College writing mini-lessons

The page's content was written by Jennifer Mitchell of the SUNY Potsdam Writing Center.

Resources for tutors and students

Some fun and helpful websites, and books.

1. The Wikibook: The online Wikibook on Rhetoric and Composition is part of Wikibooks, an open-content textbooks collection. The textbook is based on contributions to Wikipedia and its content can be revised by users.
2. Writing@CSU: Writing Guides. Guides produces by the Colorado State University Writing Center. Each link in the list includes many pages of useful material.
3. Hacker’s Citation Guide: Diana Hacker’s Research and Documentation page. This includes sample papers that show you what to aim for.
4. Common Errors in English: a glossary of words we often get wrong.
5. Pocket Keys for Writers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006. This is a short version of Keys for Writers, which you might have purchased for COMP101. Pocket Keys is available for as little as $2 plus shipping on the Internet. There is an Online Study Center for this book.
6. Two other wonderful books are Joseph Williams and Greg Colomb, Craft of Argument, Concise Edition. Boston: Longman, 2003 and Jay Silverman, Rules of Thumb. McGraw-Hill, 1990.
7. Crumb Help is Near! See Research Assistance for some helpful stuff. Information Literacy/Research Skills: See Blackboard Courses – Academic Services – Information Literacy Online Tutorials.

The writing process and organizing an argument

• Resources: Pocket Keys pages 2-9
• Writing@CSU
• Writing Situations-Issues & Ideas

Writers go through lots of steps before they finish a piece. Planning and Prewriting; Collaborating; Researching; Drafting; Editing; Reviewing; Revising; Publishing. What do these steps look like for you? Some very helpful material for improving your use of these steps is at the Wikibook/

Most of us learn to write a 5-paragraph essay, which usually involves these steps:

• Pick a thesis.
• Pick three examples that support the thesis, and give each one a paragraph.
• Conclude by restating your thesis.

This is a good, simple format for exams, and for rearranging information from a textbook to show you read it. But most college writing assignments are asking for much more than that. So here are some big steps that help you to improve that 5-paragraph essay.

Thesis

You’ll have some new thoughts as you go, so don’t always try to plan every last word before you even start writing. That’s why just “picking” a thesis doesn’t work: if you pick a thesis before you compose, then you can only pick one that is simple and obviously already true.

So develop your thesis, instead of just picking it. Explore the assignment and the topic and play with different positions. Pose a question that you care about, or that reflects the assignment, and then And start writing pieces or drafts of your paper. Let your ideas take shape as you write, and read over your draft to figure out what you’re saying. When you write this way, you’ve got to leave time to revise in order to make the pieces fit together.

After you draft your essay, revise your thesis statement to fit it. Does your introduction help your reader get ready for what they’ll find in the body? You probably think differently about your topic than you did when you started, so be sure that is reflected in the “preview” offered to your readers in your opening paragraph. And take time to point out to your readers why your topic matters, why it’s important.

Examples

Move up a level or two and think of this section of your paper as your “explanation,” “discussion,” or “support” of your thesis. Don’t hold back here. College teachers like to see a lot of discussion, and they want it to be most relevant to your thesis. (That’s one reason why you might need to revise the thesis statement to fit what you actually say.) Spell out very plainly how your support is related to your thesis; usually, revise your thesis to fit your support, rather than the other way around.

College teachers look for an “argument,” meaning that your essay shows a strong relationship between a statement and the support for it -- reasons, examples, and evidence. To clarify the pieces of this relationship, interview yourself as you go: What do I want the reader to get? Have I said that? Why is it true? How can I help them understand what I think or what I know? See Writing@CSU-Guides-Issues and Ideas.

Conclusions

Summarize what you’ve said, but don’t just restate your thesis. Try this instead: what can you say to your reader now that you have led them through your discussion? Is your reader educated enough now that you could make your point in a new way, a more challenging or subtle way – one that wouldn’t have made sense to them before they read through your argument?

The writer should think something different at the end than at the beginning. Your view of your topic might be just a little different, or more complex, or more confident. Or it might be a lot different. Give yourself time to do this thinking and to adjust your writing so that the two fit as closely as possible.

Using sources

Pocket Keys:

• Pages 24-27, finding sources
• Pages 39-44, are your sources really good enough?
• Pages 52-58, quoting and paraphrasing

For a helpful guide, see the Wikibook on “Researching”. Also see Hacker's guide

Who you gonna call?

Few of us are really experts, so we use experts to help us LEARN new knowledge and to COMMUNICATE it. Experts can back you up and help you prove your point; sometimes you can make your point by speaking against their position. Therefore, learn how to find good expert voices and how to use their texts well. One day, maybe you’ll be an expert and other writers can support their own discussions with your voice.

To find good sources, visit our librarians and see the library web page, especially “How to…” on the “Reference Assistance” page. To learn a lot about research skills, see Blackboard Courses – Academic Services – Information Literacy.

