<p>I want to start honing my writing skills this summer to prepare for my freshman year. It usually takes me a long time to craft a decent paper, and because I'll have to write constantly next year, I want to be as prepared to write as quickly (and efficiently) as possible. I journal once in a while and I also try to write small responses to political articles, but of course those don't provide adequate preparation for 10-page term papers. Does anyone have any tips regarding the transition from high school to college writing? I've picked up Stephen King's "On Writing" already, but do you guys know any good books on writing college papers?</p>
<p>No books in my repertoire, but I would definitely, definitely recommend utilizing your college writing center/workshops or any relevant resources your peers and professors offer. What I found going from high school to college was that there really isn’t a “correct” style of writing. I remember in high school we always got a slap on the wrist if we started with a quote, or didn’t format our MLA correctly, etc. but there’s a lot of diversity to be found in good writing. Writing centers are usually staffed by grad students who know their stuff and are eager to help you hone collegiate writing skills.</p>
<p>From what I can recall, I thought “On Writing” was about writing fiction, more than technical writing/analysis but I could be wrong. I think any kind of straight forward writing tips guide for college students would help, although practice certainly helps tremendously. </p>
<p>My major didn’t involve a lot of writing, but I agree that there is a lot more liberty and diversity involved than in high school where everyone followed one rigid format. As with any writing, content and presentation matters will matter more than quantity. College teachers are less lenient on “BS’d” papers and will notice if you don’t know what you’re talking about. </p>
<p>Each class or professor may have their own format they want you to use and depending in the subject, there are varying levels of analysis desired. Most of my writing were lab reports and each lab and TA had a particular format and level of detail they wanted. Most of the times specific guidelines are provided that make the process easier. I suggest if you start having issues to talk with your professor during office hours to get tips on what they expect from you. </p>
<p>As for the one English class I took, for each paper assigned, I was required to come up with my own thesis and no prompt was given. This gave me a lot of freedom, but I also had to put effort into addressing the “so what” question of my writing as well as the “how” and “why’s.” </p>
<p>The painless way to become a good writer is to be an avid reader. You will absorb many of the elements of style naturally.</p>
<p>Doing lots of practice writing is also a good idea - set yourself a small goal every day, like responding to a news story or exploring a question of interest. It can be fun if you can find a writing partner and exchange essays to critique for one another.</p>
<p>The suggestion to become familiar with MLA formatting will save you a lot of time later on!</p>
<p>Good stuff here: <a href=“http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/resources/collegewriting/index.htm”>Academic and Professional Writing (ENGL 13000/33000) | University of Chicago Writing Program. </p>
<p>Step up your journaling. If you do it consistently, it’ll loosen up your writing. Not loosen it in the sense of making it sloppy, but it gets the juices flowing.</p>
<p>I kept a dream journal while I was in grad school, just writing down every detail I could remember of every dream. I had no audience, so I didn’t worry about grammar or spelling, and of course, being about dreams it didn’t even need to make sense. But during that period, I found that when I had to write a paper, my thoughts flowed more freely.</p>
<p>Writing center tutor and writing and rhetoric major here. The transition from high school writing to collegiate writing is definitely a major one (especially if your high school was overly lenient and relaxed), but it’s totally doable. I struggled at first myself, but I learned how to adjust after testing out the waters. It’ll come in time and with experience, and it’s great that you’re trying to work on it now! </p>
<p>One of the main things you’ll notice is that college-level writing is more academic and more straightforward. Unless you’re in a creative writing program, your professors won’t care about your style as much as they’ll care about your evidence and your arguments (although of course it helps to have a strong voice). In the end, it all boils down to having a solid argument with solid support, and likewise, it’s all about organization. </p>
<p>One of my favorite writing professors told me he thinks the secret is all about the rhetorical kairos (timing) of your arguments and supports, and I couldn’t agree more. Basically, you build your own credibility and effectiveness as an author by how you construct your paper. Do you go off on long, random tangents and hint at the main point? Do you start off strong and capture the main essence of your paper? Do you present your points in a clear linear fashion, or do you skip around a bit? There really is no right or wrong way to write a paper, but little things like where you place your topic sentence and when you lay down your strongest point affect the overall feel of a paper. I’ve had conferences with my writing professors where they’ve literally just told me to play around with the order of my paragraphs and with how I introduce my main points. It may sound silly, but it seriously helped give my papers different perspectives. </p>
