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Three Powerful Tips to Improve Student Writing
Three powerful writing tips beyond grammar, writing mechanics, and professor preferences -- straight from faculty who regularly assign writing projects to students.
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by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.
Knowing as much as you can about grammar, writing mechanics, and your professors' preferences can all go a long way toward helping you earn good grades on your written assignments -- but this article offers three tips that are both subtle and powerful. The tips come straight from faculty members who regularly assign writing projects to their students.
1. Know your audience and write convincingly for that audience. Professors advise their students to keep their audience -- whether real or imagined -- in mind while writing papers. A writing professor suggests you ask, "What do I want my audience to feel, know? Think audience." A business professor recommends, "Write as though you were talking on paper." A social-sciences professor proposes that students "think of an intelligent person who is not an expert on the subject. Then, write for that person." A history professor concurs: "Write for the intelligent layperson, not for your professor." Alternatively, you could imagine you are writing for an employer, as as one marketing professor suggests, "Write persuasively as though your job depended on it."
"Write to communicate with (persuade, teach, clarify an issue for) your audience," notes a composition professor. "Writing is not simply a matter of recording content," he says. Beyond mere communication, proving your point to your audience is important, according to an English professor, who writes, "Back up whatever you assert to be so with examples, observations, details, and such, to show your audience that what you say is valid." Similarly, "make sure you lay out the argument logically so that the reader understands and is persuaded by your position," advises a political-science professor. It's not enough that you comprehend your own argument, a composition professor cautions. "Develop ideas so that your reader can understand them, not merely so that you can," the professor states.
2. Be true to your own style and ideas. Being true to yourself by employing your own style and ideas is also important to professors. "Say what you think, clearly and directly," counsels a literature professor. Another literature professor advises, "Develop your own ideas." Remembering that your writing is a window into what makes you tick is the advice of a business professor, who write, "Your writing is like a [business] card; it shows your personality." A history professor suggests that students "write in their own style rather than reproducing a stiff textbook style -- so that they actually pass content through their minds ands make it their own." Concurs a communications professor, "Be original and creative; don't be too disheartened by all the red marks."
3. Read. Intensive reading, whether of sources for your paper or outside material, will make you a better writer, many faculty members assert. "Read, and take adequate care to reflect on the text," cautions an English professor. "Read before you write" is the advice of a marketing professor. Finally, a management professor recommends that students "find an excellent author and read his/her work profusely; we learn from the best work of others."
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key academic terms by going to our College Success Glossary.
Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., is an educator, author, and blogger who provides content for
EmpoweringSites.com,
including MyCollegeSuccessStory.com. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior
from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic
Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking
Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press),
as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your
Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide
to Study Skills (Alpha). She curates, crafts, and delivers compelling content online, in print,
on stage, and in the classroom. Visit her personal Website KatharineHansenPhD.com
or reach her by e-mail at kathy(at)astoriedcareer.com.
Check out Dr. Hansen on GooglePlus.
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