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The write stuff

Beauty is kinda like a surface thing.
Beauty is so shallow.
Beauty is only skin deep.

Decisions, decisions. Making decisions to flesh out your creative ideas is often what writing is all about.

Whether you plan to attend a community college, a technical school, a liberal arts college or a major university, chances are you’ll enroll in an entry-level writing course. The course will help ensure that you will be equipped to write your way through college (even science majors have to write papers!) and into the working world beyond.

But I learned this in high school!
Sure, you had to write papers in high school. However, few freshmen can write at the level expected of them in college. Knowing what you’ll face will help you prepare.

The majority of English composition classes in college share some basic goals. Typically, you’ll be asked to meet challenges like these:
Improve your writing skills. That means lots of writing, including inventing topics through brainstorming and freewriting. You’ll also do considerable amounts of editing and proofreading.
Read and interact with college-level texts. Good readers make better writers, so be able to analyze and discuss what you’ve read.
Develop information literacy skills. That’s the college way of saying you’ll need to be a lot more savvy about using the library and electronic resources on the Internet.

Gain experience using a word processing program to compose and revise your papers. Many colleges require that students pass a computer literacy test before graduation.

You’ll probably also need to build your vocabulary. Finding the right words and avoiding slang will be critical when writing in college. So will the need to polish your grammar—learning (or relearning) the “it’s” from the “its,” the “that” from the “which,” and how to use punctuation correctly.

In college comp classes, you’ll also venture into the world of research and be expected to incorporate it into one or more papers using proper documentation. Take the advice offered by the librarians at Austin Community College in Texas: “Every paper, even one based on firsthand experience, benefits from research.” Make friends with librarians; they have a lot of nifty research tricks up their sleeves.

I’ve got to write how many papers?!?
Over the course of a semester (about 16 weeks), you’ll probably write four to five papers, each about four or five pages long. One of those papers may even count as your final exam.

Some classes may also require you to keep a journal in which you’re asked to reflect on the writing you’re doing or to plan ideas for your next paper. Generally, the journals are informal, so you’re free to write without worrying about revisions and grammar. It’s the practice of thinking before writing that counts most in journals.

Write your way to success with these tips
Jeanne Grinnan, the composition coordinator at SUNY Brockport, has found a few simple survival tips that have worked for the students in her program. They can work for you, too. She advises:
Show up to class every day.
Speak with your instructor the minute a problem arises.
Ask questions.
Ask for clarification of a professor’s expectations.
Work continually at writing projects by chipping away at them in small, manageable bits. Don’t let the whole task sit until the night before it’s due.

Karla Linn Merrifield is a professional writer and poet who teaches college composition at SUNY College at Brockport.

Got grammar?
Circle the correct options, and check your answers with the key.

1. It’s/Its easy to write.
2. There/Their homework was done.
3. If I were/was a freshman, I’d enjoy this course.
4. Who/Whom do you call when you need tutoring?
5. The students passed her/their tests.

Key: 1. It’s, 2. Their, 3. were, 4. Whom, 5. their

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