<p>As for books that can help you, there really aren’t any. The entire book concept is actually a big political debate in the realm of English and composition studies, and from my biased composition stance, I say that they really don’t help. Some people believe writing is an innate talent whereas others believe it’s a teachable skill, and the latter will recommend books while the former will say to just write and figure it out yourself. I fall somewhere in the middle since I think organization methods can be taught and developed, but you may feel differently and so may want to read up on what the professionals in the field recommend. </p>
<p>I also second @stradmom in that reading a lot certainly helps. When I struggled with writing a conference paper last semester, I read a multitude of published articles and tried to mimic how they transitioned and introduced ideas. It’s not a clear-cut way to learn since it’s not just something you can memorize, but it really does help you internalize different patterns to employ. </p>
<p>If you’re a mathy-sequencey kind of person, try literally breaking down examples into sections. You can go “okay, sentences 1-4 tell a story, 5 and 6 bring it into perspective of the issue, and 7 and 8 draw the author’s main argument.” Breaking it down like that can be fun since you can see how many different ways there are to write, and it’s also helpful when you find the same patterns being used by different writers. </p>
<p>On a final note, I recommend going to your writing professors’ office hours and asking them how they can help you. Some professors don’t like looking at papers before they’re turned in since they’re essentially giving it a pre-grade, but I’ve had others who read through my drafts meticulously and gave me tough, honest feedback from which I could improve. One even told me “I’m so glad you changed X to Y in your paper and that you actually listened and learned from me.” Every professor is different, and the important part is to write for THEM. College can be a very conservative institution where professors just want their students to learn and do things the way they did, and if that’s the case, you have to do what you have to do. </p>
<p>Sorry if I rambled or went off topic, but I just wanted to throw some things out there. Good luck with everything! </p>
<p>Oh, also, AUDIENCE AWARENESS!!! This is a very tricky concept, but all you should basically get from it is that you should learn how to divorce yourself from your paper. It’s not about YOU - - it’s about the people reading your paper. If something makes sense to you, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll make sense to your reader. That’s why going to the writing center or even having a friend read your writing helps because a fresh set of eyes can read your paper without having your biased perspective. Sometimes you subconsciously fill in the blanks and subtleties of things because you yourself thought of them, and you oftentimes find that your reader doesn’t actually get certain connections (I’m guilty of this :D). </p>
<p>There’s a lot of research on this as well, and some people argue that it’s impossible to directly teach audience awareness since a professor can’t assume every perspective to which their students write. So just try to be as clear as possible and try establishing sets of styles for different occasions. By building vocabulary and styles now, it’ll be even easier for you to draw from them in college. </p>
<p>Okay, I’m done now 
</p>
<p>A simple way to practice, is to pick a subject that you are not super familiar with, read 3 to 5 articles on the subject, and then write a couple pages in your own words. On a separate page, write down anything you would cite. Then, following MLA format, fit your citations in. In my experience, profs are even tougher than high school teachers about plagiarism, and able to spot it much more quickly. Even inadvertent plagiarism can be detrimental to your academic success, so if you have found you need to heavily rely on the words of others to write lengthier papers, get that out of your system now. Practice writing in your own words more and more. Research, a lot of reading, and good note taking before writing will certainly help…this means not trying to write a paper the night before it is due!</p>
<p>That last bit is so true! Nothing brings on a case of writer’s block like waiting until the last minute. Ideally, you would want to start on a paper practically as soon as it’s assigned. Find some good sources, jot down your initial thoughts, any phrases that come to mind, themes, points you want to make. Then let it “lie fallow” for a bit of time (but not until 2 days before it’s due!). After letting it roll around in your brain for a little while, come back to it and develop your ideas further. Make an outline, write a theme sentence or conclusion paragraph, find some more sources. Approaching it gradually in this way can make it much easier when you sit down to write the final version of the paper, because your brain has already been working on it for some time.</p>