Docs (or a similar technology) can enable your class to create a “living” bibliography that each student can alter, add to, and improve throughout the semester.

Using Sources

Working with other voices.

Have students highlight all the material borrowed or quoted from another source (including their own previous projects) in their essays in one color, and in a different color highlight all the places where they respond to or analyze those passages. Then ask them to evaluate their use of other voices—or trade papers and discuss with a partner. Are the passages adequately unpacked, explained, and analyzed? Is the reader left hanging? Are there more quotations than the students’ own words? How does the student build on and revise or drop things they wrote about in the previous assignment?

This activity could work well alongside a discussion of the difference between summary and analysis.

Outside View

Have students pass their essays around in groups. Each student should choose at least one quotation in their peer’s paper and answer the following questions: Do you know where the quote is from? Does the writer describe how or why the quote is useful for considering something interesting or troubling about their project? Is the quote integrated into the discussion of the paragraph? Afterward, students can return their papers to the original writer, and students can spend five to ten minutes revising their use of that quote.

Exploring Structure

Reverse outline.

Have students create a reverse outline of a reading, thinking about questions like: Where is the agenda, the method, and the evidence? Is the argument linear? Does the reading present a compelling argument or an interesting idea? Students can do this work individually, in groups, or together as a class. They can also identify what work each paragraph of a challenging section is doing in the author’s argument (beyond what each paragraph is saying). For instance, is a paragraph introducing a key term or idea? Illustrating a key point of evidence?

Be sure to give students time to reflect on what they have discovered through the reverse outline and how it can apply to their own writing. You may want to give them an in-class writing activity that asks them to take their own draft and model it after the essay and reflect on how the new structure influences the content and purpose of their draft.

Mapping the Text

Using the whiteboard, blank paper, or colored construction paper, have students, in groups, create a visual map of the text that they read for class. Encourage them to make design choices that reflect the author’s purpose in the text. Students can then discuss the choices the writer made in response to a specific audience or conversation.

Introduction Workshop

Project (or copy and distribute) a student’s introduction to the class and have students write what in the introduction is helpful for them as readers and what they might still need information on (for instance, if the required texts for the assignment haven’t been introduced). Have them restate the author’s project in their own words. Afterward, students should gather in groups to discuss various strategies for addressing potential issues that may have arisen, and then the whole class can discuss approaches to revision.

Also, before looking at student writing, you might have students consider introductions from the assigned readings, especially if you’re asking students to write in a similar genre. Discussing the readings can then serve as a jumping-off point for looking at student work.

Collaborative Revision

Revision can be one of the toughest aspects of writing for students to fully grasp and take advantage of. Extensively working with revising in class to demonstrate what effective revision can look like helps students to understand that revision is more than simply correcting grammar and word choice. At any stage in the drafting process, working on revision with the entire class can help students conceptualize how revising can be done effectively. Depending on your class and its needs, you may either want to pre-select students whose essays best exemplify an issue the majority of the class is grappling with or have students volunteer their work themselves. If you pre-select students, you’re most likely going to gear your discussion toward a particular issue that the sample drafts exemplify. Self-volunteered drafts may engage several different issues. As students look at the samples, have them think about how the project might be supported with texts from the class, how it contributes new knowledge, and how the writer might move forward in the essay. It may be helpful to have the student identify a specific location where they’re having trouble. As you go about your discussion, you will be modeling ways of responding to texts in peer review. Be sure to make that explicit to the students.

Topic-Specific Workshop

After reading a round of student drafts, you may find that there are common challenges that students are working through. These common issues can be the basis of in-class workshops to help students navigate these particular challenges. Below are two examples, but there are many other writing challenges to work with in class.

Transitions : Some students may be listing their major points in the body of the paper rather than developing a project; consequently, you might call on a student volunteer, or project two anonymous paragraphs from a student paper, to examine how one paragraph moves to the next. Ask students how the two paragraphs might be related and, in groups, have them rewrite the ends and beginnings of the two paragraphs so as to make explicit how the ideas in the paragraphs build on and relate to one another. Have each group present their revisions and discuss their strategies.

In-Text Citations/Using Sources : Using sources effectively in a text is a challenge for many students. Students must not only cite information correctly, but also integrate the quote into their own language and consider how the quote is working with their argument. You may first want to examine an assigned text and, as a whole class or in smaller groups, analyze the author’s use of quotations and other outside sources. Try to push students to decipher the different ways that sources can be used to support a point (using a text like Joseph Harris’s or FYW’s webpage Why Quote? can give students a vocabulary or starting point for discussion). From here, get a volunteer from class (or choose a student ahead of time) and project or distribute a paragraph from their essay. As a class, discuss how the writer could revise their quotations and citations. Then, have students turn to their own texts and work on the way that they use sources in their projects.

Paired Read-Alouds

Pair students and have them read each other’s paper aloud. Paired read-alouds can be used at different points in the drafting process for different purposes. With a rough draft, you can ask: Does the new set of eyes see more places to push the project further? Are there places where the evidence is unclear? Where might more textual support be needed? At a more polished stage, read-alouds can highlight fluency, sentence structure, and grammatical errors.

Useful for working through difficult readings, reverse outlines are also beneficial to students during drafting. Have students reverse outline their own papers, identifying the individual aims and rhetorical moves of each paragraph, and then have them reflect on what they have noticed. Or have students swap papers and reverse outline their peers’ papers, and then return the papers to their original authors. The students could also reflect on what they notice from their peers’ rendering of their projects. In any case, at the end of the activity, give students time to write about and reflect on what the reverse outline has revealed to them about their work and how they’ll use it to move forward with their draft.

For a more multimodal approach, students can create their reverse outlines using Prezi, construction paper, or the like.

Creating Revision Plans from Feedback

Students don’t always know what to do with comments after they receive your feedback or feedback from peers, so it might be useful to build in time for them to prioritize and plan. Have students look at a sample paper with comments first; then engage them in a discussion of how to prioritize and use feedback. Afterward, give them the opportunity to reflect on their own feedback and write a revision plan.

If you’re doing a portfolio in your course or wish for students to document their writing process, you may want to collect and respond to their revision plans or stress that they keep track of these documents.

Writing About Their Own Writing

At any stage in the writing process, ask your students to reflect on the writing that they have done so far, using the following prompts for in-class, informal, ungraded writing: What personal investment do you have in this issue? Why does your argument matter? What counter-interpretations might work against your emerging claims? What are you struggling with most as you approach the draft? How does the way you are writing aid (or complicate) your answers to these first questions? If you choose to, you can discuss these writings as a class or in small groups.

Representing the Writing Process

Have students use markers, pencils, Play-Doh, pipe cleaners—check out the art cart in the First-Year Writing Program office—to draw, make, or sculpt a representation of a certain part of the writing process (perhaps right after students have completed an assignment). Afterward, give them a few minutes to write about their representation. In small groups, students can share their various processes. Doing so allows students to unpack what approaches and strategies worked—it also gives them a chance to see how others approached a similar task.

Creative Synthesis

Near the end of the semester, have students read over their major essays and extract one or two “keywords” or important themes from each. (For instance, if a student wrote an essay about capitalist values in Maus, one keyword from that essay might be “capitalism,” or “homo economicus.”) In a new document, have students write their lists of keywords at the top of the page. They should then write a brief story in class that touches on each of these themes.

It’s not necessary to use the word itself—so, if one keyword is “masculinity,” the student doesn’t actually have to say “masculinity” somewhere in the story, so long as the idea is present. For example, if a student’s keywords were “capitalism,” “dystopia,” and “masculinity,” the student might write a story about a young man in a dystopian society who, in order to prove his masculinity and support his paralyzed father, has to engage in gladiatorial combat. Maybe this gladiatorial combat is televised, with pauses in the fighting for advertisements for men’s deodorant, etc.

“One-Minute Papers”

At the end of a class session, you can ask your students to write short responses to questions like: What is the one big idea or new insight you’ve taken from today’s class? What is still confusing for you? This will help students practice metacognition by allowing them to consider what in their thinking has changed and what remains a challenge for them moving forward.

Writing Across Technology

Key terms and infographics.

Students can mine a text for key terms and concepts in groups. After discussing the terms and concepts in a larger group, the small groups can then use Piktochart or Canva to create an infographic to help explain how a specific term is being used in a text. This exercise can be framed with the following question: Assuming that your audience is future students in this class, how can you visually explain how the author is using [a particular key term]?

Critical and Creative Captioning

Practice using captioning software for videos, such as with YouTube or Amara. Students can consider how captioning functions rhetorically and depends on concepts of audience, context, and purpose. This activity can be used as students work on their own videos (such as a Concept in 60 video), or students can work in groups to caption sections of a short video in class. (Movie trailers often work pretty well here.)

Cover Design

Ask students to use the design concepts from The Academic Writer to analyze the design of a visual text—a book cover works well. After evaluating the effectiveness of the design choices in the text, let students work in groups to propose alternative covers. This can be done on computers (using software like Word, PowerPoint, GIMP, or Illustrator) or with paper and markers. Students can then present their designs (explaining why these designs are effective) and vote on the elements they’d like to include in a reprint of the text.

Electronic Discussion

If all students have access to bring-your-own personal technology (laptops, smartphones, or other mobile devices with internet access), discussions can become hybrid spaces with the use of online platforms. Allowing students to participate in discussions through technology can help second-language writers, students who are shy, and students with disabilities—and can, in fact, help all students contribute in more thoughtful ways, because writing an answer allows for more time to think. The platform being used can be projected, giving everyone easy access to responses. The instructor can choose to read these responses aloud to focus and direct the discussion or ask students to take a couple of moments to quietly compose responses to spark new avenues of inquiry.

Screencasting the Writing Process

Have students use a program like Kaltura or PowerPoint to screencast their writing as they work through a draft at home. Once they have turned in the essay, have students bring the video to class to watch individually. As they watch their videos, have them describe what’s happening and take notes on what they’re noticing about how they write. Afterward, have them discuss in groups what they noticed. After the discussion, have students review their notes and reflect on what went well and what could be worked on as they proceed in their next assignment.

Recorded Elevator Pitches

Sometimes students work through ideas best when they talk about them aloud. When they’re early in the writing or research process, have them pitch their developing ideas to each other in a minute or less and use their smartphones to record their pitch. At the end of the pitch, peers should provide feedback. As students move on to the next partner, they should incorporate the previous partner’s feedback (or make revisions based on their own observations). At the end, have students listen to their pitches and reflect on what changed from one pitch to the next.

3.9 Writing

Where Are You Now?

Assess your present knowledge and attitudes.

Where Do You Want to Go?

Think about how you answered the questions above. Be honest with yourself. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your level of confidence and your attitude about writing?

In the following list, circle the three areas you see as most important to your improvement as a writer:

• Using time effectively
• Using sources effectively and appropriately
• Understanding instructors’ expectations
• Citing sources in the proper form
• Being productive with brainstorming and other prewriting activities
• Sharing my work in drafts and accepting feedback
• Organizing ideas clearly and transitioning between ideas
• Understanding the difference between proofreading and revision
• Developing ideas fully
• Drafting and redrafting in response to criticism
• Using correct sentence mechanics (grammar, punctuation, etc.)
• Using Web sites, reference books, and campus resources
• Developing an academic “voice”

Think about the three things you chose: Why did you choose them? Have you had certain kinds of writing difficulties in the past? Consider what you hope to learn here.

__________________________________________________________________

How to Get There

Here’s what we’ll work on in this chapter:

• Understanding why writing is vital to your success in college
• Learning how writing in college differs from writing in high school
• Understanding how a writing class differs (and doesn’t differ) from other classes with assigned writing
• Knowing what instructors in college expect of you as a writer
• Knowing what different types of assignments are most common in college
• Using the writing process to achieve your best work
• Identifying common errors and become a better editor of your own work
• Responding to an instructor’s feedback on your work in progress and on your final paper
• Using sources appropriately and avoiding plagiarism
• Writing an in-class essay, for an online course, and in group writing projects

The Importance of Writing

Writing is one of the key skills all successful students must acquire. You might think your main job in a history class is to learn facts about events. So you read your textbook and take notes on important dates, names, causes, and so on. But however important these details are to your instructor, they don’t mean much if you can’t explain them in writing. Even if you remember the facts well and believe you understand their meaning completely, if you can’t express your understanding by communicating it—in college that almost always means in writing—then as far as others may know, you don’t have an understanding at all. In a way, then, learning history is learning to write about history. Think about it. Great historians don’t just know facts and ideas. Great historians use their writing skills to share their facts and ideas effectively with others.

History is just one example. Consider a lab course—a class that’s as much hands-on as any in college. At some point, you’ll be asked to write a step-by-step report on an experiment you have run. The quality of your lab work will not show if you cannot describe that work and state your findings well in writing. Even though many instructors in courses other than English classes may not comment directly on your writing, their judgment of your understanding will still be mostly based on what you write. This means that in all your courses, not just your English courses, instructors expect good writing.

In college courses, writing is how ideas are exchanged, from scholars to students and from students back to scholars. While the grade in some courses may be based mostly on class participation, oral reports, or multiple-choice exams, writing is by far the single most important form of instruction and assessment. Instructors expect you to learn by writing, and they will grade you on the basis of your writing.

If you find that a scary thought, take heart! By paying attention to your writing and learning and practicing basic skills, even those who never thought of themselves as good writers can succeed in college writing. As with other college skills, getting off to a good start is mostly a matter of being motivated and developing a confident attitude that you can do it.

As a form of communication, writing is different from oral communication in several ways. Instructors expect writing to be well thought out and organized and to explain ideas fully. In oral communication, the listener can ask for clarification, but in written work, everything must be clear within the writing itself. Guidelines for oral presentations are provided in Chapter 7 “Interacting with Instructors and Classes” .

Note: Most college students take a writing course their first year, often in the first term. Even if you are not required to take such a class, it’s a good idea for all students to learn more about college writing. This short chapter cannot cover even a small amount of what you will learn in a full writing course. Our goal here is to introduce some important writing principles, if you’re not yet familiar with them, or to remind you of things you may have already learned in a writing course. As with all advice, always pay the most attention to what your instructor says—the terms of a specific assignment may overrule a tip given here!

Learning Objectives

• Define “academic writing.”
• Identify key differences between writing in college and writing in high school or on the job.
• Identify different types of papers that are commonly assigned.
• Describe what instructors expect from student writing.

Academic writing refers to writing produced in a college environment. Often this is writing that responds to other writing—to the ideas or controversies that you’ll read about. While this definition sounds simple, academic writing may be very different from other types of writing you have done in the past. Often college students begin to understand what academic writing really means only after they receive negative feedback on their work. To become a strong writer in college, you need to achieve a clear sense of two things:

• The academic environment
• The kinds of writing you’ll be doing in that environment

Differences between High School and College Writing

Students who struggle with writing in college often conclude that their high school teachers were too easy or that their college instructors are too hard. In most cases, neither explanation is fully accurate or fair. A student having difficulty with college writing usually just hasn’t yet made the transition from high school writing to college writing. That shouldn’t be surprising, for many beginning college students do not even know that there is a transition to be made.

In high school, most students think of writing as the subject of English classes. Few teachers in other courses give much feedback on student writing; many do not even assign writing. This says more about high school than about the quality of teachers or about writing itself. High school teachers typically teach five courses a day and often more than 150 students. Those students often have a very wide range of backgrounds and skill levels.

Thus many high school English instructors focus on specific, limited goals. For example, they may teach the “five paragraph essay” as the right way to organize a paper because they want to give every student some idea of an essay’s basic structure. They may give assignments on stories and poems because their own college background involved literature and literary analysis. In classes other than English, many high school teachers must focus on an established body of information and may judge students using tests that measure only how much of this information they acquire. Often writing itself is not directly addressed in such classes.

This does not mean that students don’t learn a great deal in high school, but it’s easy to see why some students think that writing is important only in English classes. Many students also believe an academic essay must be five paragraphs long or that “school writing” is usually literary analysis.

Think about how college differs from high school. In many colleges, the instructors teach fewer classes and have fewer students. In addition, while college students have highly diverse backgrounds, the skills of college students are less variable than in an average high school class. In addition, college instructors are specialists in the fields they teach, as you recall from Chapter 7 “Interacting with Instructors and Classes” . College instructors may design their courses in unique ways, and they may teach about specialized subjects. For all of these reasons, college instructors are much more likely than high school teachers to

• assign writing,
• respond in detail to student writing,
• ask questions that cannot be dealt with easily in a fixed form like a five-paragraph essay.

Your transition to college writing could be even more dramatic. The kind of writing you have done in the past may not translate at all into the kind of writing required in college. For example, you may at first struggle with having to write about very different kinds of topics, using different approaches. You may have learned only one kind of writing genre (a kind of approach or organization) and now find you need to master other types of writing as well.

What Kinds of Papers Are Commonly Assigned in College Classes?

Think about the topic “gender roles”—referring to expectations about differences in how men and women act. You might study gender roles in an anthropology class, a film class, or a psychology class. The topic itself may overlap from one class to another, but you would not write about this subject in the same way in these different classes. For example, in an anthropology class, you might be asked to describe how men and women of a particular culture divide important duties. In a film class, you may be asked to analyze how a scene portrays gender roles enacted by the film’s characters. In a psychology course, you might be asked to summarize the results of an experiment involving gender roles or compare and contrast the findings of two related research projects.

It would be simplistic to say that there are three, or four, or ten, or any number of types of academic writing that have unique characteristics, shapes, and styles. Every assignment in every course is unique in some ways, so don’t think of writing as a fixed form you need to learn. On the other hand, there are certain writing approaches that do involve different kinds of writing. An approach is the way you go about meeting the writing goals for the assignment. The approach is usually signaled by the words instructors use in their assignments.

When you first get a writing assignment, pay attention first to keywords for how to approach the writing. These will also suggest how you may structure and develop your paper. Look for terms like these in the assignment:

• Summarize. To restate in your own words the main point or points of another’s work.
• Define. To describe, explore, or characterize a keyword, idea, or phenomenon.
• Classify. To group individual items by their shared characteristics, separate from other groups of items.
• Compare/contrast. To explore significant likenesses and differences between two or more subjects.
• Analyze. To break something, a phenomenon, or an idea into its parts and explain how those parts fit or work together.
• Argue. To state a claim and support it with reasons and evidence.
• Synthesize. To pull together varied pieces or ideas from two or more sources.

Note how this list is similar to the words used in examination questions that involve writing. (See Table 6.1 “Words to Watch for in Essay Questions” in Chapter 6 “Preparing for and Taking Tests” , Section 6.4 “The Secrets of the Q and A’s” .) This overlap is not a coincidence—essay exams are an abbreviated form of academic writing such as a class paper.

Sometimes the keywords listed don’t actually appear in the written assignment, but they are usually implied by the questions given in the assignment. “What,” “why,” and “how” are common question words that require a certain kind of response. Look back at the keywords listed and think about which approaches relate to “what,” “why,” and “how” questions.

• “What” questions usually prompt the writing of summaries, definitions, classifications, and sometimes compare-and-contrast essays. For example, “ What does Jones see as the main elements of Huey Long’s populist appeal?” or “ What happened when you heated the chemical solution?”
• “Why” and “how” questions typically prompt analysis, argument, and synthesis essays. For example, “ Why did Huey Long’s brand of populism gain force so quickly?” or “ Why did the solution respond the way it did to heat?”

Successful academic writing starts with recognizing what the instructor is requesting, or what you are required to do. So pay close attention to the assignment. Sometimes the essential information about an assignment is conveyed through class discussions, however, so be sure to listen for the keywords that will help you understand what the instructor expects. If you feel the assignment does not give you a sense of direction, seek clarification. Ask questions that will lead to helpful answers. For example, here’s a short and very vague assignment:

Discuss the perspectives on religion of Rousseau, Bentham, and Marx. Papers should be four to five pages in length.

Faced with an assignment like this, you could ask about the scope (or focus) of the assignment:

• Which of the assigned readings should I concentrate on?
• Should I read other works by these authors that haven’t been assigned in class?
• Should I do research to see what scholars think about the way these philosophers view religion?
• Do you want me to pay equal attention to each of the three philosophers?

You can also ask about the approach the instructor would like you to take. You can use the keywords the instructor may not have used in the assignment:

• Should I just summarize the positions of these three thinkers, or should I compare and contrast their views?
• Do you want me to argue a specific point about the way these philosophers approach religion?
• Would it be OK if I classified the ways these philosophers think about religion?

Never just complain about a vague assignment. It is fine to ask questions like these. Such questions will likely engage your instructor in a productive discussion with you.

Key Takeaways

• Writing is crucial to college success because it is the single most important means of evaluation.
• Writing in college is not limited to the kinds of assignments commonly required in high school English classes.
• Writers in college must pay close attention to the terms of an assignment.
• If an assignment is not clear, seek clarification from the instructor.

Checkpoint Exercises

What kind(s) of writing have you practiced most in your recent past?

____________________________________________________________________

Name two things that make academic writing in college different from writing in high school.

Explain how the word “what” asks for a different kind of paper than the word “why.”

• Describe how a writing class can help you succeed in other courses.
• Define what instructors expect of a college student’s writing.
• Explain why learning to write is an ongoing task.
• Understand writing as a process.
• Develop productive prewriting and revision strategies.
• Distinguish between revision and editing.
• Access and use available resources.
• Understand how to integrate research in your writing.
• Define plagiarism.

Students are usually required to take at least one writing course in their first year of college. That course is often crucial for your success in college. But a writing course can help you only if you recognize how it connects to your other work in college. If you approach your writing course merely as another hoop you need to jump through, you may miss out on the main message: writing is vital to your academic success at every step toward your degree.

What Do Instructors Really Want?

Some instructors may say they have no particular expectations for student papers. This is partly true. College instructors do not usually have one right answer in mind or one right approach to take when they assign a paper topic. They expect you to engage in critical thinking and decide for yourself what you are saying and how to say it. But in other ways college instructors do have expectations, and it is important to understand them. Some expectations involve mastering the material or demonstrating critical thinking. Other expectations involve specific writing skills. Most college instructors expect certain characteristics in student writing. Here are general principles you should follow when writing essays or student “papers.” (Some may not be appropriate for specific formats such as lab reports.)

Title the paper to identify your topic. This may sound obvious, but it needs to be said. Some students think of a paper as an exercise and write something like “Assignment 2: History 101” on the title page. Such a title gives no idea about how you are approaching the assignment or your topic. Your title should prepare your reader for what your paper is about or what you will argue. (With essays, always consider your reader as an educated adult interested in your topic. An essay is not a letter written to your instructor.) Compare the following:

Incorrect: Assignment 2: History 101

Correct: Why the New World Was Not “New”

It is obvious which of these two titles begins to prepare your reader for the paper itself. Similarly, don’t make your title the same as the title of a work you are writing about. Instead, be sure your title signals an aspect of the work you are focusing on:

Incorrect: Catcher in the Rye

Correct: Family Relationships in Catcher in the Rye

Address the terms of the assignment. Again, pay particular attention to words in the assignment that signal a preferred approach. If the instructor asks you to “argue” a point, be sure to make a statement that actually expresses your idea about the topic. Then follow that statement with your reasons and evidence in support of the statement. Look for any signals that will help you focus or limit your approach. Since no paper can cover everything about a complex topic, what is it that your instructor wants you to cover?

Finally, pay attention to the little things. For example, if the assignment specifies “5 to 6 pages in length,” write a five- to six-page paper. Don’t try to stretch a short paper longer by enlarging the font (12 points is standard) or making your margins bigger than the normal one inch (or as specified by the instructor). If the assignment is due at the beginning of class on Monday, have it ready then or before. Do not assume you can negotiate a revised due date.

In your introduction, define your topic and establish your approach or sense of purpose. Think of your introduction as an extension of your title. Instructors (like all readers) appreciate feeling oriented by a clear opening. They appreciate knowing that you have a purpose for your topic—that you have a reason for writing the paper. If they feel they’ve just been dropped into the middle of a paper, they may miss important ideas. They may not make connections you want them to make.

Build from a thesis or a clearly stated sense of purpose. Many college assignments require you to make some form of an argument. To do that, you generally start with a statement that needs to be supported and build from there. Your thesis is that statement; it is a guiding assertion for the paper. Be clear in your own mind of the difference between your topic and your thesis. The topic is what your paper is about; the thesis is what you argue about the topic. Some assignments do not require an explicit argument and thesis, but even then you should make clear at the beginning your main emphasis, your purpose, or your most important idea.

Develop ideas patiently. You might, like many students, worry about boring your reader with too much detail or information. But college instructors will not be bored by carefully explained ideas, well-selected examples, and relevant details. College instructors, after all, are professionally devoted to their subjects. If your sociology instructor asks you to write about youth crime in rural areas, you can be sure he or she is interested in that subject.

In some respects, how you develop your paper is the most crucial part of the assignment. You’ll win the day with detailed explanations and well-presented evidence—not big generalizations. For example, anyone can write something broad (and bland) like “The constitutional separation of church and state is a good thing for America”—but what do you really mean by that? Specifically? Are you talking about banning “Christmas trees” from government property—or calling them “holiday trees” instead? Are you arguing for eliminating the tax-free status of religious organizations? Are you saying that American laws should never be based on moral values? The more you really dig into your topic—the more time you spend thinking about the specifics of what you really want to argue and developing specific examples and reasons for your argument—the more developed your paper will be. It will also be much more interesting to your instructor as the reader. Remember, those grand generalizations we all like to make (“America is the land of the free”) actually don’t mean much at all until we develop the idea in specifics. (Free to do what? No laws? No restrictions like speed limits? Freedom not to pay any taxes? Free food for all? What do you really mean when you say American is the land of the “free”?)

Integrate—do not just “plug in”—quotations, graphs, and illustrations . As you outline or sketch out your material, you will think things like “this quotation can go here” or “I can put that graph there.” Remember that a quotation, graph, or illustration does not make a point for you. You make the point first and then use such material to help back it up. Using a quotation, a graph, or an illustration involves more than simply sticking it into the paper. Always lead into such material. Make sure the reader understands why you are using it and how it fits in at that place in your presentation.

Build clear transitions at the beginning of every paragraph to link from one idea to another. A good paper is more than a list of good ideas. It should also show how the ideas fit together. As you write the first sentence of any paragraph, have a clear sense of what the prior paragraph was about. Think of the first sentence in any paragraph as a kind of bridge for the reader from what came before.

Document your sources appropriately. If your paper involves research of any kind, indicate clearly the use you make of outside sources. If you have used those sources well, there is no reason to hide them. Careful research and the thoughtful application of the ideas and evidence of others is part of what college instructors value. (We address specifics about documentation later on.)

Carefully edit your paper. College instructors assume you will take the time to edit and proofread your essay. A misspelled word or an incomplete sentence may signal a lack of concern on your part. It may not seem fair to make a harsh judgment about your seriousness based on little errors, but in all writing, impressions count. Since it is often hard to find small errors in our own writing, always print out a draft well before you need to turn it in. Ask a classmate or a friend to review it and mark any word or sentence that seems “off” in any way. Although you should certainly use a spell-checker, don’t assume it can catch everything. A spell-checker cannot tell if you have the right word. For example, these words are commonly misused or mixed up:

• there, their, they’re
• effect, affect
• complement, compliment

Your spell-checker can’t help with these. You also can’t trust what a “grammar checker” (like the one built into the Microsoft Word spell-checker) tells you—computers are still a long way from being able to fix your writing for you!

Turn in a clean hard copy. Some instructors accept or even prefer digital papers, but do not assume this. Most instructors want a paper copy and most definitely do not want to do the printing themselves. Present your paper in a professional (and unfussy) way, using a staple or paper clip on the left top to hold the pages together (unless the instructor specifies otherwise). Never bring your paper to class and ask the instructor, “Do you have a stapler?” Similarly, do not put your paper in a plastic binder unless the instructor asks you to.

The Writing Process

Writing instructors distinguish between process and product . The expectations described here all involve the “product” you turn in on the due date. Although you should keep in mind what your product will look like, writing is more involved with how you get to that goal. “Process” concerns how you work to actually write a paper. What do you actually do to get started? How do you organize your ideas? Why do you make changes along the way as you write? Thinking of writing as a process is important because writing is actually a complex activity. Even professional writers rarely sit down at a keyboard and write out an article beginning to end without stopping along the way to revise portions they have drafted, to move ideas around, or to revise their opening and thesis. Professionals and students alike often say they only realized what they wanted to say after they started to write. This is why many instructors see writing as a way to learn. Many writing instructors ask you to submit a draft for review before submitting a final paper. To roughly paraphrase a famous poem, you learn by doing what you have to do.

How Can I Make the Process Work for Me?

No single set of steps automatically works best for everyone when writing a paper, but writers have found a number of steps helpful. Your job is to try out ways that your instructor suggests and discover what works for you. As you’ll see in the following list, the process starts before you write a word. Generally there are three stages in the writing process:

• Preparing before drafting (thinking, brainstorming, planning, reading, researching, outlining, sketching, etc.)—sometimes called “prewriting” (although you are usually still writing something at this stage, even if only jotting notes)
• Writing the draft
• Revising and editing

Involved in these three stages are a number of separate tasks—and that’s where you need to figure out what works best for you.

Because writing is hard, procrastination is easy. Don’t let yourself put off the task. Use the time management strategies described in Chapter 2 “Staying Motivated, Organized, and On Track” . One good approach is to schedule shorter time periods over a series of days—rather than trying to sit down for one long period to accomplish a lot. (Even professional writers can write only so much at a time.) Try the following strategies to get started:

• Discuss what you read, see, and hear. Talking with others about your ideas is a good way to begin to achieve clarity. Listening to others helps you understand what points need special attention. Discussion also helps writers realize that their own ideas are often best presented in relation to the ideas of others.
• Use e-mail to carry on discussions in writing. An e-mail exchange with a classmate or your instructor might be the first step toward putting words on a page.
• Brainstorm. Jot down your thoughts as they come to mind. Just write away, not worrying at first about how those ideas fit together. (This is often called “free writing.”) Once you’ve written a number of notes or short blocks of sentences, pause and read them over. Take note of anything that stands out as particularly important to you. Also consider how parts of your scattered notes might eventually fit together or how they might end up in a sequence in the paper you’ll get to later on.
• Keep a journal in which you respond to your assigned readings. Set aside twenty minutes or so three times a week to summarize important texts. Go beyond just summarizing: talk back about what you have been reading or apply the reading to your own experience. See Chapter 5 “Reading to Learn” for more tips on taking notes about your readings.
• Ask and respond in writing to “what,” “why,” and “how” questions . Good questions prompt productive writing sessions. Again, “what” questions will lead to descriptions or summaries; “why” and “how” questions will lead you to analyses and explanations. Construct your own “what,” “why,” and “how” questions and then start answering them.
• In your notes, respond directly to what others have written or said about a topic you are interested in. Most academic writing engages the ideas of others. Academic writing carries on a conversation among people interested in the field. By thinking of how your ideas relate to those of others, you can clarify your sense of purpose and sometimes even discover a way to write your introduction.

All of these steps and actions so far are “prewriting” actions. Again, almost no one just sits down and starts writing a paper at the beginning—at least not a successful paper! These prewriting steps help you get going in the right direction. Once you are ready to start drafting your essay, keep moving forward in these ways:

• Write a short statement of intent or outline your paper before your first draft. Such a road map can be very useful, but don’t assume you’ll always be able to stick with your first plan. Once you start writing, you may discover a need for changes in the substance or order of things in your essay. Such discoveries don’t mean you made “mistakes” in the outline. They simply mean you are involved in a process that cannot be completely scripted in advance.
• Write down on a card or a separate sheet of paper what you see as your paper’s main point or thesis. As you draft your essay, look back at that thesis statement. Are you staying on track? Or are you discovering that you need to change your main point or thesis? From time to time, check the development of your ideas against what you started out saying you would do. Revise as needed and move forward.
• Reverse outline your paper. Outlining is usually a beginning point, a road map for the task ahead. But many writers find that outlining what they have already written in a draft helps them see more clearly how their ideas fit or do not fit together. Outlining in this way can reveal trouble spots that are harder to see in a full draft. Once you see those trouble spots, effective revision becomes possible.
• Don’t obsess over detail when writing the draft. Remember, you have time for revising and editing later on. Now is the time to test out the plan you’ve made and see how your ideas develop. The last things in the world you want to worry about now are the little things like grammar and punctuation—spend your time developing your material, knowing you can fix the details later.
• Read your draft aloud. Hearing your own writing often helps you see it more plainly. A gap or an inconsistency in an argument that you simply do not see in a silent reading becomes evident when you give voice to the text. You may also catch sentence-level mistakes by reading your paper aloud.