Again, this takes time. Plan ahead to allow yourself time for this work.

Good research skills will pay off again and again throughout your life. You’ll need to find good sources, learn from them, and use them correctly in your own communications when you’re a student, a teacher, another sort of professional, a citizen, a shopper, a lifelong learner, etc.

Documenting sources and avoiding plagiarism

See our handout and Pocket Keys 48-52 on what plagiarism is. Always give credit every time you use words or information from a source other than yourself.

Revision

• See Pocket Keys page 121.
• CWC handout “Revising Sentences.”
• Wikibook: great links at the bottom of its “Revising” page.

Building Frankenstein – or How to Share Meaning with Words

Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff, in their textbook Community of Writers, tell us to think of writing an essay like building a body. You must start with the BONES – the most important statements you want your piece to communicate. After you have drafted your piece, including most of the BONES you think you need to build this set of statements, you can start improving the MUSCLES by revising the connections, the sequence of points, and the language. The choices you make here will help your reader follow your ideas, so keep asking yourself what you want your reader to get from each part of the text. Finally, it’s time for SKIN – smoothing out the surface of your writing so that it looks good and is most easily read by your reader.

In other words, start with the most important things that need to be said, and sequence them in a way that puts them in action for the reader.

• See our handout on “Revising Sentences” and
• Pocket Keys 3 C’s of Style
• Connect (125-7): “Readers need to have a way to connect the ideas beginning a sentence with what has gone before” (125). Use consistent subjects for three or four sentences at a time.

For example: “Tutors can help you. Writers can get a lot from them.” (That’s a shift in subject from tutors to writers.) Revision: “Tutors can help you. They enjoy working with writers.” (The subject of both sentences is tutors.)

Check for Action (124-5): “Ask ‘Who’s doing what?’ about subject and verb. Let the subject of your sentence perform the action” (124). Make your sentences say that your subject did something, instead of what was done to the subject (125).

Cut (123): “Cut wordiness. Say something only once and in the best possible place” (123). “Replace wordy phrases with shorter or more direct expressions” (123). CAUTION: Write before you cut! Do not cut important ideas and words. Do not cut until you have sufficiently articulated and explained your ideas; test these articulations with readers.

Common sentence problems and punctuation

For Punctuation, see:

• CWC handout based on Everyday Writer, “A Few New Views of Old Rules.”
• Pocket Keys Part 7, page 175
• Two CWC handouts based on Keys for Writers, “Commas Yes and Commas No” and “Apostrophe.”
• Wikibook, Section called “Writer’s handbook,” subsection on “Common errors”

Adapted from Ann Raimes, Keys for Writers, 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 282. Here are examples of two common problems, the fragment and the comma splice. These problems do not always interfere with meaning-making. They are quite acceptable in some genres, including fiction and some kinds of essays. Discuss them when they make understanding hard.

An incomplete sentence: A fragment that is missing either a subject, a verb, or both.

She never talks about her inner feelings. Her feelings of fear or of joy.

She never talks about her inner feelings of fear or of joy.

A fragment that begins with the words when, because, although, since, or while, and isn’t linked with a complete sentence. For ex.: :The play failed. Because it received three bad reviews.

The play failed because it received three bad reviews.

Comma splices

Sometimes a writer will string two sentences (a.k.a. “independent clauses containing both subject and verb”) together with just a comma or no punctuation at all. Complete sentences (clauses with both subject and verb) which are combined into one sentence need to be connected with a comma with conjunction (and, or, but, because, for…), colon, semicolon, or period. (pp 292-299)

He trained hard, he never considered the strain.

He trained hard, and he never considered the strain.

He trained hard. He never considered the strain.

The film has been released, however, it has not come to our theater.

The film has been released; however, it has not come to our theater.

Proofreading Tips

Based on Raimes, Keys for Writers, 3rd Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, pp. 34-35.

1. Put your manuscript away for a day or two after you have finished it. Proofread it when the content is not so familiar.
2. Make a copy of your manuscript, and read it aloud while a reader/friend examines the original as you read. Your reader can mark strong points and places where they have a question; you can mark places where you stumble when you read – a sign that something is amiss. Don’t let your reader make changes for you, because they might not understand what you’re trying to say. Therefore, use their comments and questions as guides to the parts of the text that need more attention from you.
3. Put a piece of paper under the first line of your text. Move it down line by line as you read to focus your attention on one line at a time. Try to look at the text itself and not get too caught up in your meaning.
4. To really catch errors, read the last sentence first, and work backward through your text. This strategy will not help you check for meaning, logic, pronoun reference, fragments, or consistency of verb tenses; but it will focus your attention on the spelling, punctuation, and accuracy of one sentence at a time.
5. Use proofreading marks on your hard copy draft to mark things you want to change and to insert and delete words. There is a standard set of marks that teachers often use, and which is explained in most handbooks. When editing your own hard-copy texts, you can use similar marks to remind yourself of the changes you made when editing.

See also

• Writing a term paper