What’s the Difference between Revising and Editing?

Some students think of a draft as something that they need only “correct” after writing. They assume their first effort to do the assignment resulted in something that needs only surface attention. This is a big mistake. A good writer does not write fast. Good writers know that the task is complicated enough to demand some patience. “Revision” rather than “correction” suggests seeing again in a new light generated by all the thought that went into the first draft. Revising a draft usually involves significant changes including the following:

• Making organizational changes like the reordering of paragraphs (don’t forget that new transitions will be needed when you move paragraphs)
• Clarifying the thesis or adjustments between the thesis and supporting points that follow
• Cutting material that is unnecessary or irrelevant
• Adding new points to strengthen or clarify the presentation

Editing and proofreading are the last steps following revision. Correcting a sentence early on may not be the best use of your time since you may cut the sentence entirely. Editing and proofreading are focused, late-stage activities for style and correctness. They are important final parts of the writing process, but they should not be confused with revision itself. Editing and proofreading a draft involve these steps:

• Careful spell-checking. This includes checking the spelling of names.
• Attention to sentence-level issues. Be especially attentive to sentence boundaries, subject-verb agreement, punctuation, and pronoun referents. You can also attend at this stage to matters of style.

Remember to get started on a writing assignment early so that you complete the first draft well before the due date, allowing you needed time for genuine revision and careful editing.

What If I Need Help with Writing?

Writing is hard work. Most colleges provide resources that can help you from the early stages of an assignment through to the completion of an essay. Your first resource may be a writing class. Most students are encouraged or required to enroll in a writing class in their first term, and it’s a good idea for everyone. Use everything you learn there about drafting and revising in all your courses.

Tutoring services. Most colleges have a tutoring service that focuses primarily on student writing. Look up and visit your tutoring center early in the term to learn what service is offered. Specifically check on the following:

• Do you have to register in advance for help? If so, is there a registration deadline?
• Are appointments required or encouraged, or can you just drop in?
• Are regular standing appointments with the same tutor encouraged?
• Are a limited number of sessions allowed per term?
• Are small group workshops offered in addition to individual appointments?
• Are specialists available for help with students who have learned English as a second language?

Three points about writing tutors are crucial:

• Writing tutors are there for all student writers—not just for weak or inexperienced writers. Writing in college is supposed to be a challenge. Some students make writing even harder by thinking that good writers work in isolation. But writing is a social act. A good paper should engage others.
• Tutors are not there for you to “correct” sentence-level problems or polish your finished draft. They will help you identify and understand sentence-level problems so that you can achieve greater control over your writing. But their more important goals often are to address larger concerns like the paper’s organization, the fullness of its development, and the clarity of its argument. So don’t make your first appointment the day before a paper is due, because you may need more time to revise after discussing the paper with a tutor.
• Tutors cannot help you if you do not do your part. Tutors respond only to what you say and write; they cannot enable you to magically jump past the thinking an assignment requires. So do some thinking about the assignment before your meeting and be sure to bring relevant materials with you. For example, bring the paper assignment. You might also bring the course syllabus and perhaps even the required textbook. Most importantly, bring any writing you’ve done in response to the assignment (an outline, a thesis statement, a draft, an introductory paragraph). If you want to get help from a tutor, you need to give the tutor something to work with.

Teaching assistants and instructors. In a large class, you may have both a course instructor and a teaching assistant (TA). Seek help from either or both as you draft your essay. Some instructors offer only limited help. They may not, for example, have time to respond to a complete draft of your essay. But even a brief response to a drafted introduction or to a question can be tremendously valuable. Remember that most TAs and instructors want to help you learn. View them along with tutors as part of a team that works with you to achieve academic success. Remember the tips you learned in Chapter 7 “Interacting with Instructors and Classes” for interacting well with your instructors.

Writing Web sites and writing handbooks. Many writing Web sites and handbooks can help you along every step of the way, especially in the late stages of your work. You’ll find lessons on style as well as information about language conventions and “correctness.” Not only should you use the handbook your composition instructor assigns in a writing class, but you should not sell that book back at the end of the term. You will need it again for future writing. For more help, become familiar with a good Web site for student writers. There are many, but one we recommend is maintained by the Dartmouth College Writing Center at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/index.html .

Plagiarism—and How to Avoid It

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of material from a source. At the most obvious level, plagiarism involves using someone else’s words and ideas as if they were your own. There’s not much to say about copying another person’s work: it’s cheating, pure and simple. But plagiarism is not always so simple. Notice that our definition of plagiarism involves “words and ideas.” Let’s break that down a little further.

Words. Copying the words of another is clearly wrong. If you use another’s words, those words must be in quotation marks, and you must tell your reader where those words came from. But it is not enough to make a few surface changes in wording. You can’t just change some words and call the material yours; close, extended paraphrase is not acceptable. For example, compare the two passages that follow. The first comes from Murder Most Foul , a book by Karen Halttunen on changing ideas about murder in nineteenth-century America; the second is a close paraphrase of the same passage:

The new murder narratives were overwhelmingly secular works, written by a diverse array of printers, hack writers, sentimental poets, lawyers, and even murderers themselves, who were displacing the clergy as the dominant interpreters of the crime. The murder stories that were developing were almost always secular works that were written by many different sorts of people. Printers, hack writers, poets, attorneys, and sometimes even the criminals themselves were writing murder stories. They were the new interpreters of the crime, replacing religious leaders who had held that role before.

It is easy to see that the writer of the second version has closely followed the ideas and even echoed some words of the original. This is a serious form of plagiarism. Even if this writer were to acknowledge the author, there would still be a problem. To simply cite the source at the end would not excuse using so much of the original source.

Ideas. Ideas are also a form of intellectual property. Consider this third version of the previous passage:

At one time, religious leaders shaped the way the public thought about murder. But in nineteenth-century America, this changed. Society’s attitudes were influenced more and more by secular writers.

This version summarizes the original. That is, it states the main idea in compressed form in language that does not come from the original. But it could still be seen as plagiarism if the source is not cited. This example probably makes you wonder if you can write anything without citing a source. To help you sort out what ideas need to be cited and what not, think about these principles:

Common knowledge. There is no need to cite common knowledge . Common knowledge does not mean knowledge everyone has. It means knowledge that everyone can easily access. For example, most people do not know the date of George Washington’s death, but everyone can easily find that information. If the information or idea can be found in multiple sources and the information or idea remains constant from source to source, it can be considered common knowledge. This is one reason so much research is usually done for college writing—the more sources you read, the more easily you can sort out what is common knowledge: if you see an uncited idea in multiple sources, then you can feel secure that idea is common knowledge.

Distinct contributions. One does need to cite ideas that are distinct contributions . A distinct contribution need not be a discovery from the work of one person. It need only be an insight that is not commonly expressed (not found in multiple sources) and not universally agreed upon.

Disputable figures. Always remember that numbers are only as good as the sources they come from. If you use numbers like attendance figures, unemployment rates, or demographic profiles—or any statistics at all—always cite your source of those numbers. If your instructor does not know the source you used, you will not get much credit for the information you have collected.

Everything said previously about using sources applies to all forms of sources. Some students mistakenly believe that material from the Web, for example, need not be cited. Or that an idea from an instructor’s lecture is automatically common property. You must evaluate all sources in the same way and cite them as necessary.

Forms of Citation

You should generally check with your instructors about their preferred form of citation when you write papers for courses. No one standard is used in all academic papers. You can learn about the three major forms or styles used in most any college writing handbook and on many Web sites for college writers:

• The Modern Language Association (MLA) system of citation is widely used but is most commonly adopted in humanities courses, particularly literature courses.
• The American Psychological Association (APA) system of citation is most common in the social sciences.
• The Chicago Manual of Style is widely used but perhaps most commonly in history courses.

Many college departments have their own style guides, which may be based on one of the above. Your instructor should refer you to his or her preferred guide, but be sure to ask if you have not been given explicit direction.

Checklists for Revision and Editing

When you revise…

When you edit…

• A writing course is central to all students’ success in many of their future courses.
• Writing is a process that involves a number of steps; the product will not be good if one does not allow time for the process.
• Seek feedback from classmates, tutors, and instructors during the writing process.
• Revision is not the same thing as editing.
• Many resources are available to college writers.
• Words and ideas from sources must be documented in a form recommended by the instructor.

Checkpoint Exercise

For each of the following statements, circle T for true or F for false:

Learning Objective

Understand the special demands of specific writing situations, including the following:

• Writing in-class essays
• Writing with others in a group project
• Writing in an online class

Everything about college writing so far in this chapter applies in most college writing assignments. Some particular situations, however, deserve special attention. These include writing in-class essays, group writing projects, and writing in an online course.

Writing In-Class Essays

You might well think the whole writing process goes out the window when you have to write an in-class essay. After all, you don’t have much time to spend on the essay. You certainly don’t have time for an extensive revision of a complete draft. You also don’t have the opportunity to seek feedback at any stage along the way. Nonetheless, the best writers of in-class essays bring as much of the writing process as they can into an essay exam situation. Follow these guidelines:

• Prepare for writing in class by making writing a regular part of your study routine. Students who write down their responses to readings throughout a term have a huge advantage over students who think they can study by just reading the material closely. Writing is a way to build better writing, as well as a great way to study and think about the course material. Don’t wait until the exam period to start writing about things you have been studying throughout the term.
• Read the exam prompt or assignment very carefully before you begin to respond. Note keywords in the exam prompt. For example, if the exam assignment asks for an argument, be sure to structure your essay as an argument. Also look for ways the instructor has limited the scope of your response. Focus on what is highlighted in the exam question itself. See Chapter 6 “Preparing for and Taking Tests” for more tips for exam writing.
• Jot notes and sketch out a list of key points you want to cover before you jump into writing. If you have time, you might even draft an opening paragraph on a piece of scratch paper before committing yourself to a particular response. Too often, students begin writing before they have thought about the whole task before them. When that happens, you might find that you can’t develop your ideas as fully or as coherently as you need to. Students who take the time to plan actually write longer in-class essays than those who begin writing their answers right after they have read the assignment. Take as much as a fourth of the total exam period to plan.
• Use a consistent approach for in-class exams. Students who begin in-class exams with a plan that they have used successfully in the past are better able to control the pressure of the in-class exam. Students who feel they need to discover a new approach for each exam are far more likely to panic and freeze.
• Keep track of the time. Some instructors signal the passing of time during the exam period, but do not count on that help. While you shouldn’t compulsively check the time every minute or two, look at your watch now and then.
• Save a few minutes at the end of the session for quick review of what you’ve written and for making small changes you note as necessary.

A special issue in in-class exams concerns handwriting. Some instructors now allow students to write in-class exams on laptops, but the old-fashioned blue book is still the standard in many classes. For students used to writing on a keyboard, this can be a problem. Be sure you don’t let poor handwriting hurt you. Your instructor will have many exams to read. Be courteous. Write as clearly as you can.

Group Writing Projects

College instructors sometimes assign group writing projects. The terms of these assignments vary greatly. Sometimes the instructor specifies roles for each member of the group, but often it’s part of the group’s tasks to define everyone’s role. Follow these guidelines:

• Get off to an early start and meet regularly through the process.
• Sort out your roles as soon as you can. You might divide the work in sections and then meet to pull those sections together. But you might also think more in terms of the specific strengths and interests each of you bring to the project. For example, if one group member is an experienced researcher, that person might gather and annotate materials for the assignment. You might also assign tasks that relate to the stages of the writing process. For example, one person for one meeting might construct a series of questions or a list of points to be addressed, to start a discussion about possible directions for the first draft. Another student might take a first pass at shaping the group’s ideas in a rough draft. And so on. Remember that whatever you do, you cannot likely keep each person’s work separate from the work of others. There will be and probably should be significant overlap if you are to eventually pull together a successful project.
• Be a good citizen. This is the most important point of all. If you are assigned a group project, you should want to be an active part of the group’s work. Never try to ride on the skills of others or let others do more than their fair share. Don’t let any lack of confidence you may feel as a writer keep you from doing your share. One of the great things about a group project is that you can learn from others. Another great thing is that you will learn more about your own strengths that others value.
• Complete a draft early so that you can collectively review, revise, and finally edit together.
• See the section on group presentations in Chapter 7 “Interacting with Instructors and Classes” , Section 7.4 “Public Speaking and Class Presentations” for additional tips.

Writing in Online Courses

Online instruction is becoming more and more common. All the principles discussed in this chapter apply also in online writing—and many aspects are even more important in an online course. In most online courses, almost everything depends on written communication. Discussion is generally written rather than spoken. Questions and clarifications take shape in writing. Feedback on assignments is given in writing. To succeed in online writing, apply the same writing process as fully and thoughtfully as with an essay or paper for any course.

• Even in in-class essays, using an abbreviated writing process approach helps produce more successful writing.
• Group writing projects require careful coordination of roles and cooperative stages but can greatly help students learn how to improve their writing.
• Writing for an online course puts your writing skills to the ultimate test, when almost everything your instructor knows about your learning must be demonstrated through your writing.

List three ways in which a process approach can help you write an in-class essay.

Describe what you see as a strength you could bring to a group writing project.

Explain ways in which writing in an online course emphasizes the social dimension of writing.

Chapter Takeaways

Successful writers in all contexts think of writing as

• a means to learn,
• a social act.
• Paying close attention to the terms of the assignment is essential for understanding the writing approach the instructor expects and for shaping the essay.
• Using the writing process maximizes the mental processes involved in thinking and writing. Take the time to explore prewriting strategies before drafting an essay in order to discover your ideas and how best to shape and communicate them.
• Avoid the temptation, after writing a draft, to consider the essay “done.” Revision is almost always needed, involving more significant changes than just quick corrections and editing.
• Virtually all college writing builds on the ideas of others; this is a significant part of the educational experience. In your writing, be sure you always make it clear in your phrasing and use of citations which ideas are your own or common knowledge and which come from other sources.
• College writing extends throughout the curriculum, from your first writing class through to your last term, including writing in class on examinations, group projects, and online courses. Through all this great variety of writing, however, the main principles of effective writing remain consistent. Work to develop your college writing skills at this early stage, and you will be well served throughout your education and into your career thereafter.

Chapter Review

Complete this sentence:

The main reason I am in college right now is

• Look for abstract or general words in what you just wrote. (For example, if you wrote, “I want a better job,” the key general word is “better.” If you wrote, “I need a good education for my future,” the general words are “good” and “education.” Circle the general word(s) in what you wrote.

Write a sentence that gives your personal definition of your general words. (For example, if you wrote “I want a better job,” what makes a job better to you personally?)

Now look at the why of what you’ve written. Why did you define your reason for being in college in the way that you did? Why this reason and not other reasons? Think about this for a minute, and then jot down a statement about why this is important to you.

Now look at the what involved in your reasoning. What specifically do you expect as a result of being in college? What are you gaining? Try to come up with at least three or four specific examples related to your reasoning so far.

Imagine you are assigned to write an essay for this prompt: “Argue for a particular benefit of a college education.” Look back at what you’ve written so far—is it headed in this direction? Write down a tentative thesis statement for such an essay.

Look back at what you wrote for questions 5 and 6 to see if you have the beginning of a list of topics you might discuss in an assigned essay like this. Test out a possible outline by jotting down a few key phrases in the order in which you might discuss your ideas in the essay.

• Think about what you have just been doing in the previous questions. If you took this exercise seriously and wrote out your responses, you might actually be ready to begin writing such an essay—at least as prepared as you might be for an in-class exam essay. You have just gone through the first step of the writing process although very quickly. If you spent a few minutes thinking about your ideas, clarifying your reasons and thinking of developing your thesis through examples and explanations, you are in a better and stronger position to begin writing than if you’d started immediately with the prompt. Your essay will be much more successful.

Outside the Book

1. Use this exercise for the next paper you write in any of your college classes. Your goal is not merely to write a great paper in that class but to learn what writing process techniques work best for you. Plan to begin just as soon as you are given the assignment. Try to use each and every one of these strategies (review them in the chapter), even if some things seem repetitious. Your goal is to find out which techniques work best for you to stimulate the most thought and lead to the best writing.

• Read the assignment and make sure you understand exactly what is expected.
• Sit down with a piece of paper and jot some notes as you brainstorm about your topic.
• Talk with another student in the class about what you’re thinking about your topic and what you might say about it.
• Write a journal entry, written strictly to yourself, about what you think you might do in your paper.
• Write down some questions to yourself about what your paper will be covering. Start your questions with “why,” “how,” and “what.”
• Send a classmate an e-mail in which you describe one of the points you’ll make in your essay, asking them for their opinion about it.
• When your classmate responds to your e-mail, think about what they say and prepare a written response in your notes.
• Write a statement of purpose for the paper and a brief outline listing key points.
• Show your outline to your instructor or TA and ask if you’re on the right track for the assignment. (You can ask other questions, too, if you have them, but try this step even if you feel confident and have no questions at all. You might be surprised by their response.)
• Write a fuller outline—and then go ahead and draft the paper.

2. Return to this exercise after receiving the paper back from your instructor. If you feel the paper was successful, think back to the techniques you used and circle steps above that you felt were particularly helpful and contributed to your success. If you are dissatisfied with the paper, it’s time to be honest with yourself about what happened. When unhappy about their grade on a paper, most students admit they didn’t spend as much time on it as they should have. Look back at the list above (and other writing strategies earlier in this chapter): what should you have done more fully or more carefully to make sure your paper got off to a good start?

Make an Action List

Past Writing

My worst writing habits have been the following:

To overcome these bad habits in college, I will take these steps:

Sentence-Level Mechanics

I generally make the following specific errors (things my past teachers have marked):

I can learn to correct errors like these when proofreading and editing by

Writing Process

I generally rush through the following stage: (circle one)

• Revising/proofreading

I will spend this much time on this stage in my next college paper:

I will use these strategies to ensure that I successfully move through this stage:

Seeking Help

I am most likely to need help in these areas of writing:

I will use these resources if I need help in these areas in my next course paper:

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First Year Writing Instructor's Guide — Assignments

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Sample Information Literacy Assignments

This page contains a selection of sample assignments and presentations provided for you to adapt and provide a jumping-off point for your own assignments. If you see an assignment you like but are having trouble implementing it, please contact a librarian, and we'll be happy to help.

Goals for assignments:

• Go from "How" to "Why" with your students
• Scaffold & highlight information literacy opportunities throughout your course.
• Create assignments that introduce your students to the research process
• Incorporate library resources into your course
• Preliminary Paths to Information Literacy Start with these assignments & adapt them for yourself! Blackwell-Starnes, Katt. "Preliminary paths to information literacy: Introducing research in core courses." Information literacy: Research and collaboration across disciplines. Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado (2016).
• Information Literacy: Research and collaboration across disciplines.

Extra Tools

• Strategic Searching Spreadsheet
• UConn First Year Writing Research Paper Alternatives Sample research assignments from the First Year Writing website, to help you create your assignments.
• Virginia Tech Information Literacy Toolkit A research toolkit from Virginia Tech with sample lessons, videos, and handouts to supplement your instruction.
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The First-Year Writing Program @ CCNY

The city college of new york.

Sample Assignment Descriptions

Essay assignments.

The Self-Reflection and Final Portfolio assignments are standard across all sections. Instructors have flexibility with regard to the other assignments. The grade weights are suggestions, but the portfolio and self-reflection must carry at least 20% of the total grade. It must be clear to students that this is not a throw-away, last-minute assignment.

Suggested Assignments The assignments in this section are based on the  Norton Field Guide  to writing. With the exception of the final portfolio and self-reflection, these are not required assignments, but please feel free to use them.

Rhetorical analysis  assignments should be a feature of every reading and writing assignment you give; it provides a vocabulary and structure for thinking about reading and writing in composition. How you shape the rhetorical analysis will depend on the specifics of your course. You can use CCNY’s OER textbook as a guide; the   rhetorical analysis assignment  is based on material housed at the Purdue OWL .

Literacy Narrative (10%). (Chapter 10) (2-3 pages) and Literacy Narrative Reflection (1 page)

Exploratory Essay (15% ) . Analyzing Texts (Chapter 11) OR Reporting Information (Chapter 12) OR Abstracts (Chapter 14) OR Annotated Bibliographies (Chapter 15) OR Evaluations (Chapter 16). This assignment has multiple purposes. It introduces students to research and citation practices and asks them to interpret and summarize the text. This essay is less concerned with critical analysis, though in practice (and in the examples that the text provides) the separation between analysis/interpretation (a neutral summary) and critical analysis (an interpretation with an opinion attached) is hard to find. Critical analysis is mainly located in the next assignment, but it’s almost inevitable (and may be desirable) for it to be a part of this essay. Exploratory Essay Reflection (1-2 pages)

Researched Critical Analysis: Extending the Theme of the Exploratory Essay (20%). This assignment can be based on any of the chapters listed for Exploratory Essay assignment (except for Annotated Bibliographies); it could also be based on Arguing a Position (Chapter 13). This assignment extends the work of the Exploratory Essay. Students will have the opportunity to revise the exploratory essay again (after having already revised a first draft) and they will be able to develop and express an opinion about their subjects. They may also want (or you may want them to) expand their research.

Researched Critical Analysis Reflection (2-3 pages)

Final Portfolio (15%) Self-Reflection (15%).

The Self-Reflection should be both a rhetorical analysis of their own work that should include references to genre, audience, purpose, stance, rhetorical situation, media/design, and exigence. Students should also use this opportunity to demonstrate that they’ve achieved the course learning outcomes. The portfolios will be collected by the first-year writing program, so they must be in a digital format . The simplest method for students to create the portfolio is to collect their body of work into a single .pdf document. A more comprehensive approach would be to ask students to create a Website using a free site. If you do this, however, you must be careful to explain (and document your explanation in writing) the available privacy protections. The CCNY Writing Program has video guides that students can use to create a WordPress site (search for “CCNY Writing Program” in Youtube).

Discussion Board Posts and Peer Reviews (15-20%)

Exams and Quizzes (5-10%)

Essay page count: 17-22

Reflection page count: 4-6

Supplemental Writing Assignments

Reflection Assignments (brief reflections after every assignment, leading to a Self-Reflection essay at the end of the semester)

The goal of the course is for students to reflect on their writing in order to heighten their awareness of what they know about writing and to give them a vocabulary for discussing it. In these reflections, students should make use of the rhetorical terms introduced in Part 1 (3-24) to describe their own work. For each reflective assignment, they should describe their own essays in terms of its genre (what are its characteristic features), exigence (what need motivated the writer), purpose (what did the writer hope to accomplish), audience (who is the potential audience for the essay), context (what is the writer’s rhetorical situation? what is the relationship between the writer, her audience, and the medium?). They should also describe how each assignment has helped them to achieve the Course Learning Outcomes. These short reflections will prepare students to write the final self-reflection.

Students should be encouraged and in some cases required to use visuals in their essays and to consider design principles. Consider assigning Chapter 53: Designing Texts in order to provide some instruction and a basis for grading.

Encouraging Reading and Writing without Increasing Workload

Blackboard allows you to ask students to write a great deal more than you can read carefully. You could have them respond to more than one sample essay as they prepare to write, but then just participate in one of the discussions. These can be low- or no-stakes writing assignments (though they should be assigned a point value–even if the result is not ultimately included in the final grade–so that students take them seriously). One of the main ways students learn to write is by writing a lot. These low-stakes assignments provide them opportunities to practice in writing in low-stress contexts. They also help build community.

Reading and Writing Assignments (in addition to the essay): Online responses to assigned readings and comments on each others’ posts; peer review. Chapters in the Norton provide heuristics for peer review.

Tests and Quizzes. Build tests and quizzes in Bb to introduce students to CCNY’s Community Standards or the policy on Academic Integrity . Structure the tests so that they’re self-grading; your involvement with the results will be minimal.

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1.1 Reading and Writing in College

Learning objectives.

• Understand the expectations for reading and writing assignments in college courses.
• Understand and apply general strategies to complete college-level reading assignments efficiently and effectively.
• Recognize specific types of writing assignments frequently included in college courses.
• Understand and apply general strategies for managing college-level writing assignments.
• Determine specific reading and writing strategies that work best for you individually.

As you begin this chapter, you may be wondering why you need an introduction. After all, you have been writing and reading since elementary school. You completed numerous assessments of your reading and writing skills in high school and as part of your application process for college. You may write on the job, too. Why is a college writing course even necessary?

When you are eager to get started on the coursework in your major that will prepare you for your career, getting excited about an introductory college writing course can be difficult. However, regardless of your field of study, honing your writing skills—and your reading and critical-thinking skills—gives you a more solid academic foundation.

In college, academic expectations change from what you may have experienced in high school. The quantity of work you are expected to do is increased. When instructors expect you to read pages upon pages or study hours and hours for one particular course, managing your work load can be challenging. This chapter includes strategies for studying efficiently and managing your time.

The quality of the work you do also changes. It is not enough to understand course material and summarize it on an exam. You will also be expected to seriously engage with new ideas by reflecting on them, analyzing them, critiquing them, making connections, drawing conclusions, or finding new ways of thinking about a given subject. Educationally, you are moving into deeper waters. A good introductory writing course will help you swim.

Table 1.1 “High School versus College Assignments” summarizes some of the other major differences between high school and college assignments.

Table 1.1 High School versus College Assignments

This chapter covers the types of reading and writing assignments you will encounter as a college student. You will also learn a variety of strategies for mastering these new challenges—and becoming a more confident student and writer.

Throughout this chapter, you will follow a first-year student named Crystal. After several years of working as a saleswoman in a department store, Crystal has decided to pursue a degree in elementary education and become a teacher. She is continuing to work part-time, and occasionally she finds it challenging to balance the demands of work, school, and caring for her four-year-old son. As you read about Crystal, think about how you can use her experience to get the most out of your own college experience.

Review Table 1.1 “High School versus College Assignments” and think about how you have found your college experience to be different from high school so far. Respond to the following questions:

• In what ways do you think college will be more rewarding for you as a learner?
• What aspects of college do you expect to find most challenging?
• What changes do you think you might have to make in your life to ensure your success in college?

Reading Strategies

Your college courses will sharpen both your reading and your writing skills. Most of your writing assignments—from brief response papers to in-depth research projects—will depend on your understanding of course reading assignments or related readings you do on your own. And it is difficult, if not impossible, to write effectively about a text that you have not understood. Even when you do understand the reading, it can be hard to write about it if you do not feel personally engaged with the ideas discussed.

This section discusses strategies you can use to get the most out of your college reading assignments. These strategies fall into three broad categories:

• Planning strategies. To help you manage your reading assignments.
• Comprehension strategies. To help you understand the material.
• Active reading strategies. To take your understanding to a higher and deeper level.

Planning Your Reading

Have you ever stayed up all night cramming just before an exam? Or found yourself skimming a detailed memo from your boss five minutes before a crucial meeting? The first step in handling college reading successfully is planning. This involves both managing your time and setting a clear purpose for your reading.

Managing Your Reading Time

You will learn more detailed strategies for time management in Section 1.2 “Developing Study Skills” , but for now, focus on setting aside enough time for reading and breaking your assignments into manageable chunks. If you are assigned a seventy-page chapter to read for next week’s class, try not to wait until the night before to get started. Give yourself at least a few days and tackle one section at a time.

Your method for breaking up the assignment will depend on the type of reading. If the text is very dense and packed with unfamiliar terms and concepts, you may need to read no more than five or ten pages in one sitting so that you can truly understand and process the information. With more user-friendly texts, you will be able to handle longer sections—twenty to forty pages, for instance. And if you have a highly engaging reading assignment, such as a novel you cannot put down, you may be able to read lengthy passages in one sitting.

As the semester progresses, you will develop a better sense of how much time you need to allow for the reading assignments in different subjects. It also makes sense to preview each assignment well in advance to assess its difficulty level and to determine how much reading time to set aside.

College instructors often set aside reserve readings for a particular course. These consist of articles, book chapters, or other texts that are not part of the primary course textbook. Copies of reserve readings are available through the university library; in print; or, more often, online. When you are assigned a reserve reading, download it ahead of time (and let your instructor know if you have trouble accessing it). Skim through it to get a rough idea of how much time you will need to read the assignment in full.

Setting a Purpose

The other key component of planning is setting a purpose. Knowing what you want to get out of a reading assignment helps you determine how to approach it and how much time to spend on it. It also helps you stay focused during those occasional moments when it is late, you are tired, and relaxing in front of the television sounds far more appealing than curling up with a stack of journal articles.

Sometimes your purpose is simple. You might just need to understand the reading material well enough to discuss it intelligently in class the next day. However, your purpose will often go beyond that. For instance, you might also read to compare two texts, to formulate a personal response to a text, or to gather ideas for future research. Here are some questions to ask to help determine your purpose:

How did my instructor frame the assignment? Often your instructors will tell you what they expect you to get out of the reading:

• Read Chapter 2 and come to class prepared to discuss current teaching practices in elementary math.
• Read these two articles and compare Smith’s and Jones’s perspectives on the 2010 health care reform bill.
• Read Chapter 5 and think about how you could apply these guidelines to running your own business.
• How deeply do I need to understand the reading? If you are majoring in computer science and you are assigned to read Chapter 1, “Introduction to Computer Science,” it is safe to assume the chapter presents fundamental concepts that you will be expected to master. However, for some reading assignments, you may be expected to form a general understanding but not necessarily master the content. Again, pay attention to how your instructor presents the assignment.
• How does this assignment relate to other course readings or to concepts discussed in class? Your instructor may make some of these connections explicitly, but if not, try to draw connections on your own. (Needless to say, it helps to take detailed notes both when in class and when you read.)
• How might I use this text again in the future? If you are assigned to read about a topic that has always interested you, your reading assignment might help you develop ideas for a future research paper. Some reading assignments provide valuable tips or summaries worth bookmarking for future reference. Think about what you can take from the reading that will stay with you.

Improving Your Comprehension

You have blocked out time for your reading assignments and set a purpose for reading. Now comes the challenge: making sure you actually understand all the information you are expected to process. Some of your reading assignments will be fairly straightforward. Others, however, will be longer or more complex, so you will need a plan for how to handle them.

For any expository writing —that is, nonfiction, informational writing—your first comprehension goal is to identify the main points and relate any details to those main points. Because college-level texts can be challenging, you will also need to monitor your reading comprehension. That is, you will need to stop periodically and assess how well you understand what you are reading. Finally, you can improve comprehension by taking time to determine which strategies work best for you and putting those strategies into practice.

Identifying the Main Points

In college, you will read a wide variety of materials, including the following:

• Textbooks. These usually include summaries, glossaries, comprehension questions, and other study aids.
• Nonfiction trade books. These are less likely to include the study features found in textbooks.
• Popular magazine, newspaper, or web articles. These are usually written for a general audience.
• Scholarly books and journal articles. These are written for an audience of specialists in a given field.

Regardless of what type of expository text you are assigned to read, your primary comprehension goal is to identify the main point : the most important idea that the writer wants to communicate and often states early on. Finding the main point gives you a framework to organize the details presented in the reading and relate the reading to concepts you learned in class or through other reading assignments. After identifying the main point, you will find the supporting points , the details, facts, and explanations that develop and clarify the main point.

Some texts make that task relatively easy. Textbooks, for instance, include the aforementioned features as well as headings and subheadings intended to make it easier for students to identify core concepts. Graphic features, such as sidebars, diagrams, and charts, help students understand complex information and distinguish between essential and inessential points. When you are assigned to read from a textbook, be sure to use available comprehension aids to help you identify the main points.

Trade books and popular articles may not be written specifically for an educational purpose; nevertheless, they also include features that can help you identify the main ideas. These features include the following:

• Trade books. Many trade books include an introduction that presents the writer’s main ideas and purpose for writing. Reading chapter titles (and any subtitles within the chapter) will help you get a broad sense of what is covered. It also helps to read the beginning and ending paragraphs of a chapter closely. These paragraphs often sum up the main ideas presented.
• Popular articles. Reading the headings and introductory paragraphs carefully is crucial. In magazine articles, these features (along with the closing paragraphs) present the main concepts. Hard news articles in newspapers present the gist of the news story in the lead paragraph, while subsequent paragraphs present increasingly general details.

At the far end of the reading difficulty scale are scholarly books and journal articles. Because these texts are written for a specialized, highly educated audience, the authors presume their readers are already familiar with the topic. The language and writing style is sophisticated and sometimes dense.

When you read scholarly books and journal articles, try to apply the same strategies discussed earlier. The introduction usually presents the writer’s thesis , the idea or hypothesis the writer is trying to prove. Headings and subheadings can help you understand how the writer has organized support for his or her thesis. Additionally, academic journal articles often include a summary at the beginning, called an abstract, and electronic databases include summaries of articles, too.

For more information about reading different types of texts, see Chapter 12 “Writing a Research Paper” .

Monitoring Your Comprehension

Finding the main idea and paying attention to text features as you read helps you figure out what you should know. Just as important, however, is being able to figure out what you do not know and developing a strategy to deal with it.

Textbooks often include comprehension questions in the margins or at the end of a section or chapter. As you read, stop occasionally to answer these questions on paper or in your head. Use them to identify sections you may need to reread, read more carefully, or ask your instructor about later.

Even when a text does not have built-in comprehension features, you can actively monitor your own comprehension. Try these strategies, adapting them as needed to suit different kinds of texts:

• Summarize. At the end of each section, pause to summarize the main points in a few sentences. If you have trouble doing so, revisit that section.
• Ask and answer questions. When you begin reading a section, try to identify two to three questions you should be able to answer after you finish it. Write down your questions and use them to test yourself on the reading. If you cannot answer a question, try to determine why. Is the answer buried in that section of reading but just not coming across to you? Or do you expect to find the answer in another part of the reading?
• Do not read in a vacuum. Look for opportunities to discuss the reading with your classmates. Many instructors set up online discussion forums or blogs specifically for that purpose. Participating in these discussions can help you determine whether your understanding of the main points is the same as your peers’.

These discussions can also serve as a reality check. If everyone in the class struggled with the reading, it may be exceptionally challenging. If it was a breeze for everyone but you, you may need to see your instructor for help.

As a working mother, Crystal found that the best time to get her reading done was in the evening, after she had put her four-year-old to bed. However, she occasionally had trouble concentrating at the end of a long day. She found that by actively working to summarize the reading and asking and answering questions, she focused better and retained more of what she read. She also found that evenings were a good time to check the class discussion forums that a few of her instructors had created.

Choose any text that that you have been assigned to read for one of your college courses. In your notes, complete the following tasks:

• Summarize the main points of the text in two to three sentences.
• Write down two to three questions about the text that you can bring up during class discussion.

Students are often reluctant to seek help. They feel like doing so marks them as slow, weak, or demanding. The truth is, every learner occasionally struggles. If you are sincerely trying to keep up with the course reading but feel like you are in over your head, seek out help. Speak up in class, schedule a meeting with your instructor, or visit your university learning center for assistance.

Deal with the problem as early in the semester as you can. Instructors respect students who are proactive about their own learning. Most instructors will work hard to help students who make the effort to help themselves.

Taking It to the Next Level: Active Reading

Now that you have acquainted (or reacquainted) yourself with useful planning and comprehension strategies, college reading assignments may feel more manageable. You know what you need to do to get your reading done and make sure you grasp the main points. However, the most successful students in college are not only competent readers but active, engaged readers.

Using the SQ3R Strategy

One strategy you can use to become a more active, engaged reader is the SQ3R strategy , a step-by-step process to follow before, during, and after reading. You may already use some variation of it. In essence, the process works like this:

• Survey the text in advance.
• Form questions before you start reading.
• Read the text.
• Recite and/or record important points during and after reading.
• Review and reflect on the text after you read.

Before you read, you survey, or preview, the text. As noted earlier, reading introductory paragraphs and headings can help you begin to figure out the author’s main point and identify what important topics will be covered. However, surveying does not stop there. Look over sidebars, photographs, and any other text or graphic features that catch your eye. Skim a few paragraphs. Preview any boldfaced or italicized vocabulary terms. This will help you form a first impression of the material.

Next, start brainstorming questions about the text. What do you expect to learn from the reading? You may find that some questions come to mind immediately based on your initial survey or based on previous readings and class discussions. If not, try using headings and subheadings in the text to formulate questions. For instance, if one heading in your textbook reads “Medicare and Medicaid,” you might ask yourself these questions:

• When was Medicare and Medicaid legislation enacted? Why?
• What are the major differences between these two programs?

Although some of your questions may be simple factual questions, try to come up with a few that are more open-ended. Asking in-depth questions will help you stay more engaged as you read.

The next step is simple: read. As you read, notice whether your first impressions of the text were correct. Are the author’s main points and overall approach about the same as what you predicted—or does the text contain a few surprises? Also, look for answers to your earlier questions and begin forming new questions. Continue to revise your impressions and questions as you read.

While you are reading, pause occasionally to recite or record important points. It is best to do this at the end of each section or when there is an obvious shift in the writer’s train of thought. Put the book aside for a moment and recite aloud the main points of the section or any important answers you found there. You might also record ideas by jotting down a few brief notes in addition to, or instead of, reciting aloud. Either way, the physical act of articulating information makes you more likely to remember it.

After you have completed the reading, take some time to review the material more thoroughly. If the textbook includes review questions or your instructor has provided a study guide, use these tools to guide your review. You will want to record information in a more detailed format than you used during reading, such as in an outline or a list.

As you review the material, reflect on what you learned. Did anything surprise you, upset you, or make you think? Did you find yourself strongly agreeing or disagreeing with any points in the text? What topics would you like to explore further? Jot down your reflections in your notes. (Instructors sometimes require students to write brief response papers or maintain a reading journal. Use these assignments to help you reflect on what you read.)

Choose another text that that you have been assigned to read for a class. Use the SQ3R process to complete the reading. (Keep in mind that you may need to spread the reading over more than one session, especially if the text is long.)

Be sure to complete all the steps involved. Then, reflect on how helpful you found this process. On a scale of one to ten, how useful did you find it? How does it compare with other study techniques you have used?

Using Other Active Reading Strategies

The SQ3R process encompasses a number of valuable active reading strategies: previewing a text, making predictions, asking and answering questions, and summarizing. You can use the following additional strategies to further deepen your understanding of what you read.

• Connect what you read to what you already know. Look for ways the reading supports, extends, or challenges concepts you have learned elsewhere.
• Relate the reading to your own life. What statements, people, or situations relate to your personal experiences?
• Visualize. For both fiction and nonfiction texts, try to picture what is described. Visualizing is especially helpful when you are reading a narrative text, such as a novel or a historical account, or when you read expository text that describes a process, such as how to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
• Pay attention to graphics as well as text. Photographs, diagrams, flow charts, tables, and other graphics can help make abstract ideas more concrete and understandable.
• Understand the text in context. Understanding context means thinking about who wrote the text, when and where it was written, the author’s purpose for writing it, and what assumptions or agendas influenced the author’s ideas. For instance, two writers might both address the subject of health care reform, but if one article is an opinion piece and one is a news story, the context is different.
• Plan to talk or write about what you read. Jot down a few questions or comments in your notebook so you can bring them up in class. (This also gives you a source of topic ideas for papers and presentations later in the semester.) Discuss the reading on a class discussion board or blog about it.

As Crystal began her first semester of elementary education courses, she occasionally felt lost in a sea of new terms and theories about teaching and child development. She found that it helped to relate the reading to her personal observations of her son and other kids she knew.

Writing at Work

Many college courses require students to participate in interactive online components, such as a discussion forum, a page on a social networking site, or a class blog. These tools are a great way to reinforce learning. Do not be afraid to be the student who starts the discussion.

Remember that when you interact with other students and teachers online, you need to project a mature, professional image. You may be able to use an informal, conversational tone, but complaining about the work load, using off-color language, or “flaming” other participants is inappropriate.

Active reading can benefit you in ways that go beyond just earning good grades. By practicing these strategies, you will find yourself more interested in your courses and better able to relate your academic work to the rest of your life. Being an interested, engaged student also helps you form lasting connections with your instructors and with other students that can be personally and professionally valuable. In short, it helps you get the most out of your education.

Common Writing Assignments

College writing assignments serve a different purpose than the typical writing assignments you completed in high school. In high school, teachers generally focus on teaching you to write in a variety of modes and formats, including personal writing, expository writing, research papers, creative writing, and writing short answers and essays for exams. Over time, these assignments help you build a foundation of writing skills.

In college, many instructors will expect you to already have that foundation.

Your college composition courses will focus on writing for its own sake, helping you make the transition to college-level writing assignments. However, in most other college courses, writing assignments serve a different purpose. In those courses, you may use writing as one tool among many for learning how to think about a particular academic discipline.

Additionally, certain assignments teach you how to meet the expectations for professional writing in a given field. Depending on the class, you might be asked to write a lab report, a case study, a literary analysis, a business plan, or an account of a personal interview. You will need to learn and follow the standard conventions for those types of written products.

Finally, personal and creative writing assignments are less common in college than in high school. College courses emphasize expository writing, writing that explains or informs. Often expository writing assignments will incorporate outside research, too. Some classes will also require persuasive writing assignments in which you state and support your position on an issue. College instructors will hold you to a higher standard when it comes to supporting your ideas with reasons and evidence.

Table 1.2 “Common Types of College Writing Assignments” lists some of the most common types of college writing assignments. It includes minor, less formal assignments as well as major ones. Which specific assignments you encounter will depend on the courses you take and the learning objectives developed by your instructors.

Table 1.2 Common Types of College Writing Assignments

Part of managing your education is communicating well with others at your university. For instance, you might need to e-mail your instructor to request an office appointment or explain why you will need to miss a class. You might need to contact administrators with questions about your tuition or financial aid. Later, you might ask instructors to write recommendations on your behalf.

Treat these documents as professional communications. Address the recipient politely; state your question, problem, or request clearly; and use a formal, respectful tone. Doing so helps you make a positive impression and get a quicker response.

Key Takeaways

• College-level reading and writing assignments differ from high school assignments not only in quantity but also in quality.
• Managing college reading assignments successfully requires you to plan and manage your time, set a purpose for reading, practice effective comprehension strategies, and use active reading strategies to deepen your understanding of the text.
• College writing assignments place greater emphasis on learning to think critically about a particular discipline and less emphasis on personal and creative writing.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

27 Writing Assignment Strategies

Learning objectives.

In this chapter, you will:

• Learn about different types of writing assignments
• Identify and evaluate the writing assignment strategies you currently use
• Identify new learning strategies you would like to try

Student Spotlight

This video will help you understand the importance of writing assignments. Why is writing down your thoughts helpful and what are some challenges that you face while writing? These questions will be answered by providing tips that can help you improve your writing skills.

Self-Reflection

Pre-Activity: As you begin thinking about your writing assignments, self-reflect. Ask yourself the following questions, and write down the answers so that you may look back on them later.

• Identification: What types of writing assignments do you currently have?
• Implementation: What strategies do you use to help you with these assignments?
• Effectiveness: How effective are these strategies? How do you know?

The Ins and Outs of Writing Assignments

A key part of acing your academics will be managing writing assignments. The types and amount of writing assignments you have may vary by discipline, and type of class (e.g., writing intensive classes versus non-writing intensive classes). Still, across assignments, disciplines, and classes you will find yourself using similar writing skills. Below you’ll learn more about these skills, why these skills matter, writing assignments, types of writing assignments, writing strategies, and the writing process.

Managing Writing Assignments

Key terms for writing assignments.

Although every writing assignment in every course is unique, there are specific writing approaches that involve concrete kinds of writing that apply across all disciplines. In order to meet the requirements of each assignment, students need to understand what exactly they are being asked to do. Working alone or with your peers, define the following words commonly found in writing assignments:

It ain’t whatcha write; it’s the way atcha write it. —Jack Kerouac, author

Why Do Writing Skills Matter?

Given the prevalence of social media posts, many students today are engaged with writing text like no other generation before, but college is a time to spend even more time and attention on writing skills. Research shows that deliberate practice with a close focus on improving one’s skills makes all the difference in how one performs. Developing the craft of writing and becoming an excellent communicator will save you a lot of time in your studies, advance your career, and promote better relationships and a higher quality of life off the job. Honing your writing is a good use of your time because it pays off academically, personally, and professionally.

Also, consider this: a recent survey of employers conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 89 percent of employers say colleges and universities should place more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing” (Hart Research Associates, 2009, p.9). It was the single-most favored skill in this survey.

In addition, several of the other valued skills employers cited are also grounded in written communication:

• “Critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills” (81 percent);
• “The ability to analyze and solve complex problems” (75 percent);
• “The ability to locate, organize, and evaluate information from multiple sources” (68 percent).

Writing in College

If the average student completes about 40 classes for a 120-credit bachelors’ degree and produces about 2,500 words of formal writing per class, it equates to 100,000 words during their college career. That’s roughly equivalent to a 330-page book.

Sharpening your writing skills will make those 100,000 words much easier and more rewarding to write. All your professors care about good writing.

College writing assignments require students to apply their existing writing skills, such as paragraphing, supporting a thesis, using correct punctuation, to tackling intellectual challenges in new ways. Professors assign papers because they want students to think rigorously and deeply about important questions in their fields. To college instructors, writing is for working out complex ideas, not just explaining them. A paper that would earn a top score in high school might only get a C or D in a college class if it doesn’t show original and ambitious thinking.

Professors look at students as developing scholars and expect them to write as someone who has a genuine interest in tackling a complex question. They expect them to look deeply into the evidence, consider several alternative explanations, and work out an original, insightful argument that they care enough about to spend a significant amount of time and energy developing into an effective essay that meets the requirements of each unique assignment.

Types of Assignments

Writing assignments can be as varied as the instructors who assign them. Some are explicit about what exactly you’ll need to do, in what order, and how it will be graded while some assignments are very open-ended, leaving you to determine the best path forward. Most fall somewhere in the middle, containing details about some aspects but leaving other assumptions unstated.

Most writing in college will be a direct response to class materials, such as an assigned reading, a discussion in class, or an experiment in a lab. Generally speaking, these writing tasks can be divided into the three broad categories described below.

Summary Assignments

Being asked to summarize a source is a common requirement in many types of writing assignments. At first it can seem like a straightforward task to simply restate, in shorter form, what the source says, but a lot of advanced skills are required to effectively capture what someone else has attempted to communicate.

An acceptable summary does the following:

• reflects your accurate understanding of a source’s thesis or purpose
• differentiates between major and minor ideas in a source
• demonstrates your ability to identify key phrases to quote
• demonstrates your ability to effectively paraphrase most of the source’s ideas
• captures the tone, style, and distinguishing features of the original source
• remains free of your personal opinion about the source

That last point is often the most challenging: we are opinionated creatures by nature, and it can be very difficult to keep our opinions from creeping into a summary that should be completely neutral. Although college-level writing assignments that are only summary are rare, most require students to summarize some important information before they move on to other tasks such as analyzing, contrasting, or persuading.

Defined-Topic Assignments

Sometimes instructors will ask you to address a particular topic or a narrow set of topic options. Often, they will give out an assignment sheet explaining the purpose, required parameters (length, number and type of sources, referencing style), and criteria for evaluation. Even with all that information, however, it can sometimes be difficult to determine what aspects of the writing will be most important when it comes to grading.

Below are some tips that may help when you are unsure how to approach or need more clarification on a defined-topic writing assignment:

• Focus on what is expected. Look for verbs like compare, explain, justify, reflect, or the all-purpose analyze. Remember you’re not just producing a paper as an artifact; rather, you’re conveying, in written communication, some intellectual work you have done. What kind of thinking are you supposed to do to deepen your learning in that particular discipline?
• Put the assignment in context. Many professors think in terms of assignment sequences or units. For example, a social science professor may ask you to write about a controversial issue three times: first, arguing for one side of the debate; second, arguing for another; and finally, incorporating text produced in the first two assignments to help you think through a complex issue in a more comprehensive and nuanced manner. If the assignment isn’t part of a sequence, think about where it falls in the span of the course (early, midterm, or toward the end), and how it relates to readings and other assignments.
• Try a free-write. A free-write is when you just write, without stopping, for a set period of time about whatever comes to mind. Professional writers use free-writing to get started on a challenging writing task and to overcome writer’s block or procrastination. The idea is that if you just make yourself write, you can’t help but produce some kind of useful nugget. Thus, even if the first eight sentences of your free write are all variations on “I don’t understand this” or “I’d really rather be doing something else,” eventually you’ll write something that will help move you in the right direction.
• Ask for clarification. Even the most carefully crafted assignments may need some verbal clarification, especially if you’re new to a course or field. When reaching out to your instructor for clarification via email or during office hours, try to convey that you want to learn and you’re ready to work. When the assignment is being discussed in class, raise your hand and ask a question. Most likely you’re not the only student in class who could use some clarification.

Although the topic may be defined, you can’t just grind out four or five pages of discussion, explanation, or analysis; even when you’re being asked to “show how” or “illustrate,” you’re still being asked to make an argument. You must shape and focus your discussion or analysis so that it supports a claim or thesis and all of your discussion and explanations develop and support that claim.

Undefined-Topic Assignments

While defined-topic essays demonstrate your knowledge of the content, undefined-topic assignments are used to demonstrate skills such as your ability to perform academic research, to synthesize ideas, or to apply the various stages of the writing process.

Undefined-topic assignments you’ll potentially encounter may be only broadly identified (“water conservation” in an ecology course, for instance, or “the Dust Bowl” in a U.S. History course) or completely open (“compose an argumentative research essay on a subject of your choice”). The first hurdle with this type of task is to find a focus that interests you.

You’ll get the most value out of, and find it easier to work on, a topic that intrigues you personally in some way, so spend some time exploring potential topic ideas before settling on one. The same getting-started ideas for defined-topic assignments described above will help with these kinds of projects, too. You can also talk with your classmates, instructor, or a writing tutor to help brainstorm ideas and make sure you’re on track.

The Writing Process

No writer, not even a professional, composes a perfect draft in the first attempt. Every writer fumbles and has to work through a series of steps to arrive at a high-quality finished project.

You may have encountered these steps as assignments in classes: draft a thesis statement; complete an outline; turn in a rough draft; participate in a peer review; revise and edit; create a final copy. Most likely in higher education, these writing process steps won’t often be completed as part of class, but you should still follow them on your own.

It helps to recognize that the steps of the writing process aren’t rigid and prescribed. Instead, they are flexible, so you can adapt them to your own personal habits, preferences, and the topic at hand. You will probably find that your process changes, depending on the type of writing you’re doing and your comfort level with the subject matter.

Research Paper Writing Steps

• Come up with a topic or question. What do you want to answer with your paper?
• Do your research. Learn research strategies from Getting Started with Research: Basic Information. You can also get help at the LaGuardia Library website.
• Develop a thesis statement and outline. Come up with a “working” thesis, an argument that you might change but will help you direct your paper.
• Write a draft. Try setting a goal word count for each day and do your best to stick to it.
• Revise, edit, and proofread your paper. Read your paper out loud to yourself to catch any mistakes and see if it makes sense.

These steps are a helpful overview of what is involved in completing an essay. Keep in mind that it isn’t always a linear process, though. It’s okay to loop back to earlier steps again if needed. For instance, after completing a draft, you may realize that a significant aspect of the topic is missing, which sends you back to researching. Or the process of research may lead you to an unexpected subtopic, which shifts your focus and requires you to revise your thesis. Embrace the circular, recursive path that writing often takes because it helps you become a better thinker and communicator.

Revision and Proofreading

These last two stages of the writing process are often confused with each other, but they mean very different things and serve very different purposes.

Revision is literally “reseeing.” It asks a writer to step away from a piece of work for a significant amount of time and return later to see it with new eyes. Producing multiple drafts of an essay is important because it allows some space in between each one to let thoughts mature, connections to arise, and gaps in content or an argument to appear.

Although it’s important to leave time between drafts, it’s difficult to do given that most college students face tight timelines to get big writing projects done. One way to help that happen is to start right away, and some tricks can help you “resee” a piece of writing when you’re short on time. Reading a paper backward sentence by sentence and reading your work aloud both allow you to approach your paper from a fresh perspective. Whenever possible, though, build in at least a day or two to set a draft aside before returning to work on the final version.

Proofreading , on the other hand, is the very last step taken before turning in a project. This is the point where spelling, grammar, punctuation, and formatting all take center stage.

It’s okay not to memorize every grammar rule, but it’s also important to know where to turn for help. Utilizing the grammar-check feature of your word processor is a good start, but it won’t solve every issue (and may even cause a few itself). Your campus tutoring or writing center is a good place to turn for support and help. They will not proofread your paper, but they will offer strategies for how to spot and correct issues that are a pattern in your writing.

Finding a trusted person to help you edit is perfectly ethical, as long as that person offers you advice and doesn’t actually do any of the writing for you. Professional writers rely on outside readers for both the revision and editing process, and it’s a good practice for you to do so as well.

Using Sources

College courses offer few opportunities for writing that won’t require using outside resources. Creative writing, applied lab, or field research classes will value what you create entirely from your own mind or from the work completed for the class. For most college writing, however, you will need to consult at least one outside source.

There are several different documentation styles you might be asked to practice within your classes. Each instructor should make it clear which of the major style will be used in their courses:

• MLA (Modern Language Association) is generally used for courses in the Humanities.
• APA (American Psychological Association) is used for most courses in Education, Psychology, and the Sciences.
• Chicago is often used for courses in Business, History, and the Fine Arts.

Regardless of the style, the same principles are true any time a source is used: give credit to the source in the paper as well as in a bibliography (or Works Cited page or References page) at the end. Each of these associations publishes handbooks and guidelines on how to effectively use their citation style, and most learning centers can provide materials and support to accurately write papers and cite sources in the conventions of all three styles..

Writing Style Guides

• Style for Students
• Purdue Online Writing Lab
• Excelsior Online Writing Lab

A Closer Look

Think about your written abilities in the following areas, and when you use these skills. What are your strengths, what are your challenges? Document the following information for a two week period of time. Be sure to also think about your time management, and the outcome of the skill implementation.

After two weeks, review your responses. Which skills worked well for you? Are there any revisions you will make going forward? If so, what are these and why are you making these revisions?

Next steps: Write down one new thing you will change about the way you manage your writing assignments. Explain why you will make this change.

Additional Resources

• Time Management and Plagiarism: A key part of writing will be managing your time. According to the LaGuardia Library Plagiarism Prevention Guide, good time management is a great way to avoid plagiarism in your written assignments. Go to the LaGuardia Library Plagiarism Prevention Guide to learn more about this.
• Chapter Connections: As discussed, time management is a key part of managing your writing assignments. Go to the Time Management and Procrastination section of this textbook to learn more about how to enhance your time management skills!
• Communication: Writing is one way to communicate your thoughts and learning. LaGuardia Community College commits to developing student ability to communicate in written, oral, and digital formats. Go to the LaGuardia Community College Written, Oral, & Digital Communication Rubric to learn more.

You have the tools you need to ace your academics! As you move forward in your journey, monitor your practices to be sure you are implementing the practices that work best for you. As you go forward, adjust these practices, and be sure to connect to the campus resources for further support. You are on your way!

Key Takeaways

Acing Academics requires awareness of your current practices; monitoring of your current practices; reflection upon the effectiveness of your current practices; and revision of your practices based on information you collect about the effectiveness of your practices. If a strategy works particularly well for you based upon your self-monitoring of your strategy use, be sure to keep implementing this effective practice. If a strategy is not effective time and time again, consider if it is the right strategy for you and the outcome you are trying to achieve. Then, identify a new strategy that may be more effective. Use your college and community resources. You are on your way to acing your academics!

references, licenses, and attributions

Guptill, Amy (2016). Really? Writing? Again? In Writing in college: Competence to excellence . https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/writing-in-college-from-competence-to-excellence/chapter/really-writing-again/ . CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 except where otherwise noted.

Jones, E. J. (2010). Chris Knight’s writing . Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/elijuicyjones/4465714643/in/photostream/ CC BY-NC 2.0

LaGuardia Community College (n.d.) Written, oral & digital communication abilities . Retrieved August 10, 2022 from https://www.laguardia.edu/uploadedfiles/main_site/content/divisions/aa/assessment/docs/communication%20abilities%20rubric.pdf

Westchester Community College (n.d.). Managing writing assignments. In Westchester community college first-year seminar . Retrieved August 10, 2022 from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-wcc-collegesuccess2/chapter/writing-strategies/ . CC BY 4.0

First Year Seminar Copyright © 2022 by Kristina Graham; Rena Grossman; Emma Handte; Christine Marks; Ian McDermott; Ellen Quish; Preethi Radhakrishnan; and Allyson Sheffield is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Resources for First-Year Writing

Designing writing assignments.

A well-designed assignment can focus and guide students’ work as they write papers and develop projects, and it can also make evaluating students’ work easier for faculty.  As  Rebecca Weaver  has argued, creating an assignment sheet is a challenging writing task, one that requires faculty to think not only about what they want students to produce but also what students need to know in order to produce good work.

Responding to Student Writing

For most faculty, the biggest concern with asking students to write is finding the time to respond well to student writing . Fortunately, research in Writing Studies suggests a number of ways to make grading easier and more effective. 

Peer Review

A video explaining how and why we should incorporate Peer Review into our classes .

Working with Second-Language Writers

Many faculty are unsure how best to support international students and those for whom English is a second language. We’ve collected ideas and links to resources from the experts .

Bibliographies of Scholarly Articles, Books, and Websites on Teaching Writing

Rebecca Moore Howard’s  Writing Matters  website has dozens of bibliographies on issues in Writing Studies, including several that relate to specific concerns in our program.

• On writing as a process
• On the idea of writing as a tool for learning
• On strategies for teaching critical reading and textual analysis
• On rhetorical analysis
• Language Standards (on what to expect and how to teach grammar and mechanics, as well as why students make errors)
• On strategies for using portfolios in writing courses
• On understanding and avoiding plagiarism
• On teaching the research process and the research paper

Discussion of “Teaching Literature in the Composition Classroom”

In late December and early January, scholars in writing and leaders of writing programs around the country engaged in a lengthy, spirited discussion of the role of literature in writing courses.  Since many of us in Georgetown’s writing program use literature in various ways in our courses, this discussion might be of interest.  The discussion began in December and the discussion continued into the first week of January.

Teaching in the Digital Age

HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) hosts The Pedagogy Project , a collection of resources and ideas for using digital technologies in the classroom.

On Writing Transfer

Elon University has developed a statement on writing and the question of transfer , summarizing discussions about writing and transfer, not as an end-point, but in an effort to provide a framework for continued inquiry and theory-building.

Framework for Success in Post-Secondary Writin g

This Framework describes the rhetorical and twenty-first-century skills as well as habits of mind and experiences that are critical for college success. Based in current research in writing and writing pedagogy, the Framework was written and reviewed by two- and four-year college and high school writing faculty nationwide and is endorsed by the Council of Writing Program Administrators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Writing Project.

English Composition: Connect, Collaborate, Communicate

(22 reviews)

Ann Inoshita

Karyl Garland

Jeanne K. Tsutsui Keuma

Tasha Williams

Copyright Year: 2019

Publisher: University of Hawaii Manoa

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Monica Vidal, Lecturer, Leeward Community College on 12/12/22

The book is most certainly comprehensive. It covers all the topics one could use to teach an English 100 course. It describes in detail what students need to be successful, lays out the writing process, details the different kinds of essays... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

The book is most certainly comprehensive. It covers all the topics one could use to teach an English 100 course. It describes in detail what students need to be successful, lays out the writing process, details the different kinds of essays students write, provides tons of examples, describes researching and citing sources, and ends with three appendices which provide more insight into place- and culture-based learning, more assignments, and more resources.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The content is accurate. There is a small bias toward the Hawaiian culture, but that is because this book was written in the University of Hawai‘i system, and making references to the culture on the islands is important for the local students. The examples used in the book are place- and culture-based.

The one error I did come across was in the first chapter where the authors described the use and spelling of words borrowed from other languages. They stated that "In French, the word “résumé” is a short, employment-related document detailing one’s education, work history, and job and people skills." While that is how we use the word now in English, the word means "summary" or "summarized" in French. Otherwise, I did not find other errors.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

This text is up-to-date and not in a way that will quickly make the text obsolete within a short time. It was written in 2019 and there are references to the iPhone X, for example, which is pretty easy to change if need be.

Clarity rating: 5

The text is clear, the prose is accessible, and it provides adequate context for all jargon and terminology. The authors define new words and concepts (rhetoric, intellectual standards, mindset, mechanics, etc.) and make it easy to follow along.

Consistency rating: 5

The text is consistent in its terminology and framework. Each chapter starts with a relatable story, then new concepts and examples, it then finishes with activities and works cited. Students and teachers alike will know what to expect as they move through each new chapter. I like that instead of providing links to resources, which can one day become obsolete, they provide us with the titles of videos that can be looked up. Example: "View the video “Shot on iPhone XS—Don’t mess with Mother—Apple,” posted by the Apple company."

Modularity rating: 5

The text is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections. These sections can be easily assigned at different points within the course. There are numerous subtitles and the sections contain no large blocks of text that can overwhelm students. The book is easy to navigate and each chapter can stand on its own if needed.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The structure and flow of the book are excellent. The authors have done a beautiful job of starting the students off with a chapter on college success strategies describing attendance, syllabi, checking emails, attending meetings, managing their time and organization, and working with a growth mindset. They discuss the 9 intellectual standards (clarity, precision, accuracy, depth, breadth, logic, significance, relevance, and fairness). After establishing a strong foundation in these critical areas, the authors move on to the writing process in chapter 2 (prewriting, drafting, revising, editing), essay structure in chapter 3 (introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs), in chapter 4, four kinds of essays are described: narrative, process narrative, evaluation, and persuasion, and finally in chapter 5, the research process and citing sources are covered. There are three appendices, one each on: place- and culture-based readings, online videos and readings, and additional assignments.

Interface rating: 4

There are no interface issues, no navigation problems, or distorted images. As previously mentioned, I liked that instead of providing links to resources, readers are given the titles of videos that can be looked up.

The text is missing an index, but using the "find" feature on the pdf text will help readers find the topics they could be looking for.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

I found no grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

This text is culturally sensitive: it uses examples from the local Hawaiian Islands context and dedicates an appendix to place- and culture-based readings.

Reviewed by Anthony Accardi Jr, Adjunct Professor, Middlesex Community College on 12/6/22

I was immediately impressed by the Table of Contents of the text English Composition: Connect, Collaborate, Communicate by Ann Inoshita Karyl Garland Kate Sims Jeanne K. Tsutsui. The “nuts and bolts” structure of the text presents an... read more

I was immediately impressed by the Table of Contents of the text English Composition: Connect, Collaborate, Communicate by Ann Inoshita Karyl Garland Kate Sims Jeanne K. Tsutsui. The “nuts and bolts” structure of the text presents an easy-to-follow guide for students to learn the basics of essay writing. The pleasant surprise is that despite the basic structure the text covers all important fundamentals comprehensively. The text presents students with essential writing steps such as prewriting and editing; Essay structure including proper paragraph construction; Types of Essays including analysis, evaluating and persuasion; and Research Skills including gathering information and citing sources.

In my review I did not notice any errors or inaccuracies.

The material in this book covers the “building blocks” of fundamental essay writing. Addressing the essential elements of writing makes the text relevant as well as a good guide for students to refer to throughout their academic careers.

In my experience I find most students are intimidated by the writing process. In the text English Composition: Connect, Collaborate, Communicate the authors explain the elements of good writing in a clear straightforward manner.

In general, the structure of each chapter in the text is similar, beginning with a brief definition/explanation of the topic followed by more relevant details.

The chapters are short yet comprehensive. They are suitably structured to be assigned as student reading assignments with related writing assignments.

The organization of the chapters creates a logical pedagogical progression outlining the elements of essay writing in a step-by-step manner.

Interface rating: 5

The text interface is easy to navigate and is available Online or as a downloaded PDF or Ebook.

In my review I did not notice any grammatical or syntax errors.

I felt Appendix 1. Placed Based and Culture Based Readings showed that the authors were sensitive to cultural diversity. I found the text inoffensive and appropriate.

This text covers the “basics of essay writing”. The steps by step approach to the text makes it easy to follow the fundamental process to write a good essay.

Reviewed by Angela Hurni, English Instructor, Tidewater Community College on 7/6/22

The textbook is a slim 110 pages and contains the essential chapters of any first-year college composition textbook: College Success Skills, The Writing Process, Essay Structure, Types of Essays, and Research Skills. However, the length of the... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The textbook is a slim 110 pages and contains the essential chapters of any first-year college composition textbook: College Success Skills, The Writing Process, Essay Structure, Types of Essays, and Research Skills. However, the length of the textbook does not include the numerous hyperlinks that provide additional information and learning opportunities. On the other hand, the textbook is overly reliant on other OER textbooks, namely Writing for Success from Saylor Academy, and one feels as if they are entering a rabbit hole of information without any guidance when clicking on these hyperlinks. The textbook does not contain an index or a glossary. It does contain three appendices with additional readings, multimedia sources, and assignments.

The textbook contains very few typographical or grammatical errors. One page stated, “This is where you can add appendices or other back matter,” so somewhere in the editing process this part of the template was not deleted. Information is accurate and unbiased.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

The subject matter is up-to-date and contains the basic elements of any first-year college composition textbook. However, the textbook contains hyperlinks to other sources that are not up to date. In addition to outdated links, the textbook contains links to other sources or sites that require logins, which creates a dead end because no guidance is provided. Very few hyperlinks are embedded within the text of the chapters. Largely, the hyperlinks are relegated to the end of the chapters within a variety of informational boxes to include headings such as Works Cited, Further Resources, and Sources. Most of these informational boxes contain hyperlinks, so the textbook should be easy to update since the majority of the textbook's hyperlinks are in one of these three locations at the end of each chapter.

The textbook is easy to understand and would be accessible to a student who is taking first-year college composition. Jargon and terminology are given ample context; many times hyperlinks are provided for additional information. For example, a section that covers how to “Use Transitions” provides a definition of transitions and a hyperlink for specific examples of transitions.

I enjoyed the consistent layout of the chapters. The chapters of the textbook have a uniform numbering system. Furthermore, the chapters always start with an Introduction section that contains an image, a list of Learning Objectives, and “A Student’s Story” that helps put the chapter’s content into a realistic scenario. The headings and subheadings are used consistently. The chapters end with a variety of additional informational boxes to include headings such as Works Cited, Further Resources, and Sources. These are also uniform in design and color from chapter to chapter.

The textbook’s chapters are divided into smaller reading sections with consistent headings, subheadings, and use of text effects. Short paragraphs are easy to read and navigate as are the outlines and bullet points. The table of contents allows the instructor to assign chapters out of order with easy-to-use navigational links.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The textbook is organized logically for a first-year college composition course. The student learns about college success skills and intellectual standards before moving onto content-specific information regarding The Writing Process, Essay Structure, Types of Essays, and Research Skills. The chapters provide a consistent path for instructors to use. While the chapter order is logical, the textbook would benefit from providing easy-to-find sample essays within the “Types of Essays” chapter. One must really search to find sample essays for the students to follow.

Interface rating: 3

The textbook is available to read as a PDF, online, or as an e-book. The textbook is easy to use on a laptop or a smaller device like an iPad. The graphics are more attractive on a laptop and the navigation works better on a laptop; plus, a helpful search engine is provided when using a laptop. Some hyperlinks are outdated, while others require a login prompt with no guidance from the textbook. The hyperlinks do not open into new tabs, so reader must click the back arrow in order to return to the textbook. However, if the reader is using a smaller device like an iPad, the reader is not taken back to previous page. Usually, the reader is returned to the beginning of the chapter or to some random page—never where you were in the textbook before clicking on the link. Therefore, a laptop or a desk top computer should be advised to use in the description of the textbook where the format options are given. Images are clean and crisp.

The textbook contains minimal grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

The textbook was published in Honolulu and written and designed by English writing instructors from various campuses in the University of Hawai‘i system. The description of the book says, “The content aligns to learning outcomes across all campuses in the University of Hawai'i system.” As a result, the textbook focuses quite a bit on Hawai‘i. The stories, examples, and jargon are largely from Hawaiian culture. The textbook is not offensive in any way to other cultures; I’m just not sure if the Hawaiian-centric content would have a broad appeal.

Textbook contains the basic topics that should be covered in a first-year composition course. It would be ideal for a semester that is eight or ten weeks long. However, the brevity of the text would prove challenging for a semester that is the typical 15 or 16 weeks long. I would also use it as a supplemental text for a second-year composition course, a technical writing course, or an argumentative writing course because it would be useful as a refresher of the basics that many advanced composition textbooks do not revisit.

Reviewed by Nick Hart, Adjunct English Instructor, Johnson County Community College on 4/21/22

The textbook is only 5 chapters + appendices. In addition, the textbook does not include an extensive grammatical or formatting section. Learning basic grammar and formatting practices are essential skills in first year and second year comp... read more

The textbook is only 5 chapters + appendices. In addition, the textbook does not include an extensive grammatical or formatting section. Learning basic grammar and formatting practices are essential skills in first year and second year comp courses. Regarding the formatting section, I did observe links to valuable websites such as the Purdue OWL, which is a practical bridge.

I did not notice any errors in my review of content. Furthermore, the content is easy to read in terms of color combinations and balancing of thoughtful images with the necessary text.

The content is current and relevant. My concern is the shortened length of the textbook. For the comp texts I use in my courses I'm used to anthologies that might exceed 500 pages + appendices.

The content is easy to view. Furthermore, the text invokes a warm and inclusive tone to it.

Consistency rating: 4

I would like to see more links for writing errors, punctuation, and grammar. I am unconvinced a comp chapter should include a chapter on college success skills. Shouldn't this content be taught in a separate course? Students who take first year comp courses will have a varying degree of abilities, meaning some students will not require content on college success skills.

The length of chapters is accessible for students who are unwilling to commit extensive amounts of time to reading textbook chapters.

Delete the college success skills chapter, and replace with a grammar/syntax/punctuation/writing errors to avoid chapter.

The textbook is easy to navigate, review, and explore.

I did not notice any errors.

See previous comments about inclusivity and warmth.

I could see myself using this book for future comp courses, but I would have to heavily supplement my lessons with additional handouts, exercises, and links. Chapter 4 talks about the different types of essays. I found this section to be somewhat incomplete, considering comp courses can also assign classification papers, cause and effect papers, comparison contrast papers, and so forth. The comp courses I teach require students to write distinctly different papers from start to finish. If the course focuses on one type of writing, (i.e., argumentation but different modes of argumentation in a comp II course) then a text that only focuses on this type of texts would work.

Reviewed by James Thomas Grady, Professor, Bristol Community College on 6/30/21

Provides substantial amounts of varied content. read more

Provides substantial amounts of varied content.

Scholarship is reliable, accurate and timely. Content is well-sourced and attribution is very clear and up front--a nice model for students.

Articles tap into the immediate currency of our times--Some content might need a refresh in a few years.

Clarity rating: 3

Writing is accessible and very clear. Perhaps some pruning/compression in parts. Sometimes the activities are a tad vague in purpose and scope.

It seems like the text has a coherent voice--This is important for students who struggle connecting to a text. There's nothing wrong with having a redundant layout and style when students are engaging with a text over a semester.

Modularity rating: 3

I wish the sections were more "chunked." Some have too many varied topics in one block.

Excellent progressive and developmental approach to stacking content.

Very clear navigation and visual "hamburger" menu.

No errors found.

Selections emphasize college-level literacy and seem bereft of any bias.

I like this text's organization approach in both design and content. The readings are challenging in all the right ways, asking students to demand college-level rigor of themselves in reading, writing and critical thought. I wish the activities had more targeted goals/outcomes for the students.

Reviewed by Judith Hague, Adjunct English Instructor, Bristol Community College on 6/29/21

COMPREHENSIVENESS - The textbook offers a good basic overview of the elements of writing for first year composition students. It is well organized and clear which makes for easy reading. Each chapter consists of a Learning Objective which... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

COMPREHENSIVENESS - The textbook offers a good basic overview of the elements of writing for first year composition students. It is well organized and clear which makes for easy reading. Each chapter consists of a Learning Objective which indicates the chapter's focus. The objective is followed by a student story. There are also exercises at the end of each chapter and an additional resources section for reading as well. An appendix is located at the end of the textbook which consists of place based and culturally based readings as well as online videos and additional readings. I would suggest that many of these videos and readings may have engaged students more by placing them throughout chapters in the text.

I found this text to be very accurate throughout. I am not aware of any errors.

This is a basic first year writing text, and the content is relevant today and may well be in the future. However, it can easily be updated if the need be.

I found this text very clear, and the language very easy to read .

The chapters are arranged in a pattern and the terminology is equally consistent as well.

The text can be broken up into smaller units, and the readings can be realigned with different subunits without any difficulty.

This text was very well organized and the material was clear and logical.. The book was broken down into five chapters and 3 appendixes. Each chapter started off with a Learning Objective, followed by a Student Story, an activities section, and reference section.

The text easily transforms into an e-reader, and the pdf version is easily downloaded and read without distortion.

I did not find any grammatical errors in this text. It seemed to be very well edited.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The text has examples from the Hawaiian culture because it was created for a Hawaiian University and its students. It also has an appendix which consists of culturally based readings that provides an inclusion of ethnicities in the text.

COMMENT: This text is brief, easy to read, and well organized. It offers a good overview of the elements of writing for first year college students, and it is an OER textbook which makes it free and affordable for students. It can easy be supplemented by handouts, readings, and videos to enhance the student's learning and more actively engagement them as well. I am really impressed with what the authors of this text did in creating it in only three days.

Reviewed by Alexis Teagarden, Associate Professor & Director of First-Year English, Massachusetts Department of Higher Education on 6/29/21

First-Year Writing (FYW) textbooks grow increasingly expensive, with their additional online platforms and expanding list of topics covered. 'English Composition: Connect, Collaborate, Communicate' by Inoshita et al. provides a scaled-down set of... read more

First-Year Writing (FYW) textbooks grow increasingly expensive, with their additional online platforms and expanding list of topics covered. 'English Composition: Connect, Collaborate, Communicate' by Inoshita et al. provides a scaled-down set of materials, addressing core writing concepts and common classroom problems (e.g., email missteps). The authors’ knowledge of first-year students’ typical missteps speaks to their FYW experience, a welcome background.

The textbook primarily reads like a series of concise lectures, which present students with important concepts and core vocabulary. It touches on central ideas in Rhet/Comp and Writing Studies, such as discourse communities and writing as a recursive process. It takes a charitable view towards common plagiarism issues, framing patch-writing as a novice-writer issue; it is perhaps not so kind to the K-12 system seen to produce such writers.

The chapter on research skills struck me as the least comprehensive, praising the importance of ongoing research rather than providing concrete ways students can successfully develop lines of inquiry. But that is an issue in publisher textbooks, too.

Content appeared accurate and error-free. Since multiple pedagogical approaches for teaching English composition exist, a book this concise could not represent them all. So it does present a specific approach rather than cover all of possible ways of teaching.

Some Writing Studies faculty may argue with the process-oriented, traditional approach this text takes; it does not advance cutting-edge assignments or pedagogical approaches. However, that might contribute to the text's longevity. Its approach remains a common one across U.S. universities, one unlikely to change anytime soon. The modular design of chapters also opens the opportunity to add new material without rewriting the entire book.

Clarity rating: 4

The writing avoids overuse of jargon, assuming a primary audience of novice/first-year writers.

However, I found the book more often tells students what to be than shows them how to be it, and I think that could result in some clarity issues. Students, for instance, are told “Conscientious college writers begin thinking about and researching essay topics immediately after being given the assignment.” But what “thinking about” assignments means is not unpacked. While chapters offer activities, they would likely require more scaffolding on the instructor’s part than provided, since the textbook often does not provide sufficient illustration for a novice.

Some principles are modeled or operationalized. When discussing letters of reference, the authors provide a detailed breakdown of how to write the necessary “formal email” request. The supplementary materials at the end also provide an OER list of readings focused on place (here, Hawai‘i ) and more detailed activities and assignments. None, however, provide evaluation criteria or means of assessment. Making full sense of what the text means will require work by the instructor on behalf of the students. Most classes benefit from the instructor bringing a textbook to life, though, so I do not see this as a major issue.

Most chapters follow a similar pattern. They open with stories about students, each having a different background and corresponding writing problem. The diverse representation of college-goers might help more readers find themselves in the text or broaden ideas of what a college student can be.

Chapters end with a Works Cited box and (re)linked references. This practices what the book preaches. OER references are linked within the text as well, simplifying things for the user, e.g., the section on Dweck’s growth mindset links directly to her Ted Talk. Some chapters also provide links to student models, published in the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s undergraduate journal.

Terminology appeared consistent.

This text appears designed to support modular as well as linear use. Since chapters focus on a different aspect of writing and use different framing stories, instructors could assign chapters out of order without confusing students. Chapter divisions will be familiar to most first-year writing instructors, as they follow a common division of tasks (college skills, the writing process, researching, etc.).

The modular nature and patterned chapters creates an organized text. Since the chapter topics are quite big, ways of navigating within them is important. The clearly named and linked sub-sections accomplish this.

The open-access platform offers an easily used online ebook. The downloaded pdf version seems slightly less elegant in format, but no issues actively impede use.

No errors impeded my reading.

I saw nothing that would concern me while teaching. The vignettes depict a variety of students engaging with writing and writing struggles; this conscious choice does good work expanding the image of who goes to college and who gets to be a "good writer". Examples mostly arise from the authors' local context, and faculty elsewhere might find it useful to swap in models from their local context.

Overall, 'English Composition' offers few of the bells and whistles I associate with for-profit first-year composition textbooks, which now seem as highly-designed as a spaceship. This is not necessarily a detraction. I find instructors often prefer to create their own explicated activities, detailed models, and discussion prompts. Such activities also work best when tailored to individual class needs. So while 'English Composition' does not provide a complete plug-and-play curriculum, it’s also unlikely instructors would need one.

What this textbook does offer is concise overviews of standard Rhet/Comp and Writing Studies’ concepts, saving faculty the time of creating learning materials on them or writing up corresponding mini-lectures. The book would work well as a background text, to give students an overview in advance of an activity or application. It could also serve as a reference for assigned homework.

I’m grateful for the authors’ work developing this book and for their generosity in sharing it as an open-access resource.

Reviewed by Leah Van Vaerenewyck, Visiting Lecturer, Framingham State University on 6/23/21

The text offers a neatly organized and comprehensive index and appendix materials. The introductory chapter is well-intentioned with tips for effective communication in college, but it also assumes that all professors have the same... read more

The text offers a neatly organized and comprehensive index and appendix materials. The introductory chapter is well-intentioned with tips for effective communication in college, but it also assumes that all professors have the same standards/expectations for communications from their students. For example, I do not need an email from a student if they are going to miss a class; they are adults and my courses establish the expectation that they get themselves caught up independently. I do not need or want to respond to their personal issues; however, the sample email on p. 5 establishes the expectation that students send an email for every absence. One big missing piece in this text is any attention to citation styles. They are mentioned briefly at various points throughout the text, but no citation style is given a full treatment. The text also advocates for citation managers, but experience shows that students who rely on those generators have very little understanding of how to execute a citation and do not develop an understanding of the difference between a journal article title and the name of the journal itself (for example). Many professors caution students against these "short cuts" and this text would undermine that advice. A great strength of each chapter is the blocked out learning objectives. This is a useful guidepost for students as they read.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

The text is appealing because it is brief, but it tries to do too much in too little space. For example, Section 1.3 on sentence clarity is underdeveloped and could potentially give students the idea that modifiers and punctuation are the only considerations that matter when evaluating sentence clarity. A separate section could cover this more thoroughly, or the authors could leave the subject out all together, allowing the professor to select appropriate handbooks or other ancillary materials. There are some font inconsistencies throughout that are distracting but don't hinder understanding (for example, the penultimate bullet point on page 17)

The text is generally easy to follow and content will remain reasonably relevant.

The text takes a very basic approach to all its subjects, making it appropriate for a first-year college student, specifically first-generation or academically underprepared college students. Sometimes, though, this simple approach leads to a lack of clarity. For example, on page 85, there is some discussion of A Word About “Drive-By” Citations (which may point to an intellectual honesty issue, since this sounds a lot like Graff & Birkenstein's hit-and-run quotation). In any case, the idea is introduced, but not clarified. Students would need to see an example (or many) of this sort of dangling quotation and its antithesis to develop an understanding of how to sufficiently connect sourced material to student ideas or to other sourced material (by way of synthesis).

The text's chapter structure and tone are consistent throughout. The text has a consistent treatment of rhetorical analysis and considerations throughout, making the concepts introduced here easy to translate/apply to multiple kinds of assignments in the composition course.

Smaller sections of the text could be assigned effectively without losing much. One strength of the text is its reference to outside sources. Although links often become dated, it might be worth providing some hyperlinks to resources that can be reasonably expected to remain stable for a few years or more.

The TOC and learning objectives for each chapter are strong organizational features. The headers and sub-headers are consistent, though they could be more visually appealing to assist in scanning/navigation. The discussion of structure in the writing process and in the editing chapters could be reorganized to a consolidated, single discussion of structure.

The text is very easy to navigate and is visually simple.

The text is grammatically sound.

There are culturally diverse readings/considerations included in the appendix materials, but little to no attention paid to linguistic diversity or culturally specific/relevant pedagogies throughout.

Reviewed by Julie Odell, Associate professor, Community College of Philadelphia on 6/22/21

First, the college success chapter should include specific tips on annotation. Also, the growth mindset has become controversial for a number of reasons (it's a deficit ideology, ignores the material and emotional conditions of students' lives,... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 2 see less

First, the college success chapter should include specific tips on annotation. Also, the growth mindset has become controversial for a number of reasons (it's a deficit ideology, ignores the material and emotional conditions of students' lives, and research doesn't support its success in student learning outcomes). Even so, this textbook merely summarizes it without giving students strategies to develop a growth mindset.

The section Intellectual Standards for Quality will overwhelm many students in the introductory chapter (or they will skip it altogether). The language and tenor are also too formal. The standards themselves would be better woven through the chapters and written in more of an advising tone. They are great ways to evaluate an essay when a student is at the editing stage.

Letters of recommendation instruction does not belong in the first chapter--the textbook should stick to academic essay writing and maybe include this as an apendix. Also, letters of rec. covered in First Year Experience courses at most colleges.

English Composition teaches text-based academic writing at most schools. In the chapter on the writing process and essay structure, activities ask for personal essays on non-academic topics. I would LOVE to have seen some real-world essay prompts for text-based assignments, even from different disciplines as English comp courses serve students' future writing-intensive courses. Also, citation is tacked on at the end, briefly, while it should be integrated throughout.

In the chapter on the writing process, the writers emphasize drafting an essay in 75 minutes and offer no other possible strategies. I find most of my working adult students end up writing their drafts in pieces as they organize their time, which can be a successful drafting strategy. Or else they spend two hours or one hour. Why 75 minutes here? I'd only teach a 75-minute draft process for a timed in-class essay. Also, for the free writing activity, it would be great to ask students to free-write about something specific as that will be the case most often. It's rare they will be able to free write about whatever is on their mind and then draft an essay on a specific prompt.

As for essay structure, the chapter asks for a thesis that "must present an argument," which just isn't accurate for many prompts. It sounds like every assignment will be to write an argument essay. Also, a thesis statement is often more than one sentence. In the section on weak thesis statements, it would be great to include a revision of each to make it a strong thesis statement.

Then it recommends body paragraphs that all support that thesis, sounding much like the five-paragraph essay. In truth, English comp prompts can ask for all sorts of combinations of rhetorical moves (requiring more complex thesis statements). Also, this should introduce citation and use of source material, as most academic essays will require that. Again, some real-life academic essay prompts would be great here, as well as strategies to address them.

As far as the author's audience, in truth, the audience for academic writing is professors and other students. Any sort of "letter to the editor" model is not academic.

Needs much more on language usage.

Also, I realize instructors from the University of Hawai'i wrote this, so the examples of code-switching are culturally relevant to them, but for much of the country, code-switching is used by Black students, Latinx students, Asain students, and students from all over the world.

The section on editing could use some specific strategies, like reading out loud, having the word processing program read the essay out loud, printing and working off hard copy, etc.

As for grammar, "Most college writers struggle with only one or two main grammar blindspots" just isn't true. Also, there is such specific instruction on punctuation. I'd like to see the same for sentence boundary issues, passive versus active voice, even capitalization, which, in the age of texting and social media, is chaos.

Also, the section on rhetorical modes is a bit too pat. Most real academic essay prompts ask for a combination of rhetorical moves and often don't identify themselves as a specific mode. It would be great to see more about combinations of modes, and connection to actual academic essay prompts. Also, the activities for each rhetorical mode were too simplistic and not academic. "Evaluate a restaurant" is not an appropriate prompt for a college-level writing course.

Finally, at most schools, English composition and research writing are two separate courses. And the section on research skills is rushed anyway. Again, I believe use of sources, citation, APA versus MLA, and essay format need to be integrated into earlier chapters.

See comments above--in several areas, I found content inaccurate in terms of what happens in English comp courses.

Because I think the content does not address enough of what's required in academic writing, I can't speak to this.

I found the prose too formal, and, especially in the first chapter College Success Skills, too scoldy and too much "you must." I wonder why this wasn't written in second person to address the student directly. It has a "sage on the state" quality and needs a more "guide on the side," student-centered tone.

The text is consistent.

The textbook is well-organized and is visually pleasing with plenty of white space and attractive, though generic, photos.

As I wrote above, I believe the use of source material and citation needs to be integrated throughout the textbook.

The book's interface is clear.

The grammar is excellent.

Code-switching needs to include various races and ethnicities. Growth mindset can be exclusionary, ignores students' realities, trauma, previous educational experiences, and so can be racially problematic. The tone of the text, particularly the first chapter, often sounds authoritarian and too stern, too "sage on the stage." It also ignores the fact that 50% of all students today are first-generation. I believe this requires a more supportive tone, and, again, more of a "guide on the side" tenor. For example, "Speaking of 'presence,' students must be physically, psychologically, and intellectually present in class each period to learn everything they possibly can" is so not great as instruction (sounds like an old-school non-student-centered syllabus) and holds students to an ideal they may have never encountered and may not be possible at all times. There is a mental health crisis on college campuses--pre-pandemic, 87% of college students felt overwhelmed by all they had to do, 66% felt overwhelming anxiety, 56% felt things were hopeless and 13% seriously considered suicide. Imagine post-pandemic! A chapter on college success absolutely must address this and do so with kindness, which means telling students how to manage stress, depression, and access mental health services.

Reviewed by Tabitha Espina, Assistant Professor, Eastern Oregon University on 6/14/21

The range of the text is particularly impressive. The first chapter consists of College Success Skills that are relevant to many first-year students' experiences. I liked that the text explicitly framed success in college with a narrative of... read more

The range of the text is particularly impressive. The first chapter consists of College Success Skills that are relevant to many first-year students' experiences. I liked that the text explicitly framed success in college with a narrative of student experience, to show that these concerns are not isolated and rather address an entire community of first-year college students. Moreover, practical tips like "presence" and attendance, how to write an email, how to read a syllabus, time management, and even civil discourse are explored. Often I have to use multiple sources to address these different skills and topics, but I appreciate that these all can be found prefacing this text. What I found particularly helpful in the first chapter was the description of intellectual standards and terminology related to the fields of rhetoric and composition. Intellectual standards are described to show what type of writing is associated with quality and how writing is typically evaluated. However, I would have liked if "standards" were framed as subjective, reflecting the values of a community or institution, rather than primary criteria. I think it is important not to refiy assumptions of deficiency, and a decolonial pedagogy recognizes multiple meanings and ways to arrive at those meanings--even if they are not recognized by standards of the dominant culture. However, this is a small concern compared to the other important terms discussed in this chapter. Rhetoric is often not discussed, much less defined, explicitly in first-year composition, but the descriptions given in this text are given necessary context and explanation. Moreover, I often teach rhetorical analysis in my composition courses, and many students lack familiarity with the rhetorical appeals. I like that the rhetorical appeals are outlined in this first chapter, so that students have a reference readily available to conduct their analyses. The second chapter demonstrates the processual nature of writing, moving from ideation to publication or sharing. In addition to the process, I like that a genre analysis is available in the third chapter, wherein the different parts of an academic essay are given specific focus and direction. I like that I have a resource to provide students that allows them to look at the composite parts and see the coherence, in order to become familiar with the genre of an academic essay. In addition to parts and process, the fourth chapter further evaluates genre by rhetorical modes, allowing students to see the multiple purposes, patterns of development, and approaches of an academic essay. Finally, the fifth chapter is especially useful in outlining the core principles and processes of research, which are easily adaptable to the different research style sheets, like MLA, APA, and Chicago. I find that many of my students do not know how to begin the research process, and I appreciated that topics such as time management and properly citing sources to avoid plagiarism are discussed in clear, descriptive detail.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

The information is highly accurate and synthesizes topics in contemporary composition, such as that related to process theory, code-switching, counterargument, rhetorical appeals, and civil discourse. I would, however, have liked to see more on linguistic diversity/translingualism, pluriversality, or language/discourse communities related to diverse student language experiences. Nevertheless, the online citation management tools described, for example, are those still commonly utilized by students. Some cited material is as recent as 2020.

By providing multiple chapters that describe the function and genre of an academic essay, the text remains relevant. Chapter 2 describes the processual nature of the composing process and how to approach the various steps in writing an essay that adheres to what the text calls the “nine primary intellectual quality standards” (1.3) of clarity, precision, accuracy, depth, breadth, logic, significance, relevance, and fairness. Chapter 3 describes the conventional components of an academic essay. Chapter 4 looks at rhetorical modes and patterns of development, with particular focus on those most often encountered by first-year writing students: narrative, evaluative, process analysis, and persuasive rhetorical modes. Chapter 5 provides research guides and principles that can be applied to specific disciplines. The college success skills are practical and can be applied throughout a student’s academic career.

The text is highly accessible. Terminology from the fields of rhetoric and composition are clearly defined, provided context, and also often framed in student narratives that illustrate the relevance of these terms. Additional resources are linked to provide additional context or clarification.

The text is consistent in both tone and content. Chapters are prefaced with an introduction that includes a visual, foregrounds the significance of the topics discussed, and outlines specific learning objectives. Subchapters have activities and sources specific to the content. The framework is undergirded by the “nine primary intellectual quality standards” (1.3) of clarity, precision, accuracy, depth, breadth, logic, significance, relevance, and fairness, and the language of the quality standards are used consistently throughout.

The text is logically divided with clear subheadings that guide readers’ understanding of the topics presented within subchapters. The chapters, themselves, can function independent of one another and do not need to be read in succession in order to be understood. Furthermore, subchapters can be assigned individually, as each has its own contexts and topics, and many have their own activities.

The text follows a clear, logical organizational structure. Prefacing the text with college success skills addresses issues of preparedness that underlie success in writing courses. The organization of the chapters reflect a contemporary philosophy of composition by positioning writing courses within the larger context of college success, then discussing a processual approach, then describing the conventional genre, then addressing multiple rhetorical modes, and finally presenting the conventions of scholarly research that make writing public and accessible. This organization moves from broader to more specific concerns.

The interface is highly effective. Visuals are utilized that compliment the text and are representative of a diverse student body. Learning objectives and activities are positioned in colored boxes, and sources are set off and hyperlinked in a bottom box. The collapsible Table of Contents makes the text easily navigable. My least favorite visual, however, was that used as the cover, as I do not feel it fully represents the vibrancy of the text’s content and style.

I did not observe any grammatical errors throughout the text.

This book was most impressive to me because of its culturally responsive and culturally sustaining approaches to the teaching of writing. The visuals and stories reflect a diverse student body and experiences specific to the context from which the text emerged, aligning specifically to learning outcomes across all campuses in the University of Hawai'i system. I most appreciated the Appendices, which include place-based and culture-based readings that are geographically significant, online videos and readings relevant to the Hawai’i and Pacific context, and suggested assignments that are culture-based, using “the culture, ethnicity, language, and traditions of people groups as engaging and relevant approaches and topics” (Appendix 3). These Appendices are relevant and useful to my own instruction with Asian American and Pacific Islander students.

I am grateful for the existence of a text that is so culturally situated and attuned to the needs of students within its context. I hope that similar texts might emerge from other Pacific Islands.

Reviewed by Sharon Graham, Instructor, English Composition, Fort Hays State University on 5/21/21

This text includes useful material for all main areas of typical first-year college English composition classes. In some ways, it feels like an expanded outline that provides a solid foundation on which to elaborate. I, for one, appreciate the... read more

This text includes useful material for all main areas of typical first-year college English composition classes. In some ways, it feels like an expanded outline that provides a solid foundation on which to elaborate. I, for one, appreciate the relative simplicity of the text while at the same time realizing the need to supplement (which I do anyway even with bulkier textbooks). The part where I would like to have seen additional content is the section on editing. Although an exhaustive list of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and other language items that might require a writer's attention is nearly impossible to produce (and really not desirable), the section in the text seems to be rather "hit or miss," especially when it comes to the table of examples. In addition, the text is missing an index and glossary.

The bulk of content appears to be accurate and unbiased. However, a few of the hyperlinks are either broken or link to the wrong page. For example, the link “Essay Development: Good paragraph development: as easy as P.I.E.” under "Further Resources" in section 3.3 is broken. Under "Further Resources" in section 4.5, there is no link to the "Ethos, Pathos, Logos" video, and the link for the first sample persuasive essay takes you to an unrelated website.

As previously mentioned, the main content reflects traditional first-year composition classes and is not likely to change anytime soon. The writers include several examples that have more direct relevance within a Hawaiian context, but not exclusively; the key material is relevant with plenty of room to adapt to different environments as necessary. Some may question the inclusion of "College Success Skills" in the first chapter, but since first-year writing classes are generally intended to contribute to students' overall success throughout their course of study, I think the information is relevant even if it is a review for some students. The majority of the students I currently teach are online-only and do not take the typical "first year experience" class required of on-campus freshmen. In addition, they often have been away from the academic environment for a number of years; thus, starting off with some basic skills for student success would be beneficial.

The language of the book is clear and approachable. It does not use intimidating language, but neither does it seem to talk down to students. Although there is no a glossary, many of the more technical terms are defined in context.

The layout of the text is mostly consistent. Chapters begin with a list of learning objectives followed by "A Student's Story" section. Consistent font sizes/styles are used within chapters to identify section headings, main content, etc. An "Activities" box is included for most (but not all) sections. One area of consistency that might be improved is the use of "Works Cited" at the end of some sections and "Sources" at the end of others; section 3.3 actually includes both (I think the writers are perhaps trying to distinguish between smaller bits of cited material and larger portions of information from a Creative Commons source, but this could be a little confusing especially to students).

The book's modularity is one of its strong points. I felt the content was divided into appropriate chunks that could be easily assigned and referenced.

I found the organization to be logical, very similar to what I follow in my own teaching. One detail I especially appreciated in section 5.3 in the "Research Skills" chapter is the discussion of Works Cited/References pages before in-text citations; as the text itself states, "The information in the in-text citation will be whatever the first word is in the Works Cited entry. For that reason, it can be easier to add in in-text citations after the Works Cited page has been created."

The eBook and online interfaces are easy to navigate for the most part. Wherever you are on a page, there is an arrow that will take you back to the top where you can access the table of contents and the corresponding links to different chapters and sections of the book. This is true for the mobile experience as well. I appreciate having a PDF version available, but there is some wasted space (although as another reviewer pointed out, it is easier to search the PDF version).

I did not find any glaring grammatical errors.

The book often incorporates examples from the Hawaiian culture, which is appropriate for the context of its writers. I don't think these locale-specific examples are necessarily a problem to include; rather, they can provide opportunities to discuss the importance of audience among other things. Even more, I see them as a model for instructors to follow in either inserting examples of their own that might reflect the local college context or asking students themselves to share examples that reflect their specific cultural background.

Overall, I found this text to be a viable OER option for first-year college writing. It provides a suitable basic foundation in terms of content and organization. The writers include several practical ideas and "tricks" for students throughout the chapters.

Reviewed by Kole Matheson, Lecturer, Old Dominion University on 5/16/21

The text offers a comprehensive overview of the current-traditional approach to English Composition. The genres explored in the text are typical of “first-year English” classes of the last century. Furthermore, the text accounts for established... read more

The text offers a comprehensive overview of the current-traditional approach to English Composition. The genres explored in the text are typical of “first-year English” classes of the last century. Furthermore, the text accounts for established learning outcomes of the field, which include information literacy, writing as a process, and knowledge of grammatical and citation conventions. The text exceeds expectations of comprehensiveness in that additional sections on college success skills are included, which is not typical of a current-traditional approach to writing.

The text accurately reflects the current-traditional approach to the teaching of composition. The content therein aligns with other textbooks in the field that deploy this approach to freshman writing. There are no factual errors present in the text.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 2

As the text reflects the century-old approach to the teaching of college composition, its relevance is waning. Countless textbooks are published in the field that explore the current traditional approach to freshmen writing, which leaves the reader wanting for a more immediate contribution. Emergent practices in the field are not treated by the text; rather, the established approach to current-traditionalism is rearticulated for an open access audience.

The text is written clearly and concisely. Especially helpful are the graphic organizers, example outlines, and activities that aid the reader in understanding and applying the content of discussion.

The text is consistently designed and user-friendly. Section headings, subheadings, bulleted points, reflective conclusions, and “further resources” offer a consistent structure within each chapter of the text. This consistent and predictable design enhances the readability and accessibility of the content.

Modularity rating: 4

The text’s modularity is sound. The various chapters could be read sequentially or in isolation. Depending on the instructor’s preference, the chapters could be presented from cover-to-cover or in some other sequence that serves the goals of the course.

The text's organization is typical of the current-traditional approach to writing. In fact, the text follows the directions it prescribes to students in that a clear writing process is the foundation of understanding how writing happens. Next, the focus on process culminates in a variety of approaches to essay structure. Finally, the text closes with a discussion on best practices in research. As such, the organization of the text outlines the typical structure of a semester of freshman composition.

I read the PDF version of the text and did not encounter any issues with the interface. The text is viewable, graphics are positioned well, and images are appropriately placed.

There are no glaring issues with the grammatical structures in the text.

Cultural Relevance rating: 2

The cultural relevance of the text might be critiqued, especially as the field of writing studies continues to grapple with issues of diversity and cultural competence. The text rightfully claims that “one language is (not) better than another.” However, the section on “Intellectual Standards of Quality” seems to contradict this claim. The uncritical depiction of “academic English” as “clear for everyone” actually leads the reader to infer that one language variety is more communicative than another. Still, the focus on Hawai'ian culture is novel and important.

To date, this is the most comprehensive and well organized current-traditional writing text I have seen in open access publication.

Reviewed by Rochella Bickford, Associate Professor, Kansas City Kansas Community College on 4/25/21

While the book provides a simple overview of a first-year composition course, there are many elements that would need to be included if it were to be used in courses that need to address different modes and genres of text. There are limited... read more

While the book provides a simple overview of a first-year composition course, there are many elements that would need to be included if it were to be used in courses that need to address different modes and genres of text. There are limited readings and assignments linked to the units, as well. Some of the assignments would require teaching additional skills or providing exemplars. For example, in 1.2 on College Success Skills, a student who was new to the concept of close reading and annotation would do better with a video and visual example of what it means to think through and annotate a text. There were no scoring guides, and linked rubrics would have been helpful to both students and instructors. There is no index or glossary.

There are more types of writing taught in first-year composition courses than what the textbook covers. For example, the text covers narration, process analysis, evaluation, and persuasion. However, students may need instruction in other types of writing, such as descriptive, expository, or argumentative essays. It wasn’t clear why section 4.2 listed several types of writing and noted that most of those types would not be covered. More importantly, teaching students to write objective summaries of text is an essential skill missing from this course. The section on writing a thesis statement (3.2) was not quite accurate in the limited description of where a thesis statement could be located in a text.

In recent years, the ideas of how grit, determination, and having a “growth mindset” have been largely criticized for discounting the real obstacles that many underprivileged students face. This text heavily emphasizes the growth mindset, so any updates to new research or evidence-based practices with this approach would need to be added. Some of the student “stories” may need to be updated to reflect recent and relevant views and contexts.

Most of the text uses clear and simple prose that is widely accessible to students. With instances where students are learning new words and concepts (such as annotation), exemplars or a glossary would be helpful.

Each of the sections begins with the same pattern: photograph, learning objectives, and a “Student’s Story.” Students will readily recognize the start of each unit. However, some sections contained activities and further resources, but some sections omitted these parts.

I reviewed the online version of the book. While the interface is very easy to navigate, it is almost too simple. There is no way to navigate within a page/section once you are on it. The pages of text are very long. I am looking for materials to use in an integrated, reading and writing course that pairs with a first-year composition class. I don’t think many students will take the time to read the entire page. If an instructor wanted to assign a section of the page, there isn’t a way to direct the students to a specific point.

The section on citing sources (5.3) could have been clearer in regard to MLA and APA format. This section mentioned citation management before it discussed what citations were or how to use them. It would have been nice to see links to the APA and MLA at the start of this section, as opposed to the very end. It was nice that the text linked to sources such as the OWL at Purdue University. Overall, the organization of the book was clear. Since this is a subject that is recursive as opposed to linear, it would work with any course structure or outline.

Due to the large “blocks” of text on many pages, additional, embedded graphics or videos would have helped to support the text. The inability to click on direct links to move to different areas of a page makes the reader scroll through the whole section before finding relevant information.

Grammatical Errors rating: 4

There are a few grammatical errors in a few places. There are some awkward sentences and fragments. For example, in Citing Sources (5.3), “Using notes and bibliography is preferred” has a subject/verb agreement error. At the end of that section, one of the assignments asks students to “Put away a plagiarized essay and tell the instructor or peer mentor what you wrote.” It was very difficult to understand what the assignment is asking the student to do.

There do not seem to be any culturally offensive or insensitive references in the text. While the text mostly focuses on Hawaii, there are texts and videos that reference other races and cultures.

This is a simple and clear outline for a first-year composition text. It would be a great resource for students who are learning online, as long as the instructor can be very specific about the sections the students need to review. Instructors can expect to add several additional resources and exemplars to strengthen the content.

Reviewed by Karin Rhodes, Instructor, Salem State University on 7/2/20

This concise textbook is a good overview for newcomers to college. I like the first chapter on Success Skills; regardless of orientation workshops and First-Year Experience courses, freshmen need these skills to be repeated and reinforced. Our... read more

This concise textbook is a good overview for newcomers to college. I like the first chapter on Success Skills; regardless of orientation workshops and First-Year Experience courses, freshmen need these skills to be repeated and reinforced. Our institution's writing program is now emphasizing "genre" and "multimodal," neither of which are addressed here. I also would have liked some more help with "peer-reviewing" in the Revision chapter. There is no Index nor Glossary, and it is sometimes difficult to track down specific information. (The online version's search was useless, but the pdf and the ebook were more searchable.)

As far as I could tell, all the information was "accurate," but I cannot say it was error-free. (see Grammatical Errors and Clarity)

The book's audience is specifically Hawaiian, but that only makes it more interesting to read. I found it ironic that in the "Close Reading" section, the students are instructed to use colored pens/highlighters and to use "the front of the book" for notes. This is irrelevant if we don't have a print textbook. Information about how to do this with ebooks would be more relevant, wouldn't it?

The text is USUALLY clear and quite readable, but there are still some rough spots that weren't worked out in the editing. For instance, in the Revision chapter, in Table 1, the term "subordinate clause" is not defined and the example given seems to be a mistake. (Also, Table 1 claims to be about Punctuation and Mechanics, but it is about grammar or style. I mean, the rule that "using 'so' to mean 'really' or 'very' without using 'that' is an error" is NOT a punctuation rule.) Throughout, words are defined in-text, but could just as well be hot-linked. As I said above, "subordinate clause" is not explained, yet frequently the authors use a construction such as "English is a polyglot language (made up of multiple languages)."

SOME in-text citations were hot-linked, but not all. There would be a Works Cited in the middle of one chapter but not the next; why not just leave it to the end of each chapter? In Chapter 4, the hot-links were erratic.

In general, this trait is good. However, a more thorough numbering of the subsections would be so much more helpful. For example, 4.2 could have been further labeled 4.2.1, 4.2.2, and 4.2.3. If the students are using the pdf, page numbers can be referred to, but if they are using the ebook, will they understand "Look at the table at 41%"? How am I supposed to direct them to certain Activities boxes? If most of (at least) one of the chapters is pretty much from Writing for Success, why shouldn't I just use THAT source?

The main outline is organized as I would do it myself--quite standard. Style hints are interjected into the other chapters as the concepts arise, which is fine if the book as a whole will be used but creates a problem in the "modularity" trait. The format of starting with Learning Objectives and A Student's Story was nice, but consistency in adding Works Cited, Sources, and Further Sources would be nice.

Interface rating: 2

Some links do nor open correctly or misdirect. ADA compatibility is weak; the ebook has a lovely built-in reader, but the images do not have descriptions. I especially LIKED this text because of the variety of formats: online (ho-hum), pdf (too much wasted space; vertical format not so great on a laptop), ebook (my favorite; easy to read in a horizontal format). I was unable to test it out on a smartphone, which is how most of my students would probably access it.

Grammatical Errors rating: 3

In the section explaining the importance of punctuation such as commas, they left out the end-stop period! (I suppose this could be used as a teaching moment, but, really...) The font size went fluky in a couple of spots (got larger for no apparent reason). In at least two spots, I found problems with quotations. One was a quote that was opened and cited, but never closed. The other was at the beginning of the first chapter (some introduction!) The Student's Story was actually quoted from Michelle Obama's speech, but there were no quotation marks and no introductory remarks to indicate to the student-reader that the passage was anything other than the authors' words. Very confusing.

All the examples are Hawaiian. I don't think this would offend any students or make them feel "left out." The intended audience appears to be first-generation college students (which is my main demographic). There is no special sections or hints for ESL students, but the discussions of "code-switching" and Pidgin language is really interesting and enlightening for any student.

I am looking for "one-stop-shopping" in a textbook. This one covers the basics, is quite readable at the freshman level, has activities, gives examples (though not full student papers), and comes in various formats. Unfortunately, the book could use one more diligent edit. More links could be useful (for definitions, for further sources, maybe some exercises).

Reviewed by Padma Sundar, Adjunct Faculty, Bunker Hill Community College on 6/23/20

It covers all the areas a faculty would look for that can serve as a bridge course between high school and college. The topics range from functionalities of language to dynamics of it. The travel from the writing process to types of writing and... read more

It covers all the areas a faculty would look for that can serve as a bridge course between high school and college. The topics range from functionalities of language to dynamics of it. The travel from the writing process to types of writing and ending in research skills complete the cycle of learning required for students to embark on in-depth writing required as they go along in their 4-year college course. The examples provided at the end of each topic reinforces the concept. However, as a faculty, I would have looked for some more exercises with answers for practice. The authors can consider the idea of having a practice book with answers and sample essays as an addendum.

The language used is error-free and accurate.

The topics and activities chosen are relevant in terms of topic and timing. For example, the inclusion of thesis statements, strong and weak thesis statements just before essay writing gives students a definite approach to write an essay. The technique involved in writing a strong thesis statement makes the task of writing an essay easier. The definite transition from a narrative is very commendable as it allows students to embark on a journey of simple to complex. The students start from the art of narrating a story to convincing the audience in what they believe strongly with evidence. All these activities are relevant to what happens in their day-to-day life so their involvement and immersion are complete.

The language used is simple and the students from different backgrounds(ESL) can easily understand the concept. They may find some terms like citation, evaluation, and analysis challenging initially, however, as the course progresses they learn these and get familiar with. Afterall the aim of doing a course is to dwell into something new.

There is definitely a regular progression from simple to complex in the text and the end of the topic exercises cater to reinforcement. The text offers a lot of clarity to students on the topics covered and dwelled in detail to help them understand the concepts needed for effective writing.

The text has been very clearly organized into modules easily accessed according to topics.

There is a definite structure to the text with topics ranging from mechanics of writing to applying them in different forms of writing. The inclusion of student stories in between is a novel concept. The stories make students feel that the fears they have are normal and experienced by many likewise. The structure of the book helps the faculty to structure the syllabus on the lines of the book. The progression from simple to complex and concluding with researching skills leaves students well prepared for their next journey.

The book offers a good navigation process. The graphic organizer for the persuasion chart (pg. 22) could have been on a separate page that way the students can photocopy it and use it for their essays.

The text is strong in language with least or no errors in grammar.

The text can be well understood by students. The fact that the stories do not mention the background of the students is commendable. That way they can relate to students from different backgrounds. The emphasis on place-based and culture-based readings is direct evidence of an inclusive approach of the authors.

The book serves as a good source for faculty in devising their syllabus for College Writing 1. It has all the right things in place and gives a sense of direction to all those who are guessing as to what their starting point should be. The activities are well-graded and there is a logical and holistic approach to the course. I recommend this to all my colleagues who are new to teaching College Writing.

Reviewed by Stephanie Viens, Adjunct Faculty, Bristol Community College on 6/22/20

The text appropriately covers all subjects relevant to an entry-level writing course. As an adjunct faculty members teaching Communication and secondary English Language Arts teacher, I find this text wanting for naught in terms of topics covered.... read more

The text appropriately covers all subjects relevant to an entry-level writing course. As an adjunct faculty members teaching Communication and secondary English Language Arts teacher, I find this text wanting for naught in terms of topics covered. The content on introductions and conclusions could be slightly stronger by including full example introduction and conclusion paragraphs. The section on Rhetoric likewise has a bit of room for improvement, as it seems to suggest that "rhetoric" is a term students should be familiar with, but the relevancy beyond could be explained more explicitly. Some examples of how students might see/hear this term used in various courses would be helpful. Additionally, while most technical terms are explained throughout the chapter sections, there is not a glossary or index for quick reference. The content on citations could be a bit more clear by providing a few more examples of in-text citations; one explanation suggests that "when using a signal phrase" the in-text citation may differ, and the term "signal phrase" is unclear (a clearer example could be offered).

Content is accurate, error-free, and unbiased.

The "student story" examples provided are current and relevant to today's students. The organization of these short segments is such that they could be easily updated to reflect online learning environments that students might be experiencing or other changes to the overall student experience. The academic content is up-to-date and will remain current for many years to come, as the writing rules and processes covered are not apt to change in the near future.

The text is written in a clear fashion that is accessible to 100-level college readers. Technical terms are explained appropriately and thoroughly.

While the topics covered are all connected by way of the central goal of the text, there are a few minor "disconnects." For instance, the beginning of the text covers intellectual standards for quality, including but not limited to "clarity." The section on clarity explains and provides examples of misplaced and dangling modifiers and their impact on clarity. This content is important, and I feel it would be worth including again in the section on Editing, as students should seek out unclear modifiers during the Editing process.

This text is easily and readily divisible into smaller sections that can be assigned as needed, in varying order. The layout is clear and well-spaced such that pages or chapters could be disseminated to students as reference material or "worksheets" on particular topics, particularly the content on citations.

The chapter topics and sub-topics are well chosen and organized. The few number of chapters makes it easy to recall where one is in the text while reading. The sections are clear and the subsections are well-organized.

The text's interface is easy to understand and navigate with no issues in display or distortion of images, figures, etc.

The text is grammatically sound. There is one run-on sentence which may lead to some confusion in the section on "Researching" segment of the Prewriting section (#1 of the two often misunderstood aspects of researching).

The "Student's Story" section of each chapter adds to the inclusivity of the text. The content appears to be relatable to most students of various backgrounds.

I would feel confident using this text in an entry-level college writing course. I was pleased to find that much of the content on structuring and organizing writing aligns with popular and widespread knowledge of speech structure. I teach Public Speaking classes and always appreciate clear overlap between teaching writing and teaching speaking!

Reviewed by Marie Pabst, Adjunct Instructor, Bunker Hill Community College on 6/11/20

This book provides a very comprehensive description of all the parts of the writing process. Additionally, when discussing each stage of writing this book gives clear and effective strategies that writers (especially emerging undergraduate... read more

This book provides a very comprehensive description of all the parts of the writing process. Additionally, when discussing each stage of writing this book gives clear and effective strategies that writers (especially emerging undergraduate writers) can use to really engage effectively in the writing process. This book provides many small examples that students could use (such as the examples of sentence revision in the revising and editing chapters, or links to examples of argument writing) but does not directly provide full writing models for students. In addition to providing this comprehensive description of the writing process, this book breaks down a basic essay structure with sections on “Opening Paragraphs,” “Body Paragraphs” and “Conclusions.” All three of these sections discuss and dissect thesis statements. While I appreciated the concrete and clear nature of these chapters, I did find the description of this essay structure to be a bit too close to a “five-paragraph-essay,” which is something many of us teaching composition classes are trying to move beyond. In the Types of Essays chapter, this book describes Narration, Process Analysis, Evaluation, and Persuasion. Once again, in each of these sections, the authors give clear and sound advice and examples to help students engaged in this type of writing. While I would have liked to see more discussion about what unifies these essay types, I do think these four essay types cover most, if not all, writing that students will engage in during their undergraduate years.

The descriptions of the writing process and the types of essays in this book is very accurate and clear. My one concern is the chapter on Essay Structure, and the way that this chapter seems to suggest limitations on a thesis statement that is not always true for more complex writing, and the simplicity of describing an essay using the modality of the five-paragraph essay (in description, not necessarily in name). However, the information and examples in this chapter are accurate descriptions for what would be expected in this highly-structured essay writing, and many of the ideas and examples that are shared in the Essay Structure chapter could also be applied to more complex writing as well even if taken out of the “Opening paragraph, Body paragraph, Conclusion” structure.

This book is up to date, relevant right now, and will remain relevant since it covers aspects of undergraduate writing and undergraduate learning that are quite standard.

This book is extremely clear and easy to follow! Aspects of this book I found most helpful (for myself and my students) were: the learning objectives at the beginning of each chapter, the clear and concrete examples provided throughout the book, and the effectiveness of the book's organization. This book is very accessible for any undergraduate, and I believe it would be a very helpful book to use with all students, including non-native English speakers.

Terms in this book are used clearly and consistently throughout the whole text. This book reads as one well-thought-out text that was developed with a flow of learning in mind.

The chapters and sections of this book are organized in a way that allows any instructor to pull chapters or sections to suit their needs. One could easily use a single chapter or single section from a chapter to supplement another course text, or take chapters or sections from this text and compile them from essay examples, etc. to create a cohesive text for an introductory undergraduate writing course.

The organization of the book flows clearly from discussing the writing process, the structure of an essay, and essay types. Each chapter is made up of sections that flow logically from one to the other, but that could each be used as a stand-alone resource or students as well.

I read this text both as a .pdf and as an online text. Both were very easy to navigate. The online version had the additional benefit of making it easy to use hyperlinks in the table of contents to move around from chapter to chapter, section to section.

The grammar and conventions use is excellent.

The authors clearly used real student examples from their diverse university setting in this book. The student examples and images in the text are representative and inclusive. Additionally, in the appendix, there is a discussion and list of resources to help instructors think about place-based and culture-based readings.

Overall, as an instructor of undergraduate composition, I found this book to be an extremely helpful resource that will be highly accessible and helpful for my students.

Reviewed by Nina Presuto, Adjunct Professor, Raritan Valley Community College on 4/7/20

The text offers a clear scope and sequence of the writing process. Topics covered include prewriting, brainstorming, drafting, and revising/editing. Each of these steps, building upon previous step(s), creates a strong foundation for its topic,... read more

The text offers a clear scope and sequence of the writing process. Topics covered include prewriting, brainstorming, drafting, and revising/editing. Each of these steps, building upon previous step(s), creates a strong foundation for its topic, and leads to the next step and mastery of the basic writing process. It provides concise definitions for each term, explanation of process, and activity to apply skill. Resources augment instruction to delineate, support, and reteach information as needed.

The text is accurate and unbiased. The content begins by explaining writers'/readers' purpose and continues with visuals and outlines to illustrate writing techniques and structures. This teaches the student reason for writing and creates templates and checklists for students to follow and replicate in their work. It effectively teaches the basics of writing an essay without bias.

The text is relevant. The basic structure of writing is presented in a clear and organized manner that can easily be revised should the user wish to augment the text. Additionally, resources and or graphic organizers can be inserted between clearly delineated sections if desired. However, the content is up-to-date, is the basis for good writing across time, and clearly teaches the writing process.

The language contained in the text's content is easily digestible for all student levels. Vocabulary include expected instructional terms such as brainstorming, freewriting, and chronological order with clear context clues to help low level learners understand them and their applications. Moreover, the text discusses "appropriate language" as it pertains to the differing perspectives of communities and therefore classrooms within those communities. Not only is the language this text utilizes appropriate and effective for the students it serves, but the text directly addresses the issue of language in academia.

Each topic is clearly presented. The textbook's structure is clear and accessible. The table of contents is clearly located on the left hand of each page and links to all areas of the text for ease of navigation. Students can easily advance from topic to topic to review content for clarity as needed. The text directly links to resources to aid in instruction as needed.

The text's writing style is succinct and compact. Material is broken down into major headings: College Success Skills, The Writing Process, Essay Structure, Types of Essays, Research Skills. Each chapter is prefaced by an introduction that outlines objectives and illustrates a student example and perspective to connect with, inspire, and engage the learner. Broken down into sections based upon its topic, each chapter can be addressed as a whole or by focusing on one specific element. Links direct students to resources to support structure as needed. Each lesson is followed by activities for students to apply the skills learned.

Presented clearly and logically, the text begins by introducing students to the rigors of academic performance and provides guidelines for how to be successful. Next, the text systematically approaches the writing process and builds upon its application. After presenting a foundation for how to write an essay, the text delineates the elements of an essay. The remaining chapters elaborate on essay types and provide an appendix of resources.

The text is free of navigation errors and students can easily move from one chapter/topic to another. The presentation of information is prefaced by large headings and medium sized subheadings above the text’s content. These features organize text and draw reader's attention to content. All content is presented in uniform size and is easily interpreted by the student. Links connected to chapters open consistently and accurately present information related to topic. The margins are free of distractions and resources and sequentially linked within text where the augment instruction.

Text is free of grammatical errors. Text uses a variety of sentence and paragraph structures. Items listed are appropriately indented and bulleted as needed.

Content is culturally sensitive and inoffensive in every way. However, some student essays and resources thematically focus on the Hawaiian culture of the authoring university rather than of a cross section of universities in general. These references may not be particularly meaningful to other university’s’ usage and may require additional and more culturally relevant resources be acquired.

While this text is an excellent resource for teaching basic essay writing structure to average and low-level learners, it is not useful for students who arrives in class already espousing a knowledge the collegiate writing structure. The content does not extend beyond the basic essay writing structure, and therefore, the information, while concise, does not engage higher-level learners. Second, the scope of content is narrow. It provides the basic argument essay structure, but does not delve into variations on the structure. It provides a list and definition of ten specific “typical modes of essays” from cause and effect through process analysis essays, but it focuses only on four specific models: narrative, evaluative, process analysis, and persuasive rhetorical. However, the models are presented summarily rather than with the in depth style needed for mastery of the subtle differences between the models. Furthermore, the research essay is not covered at all. On the while, this text is an excellent resource for teaching low to emerging level writers but requires additional resources to reach higher-level learners.

Reviewed by Frank Napolitano, Associate Professor of English, Radford University on 1/22/20

This book provides an overview of some of the main topics in writing instruction. I found the section on "Peer and Instructor Feedback" to be particularly useful (33). The activities provided at the end of each section enable students and... read more

This book provides an overview of some of the main topics in writing instruction. I found the section on "Peer and Instructor Feedback" to be particularly useful (33). The activities provided at the end of each section enable students and instructors to work together on manageable writing goals during class. Other sections, like "The Revision Process," (32), "Language Usage" (34), "Engaging the Reader" (36-37), and "Identify the Characteristics of Good Primary Support" (49) were less developed and would have benefited from a more extended discussion and examples from student writing. The list of punctuation and mechanical mistakes (38-39) isn't comprehensive and may reflect the types of errors that the authors see in their particular students. The book does, however, provide several helpful links to outside resources, like the Purdue Owl and citation management applications.

I like that the brief section on grammar acknowledges that students know many of the "rules" of grammar and usage not because they learned them from a book, but because of their lived experiences (34). Other claims don't seem to reflect the complexity of writing in its many forms, though. For example, the text says that "A paragraph is a collection of sentences related to a main point" (44), when many successful examples of writing contain paragraphs with more than one "main" idea. Also, sentences like "An introduction exists as the first paragraph in a 5-page essay" seems limiting, since many successful 5-page papers have more than one introductory paragraph. Finally, the following admonitions seem idiosyncratic: "That being said, college-level statements would do well to not include the word "should," as a means of trying to sound authoritative so as to make a solid argument" (47); "Remember, do not refer to your essay in your essay. By the time one enters college, such strategies for writing thesis statements have passed" (48). Countless essays in academic journals employ meta-commentary, so it seems odd that students should be warned against doing so.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 3

I really like the book's stance that argument is a "truth-seeking" endeavor (71). Given the horrible state of public discourse in the U.S., this focus on working toward the truth is much appreciated. The book's advice on avoiding plagiarism is also very helpful (78-79). In other areas, the book offers rather traditional guidance that doesn't reflect recent conversations about academic writing. For example, the "Persuasion Map," without proper guidance, could encourage students to produce formulaic 5-paragraph essays that don't really look like real academic writing. I would like to see more information about how college writing is an effort to contribute to an ongoing scholarly conversation. I also would have liked to see more information about how the modes of discourse covered in chapter 4 (60-61) are less reflective of discrete types of essays but rather rhetorical moves that authors can shift among in a single piece of writing. The book hints as much in one of its activities, where it encourages students to "identify the modes of writing found in the [sample] essay" (62).

For the most part, the book did an excellent job of conveying complex topics in accessible language. There were moments when the book would have benefited from more focused editing. E.g.: "Stating in the middle of a story with the conclusion of the story existing as the first sentence in the conclusion paragraph" (45).

There are minor errors in consistency. For example, in its section on conclusions, the text advises students: "If the writer started with statistics, offer more statistics" (54). However, on the next page, it warns students against "introducing new material" (55).

The authors did a good job creating a modular text. I hope to see them develop several of the sections in the future.

For the most part, the book was organized well, with separate chapters focusing on the writing process, types of essays, etc. Some organizational choices seemed questionable, though. for example, I can see why the section on "sentence clarity" would fit into section 1.3: the Intellectual Standards for Quality, but I think it would have worked better in the section dedicated to editing and proofreading (34-35). The book could integrate the Intellectual Standards for Quality into each of its chapters, since doing so would show readers how the standards inform everything the book discusses.

The book's interface was very good. One way to improve it would be to offer hyperlinked references from one section to another.

I noticed a few grammatical errors throughout the piece, and they were a bit distracting. * "she found that her vocabulary were embarrassingly limited" (24). * "Discussing the dangers of illegal drug use is with elementary and middle school students is one method that schools use to help dissuade young people from abusing drugs as they grow up" (47).

I think the book does a nice job of referring to the culture and vernacular of the Hawaiian people. Appendix 1: Place-Based and Culture-Based Readings does a nice job in this regard. I can see other institutions adapting this format to benefit their own student populations. I also like how a couple of the book's "student stories" focused on non-traditional students.

The authors did an impressive job with this resource, given that they had only three days and nights to complete the "book sprint." In fact, many of my criticisms seem unfair given that I'm comparing the text to books that were developed over extended periods of time, with considerable editorial support. I would love to see the authors develop and revise the text based on the feedback they receive.

Reviewed by Allan Anderson, Lecturer, Hawaii Community Colleges on 1/4/20

A first semester composition course has to make certain specific foundational choices about its topic. Do you want to emphasize analysis and paragraph structure? Thesis-building? How much should be given to research and argument, and the citation... read more

A first semester composition course has to make certain specific foundational choices about its topic. Do you want to emphasize analysis and paragraph structure? Thesis-building? How much should be given to research and argument, and the citation process? This textbook hits all of these topics well, but would function best integrated with further exercises and assignments which implement specifics. It comes across as an excellent introduction/survey of how to master composition.

The text never strays from the facts in content areas. Claims regarding the efficacy and value of parts of the writing process are backed up with research references. Citation directions and examples are clear, useful, and easy to apply.

The content covered is not radical; it proceeds through useful and standard methods of composition which are unlikely to require seismic revision any time soon. Contemporary examples are interspersed with classic ones. The web links and appendixes are arranged such that any further updates look easy for the authors and editors to develop.

You notice how the topic and word choice reflect the authors' time in the university and community college classroom, refining how they express their points. Sometimes it feels brief, but never because it is skipping over essential pieces. It states it is targeted at 100-level students, but I feel it would also be effective with developmental students a level below that. My community college students in English 100 were all able to grasp the sections I assigned from this text; no problematic areas stood out.

The team of writers appear to have collaborated tightly, making sure that terminology defined early on in the text remains useful to students throughout the entire book's topics. Once in a while, some areas of the text seems more developed than others. Usually, though, it's steady in its focus. The sections are broken down into the same subheading format throughout. Minimal confusion should ensue.

I used sections of this book out of order, supporting my own existing unit plans. The text sections are very to-the-point and focused on the essential information at hand, which made them plug in well. Subheadings are used frequently. Even more detail and development under each subheading would improve re-usability. In general, though, I did not encounter any troubling tangles.

I appreciate that the topics covered do not dive directly into writing an essay, but rather build up carefully and step-by-step through the portions and process of writing. This is the sort of instruction which helps bring together a class which starts with widely different backgrounds. Some student populations may be ready to dive right into paper-writing, which allows for more time spent on learning and practicing research. But this text's organization and choice of topics makes it very useful for a more heterogeneous community college classroom.

As far the interface's clarity and lack of error, this text is fine. Everything is where it should be and works correctly. The interface and layout only suffers from being a little boring. It could be improved by further editing attention to include more charts and images which set the scene of the work being done. But the text as it is remains useful and functional, with no interface problems interfering with student use.

Next to no grammatical errors turned up during textbook use, and none which proved confusing to students.

This text's cultural sensitivity and range reflects its state of origin. The University of Hawaii educator authors range from indigenous to African-American texts as relevant and valuable examples. Some other sections seem more generic; perhaps a future revision might include similar attentions throughout.

This text does an admirable job of covering a lot of ground without excessive verbiage. It reads as every section being useful to students and applicable to the Composition classroom. I plan to use it, adapted as needed, in my upcoming classes.

Reviewed by Lee Babin, English Instructor, Fletcher Technical Community College on 12/13/19

The book is a beginning to hopefully providing more in-depth lessons and instructions. Lessons touch upon different concepts of first-year college composition but rely on the person using the text to find almost all examples and supplemental... read more

The book is a beginning to hopefully providing more in-depth lessons and instructions. Lessons touch upon different concepts of first-year college composition but rely on the person using the text to find almost all examples and supplemental materials for further understanding of the concepts. There is a hyperlinked table of contents of the text, but no index nor glossary for the text. Chapters within the text are quite short, sometimes only covering one page in pdf format. Many of the chapters feel disjointed, not quite building on concepts of the previous chapter. In other words, the chapters feel like they are independent lessons rather than concepts building on previous information obtained. Chapter 4 introduces ten rhetorical modes of writing but only includes detailed instruction on four of them. There are no full internal writing examples in a composition text for students to get a sense of completion of essay composition.

Overall, the text has few noticeable errors. There are some formatting choices for headers and subheaders that lead to some confusion in the online text, but those same formatting choices seem clear within a printed (pdf) version of the text. References to "Sources" or "Works Cited" should be centered in the text to follow normal expectations of students producing papers. On P. 38 (pdf file), the first example references punctuation rules of compound sentences but uses a complex sentence as its only example; compound and complex sentences should be distinguished as different sentence types. Chapter 4 introduces different rhetorical modes of writing, but it presents only four of those modes in detailed instruction and includes them out of order from the introductory text. Also, the chapter introduction claims that there are "links to real student essays." However, 4.2 Narration provides no such link, and 4.3 Process Analysis and 4.4 Evaluation link to a journal with no obvious examples of process analysis nor evaluation. On P. 17 (pdf file), in the "Fairness" section, the font size changes in the middle of a sentence, beginning with the bullet point "Are there any fallacies..." and on P. 81, the first full paragraph does the same. On P. 45 (pdf file), "5-page essay" should be "five-paragraph"? The second bullet point on that page has an unnecessary comma in "attitude, toward" and there is a misspelled "Stating" instead of "Starting."

Overall, this section looks like it is doing what is expected. External links look like they can be easily replaced by current examples. Choices in MLA citation can be updated to the latest trends of the MLA style. Examples for the "A Student's Story" sections could easily be updated to modern/current problems when necessary. Appendix 2 gives a list of online content contained in the text, so that section can be updated as needed.

The text seems to do a decent job of being clear throughout on the terms used. There are several introductions to Latin and Greek phrases used in logic and rhetorical concepts with a definition of those words. A glossary and index could be helpful for further reference.

Terminology throughout the text remains consistent. Terms that are defined early in the text are used throughout. That is why the glossary may be necessary. Some terms are defined again, like ethos, logos, and pathos in 4.5 Persuasion.

Because the text is short overall, it does divide sections into smaller sections. In some cases, the sections are too small, with headers and subsequent spacing on the page dominating over actual instructional text. More specific examples could and should be included for each of those sections to give each header more information than what is on the page. For example, in 4.4 Evaluation, the four points of structure are spread out, but only the "Evidence" section has any further explanation. This section either needs bullet points with the definitions or full explanations with examples to give depth to the section.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 2

While the chapters are justifiably ordered by the book authors' preferences, there is little transition from one chapter to another and from one section of a chapter to another. Composition is a type of subject based entirely on adding more information building on previously addressed concepts and practices. While those concepts and practices are indicated, the authors do not explicitly make those connections from one chapter or section of a chapter to another. This may be a space or content decision, but understanding how each of the steps in the writing process connects with the structure of essays and the types of essays could help in giving students a more comprehensive understanding of English composition courses.

Pictures and graphics are minimal. The only effective graphic throughout is the 2.2 Prewriting graphic for making a Persuasion Map. However, that particular map seems to be out of place for the purpose of the book. Alike or similar graphs for other essay types would prove useful here.

All suggestions come from the paginated PDF version of the textbook. On P. 24 of the pdf, 2.1 Introduction, "vocabulary were" should be "vocabulary was." On P. 28, "According to the" is missing what the noun is. On P. 38, the first section gives a complex sentence example for a compound sentence rule: "Unless the surf is bad, we are going to surf in the morning." That should be an example like this: "The surf is bad this morning, but we are still going to surf." On P. 38, under "Absolutes," it states, "Avoid them in most all cases." The term "most all" is a colloquialism and is not proper for a textbook. On P. 45, "5-page" appears to mean "five-paragraph." On P. 45, remove the unnecessary comma in "attitude, toward." On P. 45, "Stating" should be "Starting." On P. 78, it should read, "Students' Stories" perhaps, but definitely not "A Students' Story" as it currently does. On P. 85, one of the citation examples is missing the opening quotation marks.

The text is not specifically geared towards a particular region, but the authors are all a part of the Hawaii university system. Therefore, some of the materials and examples given are based on their particular knowledge of the region. There are no noticeable insensitive or offensive materials throughout the text, and none of the examples of "A Student's Story" seem to indicate the student's race, ethnicity, nor background.

For being a three-day project as indicated in the Foreword, this is an impressive compilation. There is definitely potential in the future of the text with my main recommendations being to make the different chapters and subchapters of the book relate to previous chapters (including internal hyperlinks and an index and glossary section) AND adding more in-text examples for students to have an easier time comprehending and processing the information presented.

Reviewed by Denise Acevedo, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University on 11/13/19

Chapter 1 is odd as it does not use the Sections 2 or 3 as modes to introduce a learning narrative, for example; instead, the information consists of details that students should have received in their New Student Orientation program or a New... read more

Chapter 1 is odd as it does not use the Sections 2 or 3 as modes to introduce a learning narrative, for example; instead, the information consists of details that students should have received in their New Student Orientation program or a New Student Experience course. I recommend Chapters 3 & 4 be switched so students are introduced first to the diverse types of essay types; e.g. argumentative, expository, narrative, et al. as Chapter 3's Introduction, explanations and examples are solely from the argumentative perspective, which may make it more difficult for students to try other types of writing, especially first-year students as this point-to-point style is ingrained during their K-12 academic writing career.

In Chapter 5.1, the authors include an example of Jaden’s lack of commitment to research, and note that in his conversation with his teacher, he points out that he included both in-text citation and a Works Cited page. Although his formatting for both requirements were not perfect, he did, in fact, include some details on his external resources, so the authors might want to revise their wording of “Such plagiarism…” as Jaden did not, technically, plagiarize; instead, he was just not accurate in his citation details, which is different. Jaden may be lazy, but in the authors' example, he did not commit plagiarism.

The authors could have included real-life examples of varied Island languages, for example, via prior students' essays for more consistent learning and academic/workplace application.

Chapter 1 can be revised so that the voice is of a peer rather than someone talking to/at the student; e.g. "College students are expected to demonstrate independence, responsibility, and relationship-building skills" could become "As a college student, you will be expected to demonstrate independence, responsibility, and relationship-building skills" to make the advice and subsequent activities and assignments more relatable, and thus applicable, to first-year and non-traditional learners.

Consistency rating: 3

Yes, but some terms are more discipline-based; e.g. from an educator's professional vocabulary rather than a student's. When revised, consider the terminology from the students' perspectives, those who are first-year and non-traditional, and know, too, that in Hawaii there are numerous cultures and languages to be considered (and yes, I know the authors know this!), so perhaps include examples using the diversity of the Island. My recommendation here is somewhat developed in Chapter 3.1, "A Student's Story."

Chapter 1, in particular, has too much text; first-year and non-traditional students' interest and focus may increase if (1) graphics are incorporated and/or (2) real-life scenario examples are provided for students to practice during class as this will also allow relationship-building and trust to grow between students and students/educator. Chapter 2.2 could further develop and include examples of varied paragraph formatting styles; the style that is included suggests a Point-to-Point essay, but it is not as the last paragraph does not fit that P2P style. Chapter 3.2, though, only offers instructions from that 5-pararagph model, which is not always a realistic writing practice in the real world. A thesis statement does not always have to be arguable; a thesis statement, depending on the form of writing, can be opinion-based and this more creative in its narrative, which, also, is not always i the 5-paragraph structure. Chapter 4.2's Activities section is not correctly formatted, which may make it more difficult for students with accessibility barriers to read/decipher. If the authors include ten types of essays (Chapter 4.1), then they should include explanations et al. for all ten and not just four (4.2. 4.3, 4.4, & 4.5). Connect each Chapter to the "Clarifying Aristotelian Rhetorical Concepts" in Chapter 1.3 as rare references do not support cumulative learning and application practices. Chapter 5.2 should be moved to Chapter 2 as research is an integral part of the writing processes. The Citation Management in Chapter 5.3 offers three online citation support options; I recommend the authors either (1) use the OWL at Purdue only or (2) require students to purchase via OER a text that offers MLA formatting examples and exercises as EasyBib and BibMe do not use the most recent edition of MLA formatting guidelines.

The Chapters arrangement lacks flow as students should be introduced to pre-flection, research and formatting guidelines in the beginning of their academic writing career rather than in the middle or end of the semester. Updates could be made yearly as past students' examples are incorporated into each Chapter as examples and/or peer-editing practice.

The graphics, charts et al. are high quality, but as a learner with an LD (not assessed and diagnosed until my doctoral program!), some students may find "unpacking" tables, charts, and/or graphs more difficulty, especially as they relate to writing (Persuasion Map, 2.2), so an in-class activity that is included in the book may help students comprehend the mapping idea from a new, applicable lens. Most students will not know what Meta-cognitive (Chapter 2.2.) means. Will this be addressed as it is not in the SLOs? 2.3 could be further developed to include examples for students to peer review and discuss in class before they start drafting. Provide examples of 2.4's ARRR. So glad the OWL at Purdue link is included as this resources is current on MLA formatting, offers applicable examples and is free to students and teachers. I like the inclusion of frequency adverbs in 2.5 as I find my first-year writing students reply heavily on these parts of speech to convey what they believe are profound realizations. Consider adding more in-text or connect to the OWL at Purdue and discourage the overuse of these terms as they are vague in their meaning.

In Chapter 2, Introduction, the term "vocabulary" is used as a plural when it is a non-count noun and must be connected with a singular verb; e.g. In middle school, she found that her vocabulary was (not were) embarrassingly limited. In "A Student's Story," the commas are not uses correctly as the set-off portion is not an appositive, so the second comma should be removed; i.e. As she entered college and enrolled in her first-year writing course, she was anxious about attending a required conference with her instructor who was meeting with each student to discuss the rough drafts of their first essays. In 2.2., this is unclear as it is missing punctuation and a noun or pronoun: "According to the Leilani was shocked..." For 2. under Activities in Chapter 2.2, there is a missing comma: "For each writing assignment in class, spend three (add comma here) 10-minute sessions either..." Also in Chapter 2.2, #2 should include a hyphen for the compound adjective; e.g. "Writers become so involved in the research process that they don’t start the actual writing process soon enough so as to meet a due date with a well-written, edited, and revised finished composition."

I don't find any culturally insensitive content, but I admire that this text is written for a certain demographic, which is why I recommend the authors include examples that students will relate to, such as prior students' essays written in pidgin, which they can revise (as a collaborative activity, with the teacher's help) into Standard Written English to see how code-switching works and can impact their academic and professional writing experiences. If the text will be used (mostly?) in first-year writing programs in Hawaii, then include more examples from students who represent these demographics via names in the opening stories and student examples.

The text should be an exemplar for students, especially as first-year learners tend to copy what is presented, which is why I recommend that MLA formatting be consistent; e.g. Works Cited in 1.2, 1.3, 2.2 et al. be centered, as per MLA formatting guidelines. Chapter 3.2 & 3.4's external resources are not correctly formatted as the title is Sources rather than Works Cited, with each external source listed as per MLA formatting guidelines.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1. College Success Skills
• Chapter 2. The Writing Process
• Chapter 3. Essay Structure
• Chapter 4. Types of Essays
• Chapter 5. Research Skills

Ancillary Material

About the book.

This OER textbook has been designed for students to learn the foundational concepts for English 100 (first-year college composition). The content aligns to learning outcomes across all campuses in the University of Hawai'i system. It was designed, written, and edited during a three day book sprint in May, 2019.

About the Contributors

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In-Class Writing Exercises

If you find yourself wishing your students would write more thoughtful papers or think more deeply about the issues in your course, this handout may help you. At the Writing Center, we work one-on-one with thousands of student writers and find that giving them targeted writing tasks or exercises encourages them to problem-solve, generate, and communicate more fully on the page. You’ll find targeted exercises here and ways to adapt them for use in your course or with particular students.

Writing requires making choices. We can help students most by teaching them how to see and make choices when working with ideas. We can introduce students to a process of generating and sorting ideas by teaching them how to use exercises to build ideas. With an understanding of how to discover and arrange ideas, they will have more success in getting their ideas onto the page in clear prose.

Through critical thinking exercises, students move from a vague or felt sense about course material to a place where they can make explicit the choices about how words represent their ideas and how they might best arrange them. While some students may not recognize some of these activities as “writing,” they may see that doing this work will help them do the thinking that leads to easier, stronger papers.

Brainstorming

In order to write a paper for a class, students need ways to move from the received knowledge of the course material to some separate, more synthesized or analyzed understanding of the course material. For some students this begins to happen internally or through what we call “thinking,” unvoiced mulling, sorting, comparing, speculating, applying, etc. that leads them to new perspectives, understanding, questions, reactions about the course material. This thinking is often furthered through class discussion and some students automatically, internally move from these initial sortings of ideas into complex, logical interpretations of material at this point. But, for more students, their thinking will remain an unorganized, vague set of ideas referring to the subject. Many will have trouble moving beyond this vague sense or simple reaction toward ideas that are more processed, complex, or what we often call “deep.” We can foster that move to a deeper understanding by providing opportunities to externalize and fix their ideas on paper so that they may both see their ideas and then begin to see the relationships between them. The following activities will help students both generate and clarify initial responses to course material:

• Free-writing. Find a clock, watch, or timer to help you keep track of time. Choose a topic, idea, question you would like to consider. It can be a specific detail or a broad concept-whatever you are interested in exploring at the moment. Write (on paper or on a computer) for 7-10 minutes non-stop on that topic. If you get stuck and don’t know what to say next, write “I’m stuck and don’t know what to say next…” or try asking yourself “what else?” until another idea comes to you. Do not concern yourself with spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Your goal is to generate as much as you can about the topic in a short period of time and to get used to the feeling of articulating ideas on the page. It’s ok if it’s messy or makes sense only to you. You can repeat this exercise several times, using the same or a variety of topics connecting to your subject. Read what you have written to see if you have discovered anything about your subject or found a line of questioning you’d like to pursue.
• Clustering/Webbing. Find a clock, watch, or timer to help you keep track of time. Put a word you’d like to explore in the center of a piece of paper and put a circle around it. As fast as you can, free-associate or jot down anywhere on the page as many words as you can think of associated with your center word. If you get stuck, go back to the center word and launch again. Speed is important and quantity is your goal. Don’t discount any word or phrase that comes to you, just put it down on the page. Jot words for between 5-10 minutes. When you are finished you will have a page filled with seemingly random words. Read around on the page and see if you have discovered anything or can see connections between any ideas.
• Listing. On a piece of paper list all the ideas you can think of connected to subjects you are considering exploring. Consider any idea or observation as valid and worthy of listing. List quickly and then set your list aside for a few minutes. Come back and read your list and do the exercise again.
• Cubing. This technique helps you look at your subject from six different points of view (imagine the 6 sides of a cube and you get the idea). Take your topic or idea and 1) describe it, 2) compare it, 3) associate it with something else you know, 4) analyze it (meaning break it into parts), 5) apply it to a situation you are familiar with, 6) argue for or against it. Write at a paragraph, page, or more about each of the six points of view on your subject.
• Journalistic questions. Write these questions down the left hand margin of a piece of paper: Who? What? Where? When? How? And Why? Think about your topic in terms of each question.
• What? So What? Now what? To begin to explore an idea first ask yourself, “What do I want to explore?” and write about that topic for a page or more. Then read what you have written and ask “So what?” of the ideas expressed so far. Again, write for a page or more. Finally ask yourself, “Now what?” to begin to think about what else you might consider or where you might go next with an idea.
• Defining terms. Although this suggestion is simple and may seem obvious, it is often overlooked. Write definitions for key terms or concepts in your own words. Find others’ articulations of the terms in your course readings, the dictionary, or in conversations, and compare these definitions to your own. Seek input from your instructor if you can’t get a working definition of a term for yourself.
• Summarizing positions. Sometimes it’s helpful to simply describe what you know as a way to solidify your own understanding of something before you try to analyze or synthesize new ideas. You can summarize readings by individual articles or you can combine what you think are like perspectives into a summary of a position. Try to be brief in your description of the readings. Write a paragraph or up to a page describing a reading or a position.
• Metaphor writing. Metaphors or similes are comparisons sometimes using the words “like” or “as.” For example, “writing is like swimming” or the “sky is as blue as map water” or “the keyboard wrinkled with ideas.” When you create a metaphor, you put one idea in terms of another and thereby create a new vision of the original idea. Sometimes it may be easier to create a metaphor or simile may help you understand your view of an idea before you can put it fully into sentences or paragraphs. Write a metaphor or simile and then explain to someone why your metaphor works or what it means to you.
• Applying ideas to personal circumstance or known situations. Sometimes ideas come clearest when you can put them in a frame that is meaningful to you. Take a concept from your reading assignments and apply it so a situation in your own life or to a current event with which you are familiar. You may not end up using this application in your final draft, but applying it to something you know will help you to understand it better and prepare you to analyze the idea as your instructor directs.

Once students have something on the page to work with, they can begin the decision-making process crucial to developing a coherent idea or argument. At this point, students will choose which ideas most appeal to them, which ideas seem to fit together, which ideas need to be set aside, and which ideas need further exploration. The following activities will help students make decisions as they shape ideas:

• Drawing diagrams. Sometimes it helps to look for the shape your ideas seem to be taking as you develop them. Jot down your main ideas on the page and then see if you can connect them in some way. Do they form a square? A circle? An umbrella with spokes coming down? A pyramid? Does one idea seem to sit on a shelf above another idea? Would equal signs, greater or less signs help you express the relationships you see between your idea? Can you make a flow chart depicting the relationships between your ideas?
• Making charts or piles. Try sorting your ideas into separate piles. You can do this literally by putting ideas on note cards or scraps of paper and physically moving them into different piles. You can do this on the page by cutting and pasting ideas into a variety of groups on the computer screen. You can also make charts that illustrate the relationships between ideas. Common charts include timelines, authors sitting around a dinner table, and comparison/contrast charts.
• Scrap pile. Be prepared to keep a scrap pile of ideas somewhere as you work. Some people keep this pile as a separate document as they work; others keep notes at the bottom of a page where they store scrap sentences or thoughts for potential use later on. Remember that it is sometimes important to throw out ideas as a way to clarify and improve the ones you are trying to develop along the way.
• Shifting viewpoints (role-playing). When you begin to feel you have some understanding of your idea, it sometimes helps to look at it from another person’s point of view. You can do this by role-playing someone who disagrees with your conclusions or who has a different set of assumptions about your subject. Make a list or write a dialogue to begin to reveal the other perspective.
• Applying an idea to a new situation. If you have developed a working thesis, test it out by applying it to another event or situation. If you idea is clear, it will probably work again or you will find other supporting instances of your theory.
• Problem/Solution writing. Sometimes it helps to look at your ideas through a problem-solving lens. To do so, first briefly outline the problem as you see it or define it. Make sure you are through in listing all the elements that contribute to the creation of the problem. Next, make a list of potential solutions. Remember there is likely to be more than one solution.
• Theory/application writing. If your assignment asks you to develop a theory or an argument, abstract it from the situation at hand. Does your theory hold through the text? Would it apply to a new situation or can you think of a similar situation that works in the same way? Explain your ideas to a friend.
• Defining critical questions. You may have lots of evidence or information and still feel uncertain what you should do with it or how you should write about it. Look at your evidence and see if you can find repeated information or a repeated missing piece. See if you can write a question or a series of questions that summarize the most important ideas in your paper. Once you have the critical questions, you can begin to organize your ideas around potential answers to the question.
• Explaining/teaching idea to someone else. Sometimes the most efficient way to clarify your ideas is to explain them to someone else. The other person need not be knowledgeable about your subject-in fact it sometimes helps if they aren’t familiar with your topic-but should be willing to listen and interrupt you when he or she doesn’t follow you. As you teach your ideas to someone else, you may begin to have more confidence in the shape of your ideas or you may be able to identify the holes in your argument and be more able to fix them.
• Lining up evidence. If you think you have a good idea of how something works, find evidence in your course material, through research in the library or on the web that supports your thinking. If your ideas are strong, you should find supporting evidence to corroborate your ideas.
• Rewriting idea. Sometimes what helps most is rewriting an idea over the course of several days. Take the central idea and briefly explain it in a paragraph or two. The next day, without looking at the previous day’s writing, write a new paragraph explaining your ideas. Try it again the next day. Over the course of three days, you may find your ideas clarifying, complicating, or developing holes. In all cases, you will have a better idea of what you need to do next in writing your draft.

As students have been working with their ideas, they have been making a series of choices about their ideas that will lead them to feel “ready” to put them in a more complete, coherent form; they will feel “ready to write” their ideas in something closer to the assignment or paper form. But for most, the tough moments of really “writing” begin at this point. They may still feel that they “have ideas” but have trouble “getting them on the page.” Some will suddenly be thrust into “writing a paper” mode and be both constrained and guided by their assumptions about what an assignment asks them to do, what academic writing is, and what prior experience has taught them about writing for teachers. These exercises may ease their entry into shaping their ideas for an assignment:

• Clarify all questions about the assignment. Before you begin writing a draft, make sure you have a thorough understanding of what the assignment requires. You can do this by summarizing your understanding of the assignment and emailing your summary to your TA or instructor. If you have questions about points to emphasize, the amount of evidence needed, etc. get clarification early. You might try writing something like, “I’ve summarized what I think I’m supposed to do in this paper, am I on the right track?
• Write a letter describing what the paper is going to be about. One of the simplest, most efficient exercises you can do to sort through ideas is to write a letter to yourself about what you are planning to write in your paper. You might start out, “My paper is going to be about….” And go on to articulate what evidence you have to back up your ideas, what parts still feel rough to you about your ideas. In about 20 minutes, you can easily have a good sense of what you are ready to write and the problems you still need to solve in your paper.
• Write a full draft. Sometimes you don’t know what you think until you see what you’ve said. Writing a full draft, even if you think the draft has problems, is sometimes important. You may find your thesis appears in your conclusion paragraph.
• Turn your ideas into a five-minute speech. Pretend you have to give a 5 minute speech to your classmates. How would you begin the speech? What’s your main point? What key information would you include? How much detail do you need to give the listener? What evidence will be most convincing or compelling for your audience?
• Make a sketch of the paper. Sometimes it helps to literally line up or order you evidence before you write. You can do so quickly by making a numbered list of your points. Your goal is something like a sketch outline—first I am going to say this; next I need to include this point; third I need to mention this idea. The ideas should flow logically from one point to the next. If they don’t-meaning if you have to backtrack, go on a tangent, or otherwise make the reader wait to see the relationship between ideas, then you need to continue tinkering with the list.
• Make an outline. If you have successfully used formal outlines in the past, use one to structure your paper. If you haven’t successfully used outlines, don’t worry. Try some of the other techniques listed here to get your ideas on the page
• Start with the easiest part. If you have trouble getting started on a draft, write what feels to you like the easiest part first. There’s nothing magic about starting at the beginning-unless that’s the easiest part for you. Write what you know for sure and a beginning will probably emerge as you write.
• Write the body of the paper first. Sometimes it’s helpful NOT to write the beginning or introductory paragraph first. See what you have to say in the bulk of your draft and then go back to craft a suitable beginning.
• Write about feelings about writing. Sometimes it’s helpful to begin a writing session by spending 5-10 minutes writing to yourself about your feelings about the assignment. Doing so can help you set aside uncertainty and frustration and help you get motivated to write your draft.
• Write with the screen turned off. If you are really stuck getting starting or in the middle of a draft, turn the monitor off and type your ideas. Doing so will prevent you from editing and critiquing your writing as you first produce it. You may be amazed at the quantity and quality of ideas you can produce in a short time. You’ll have to do some cleanup on the typos, but it may be well worth it if it allows you to bang out a draft.
• Write in alternatives (postpone decision-making). You may need to test out more than one idea before you settle into a particular direction for a paper. It’s actually more efficient to spend time writing in several directions i.e. trying out one idea for awhile, then trying out another idea, than it is to try to fit all of your ideas into one less coherent draft. Your writing may take the form of brief overviews that begin, “If I were going to write about XYZ idea, I would…” until you are able to see which option suits the assignment and your needs.
• Write with a timer. Sometimes what you need most is to get all of your ideas out on paper in a single sitting. To do so, pretend you are taking an essay exam. Set a timer for an appropriate amount of time (1 hour? 3 hours?) depending on the length of your draft. Assume that it will take you approximately 1 hour per page of text you produce. Set a goal for the portion of your draft you must complete during the allotted time and don’t get up from your seat until the timer goes off.

As students use language to shape ideas, they begin to feel the need to test their ideas or move beyond their own perspectives. Sometimes we have ideas that make good sense to us, but seem to lose or confuse readers as we voice them in conversation or on the page. Once students have a complete draft of a paper, they need ways to share their ideas to learn points where their ideas need further development. With feedback from an audience, students are better able to see the final decisions they still need to make in order for their ideas to reach someone. These decisions may be ones of word choice, organization, logic, evidence, and tone. Keep in mind that this juncture can be unsettling for some students. Having made lots of major decisions in getting their ideas down on the page, they may be reluctant to tackle another round of decision-making required for revising or clarifying ideas or sentences. Remind students that ideas don’t exist apart from words, but in the words themselves. They will need to be able to sell their ideas through the words and arrangement of words on the page for a specific audience.

• Talk your paper. Tell a friend what your paper is about. Pay attention to your explanation. Are all of the ideas you describe actually in the paper? Where did you start explaining your ideas? Does your paper match your description? Can the listener easily find all of the ideas you mention in your description?
• Ask someone to read your paper out loud to you. Ask a friend to read your draft out loud to you. What do you hear? Where does your reader stumble? Sound confused? Have questions? Did your reader ever get lost in your text? Did ideas flow in the order the reader expected them to? Was anything missing for the reader? Did the reader need more information at any point?
• Share your draft with your instructor. If you give them enough notice, most instructors will be willing to read a draft of a paper. It sometimes helps to include your own assessment of the draft when you share it with a teacher. Give them your assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the draft, as you see it, to begin a conversation.
• Share your draft with a classmate. Arrange to exchange papers with a classmate several days before the due date. You can do so via email and make comments for revision using Word’s comment function.
• Look at your sentences. Often you will need to analyze your draft of the sentence level. To do so, break your paper into a series of discrete sentences by putting a return after each period or end punctuation. Once you have your paper as a list of sentences, you can more easily see and solve sentence level problems. Try reading the sentences starting with the last sentence of the draft and moving up. Doing so will take them out of context and force you to see them as individual bits of communication rather than familiar points.
• Discuss key terms in your paper with someone else. After you have completed a draft, it’s sometimes helpful to look back at the key terms you are using to convey your ideas. It’s easy, in the midst of thinking about an idea, to write in loaded language or code in which certain key words come to have special meaning for you that isn’t necessarily shared by a reader. If you suspect this is the case, talk about your key terms with a friend, and ask them to read your draft to see if the idea is adequately explained for the reader.
• Outline your draft. After you have a complete draft, go back and outline what you have said. Next to each paragraph write a word or phrase that summarizes the content of that paragraph. You might also look to see if you have topic sentences that convey the ideas of individual paragraphs. If you can’t summarize the content of a paragraph, you probably have multiple ideas in play in that paragraph that may need revising. Once you have summarized each paragraph, turn your summary words into a list. How does the list flow? Is it clear how one idea connects to the next?
• Underline your main point. Highlight the main point of your paper. It should probably be (although it will depend on the assignment) in one sentence somewhere on the first page. If it’s not, the reader will likely be lost and wondering what you paper is about as he or she reads through it. Your draft should not read like a mystery novel in which the reader has to wait until the end to have all the pieces fit together.
• Ask someone without knowledge of the course to read your paper. You can tell if your draft works by sharing it with someone outside of the context. If they can follow your ideas, someone inside the class will be able to as well.
• Ask a reader to judge specific elements of your paper. Share your draft with someone and ask them to read for something specific i.e. organization, punctuation, transitions. A reader will give more specific feedback to you if you give them some specific direction.

Implementing exercises

Many of these exercises can be used in short in-class writing assignments, as part of group work, or as incremental steps in producing a paper. If you’ve assigned an end-of-semester term paper, you may want to assign one or two activities from each of the four stages-brainstorming, organizing, drafting, editing-at strategic points throughout the semester. You could also give the students the list of exercises for each stage and ask them to choose one or two activities to complete at each point as they produce a draft.

If you’d like to discuss how these exercises might work in your course, talk about other aspects of student writing, contact Kimberly Abels [email protected] at the Writing Center.

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• Teaching Guidelines

Active Learning in the First-Year Writing Classroom

Active learning: aims and implications.

The Writing Program's Faculty Resource pages aim to:

• Outline a pedagogy that coheres the various methods commonly used in Dartmouth's writing classrooms;
• Offer strategies to make these methods even more effective;
• Introduce our methods and philosophies to instructors who are new to the program.

Dartmouth's writing instructors employ an array of effective instructional methods as they teach writing. Many of these methods are drawn from the pedagogy known as Active Learning (sometimes referred to as "engaged learning," or "student-centered learning"). Active Learning pedagogy seeks to overhaul the model of education in which students impassively receive knowledge from their instructors. In Active Learning classrooms, students are challenged to forego passivity in favor of contribution and participation. Responsibility for learning changes hands as instructors and students collaborate to teach and learn from one another

Active Learning classrooms are distinguished by three principles:

• Active Learning is student-driven. In the Active Learning classroom, students might be asked to lead discussion, to design their own writing assignments, to instruct their peers, and to collaborate with their instructor to determine course aims and assess course work.
• Active Learning teaches students how to learn in collaboration with their peers, creating a community that facilitates learning. This community, properly designed, helps students to understand the expectations and conventions of the community of scholars that they are about to join.
• Active Learning asks instructors to transfer to students some portion of the authority that has traditionally been theirs. Students, in turn, take increased responsibility for their writing educations. Transferring authority requires instructors to shift their focus from setting standards to diagnosing problems, from giving direction to facilitating learning, from focusing exclusively on product to supporting process. In the Active Learning classroom, instructors, like students, remain actively engaged.

Effective Methods

Instructors employ active learning principles in our writing classrooms in a number of ways.

Let students teach one another. One of the best ways to master something is to teach it. Students become better writers when you put teaching responsibilities into their hands. Placing your students into peer editing groups in which they diagnose and respond to problems in their classmates' papers not only sharpens their critical skills but also shows them how to talk and think about writing. Students eventually internalize these discussions and draw on them as they write. For a fuller discussion of the benefits and the methods of peer instruction, see Collaborative Learning . For specific advice regarding sharpening students' peer editing skills, see Diagnosing and Responding .

Make student writing a text in the class. Instructors who embrace the student-centered principles of Active Learning understand how important it is to conduct Writing Workshops, in which student papers are read and discussed in class. Making student writing a text in the class signals to students not only that you take their writing seriously, but also that they are now part of the ongoing conversation of scholarship. Making student writing a text in the class also allows you to teach students to diagnose and respond to problems that come up in their writing. For a fuller discussion regarding why and how to make student writing a text in the class, see Conducting Writing Workshops .

Expect students to direct discussion; invite them to teach a class. Writing instructors conduct their classes via discussion rather than lectures. But even in discussion classes, professors exert authority. Too often in discussion students are more concerned with performing to please the professor than they are with genuinely pursuing a line of inquiry. Active Learning instructors expect students to determine the focus of the discussion. Some invite students to co-facilitate discussions. Others assign presentations. In all cases instructors ask students NOT to position their classmates as passive listeners. Like the instructor, student facilitators are expected to teach using Active Learning methods.

Ask students to design their own writing assignments. Developing elaborate, well-articulated prompts has certain pedagogical advantages. But letting students discover their own questions and letting them design their own writing prompts not only gives them the power to approach assignments on their own terms, but also gives them practice in the methods of scholarly inquiry. For more information, see Syllabus and Assignment Design .

Involve students in assessment. Those of us who routinely practice Active Learning principles understand that the act of grading can undo the transfer of power that we've been working so hard to achieve. One way of avoiding this "undo" is to involve students in the assessment process. Devote a class to discussing the qualities of good writing; collaborate with the students to define standards or to design a rubric for grading; invite the students to grade an assignment with you, and let those grades have weight equal to yours. (The last strategy works particularly well when grading class presentations, when effectively engaging the audience is a concern.) 

Adopt a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive, attitude toward grammar and style. Presenting grammar and style as a series of rules insures that students will remain in the position of "apprentice" writers. Describing grammar in terms of reader expectations and discourse conventions helps students to figure out how to write for an academic audience. Students are thereby positioned as fully responsible participators in the academic conversation. For fuller discussions, see Addressing Grammar .

Provide students with opportunities to fail and to revise. Active Learning theorist Ken Bain argues in his book, What the Best College Teachers Do , that real teaching requires three steps: 1) Show your students that their models fail/are inadequate; 2) Make them care enough to find new models; 3) Support them while they do. Once you've convinced students their high-school models for thinking and writing won't work, you'll need to give them plenty of time to find new models. This means that you'll have to give them time to draft and redraft their papers, so that they can see where their work is coming up short and will have the time (and the desire) to revise it.

Common Concerns

Many instructors resist adopting Active Learning methods. They are concerned that these methods require considerable amounts of time. They worry about letting go of their control over the classroom. They are concerned that students won't understand these methods, will find them frustrating, and will express this frustration on course evaluations. They are also hesitant to use methods in class that they haven't used before. If these methods fail, students will leave their writing classes without the requisite skills.

We address these concerns in turn.

Time. Active Learning does take time: class time, conference time, and preparation time. But it's not as time-intensive as many instructors think. We offer the following reassurances:

• Class time: Not all Active Learning instruction needs to happen in class. One of the benefits of adopting this model is that you are asking students to teach one another. You can therefore ask students to meet outside of class to talk about their papers; you can also ask them to conduct peer critique on the Canvas discussion board. You'll want to oversee peer instruction by monitoring Canvas postings or by asking students to summarize, in writing, the peer work they do outside of class. Either way, class time needn't be overwhelmed by Active Learning exercises.
• Conference time: One advantage of the Active Learning classroom is that collaborative learning techniques can be extended to the conference dynamic. If you've divided your students into editing groups, confer with students in groups rather than individually. This method is not only time-efficient, it's also effective. Too often the one-one-one conference turns into a fix-it session, with students seeking specific instruction about how to make a paper work. In group conferences, students engage in debates about writing. Reading three or four papers rather than one encourages students to determine more generally what works (and what doesn't). They'll take with them a better sense of the principles (rather than simply the particulars) of good writing.
• Preparation: The shift to Active Learning is more qualitative than quantitative. That is, Active Learning requires you to position yourself differently vis a vis your class and your teaching. In this way, Active Learning requires not more work, but different work. If students are indeed sharing the work of teaching, preparation time can be reduced. The hours spent crafting an assignment or determining discussion questions are eliminated if students are entrusted to do these things for themselves.

Control. Instructors who are hesitant to give up control don't trust that first-year students are ready to take charge of their own educations. First-year students are newcomers to the academy. How can they decode its conventions or its expectations? How can they be expected to take charge of their learning? We respond by saying that students in Active Learning classrooms can puzzle out the conventions together. Rather than telling them what is expected of them and then turning them loose to write, you'll be presenting them with models of academic writing (student and scholarly) and then working with them to determine conventions. The latter methodology is far more likely to "stick."

Evaluations. Some instructors worry that students will not understand the rationale for active learning, and that these "strange" methods might be remarked upon in evaluations. Students do sometimes find Active Learning methods frustrating. For instance, students, who are "loner learners" don't like to work in groups. Others who are result-oriented don't see the point in spending time talking about process. We've found, however, that resistant students can be brought on board by making the rationale for Active Learning clear. When your methods are transparent, students (in particular first-year students) will generally be willing to give them a chance. They'll also be more likely to evaluate your success in meeting your goals if you've clearly stated them.

Failure. Instructors are justifiably concerned that a new, unfamiliar teaching method might fail. Indeed, not every method or exercise you employ will succeed. But both you and your students can learn from these failures. If an assignment or exercise doesn't work, talk with your students. Get them to brainstorm reasons for why the method isn't succeeding. This will not only help you to make adjustments, it will require your students to reflect upon teaching and learning methods. It will also prove to your students that you care what they think.

Using Technology to Support Active Learning

Canvas is an excellent tool to support Active Learning goals in the writing classroom. Discussion boards can be used to facilitate peer commentary; wikis can be used for collaborative writing and research assignments. Best of all, Canvas is flexible enough that it can be adapted to meet almost any of your teaching goals.

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Writing assignments

Analytical essay: Philosophers' Fictions From an NU literature seminar, this assignment asks students to write an analytical essay that illuminates significant campus issues and events free from cultural bias.

Argumentative essay From an NU literature seminar, this assignment requires students to support their argument with at least three secondary sources.

Critical book review From an NU anthropology seminar, this assignment asks students to write a critical book review of the sort that might appear in an academic journal.

Definition essay From an NU writing course, this is a worksheet for an assignment to write an essay defining a term or concept.

Research paper--castles seminar From an NU anthropology seminar, this assignments asks students to write a scholarly introduction that might appear in an academic journal.

Satire essay From an NU literature seminar, this assignment asks students to write a satire on some aspect of social institutions, government, current event or human behavior.

Style assignment Two writing prompts--from a Northwestern course on Utopian literature--that ask students to imitate the style of works they’ve studied.  The assignment is intended to get students to explore the author’s style and use that style as a springboard for developing their own ideas about the course texts.

Writing assignments English freshman seminar These detailed assignments show the progression of writing skills that students are expected to develop throughout a course taught at Northwestern.  Peer editing sheets for the assignments are included.

Plato Symposium Paper Topics The assignment description includes explanations of how to formulate a strong thesis, organize and support ideas, write an interesting introduction and conclusion, etc., depending on the topic chosen.

Close reading assignments Explains, with an illustrative example, writing assignments that involve close readings: essays and discussion board posts

Evaluate with evidence--castles seminar From an NU anthropology seminar, this assignment asks students to evaluate evidence in order to answer a question raised in the course.

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Part 1: Thinking Through the Disciplines

Academic writing, writing as a college student.

As a college student, you have been writing for years, so you probably think that you have a clear understanding about academic writing. High school and college writing, however, differ in many ways. This chapter will present some of those core differences along with a general overview of the college writing process.

11.1 Meeting College Writing Expectations

Learning objectives.

• Understand and describe differences between high school and college writing.
• Recognize some of the core principles and values of higher education.

If you’re like most first-year college students, you’re probably anxious about your first few writing assignments. Transitioning from being a successful high school writer to being a quality college writer can be difficult. You have to adjust to different learning cultures. You have to accept that college writing is different from high school writing and come to understand how it is different.

These students relay a typical range of first-year college experiences:

Emma: I always got As on my high school papers, so I thought I was a good writer until I came to college and had to completely rewrite my first paper to get a C–.

Javier: I received an F on my first college paper because I “did not include one original thought in the whole paper.” I thought I was reporting on information I had researched. I didn’t know that I was supposed to add my own thoughts. Luckily, the professor had a policy to throw out each student’s lowest grade of the semester.

Danyell: The professor in my Comp 101 class said that he didn’t want us turning in anything meaningless or trite. He said that we were to show him that we had critical thought running through our heads and knew how to apply it to the readings we found in our research. I had no idea what he was talking about.

Pat: I dreaded my first college English class since I had never done well in English classes in high school. Writing without grammatical and mechanical errors is a challenge for me, and my high school teachers always gave me low grades on my papers due to all my mistakes. So I was surprised when I got a B+ on my first college paper, and the professor had written, “Great paper! You make a solid argument. Clean up your grammar and mechanics next time and you will get an A!” Suddenly it seemed that there was something more important than grammar and punctuation!

What’s “Higher” about Higher Education?

Despite the seeming discrepancy between what high school and college teachers think constitutes good college writing, there is an overall consensus about what is “higher” about higher education.

Thinking with flexibility, depth, awareness, and understanding, as well as focusing on how you think, are some of the core building blocks that make higher education “higher.” These thinking methods coupled with perseverance, independence, originality, and a personal sense of mission are core values of higher education.

Differences between High School and College Culture

The difference between high school and college culture is like the difference between childhood and adulthood. Childhood is a step-by-step learning process. Adulthood is an independent time when you use the information you learned in childhood. In high school culture, you were encouraged to gather knowledge from teachers, counselors, parents, and textbooks. As college students, you will rely on personal assistance from authorities less and less as you learn to analyze texts and information independently. You will be encouraged to collaborate with others, but more to discuss ideas and concepts critically than to secure guidance.

How the Writing Process Differs in College

It’s important to understand that no universal description of either high school or college writing exists. High school teachers might concentrate on skills they want their students to have before heading to college: knowing how to analyze (often literary) texts, to develop the details of an idea, and to organize a piece of writing, all with solid mechanics. A college teacher might be more concerned with developing students’ ability to think, discuss, and write on a more abstract, interdisciplinary level. But there are exceptions, and debates rage on about where high school writing ends and college writing begins.

Key Takeaways

• Requirements and expectations for high school and college writing vary greatly from high school to high school and college to college.
• Some general differences, however, are fairly consistent: College students are expected to function more independently than high school students are. College students are encouraged to think with a deep awareness, to develop a clear sense of how they think, and to think on a more abstract level.
• Write a brief essay or a journal or blog entry about your personal experience with higher education so far. Consider, especially, what sort of misconceptions you have discovered as you compare your expectations with reality.

Study the following two sets of writing standards. The first is the result of a recent nationwide project to create core standards for language arts students in eleventh and twelfth grades. It outlines what students should be able to do by the time they graduate high school. The second describes what college writing administrators have agreed students should be able to do by the time they finish their first year of college writing courses. What differences do you see? What might account for those differences? How well do you think your skills match up with each set of standards?

• Common Core State Standards Initiative English Language Arts Standards for Grades 11 and 12: http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/english-language-arts-standards/writing-6-12/grade-11-12
• Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA) Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition: http://www.wpacouncil.org/positions/outcomes.html

11.2 Using Strategies for Writing College Essays

• Use time-management skills to lay out a work plan for major writing assignments.
• Develop strategies for reading college assignments strategically.

As a college student, you must take complete responsibility for your writing assignments. Your professors are assessing your ability to think for yourself, so they’re less likely to give you ready-made templates on how to write a given essay. This lack of clarity will be unsettling, but it’s part of an important growth process. By using strategies, you can systematically approach each assignment and gather the information you need for your writing requirements.

Plotting a Course for Your Writing Project

Once you know you have an upcoming writing project, you have some basic decisions to make. The following list of questions will lead you to make some preliminary choices for your writing project.

• What am I trying to accomplish? Writing can serve a variety of purposes , such as to explain, to persuade, to describe, to entertain, or to compare. Your assignment might specifically dictate the purpose of the writing project. Or the assignment might simply indicate, for example, that you are to show you understand a topic. In such a situation, you would then be free to choose a writing purpose through which you could demonstrate your understanding.
• Who do I want my readers to be? Traditionally the audience for a college student’s paper has been the instructor, but technology is rapidly changing that. Many instructors actively make use of the web’s collaborative opportunities. Your fellow students (or even people outside the class) may now be your audience, and this will change how you approach your assignment. Even if your instructor is the only person who will see your finished product, you have the right (and even the responsibility) to identify an ideal reader or readership for your work. Whoever your audience is, take care to avoid writing too far above or too far beneath their knowledge or interest level.
• What am I writing about? Your topic might be set by your instructor. If so, make sure you know if you have the option of writing about different angles of the topic. If the topic is not preset, choose a topic in which you will be happy to immerse yourself.
• What’s my position on this topic? Analyze your ideas and opinions before you start the writing project, especially if the assignment calls for you to take a position. Leave room for new ideas and changes in your opinion as you research and learn about the topic. Keep in mind that taking a stand is important in your efforts to write a paper that is truly yours rather than a compilation of others’ ideas and opinions, but the stand you take should evolve from encounters with the opinions of others. Monitor your position as you write your first draft, and attend to how it changes over the course of your writing and reading. If your purpose is to compare ideas and opinions on a given topic, clarifying your opinion may not be so critical, but remember that you are still using an interpretive point of view even when you are “merely” summarizing or analyzing data.
• How long does this piece of writing need to be? How much depth should I go into? Many assignments have a predetermined range of page numbers, which somewhat dictates the depth of the topic. If no guidance is provided regarding length, it will be up to you to determine the scope of the writing project. Discussions with other students or your instructor might be helpful in making this determination.
• How should I format this piece of writing? In today’s digital world, you have several equally professional options for completing and presenting your writing assignments. Unless your professor dictates a specific method for awareness and learning purposes, you will probably be free to make these format choices. Even your choice of font can be significant.
• How or where will I publish this piece of writing? You are “publishing” every time you place an essay on a course management system or class-wide wiki or blog , or even when you present an essay orally. More likely than not, if your writing means something to you, you will want to share it with others beyond your instructor in some manner. Knowing how you will publish your work will affect some of the choices you make during the writing process.
• How should my writing look beyond questions of format and font? College essays used to be completely devoid of visuals. Nowadays, given the ease of including them, an essay that does not include visuals might be considered weak. On the other hand, you do not want to include a visual just for the sake of having one. Every visual must be carefully chosen for its value-adding capacity.

Planning the basics for your essay ahead of time will help assure proper organization for both the process and the product. It is almost a certainty that an unorganized process will lead to an unorganized product.

Reading Assignments Closely and Critically

A close and careful reading of any given writing assignment will help you sort out the ideas you want to develop in your writing assignment and make sense of how any assigned readings fit with the required writing.

Use the following strategies to make the most of every writing assignment you receive:

• Look for key words, especially verbs such as analyze , summarize , evaluate , or argue , in the assignment itself that will give clues to the genre , structure , and medium of writing required.
• Do some prewriting that establishes your base of knowledge and your initial opinions about the subject if the topic is predetermined. Make a list of ideas you will need to learn more about in order to complete the assignment.
• Develop a list of possible ideas you could pursue if the topic is more open.

Use the following strategies to help you make the most of readings that support the writing assignment:

• Make a note if you question something in any assigned reading related to the writing assignment.
• Preview each reading assignment by jotting down your existing opinions about the topic before reading. As you read, monitor whether your preconceived opinions prevent you from giving the text a fair reading. After finishing the text, check for changes in your opinions as result of your reading.
• Mark the locations of different opinions in your readings, so you can easily revisit them. (For more on how this works with research, see Chapter 7 “Researching” , Section 7.8 “Creating an Annotated Bibliography” .)
• Note the points in your readings that you consider most interesting and most useful. Consider sharing your thoughts on the text in class discussions.
• Note any inconsistencies or details in your readings with which you disagree. Plan to discuss these details with other students or your professor.

Above all, when questions or concerns arise as you apply these strategies, take them up with your professor directly, either in class or during office hours. Making contact with your professor by asking substantive questions about your reading and writing helps you stand out from the crowd and demonstrates that you are an engaged student.

Connecting Your Reading with Your Writing

College writing often requires the use of others’ opinions and ideas to support, compare, and ground your opinions. You read to understand others’ opinions; you write to express your opinions in the context of what you’ve read. Remember that your writing must be just that—yours. Take care to use others’ opinions and ideas only as support. Make sure your ideas create the core of your writing assignments. (For more on documentation, see Chapter 22 “Appendix B: A Guide to Research and Documentation” , Section 22.5 “Developing a List of Sources” .)

Sharing and Testing Your Thinking with Others

Discussion and debate are mainstays of a college education. Sharing and debating ideas with instructors and other students allows all involved to learn from each other and grow. You often enter into a discussion with your opinions and exit with a widened viewpoint. Although you can read an assignment and generate your understandings and opinions without speaking to another person, you would be limiting yourself by those actions. Instead it is in your best interest to share your opinions and listen to or read others’ opinions on a steady, ongoing basis.

In order to share your ideas and opinions in a scholarly way, you must properly prepare your knowledge bank. Reading widely and using the strategies laid out in the Section 11.2.3 “Connecting Your Reading with Your Writing” are excellent methods for developing that habit.

Make sure to maintain fluidity in your thoughts and opinions. Be prepared to make adjustments as you learn new ideas through discussions with others or through additional readings. You can discuss and debate in person or online, in real time or asynchronously. One advantage to written online discussions and debates is that you have an archived copy for later reference, so you don’t have to rely on memory. For this reason, some instructors choose to develop class sites for student collaboration, discussion, and debate.

• The assignments you receive from your instructors in college are as worthy of a close and careful reading as any other texts you are assigned to read. You can learn to employ certain strategies to get the most out of the assignments you are being asked to perform.
• Success in college and life depends on time- and project-management skills: being able to break large projects into smaller, manageable tasks and learning how to work independently and collaboratively.

For every assignment you receive with an open topic, get into the habit of writing a journal or blog entry that answers the following four questions:

• What are some topics that interest you?
• What topics will fit within the time frame you have for the project?
• Of the possible topics, which have enough depth for the required paper?
• For which topics can you think of an angle about which you are passionate?

Figure 11.1 Sample Assignment with Student Annotations

11.3 Collaborating on Academic Writing Projects

• Understand how cooperative and collaborative learning techniques, with the help of technology, can enhance college-level writing projects.
• Learn how to give and receive effective and meaningful feedback.

How do you feel about group projects in your college classes? Are you like many students who resist group projects because you prefer to work alone? Do you know why college-level work often requires collaboration and how that collaborative work might be conducted differently than how it’s done in a K–12 environment?

Different Types of Group Work

You might not think of a typical writing assignment as a group project, but you begin collaborating on a writing assignment the moment you discuss your topic with someone else. From there, you might ask classmates to read your paper and share their opinions or to proofread your work. Some students form study groups to assure they have reviewers for their work and to have a collaborative atmosphere in which to work. These are just a few examples of effective college students voluntarily engaging in collaboration.

Choosing to collaborate is not always left up to you, since some instructors often require it, whether through simple group discussion boards or through more complex interactions, such as a semester-long project. Whether or not it starts out as something that’s required, or “part of your grade” for the course, collaboration is something successful college students eventually learn to do on their own.

If your instructor gives you a collaborative writing assignment, don’t assume the worst possible outcome, where one or two people end up doing all the work. Decide and document who will do what and when it will happen. As a group, you are taking on nearly total responsibility for the project when you are involved in a collaborative learning situation. Because of their complexity, collaborative writing projects still tend to be fairly uncommon, but they are becoming increasingly popular ways of developing and testing your collective ability to think, work, and communicate interdependently as part of a team—certainly an essential skill in the workplace.

The Dynamics of Interpersonal Communication

If collaboration is required, making a plan at the beginning of the assignment is essential. Decide if you will meet in person, online, or both. If the level of collaboration is at the reviewing and proofreading level, agree on a date to turn in or post drafts for review and set a clear timeline for completing reviews. For more involved collaborative efforts, such as a joint paper or project, begin by agreeing on a vision for the overall project. Then set up a schedule and split up the work evenly and equally, but with a sense of strategy as well. Figure out each other’s strengths and play to them. Make sure the schedule allows for plenty of time to regroup in case a group member does not meet a deadline.

During group meetings, discuss the direction and scope of the overall project as well as individual components. If any group members are struggling with their parts of the project, keep in mind that the success of all depends on the success of each, so meet to address problems. When group members disagree—and there will almost always be some differences of opinion—talk through the problems with a willingness to compromise while being careful to protect the overall integrity of the assignment. Choose an individual deadline for completion that allows time for all group members to read through the draft and suggest further revisions. If your project includes a presentation, make sure to leave time to plan that as well. Decide if one or more people will present and schedule at least one practice session to assure the group members are happy with the final presentation.

General Group Work Guidelines

• Make sure the overall plan is clear. A group project will only come together if all group members are working toward the same end product. Before beginning to write, make sure the complete plans are fleshed out and posted in writing on the group website, if one is available. Within the plan, include each member’s responsibilities.
• Keep an open mind. You will undoubtedly have your ideas, but listen to other ideas and be willing to accept them if they make sense. Be flexible. Don’t insist on doing everything your way. Be tolerant. Hold back from criticizing others’ errors in an insulting way. Feel free to suggest alternatives, but always be polite. If you think someone is criticizing you unfairly or too harshly, let it go. Retaliating can create an ongoing problem that gets in the way of the project’s completion.
• Be diplomatic. Even if you think a coparticipant has a lousy idea and you are sure you have a better idea, you need to broach the topic very diplomatically. Keep in mind that if you want your opinion to have a fair hearing, you’ll need to present it in a way that is nonoffensive.
• Pay attention. Make sure you know what others are saying. Ask for clarification when needed. If you are unsure what someone means, restate it in your words and ask if your understanding is correct.
• Be timely. Don’t make your coparticipants wait for you. As a group, agree to your timing in writing and then do your part to honor the timeline. Allow each person ample time to complete his or her part. Tight schedules often result in missed deadlines.

Managing Consistency of Tone and Effort in Group Projects

Human nature seems to naturally repel suggestions of change from others. It is wise to remember, however, that no one is a perfect writer. So it is in your best interest to welcome and at least consider others’ ideas without being defensive. Guard against taking feedback personally by keeping in mind that the feedback is about the words in your paper, not about you. Also show appreciation for the time your classmate took to review your paper. If you do not completely understand a suggestion from a classmate, keep in mind the “two heads are better than one” concept and take the time to follow up and clarify. In keeping with the reality that it is your paper, in the end, make only the changes with which you agree.

When you review the work of others, keep the spirit of the following “twenty questions” in mind. Note that this is not a simple checklist; the questions are phrased to prevent “yes” or “no” answers. By working through these questions, you will develop a very good understanding about ways to make the writer’s draft better. You’ll probably also come up with some insights about your draft in the process. In fact, you’re welcome to subject your draft to the same review process.

When you have an idea that you think will help the writer, either explain your idea in a comment box or actually change the text to show what you mean. Of course, only change the text if you are using a format that will allow the author to have copies of both his or her original text and your changed version. If you are working with a hard copy, make your notes in the margins. Make sure to explain your ideas clearly and specifically, so they will be most helpful. Do not, for example, note only that a sentence is in the wrong place. Indicate where you think the sentence should be. If a question comes into your mind while you are reading the paper, include the question in the margin.

Twenty Questions for Peer Review

• What sort of audience is this writer trying to reach? Is that audience appropriate?
• What three adjectives would you use to describe the writer’s personality in the draft?
• How well does the draft respond to the assignment?
• What is the draft’s purpose (to persuade? to inform? to entertain? something else?) and how well does it accomplish that purpose?
• Where is the writer’s thesis? If the thesis is explicit, quote it; if it is implicit, paraphrase it.
• What points are presented to support the thesis?
• How do these points add value in helping to support the thesis?
• How does the title convey the core idea in an interesting way?
• How does the paper begin with a hook that grabs your attention? Suggest a different approach.
• How effectively does the writer use visuals? How do they add value?
• Where else could visuals be used effectively? Suggest specific visuals, if possible.
• How are transitions used to help the flow of the writing? Cite the most effective and least effective transitions in the draft.
• Is the draft free of errors in punctuation and grammar? If not, suggest three changes. If there are more than three errors, suggest where in this handbook the writer could find assistance.
• How varied are the sentence styles and lengths? Give one example each of a short, simple sentence and a long, complex sentence in the draft.
• What point of view is used throughout the paper?
• How well does the conclusion wrap up the thesis? What else could the conclusion accomplish?
• How are subheadings used, if they are used?
• What are the strongest points of the draft?
• What are the weakest points of the draft?
• What else, if anything, is confusing?

Assessing the Quality of Group Projects

Instructors assess group projects differently than individual projects. Logically, instructors attribute an individual assignment’s merits, or lack thereof, completely to the individual. It is not as easy to assess students fairly on what they contributed individually to the merits of a group project, though wikis and course management systems are making individual work much easier to trace. Instructors may choose to hold the members of a team accountable for an acceptable overall project. Beyond that, instructors may rely on team members’ input about their group for additional assessment information.

For an in-depth collaborative project, your instructor is likely to ask all students in the group to evaluate their own performance, both as individuals and as part of the larger group. You might be asked to evaluate each individual group member’s contributions as well as the overall group efforts. This evaluation is an opportunity to point out the strong and weak points of your group, not a time to discuss petty disagreements or complain about group plans that did not go your way. Think about how you would feel if group members complained about your choices they did not like, and you can easily see the importance of being flexible, honest, and professional with group evaluations. For a clear understanding of how an instructor will grade a specific collaborative assignment, talk to the instructor.

• Online tools and platforms like course management systems and wikis allow students to collaborate by sharing information and by editing, revising, and publishing their finished work.
• Collaborative learning approaches are increasingly prevalent in higher education, as colleges attempt to prepare students for the demands of increasingly collaborative work environments.
• If the writing course in which you are currently enrolled is not using a wiki, write a rationale to your instructor for how the course might benefit from having such a collaborative platform. (Check out two of the most popular wikis for which free educational versions are currently available: http://www.wikispaces.com and http://www.pbworks.com .) Include an evaluative comparison in your proposal and suggest to your class and instructor which would be the best to use for your writing course and why. Make sure you take into account how you would observe the syllabus and assignments currently in place for your course, and consider how they might be adjusted to meet the demands of a more collaborative context.
• As part of your proposal, you could set up a free wiki online and create a one-page essay explaining the process of setting up a free wiki. Publish your essay in your wiki and then give the rest of the class and your instructor permission to see your essay. If your writing course is already using a wiki, consider how you would draw up a similar proposal to an instructor in another discipline. For example, how would a history, biology, psychology, business, or nursing course benefit from a wiki?
• Choose an essay you have written for a previous assignment in class. Exchange the paper with a classmate. If possible, exchange an electronic version rather than a hard copy. Answer each of the “Twenty Questions for Peer Review” in this section. When necessary, make notes in the margins of the paper (by using Insert Comment if you are working in Word, then resaving the draft before returning it electronically).
• Academic Writing. Authored by : Withheld by Lardbucket at Publishers' Request (see https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/writers-handbook/). Provided by : Lardbucket. Located at : https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/writers-handbook/s15-academic-writing.html . Project : Writers' Handbook. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Six Tips to Prepare Students for College Writing Courses

Many students, often with different majors outside the humanities, end up taking a required sequence of first-year college composition courses during their first year in college. Much of the time, students feel a sense of dread or apathy towards writing in general. A majority of my students in their diagnostic essays (about their strengths and weaknesses) tell me that the act of sitting down at a computer for several hours and trying to come up with the right words and sentences can be a daunting task. Here are a few helpful tips I would give to students preparing for first-year composition. If you teach high school writing, these tips would be helpful to practice early on with students to prepare them for these first-year composition courses. 

Change your thinking, mindset, and routine. 

Don’t fear writing. Instead, think of a composition class as an opportunity to improve your reading comprehension, critical thinking, and writing ability in both an academic and professional setting. These skills benefit you no matter your field of interest. Once you see its value, are you then willing to work hard and do everything you can to meet your goals? Can you allow yourself to make mistakes but see how those mistakes can help refine your writing with more practice and experience? Adjust your approach. Look at things with an open mind. Will you ask for help when needed? Are you actively seeking out every possible resource that your school has to offer (success center, resource center, library services, online tutoring, student services)? Make choices that put you in the best position to thrive. Does this mean sacrificing time with friends and family? Does it mean scheduling some time at the writing center or with an online tutor? Or does it mean sending your instructor an e-mail about your writing concerns? If you want to give yourself the best chance to succeed, then the answer to these questions is an emphatic “Yes!”

Read the course syllabus. 

Reread it again if you must. No, seriously. Please read it a few times. More often than not, a question you may have about the course (especially within the first week or so) can be found here. Have the syllabus close by for reference and highlight specific parts or lines that are important. This may include your instructor’s contact information (e-mail, phone number, office/virtual hours), course policies (late work, plagiarism, formatting requirements), course materials (textbooks, workbooks, login/access codes, and links), weekly course schedules (assignments and due dates), and specific directions for assignments (requirements and style).

Do all of the required reading and homework assignments. 

Block off some time each day—or whenever your schedule allows—to work on your course assignments (write down due dates in a planner). Allow yourself enough time to thoroughly review, comprehend, and complete the coursework. This isn’t just to get a good grade. Writing is recursive. Each assignment in a course is scaffolded and builds upon each other. For example, you might not be able to master the end-of-module summative assessment (high stakes) such as a three-to-four-page descriptive essay, unless you are doing the formative assessments (low stakes) each week in order to understand and practice implementing the five senses into your writing. Be an active learner and ask questions to yourself, your instructor, or your classmates about the course materials. Treat school and these assignments as a full-time job. Put the time and effort into every reading and writing assignment.

Know the intent of each assignment. 

Carefully review the directions on the assignment sheet (pay close attention to action words, keywords, and rules), and sometimes a posted writing sample of what the instructor is looking for in a particular assignment. Are you clear about the assignment’s expectations? Be sure you have a well-developed plan that answers what the assignment is asking of you. For instance, there are usually several questions (and subset questions) listed on the assignment sheet. They are there for a reason and should be clearly addressed in your writing. The questions will allow you to often consider content, rhetorical elements, situation, audience, purpose, point of view, organization, style, and theme.

Prepare a rough draft for all major essays, even if it isn’t required. 

This might take some extra time and effort, but you can receive really valuable feedback from your instructor, success/writing center, study group, or online tutoring service. The more eyes that review your essay, the better. This can help you identify issues with content, organization, and style. If you address these problems for the final essay, you are most likely going to see a higher grade because your final product is more polished. Good writing doesn’t happen in an instant, it usually takes some time to mature as a writer. Writing one, two, or even three rough drafts before the final draft is due is a great way to practice and enhance your skills.

Reach out to your instructor. 

E-mail, Zoom, or a learning management system message are all ways you can get in contact with your instructor. Always keep them informed of any problems you are having that might affect your performance in the class. Such issues might include asking to turn in a late assignment, illness, not understanding an assignment, or an inability to begin the writing process. Instructors have issues come up as well and are most likely open to working with you. If you don’t immediately notify your instructor of an issue, there might not be enough time to make arrangements, and it could end up hurting your overall grade in the class. It never hurts to simply ask.

These tips will set any student up for success in their first year of college. But they do require students to take initiative, ownership, and responsibility for their learning– which takes practice and support to reach autonomy. The more practice students can get with these tips before entering their college writing courses, the better prepared and more successful they will be. 

John Hansen

John Hansen received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Iowa and a master's degree in English literature from Oklahoma State University. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Summerset Review, One Sentence Poems, The Dillydoun Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Eunoia Review, Litro Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, The Banyan Review, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere. He has presented on a variety of topics at The National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD), The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC—Regional), The American Comparative Literature Association, The Midwest Conference on British Studies, and others. He is an English faculty member at Mohave Community College in Arizona. Read more at johnphansen.com .

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These tips are helpful. Appreciate the information. I’ll be using them with my students as well.

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Preparing for your first assignment

Simple steps to help you tackle your first assignment.

It won't be long before you'll be working on your first assignment. These simple steps will help you understand how to tackle it and find out more about the support on offer. 

• Understand the assignment  and its format.
• Familiarise yourself with the assessment criteria . 
• Plan for your assignment. Make sure you ask any questions that you have. 
• Check out UCL Library Services resources on assignments.
• Understand what is meant by academic integrity .
• Understand how to engage AI in your education and assessments. 
• Gather materials and information   effectively. 
• Draft  your answer first, then refine in subsequent drafts.
• Develop your academic voice . 
• Proofread and submit your assignment, often using the  TurnItIn  tool. 

Understanding and using Feedback

Once you've handed in your assignment, you'll get feedback on it. Understanding and using the feedback from your assignment is just as important as doing the assignment itself. It will help you understand what you have done well and what you need to do to improve. You may also want to discuss your feedback with someone, like your personal tutor.

• Responding to Feedback , UCL IOE Writing Centre.
• Giving and Receiving Feedback , LinkedIn Learning.

Planning for assessments and exams

We recommend you make a start with our  Assessment Planning: a guide for UCL students . This walks you through how to plan your time for the year.

Looking after yourself

Assignments and exams can be stressful and intense. Make sure you pay attention to your Mental Health and Wellbeing and  seek support  if you need it. 

Wellbeing events

The Student Support and Wellbeing team put on a host of  wellbeing events  throughout the year to help you look after your wellbeing whilst at university. We recommend you take a look at 'Your Guide to Thrive' and 'Exam Season Toolkit'

Project Active

Project Active  is a collaboration between UCL and the Student Union and offers UCL students a wide range of inclusive, beginner-friendly opportunities to get active.

Managing stress

Check out UCL’s advice on how to  manage exam stress  or use our assessment wellbeing guide , which will help you look after yourself before, during and after your exams.

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• Professional learning

Teach. Learn. Grow.

Teach. learn. grow. the education blog.

Anchor your writing instruction in big ideas students can remember

Years later, when one of my journalism students won a Los Angeles Times award for news writing, I thought more deeply about the instructional changes I had made. I also thought about the social and emotional factors that likely enabled this once-timid reporter to tackle tough issues and blossom into an adept writer. What I realized from this exercise is that many of my instructional shifts had more to do with “leaning in” and getting to know my student as a writer, along with “letting go” of some outdated notions about what good writing is.

These are the three most important lessons I learned that I’d like to pass along.

Lesson #1: Writing instruction begins with a shared language for talking about writing and a shared understanding of the purposes for writing

Anchoring your instruction in a few big ideas that students can remember helps simplify the experience for everyone—and writing is always an experience.

As a new English language arts teacher, I often made writing more complicated than it needed to be. In my journalism classes, things were simple: we focused on the 5Ws and H (who? What? When? Where? Why? How?). It was easy for every student to remember and internalize these guiding questions.

If only there were a similar list of questions I could apply to other writing tasks! Over time, I found that there was. And at NWEA, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with current and former teachers to hone that list of essential questions down to the following five.

If anchoring your instruction in big ideas students can remember resonates with you, like it did for me, I encourage you to try incorporating these five essential questions into your writing curriculum.

We’ve even compiled these big ideas for growing writers into a free resource aimed at building a shared language for talking about writing with students. To that end, we’ve created a student version , too.

1. Why am I writing?

This question encourages students to ponder their purpose for writing. Often, their immediate response to this question is, “I’m writing because my teacher assigned me this essay/report/research paper.”

If we can get students to push past the idea of writing as an assignment and toward writing as a form of communication, we may see a dramatic increase in their motivation and writing quality. “What do you want to accomplish with this piece of writing?” becomes the question, not “What kind of writing does your teacher want from you?”

Writing is always the intellectual product of the writer, and the more we can encourage students to see themselves as writers and to take ownership of their writing, the better the results. Before students write, it’s critical they know and understand their purpose for writing, as this purpose informs so many other choices they will make.

2. Who are my readers?

This question forces students to consider their audience . When writers can anticipate the needs of their audience, they increase the effectiveness of their communication.

If the only audience a student ever has for their writing is a teacher, they lose the opportunity to make writerly decisions based on different audiences, such as considering their unique feelings and opinions about a topic, their different vocabularies (e.g., familiarity with code switching, idioms, or jargon), and their varying degrees of background knowledge. This is why giving students authentic writing tasks is so important . Authentic writing engages students in the same cognitive processes they use to write for real-world situations, such as applying for a job, taking civic action, or even communicating with family and friends.

3. What am I writing?

This question gets students to think more deeply about the task , genre , and form for their writing. While some of this information is likely included in the writing assignment, it’s still important for students to work through the task details on their own.

Students will make more informed writing decisions when they are able to clearly articulate the expectations and success criteria for a writing task . The writing genre provides another framework for students to think about their purpose for writing. Each genre’s unique features have developed over time through socially agreed-upon conventions, and experienced writers understand how to use these features to communicate more clearly with their audiences. Finally, form —or format—describes the type of text to be produced, and today’s writers have more forms to choose from—both analog and digital—than ever before.

When students put time and thought into their purpose, audience, and task, they have a greater command over their writing and what they want it to accomplish. And that’s when we get to see students’ communication skills and creativity truly shine through.

4. How am I presenting ideas in my writing?

This question addresses the myriad of choices a writer must make when they embark on a task, including decisions about writing development , organization , style , and conventions . Too often, this is where we ask students to start, and it can be overwhelming to make all these decisions before a student has wrapped their head around what they plan to write and why. In addition, while these writerly decisions are important, we may place too great an emphasis on a student’s final written product when a focus on their writing process may have more instructional utility.

My advice to students is, “Don’t sweat the small stuff when it comes to presenting ideas in your writing.” The ideas themselves are what’s most important. They’ll have numerous opportunities to practice and hone their writing development, organization, style, and conventions with every piece they write and over an entire lifetime.

5. How am I using the writing process?

This question reminds students that writing is both a product and a process . And the writing process is where much of the learning and critical thinking takes place.

Though writing is often taught as a sequence of forward-moving steps, the writing process is recursive and iterative, not linear . For example, writers go back and forth between planning, drafting, translating, reviewing, and revising to meet their writing goals, and writing goals can be self-generated or revised at any time during the writing process.

Writing itself is a work in progress that includes collaboration, self-regulation, and self-evaluation in addition to the other steps students typically learn. The more frequently students engage in and reflect on their own writing process, the more likely they are to develop productive and efficient writing habits, as well as growth mindsets that can help them overcome writing challenges in their school, career, and personal lives.

Lesson #2: Writing instruction is most impactful when it extends through professional learning communities (PLC) that offer students school-wide support for writing

As students move from grade to grade, a strong and coordinated PLC can help them build on what they already know about writing and focus on becoming even more expressive and effective writers.

In my first year of teaching, a colleague and I had an opportunity to attend a professional learning summit on writing. One session led by Harry Noden taught us how his Image Grammar could help students expand, vary, and improve their sentence structures. The majority of our student population was multilingual learners, and we rightly suspected that focused practice on writing, even at the sentence level, could increase language development in English . In part, this is because writing has a slower pace, provides a permanent record, and calls for greater precision in word choice.

We accurately assumed that sentence writing would benefit all our students , too. And once we were satisfied with the results, we leveraged our PLC to encourage a school-wide adoption of teaching grammar with Noden’s “brushstrokes.” We saw students quickly embrace the concept of “brushstrokes” because it positioned them as “artists” painting with words. This artistry was reinforced by the quality of their sentence writing. Often shared aloud, these sentences could be chill inducing they were so beautiful. For many students, this was their first proof they could be excellent writers, once they learned how.

Lesson #3: Writing outcomes can be improved through the use of common assessments and common rubrics at the school, district, or even state level

Common assessments and common rubrics help educators develop a shared understanding of how to evaluate writing. This includes providing students with meaningful feedback and grading writing more consistently across a school, district, or even state.

Coordination among teachers can help establish a school-wide writing community that all students can tap into for peer review. It can also lead to greater consistency in writing instruction and evaluation. Such consistency builds trust between students and teachers, which in turn can strengthen students’ view of themselves as learners and increase their motivation to learn .

When students don’t have to figure out individual teacher preferences for writing—and they feel confident every teacher will grade their writing for substance not style—they can focus their mental energy on becoming better writers. This includes developing their own sense of how to use language(s) effectively for personal, academic, and civic purposes.

One way to foster student-teacher collaboration is to encourage students to enter writing contests . Student writing contests can range from local to national, and it’s worth some extra effort to find ones that are a good fit for your students. Once my journalism students began entering (and winning!) writing contests, these events became an annual tradition. My students also became more willing to work on their digital portfolios throughout the year.

At the district level, common assessments and common rubrics can help leaders identify schools that need more support, such as more professional learning for educators or more high-dosage tutoring for students . They can also identify schools that have model instruction and can serve as resources for others. If you’re looking for a place to start in your district, the Literacy Design Collaborative offers common analytic rubrics for several writing genres , and the New York Performance Standards Consortium provides a robust set of performance-based assessments and rubrics .

Districts that use state rubrics in their common writing assessments help ensure all educators have similar expectations of student writing. If your state assesses writing, check the state department of education website for newly released writing assessments and their accompanying rubrics. And if your state doesn’t assess writing, they may still offer writing materials for teachers to use.

Finally, NWEA is often asked about the connection between MAP® Growth™ and writing. MAP Growth does not include writing prompts, so it can’t take the place of high-quality formative assessment in the classroom ; it simply wasn’t designed to assess students’ writing. But MAP Growth can provide insights into students’ strengths and opportunities for growth, and these insights are especially helpful when educators use an integrated approach to reading and writing instruction.

The MAP Growth instructional areas for reading, for example, offer some information about how well students understand literary text, informational text, and vocabulary. Students who are performing below grade-level for vocabulary would likely benefit from more explicit vocabulary instruction, including more strategic exposure to roots and affixes. This expanded vocabulary knowledge can later be applied to students’ writing. One approach is to have students “speak in synonyms,” a kind of oral rehearsal that can be done with peers or small groups and then integrated into a piece of student writing. Meanwhile, students who struggle to comprehend informational text might benefit from a self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) approach to writing . This method teaches students to recognize, internalize, and utilize important genre features in writing. And since reading and writing are related, SRSD can help improve students’ comprehension of informational texts, too.

A recap of lessons learned

Writing is hard, and teaching writing may be harder still. As educators, we continually learn new lessons about how to help our students (and ourselves) become better writers. I hope the three lessons I’ve shared here are helpful to you and bring you closer to having every student see themselves as a capable writer or, better yet, an artist painting with words.

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100 Creative Writing Prompts for Middle & High School – 2024

April 15, 2024

Some high school students dream of writing for a living, perhaps pursuing an English major in college, or even attending a creative writing MFA program later on. For other students, creative writing can be useful for school assignments, in English and other subjects, and also for preparing their Common App essays . In a less goal-oriented sense, daily freewriting in a journal can be a healthy life practice for many high schoolers. Not sure where to start? Continue reading for 100 creative writing prompts for middle school and high school students. These middle/high school writing prompts offer inspiration for getting started with writing in a number of genres and styles.

Click here to view the 35 Best Colleges for Creative Writing .

What are Creative Writing Prompts?

Similar to how an academic essay prompt provides a jumping-off point for forming and organizing an argument, creative writing prompts are points of initiation for writing a story, poem, or creative essay. Prompts can be useful for writers of all ages, helping many to get past writer’s block and just start (often one of the most difficult parts of a writing process).

Writing prompts come in a variety of forms. Sometimes they are phrases used to begin sentences. Other times they are questions, more like academic essay prompts Writing prompts can also involve objects such as photographs, or activities such as walking. Below, you will find high school writing prompts that use memories, objects, senses (smell/taste/touch), abstract ideas , and even songs as jumping-off points for creative writing. These prompts can be used to write in a variety of forms, from short stories to creative essays, to poems.

How to use Creative Writing Prompts

Before we get started with the list, are a few tips when using creative writing prompts:

Experiment with different formats : Prose is great, but there’s no need to limit yourself to full sentences, at least at first. A piece of creative writing can begin with a poem, or a dialogue, or even a list. You can always bring it back to prose later if needed.

Interpret the prompt broadly : The point of a creative writing prompt is not to answer it “correctly” or “precisely.” You might begin with the prompt, but then your ideas could take you in a completely different direction. The words in the prompt also don’t need to open your poem or essay, but could appear somewhere in the middle.

Switch up/pile up the prompts : Try using two or three prompts and combine them, or weave between them. Perhaps choose a main prompt, and a different “sub-prompt.” For example, your main prompt might be “write about being in transit from one place to another,” and within that prompt, you might use the prompt to “describe a physical sensation,” and/or one the dialogue prompts.  This could be a fun way to find complexity as you write.

Creative Writing Prompts for Middle School & High School Students (Continued)

Write first, edit later : While you’re first getting started with a prompt, leave the typos and bad grammar. Obsessing over details can take away from your flow of thoughts. You will inevitably make many fixes when you go back through to edit.

Write consistently : It often becomes easier to write when it’s a practice , rather than a once-in-a-while kind of activity. For some, it’s useful to write daily. Others find time to write every few days, or every weekend. Sometimes, a word-count goal can help (100 words a day, 2,000 words a month, etc.). If you set a goal, make sure it’s realistic. Start small and build from there, rather than starting with an unachievable goal and quickly giving up.

100 Creative Writing Prompts for Middle School & High School Teens

Here are some prompts for getting started with your creative writing. These are organized by method, rather than genre, so they can inspire writing in a variety of forms. Pick and choose the ones that work best for you, and enjoy!

Prompts using memories

• Begin each sentence or group of sentences with the phrase, “I remember…”
• Describe a family ritual.
• Choose an event in your life, and write about it from the perspective of someone else who was there.
• Pick a pathway you take on a regular basis (to school, or to a friend’s house). Describe five landmarks that you remember from this pathway.
• Write about your house or apartment using a memory from each room.
• Write an imaginary history of the previous people who lived in your house or apartment.
• Write about an ancestor based on stories you’ve heard from relatives.
• What’s your earliest memory?
• Who was your first friend?
• Write a letter to someone you haven’t seen since childhood.
• Write about yourself now from the perspective of yourself twenty, or eighty, years from now.
• Write about the best month of the year.
• Write about the worst day of the year.
• Rant about something that has always annoyed you.
• Write about the hottest or coldest day you can remember.
• Visualize a fleeting moment in your life and as though it’s a photograph, and time yourself 5 minutes to write every detail you can remember about the scene.
• Draw out a timeline of your life so far. Then choose three years to write about, as though you were writing for a history book.
• Write about a historical event in the first person, as though you remember it.
• Write about a memory of being in transit from one place to another.

Objects and photographs as creative writing prompts

• Describe the first object you see in the room. What importance does it have in your life? What memories do you have with this object? What might it symbolize?
• Pick up an object, and spend some time holding it/examining it. Write about how it looks, feels, and smells. Write about the material that it’s made from.
• Choose a favorite family photograph. What could someone know just by looking at the photograph? What’s secretly happening in the photograph?
• Choose a photograph and tell the story of this photograph from the perspective of someone or something in it.
• Write about a color by describing three objects that are that color.
• Tell the story of a piece of trash.
• Tell the story of a pair of shoes.
• Tell the story of your oldest piece of clothing.

Senses and observations as creative writing prompts

• Describe a sound you hear in the room or outside. Choose the first sound you notice. What are its qualities? It’s rhythms? What other sounds does it remind you of?
• Describe a physical sensation you feel right now, in as much detail as possible.
• Listen to a conversation and write down a phrase that you hear someone say. Start a free-write with this phrase.
• Write about a food by describing its qualities, but don’t say what it is.
• Describe a flavor (salty, sweet, bitter, etc.) to someone who has never tasted it before.
• Narrate your day through tastes you tasted.
• Narrate your day through sounds you heard.
• Narrate your day through physical sensations you felt.
• Describe in detail the physical process of doing an action you consider simple or mundane, like walking or lying down or chopping vegetables.
• Write about the sensation of doing an action you consider physically demanding or tiring, like running or lifting heavy boxes.
• Describe something that gives you goosebumps.
• Write a story that involves drinking a cold glass of water on a hot day.
• Write a story that involves entering a warm house from a cold snowy day.
• Describe someone’s facial features in as much detail as possible.

Songs, books, and other art

• Choose a song quote, write it down, and free-write from there.
• Choose a song, and write a story in which that song is playing in the car.
• Choose a song, and write to the rhythm of that song.
• Choose a character from a book, and describe an event in your life from the perspective of that character.
• Go to a library and write down 10 book titles that catch your eye. Free-write for 5 minutes beginning with each one.
• Go to a library and open to random book pages, and write down 5 sentences that catch your attention. Use those sentences as prompts and free-write for 5-minutes with each.
• Choose a piece of abstract artwork. Jot down 10 words that come to mind from the painting or drawing, and free-write for 2 minutes based on each word.
• Find a picture of a dramatic Renaissance painting online. Tell a story about what’s going on in the painting that has nothing to do with what the artist intended.
• Write about your day in five acts, like a Shakespearean play. If your day were a play, what would be the introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution?
• Narrate a complicated book or film plot using only short sentences.
• Read a short poem. Then write a poem that could be a “sister” or “cousin” of that poem.

Abstract ideas as creative writing prompts

• Write about an experience that demonstrates an abstract idea, such as “love” or “home” or “freedom” or “loss” without ever using the word itself.
• Write a list of ways to say “hello” without actually saying “hello.”
• Write a list of ways to say “I love you” without actually saying “I love you.”
• Do you believe in ghosts? Describe a ghost.
• Invent a mode of time travel.
• Glass half-full/half-empty: Write about an event or situation with a positive outlook. Then write about it with a miserable outlook.
• Free-write beginning with “my religion is…” (what comes next can have as much or as little to do with organized religion as you’d like).
• Free-write beginning with “my gender is…” (what comes next can have as much or as little to do with common ideas of gender as you’d like).
• Write about a person or character that is “good” and one that is “evil.” Then write about the “evil” in the good character and the “good” in the evil character.
• Write like you’re telling a secret.
• Describe a moment of beauty you witnessed. What makes something beautiful?

Prompts for playing with narrative and character

• Begin writing with the phrase, “It all started when…”
• Tell a story from the middle of the most dramatic part.
• Write a story that begins with the ending.
• Begin a story but give it 5 possible endings.
• Write a list of ways to dramatically quit a terrible job.
• Write about a character breaking a social rule or ritual (i.e., walking backwards, sitting on the floor of a restaurant, wearing a ballgown to the grocery store). What are the ramifications?
• You are sent to the principal’s office. Justify your bad behavior.
• Re-write a well-known fairytale but set it in your school.
• Write your own version of the TV show trope where someone gets stuck in an elevator with a stranger, or a secret love interest, or a nemesis.
• Imagine a day where you said everything you were thinking, and write about it.
• Write about a scenario in which you have too much of a good thing.
• Write about a scenario in which money can buy happiness.
• Invent a bank or museum heist.
• Invent a superhero, including an origin story.
• Write using the form of the scientific method (question, hypothesis, test, analyze data conclusion).
• Write using the form of a recipe.

Middle School & High School Creative writing prompts for playing with fact vs. fiction

• Write something you know for sure is true, and then, “but maybe it isn’t.” Then explain why that thing may not be true.
• Write a statement and contradict that statement. Then do it again.
• Draft an email with an outlandish excuse as to why you didn’t do your homework or why you need an extension.
• Write about your morning routine, and make it sound extravagant/luxurious (even if it isn’t).
• You’ve just won an award for doing a very mundane and simple task. Write your acceptance speech.
• Write about a non-athletic event as though it were a sports game.
• Write about the most complicated way to complete a simple task.
• Write a brief history of your life, and exaggerate everything.
• Write about your day, but lie about some things.
• Tell the story of your birth.
• Choose a historical event and write an alternative outcome.
• Write about a day in the life of a famous person in history.
• Read an instructional manual, and change three instructions to include some kind of magical or otherwise impossible element.

Prompts for starting with dialogue

• Write a texting conversation between two friends who haven’t spoken in years.
• Write a texting conversation between two friends who speak every day and know each other better than anyone.
• Watch two people on the street having a conversation, and imagine the conversation they’re having. Write it down.
• Write an overheard conversation behind a closed door that you shouldn’t be listening to.
• Write a conversation between two characters arguing about contradicting memories of what happened.
• You have a difficult decision to make. Write a conversation about it with yourself.
• Write a conversation with a total lack of communication.
• Write a job interview gone badly.

Final Thoughts – Creative Writing Prompts for Middle School & High School 

Hopefully you have found several of these creative writing prompts helpful. Remember that when writing creatively, especially on your own, you can mix, match, and change prompts. For more on writing for high school students, check out the following articles:

• College Application Essay Topics to Avoid
• 160 Good Argumentative Essay Topics
• 150 Good Persuasive Speech Topics
• Good Transition Words for Essays
• High School Success

Sarah Mininsohn

With a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Sarah is a writer, educator, and artist. She served as a graduate instructor at the University of Illinois, a tutor at St Peter’s School in Philadelphia, and an academic writing tutor and thesis mentor at Wesleyan’s Writing Workshop.

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Guest Essay

The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex

By Peggy Orenstein

Ms. Orenstein is the author of “Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the New Masculinity” and “Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.”

Debby Herbenick is one of the foremost researchers on American sexual behavior. The director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University and the author of the pointedly titled book “Yes, Your Kid,” she usually shares her data, no matter how explicit, without judgment. So I was surprised by how concerned she seemed when we checked in on Zoom recently: “I haven’t often felt so strongly about getting research out there,” she told me. “But this is lifesaving.”

For the past four years, Dr. Herbenick has been tracking the rapid rise of “rough sex” among college students, particularly sexual strangulation, or what is colloquially referred to as choking. Nearly two-thirds of women in her most recent campus-representative survey of 5,000 students at an anonymized “major Midwestern university” said a partner had choked them during sex (one-third in their most recent encounter). The rate of those women who said they were between the ages 12 and 17 the first time that happened had shot up to 40 percent from one in four.

As someone who’s been writing for well over a decade about young people’s attitudes and early experience with sex in all its forms, I’d also begun clocking this phenomenon. I was initially startled in early 2020 when, during a post-talk Q. and A. at an independent high school, a 16-year-old girl asked, “How come boys all want to choke you?” In a different class, a 15-year-old boy wanted to know, “Why do girls all want to be choked?” They do? Not long after, a college sophomore (and longtime interview subject) contacted me after her roommate came home in tears because a hookup partner, without warning, had put both hands on her throat and squeezed.

I started to ask more, and the stories piled up. Another sophomore confided that she enjoyed being choked by her boyfriend, though it was important for a partner to be “properly educated” — pressing on the sides of the neck, for example, rather than the trachea. (Note: There is no safe way to strangle someone.) A male freshman said “girls expected” to be choked and, even though he didn’t want to do it, refusing would make him seem like a “simp.” And a senior in high school was angry that her friends called her “vanilla” when she complained that her boyfriend had choked her.

Sexual strangulation, nearly always of women in heterosexual pornography, has long been a staple on free sites, those default sources of sex ed for teens . As with anything else, repeat exposure can render the once appalling appealing. It’s not uncommon for behaviors to be normalized in porn, move within a few years to mainstream media, then, in what may become a feedback loop, be adopted in the bedroom or the dorm room.

Choking, Dr. Herbenick said, seems to have made that first leap in a 2008 episode of Showtime’s “Californication,” where it was still depicted as outré, then accelerated after the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” By 2019, when a high school girl was choked in the pilot of HBO’s “Euphoria,” it was standard fare. A young woman was choked in the opener of “The Idol” (again on HBO and also, like “Euphoria,” created by Sam Levinson; what’s with him ?). Ali Wong plays the proclivity for laughs in a Netflix special, and it’s a punchline in Tina Fey’s new “Mean Girls.” The chorus of Jack Harlow’s “Lovin On Me,” which topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for six nonconsecutive weeks this winter and has been viewed over 99 million times on YouTube, starts with, “I’m vanilla, baby, I’ll choke you, but I ain’t no killer, baby.” How-to articles abound on the internet, and social media algorithms feed young people (but typically not their unsuspecting parents) hundreds of #chokemedaddy memes along with memes that mock — even celebrate — the potential for hurting or killing female partners.

I’m not here to kink-shame (or anything-shame). And, anyway, many experienced BDSM practitioners discourage choking, believing it to be too dangerous. There are still relatively few studies on the subject, and most have been done by Dr. Herbenick and her colleagues. Reports among adolescents are now trickling out from the United Kingdom , Australia , Iceland , New Zealand and Italy .

Twenty years ago, sexual asphyxiation appears to have been unusual among any demographic, let alone young people who were new to sex and iffy at communication. That’s changed radically in a short time, with health consequences that parents, educators, medical professionals, sexual consent advocates and teens themselves urgently need to understand.

Sexual trends can spread quickly on campus and, to an extent, in every direction. But, at least among straight kids, I’ve sometimes noticed a pattern: Those that involve basic physical gratification — like receiving oral sex in hookups — tend to favor men. Those that might entail pain or submission, like choking, are generally more for women.

So, while undergrads of all genders and sexualities in Dr. Herbenick’s surveys report both choking and being choked, straight and bisexual young women are far more likely to have been the subjects of the behavior; the gap widens with greater occurrences. (In a separate study , Dr. Herbenick and her colleagues found the behavior repeated across the United States, particularly for adults under 40, and not just among college students.) Alcohol may well be involved, and while the act is often engaged in with a steady partner, a quarter of young women said partners they’d had sex with on the day they’d met also choked them.

Either way, most say that their partners never or only sometimes asked before grabbing their necks. For many, there had been moments when they couldn’t breathe or speak, compromising the ability to withdraw consent, if they’d given it. No wonder that, in a separate study by Dr. Herbenick, choking was among the most frequently listed sex acts young women said had scared them, reporting that it sometimes made them worry whether they’d survive.

Among girls and women I’ve spoken with, many did not want or like to be sexually strangled, though in an otherwise desired encounter they didn’t name it as assault . Still, a sizable number were enthusiastic; they requested it. It is exciting to feel so vulnerable, a college junior explained. The power dynamic turns her on; oxygen deprivation to the brain can trigger euphoria.

That same young woman, incidentally, had never climaxed with a partner: While the prevalence of choking has skyrocketed, rates of orgasm among young women have not increased, nor has the “orgasm gap” disappeared among heterosexual couples. “It indicates they’re not doing other things to enhance female arousal or pleasure,” Dr. Herbenick said.

When, for instance, she asked one male student who said he choked his partner whether he’d ever tried using a vibrator instead, he recoiled. “Why would I do that?” he asked.

Perhaps, she responded, because it would be more likely to produce orgasm without risking, you know, death.

In my interviews, college students have seen male orgasm as a given; women’s is nice if it happens, but certainly not expected or necessarily prioritized (by either partner). It makes sense, then, that fulfillment would be less the motivator for choking than appearing adventurous or kinky. Such performances don’t always feel good.

“Personally, my hypothesis is that this is one of the reasons young people are delaying or having less sex,” Dr. Herbenick said. “Because it’s uncomfortable and weird and scary. At times some of them literally think someone is assaulting them but they don’t know. Those are the only sexual experiences for some people. And it’s not just once they’ve gotten naked. They’ll say things like, ‘I’ve only tried to make out with someone once because he started choking and hitting me.’”

Keisuke Kawata, a neuroscientist at Indiana University’s School of Public Health, was one of the first researchers to sound the alarm on how the cumulative, seemingly inconsequential, sub-concussive hits football players sustain (as opposed to the occasional hard blow) were key to triggering C.T.E., the degenerative brain disease. He’s a good judge of serious threats to the brain. In response to Dr. Herbenick’s work, he’s turning his attention to sexual strangulation. “I see a similarity” to C.T.E., he told me, “though the mechanism of injury is very different.” In this case, it is oxygen-blocking pressure to the throat, frequently in light, repeated bursts of a few seconds each.

Strangulation — sexual or otherwise — often leaves few visible marks and can be easily overlooked as a cause of death. Those whose experiences are nonlethal rarely seek medical attention, because any injuries seem minor: Young women Dr. Herbenick studied mostly reported lightheadedness, headaches, neck pain, temporary loss of coordination and ear ringing. The symptoms resolve, and all seems well. But, as with those N.F.L. players, the true effects are silent, potentially not showing up for days, weeks, even years.

According to the American Academy of Neurology, restricting blood flow to the brain, even briefly, can cause permanent injury, including stroke and cognitive impairment. In M.R.I.s conducted by Dr. Kawata and his colleagues (including Dr. Herbenick, who is a co-author of his papers on strangulation), undergraduate women who have been repeatedly choked show a reduction in cortical folding in the brain compared with a never-choked control group. They also showed widespread cortical thickening, an inflammation response that is associated with elevated risk of later-onset mental illness. In completing simple memory tasks, their brains had to work far harder than the control group, recruiting from more regions to achieve the same level of accuracy.

The hemispheres in the choked group’s brains, too, were badly skewed, with the right side hyperactive and the left underperforming. A similar imbalance is associated with mood disorders — and indeed in Dr. Herbenick’s surveys girls and women who had been choked were more likely than others (or choked men) to have experienced overwhelming anxiety, as well as sadness and loneliness, with the effect more pronounced as the incidence rose: Women who had experienced more than five instances of choking were two and a half times as likely as those who had never been choked to say they had been so depressed within the previous 30 days they couldn’t function. Whether girls and women with mental health challenges are more likely to seek out (or be subjected to) choking, choking causes mood disorders, or some combination of the two is still unclear. But hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation — judging by what research has shown about other types of traumatic brain injury — could be a contributing factor. Given the soaring rates of depression and anxiety among young women, that warrants concern.

Now consider that every year Dr. Herbenick has done her survey, the number of females reporting extreme effects from strangulation (neck swelling, loss of consciousness, losing control of urinary function) has crept up. Among those who’ve been choked, the rate of becoming what students call “cloudy” — close to passing out, but not crossing the line — is now one in five, a huge proportion. All of this indicates partners are pressing on necks longer and harder.

The physical, cognitive and psychological impacts of sexual choking are disturbing. So is the idea that at a time when women’s social, economic, educational and political power are in ascent (even if some of those rights may be in jeopardy), when #MeToo has made progress against harassment and assault, there has been the popularization of a sex act that can damage our brains, impair intellectual functioning, undermine mental health, even kill us. Nonfatal strangulation, one of the most significant indicators that a man will murder his female partner (strangulation is also one of the most common methods used for doing so), has somehow been eroticized and made consensual, at least consensual enough. Yet, the outcomes are largely the same: Women’s brains and bodies don’t distinguish whether they are being harmed out of hate or out of love.

By now I’m guessing that parents are curled under their chairs in a fetal position. Or perhaps thinking, “No, not my kid!” (see: title of Dr. Herbenick’s book above, which, by the way, contains an entire chapter on how to talk to your teen about “rough sex”).

I get it. It’s scary stuff. Dr. Herbenick is worried; I am, too. And we are hardly some anti-sex, wait-till-marriage crusaders. But I don’t think our only option is to wring our hands over what young people are doing.

Parents should take a beat and consider how they might give their children relevant information in a way that they can hear it. Maybe reiterate that they want them to have a pleasurable sex life — you have already said that, right? — and also want them to be safe. Tell them that misinformation about certain practices, including choking, is rampant, that in reality it has grave health consequences. Plus, whether or not a partner initially requested it, if things go wrong, you’re generally criminally on the hook.

Dr. Herbenick suggests reminding them that there are other, lower-risk ways to be exploratory or adventurous if that is what they are after, but it would be wisest to delay any “rough sex” until they are older and more skilled at communicating. She offers language when negotiating with a new partner, such as, “By the way, I’m not comfortable with” — choking, or other escalating behaviors such as name-calling, spitting and genital slapping — “so please don’t do it/don’t ask me to do it to you.” They could also add what they are into and want to do together.

I’d like to point high school health teachers to evidence-based porn literacy curricula, but I realize that incorporating such lessons into their classrooms could cost them their jobs. Shafia Zaloom, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, recommends, if that’s the case, grounding discussions in mainstream and social media. There are plenty of opportunities. “You can use it to deconstruct gender norms, power dynamics in relationships, ‘performative’ trends that don’t represent most people’s healthy behaviors,” she said, “especially depictions of people putting pressure on someone’s neck or chest.”

I also know that pediatricians, like other adults, struggle when talking to adolescents about sex (the typical conversation, if it happens, lasts 40 seconds). Then again, they already caution younger children to use a helmet when they ride a bike (because heads and necks are delicate!); they can mention that teens might hear about things people do in sexual situations, including choking, then explain the impact on brain health and why such behavior is best avoided. They should emphasize that if, for any reason — a fall, a sports mishap or anything else — a young person develops symptoms of head trauma, they should come in immediately, no judgment, for help in healing.

The role and responsibility of the entertainment industry is a tangled knot: Media reflects behavior but also drives it, either expanding possibilities or increasing risks. There is precedent for accountability. The European Union now requires age verification on the world’s largest porn sites (in ways that preserve user privacy, whatever that means on the internet); that discussion, unsurprisingly, had been politicized here. Social media platforms have already been pushed to ban content promoting eating disorders, self-harm and suicide — they should likewise be pressured to ban content promoting choking. Traditional formats can stop glamorizing strangulation, making light of it, spreading false information, using it to signal female characters’ complexity or sexual awakening. Young people’s sexual scripts are shaped by what they watch, scroll by and listen to — unprecedentedly so. They deserve, and desperately need, models of interactions that are respectful, communicative, mutual and, at the very least, safe.

Peggy Orenstein is the author of “Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent and Navigating the New Masculinity” and “Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape.”

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An earlier version of this article misstated the network on which “Californication” first appeared. It is Showtime, not HBO. The article also misspelled a book and film title. It is “Fifty Shades of Grey,” not “Fifty Shades of Gray.”

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