Essentials of College Writing

Good Writing Skills are Key to College Success

Writing well is an expectation for online college students, and yet many students struggle to put together writing that flows and informs. Some students agonize over their writing tasks, and still don't turn out the quality that want. Most of your grades will be based on writing assignments. Your instructors want to assess what you have learned, even though they may not be splendid writers themselves, or able to give great constructive feedback. However, most people, including academicians, naturally respond to good writing positively. Even if they cannot define what makes the writing good, they will understand what you meant when they read your paper, and they will realize that you have learned something from their course. And that is really the point.

That being said, there are some guidelines that your instructors will have in mind, and if you do not meet them, no matter how eloquent you are, you may not make the grade. In addition to improving your grades, becoming a better writer can help you for the rest of your life. A good writer is a good communicator, someone who can present their ideas in an organized and persuasive fashion. By practicing good writing you will go through a thought process that will sharpen your own understanding of ideas and concepts, helping to improve your overall critical thinking skills. No matter what field you go into, strong writing will help you excel in whatever you do.

First rule; forget the rules you learned in high school. Come to think of it, forget about rules altogether. There is not a simple formula for good writing. Rather, there are guiding principles that you should reach for in your writing. And the over-riding principle for all writing is clarity! Make your message clear, present your words in a way that helps the reader understand what you mean. You can do this through efficient use of words, good organization and concise examples to illustrate your ideas.

As you move through the research process, or pre-writing, you are setting the stage for what will come. Gather information from valid sources and be sure to take notes; both on the statistics or quotes you will use, and your thoughts about them as you go along. This will give you the bulk that you need to shape into something nice-looking later. If you wait to do all of your thinking and writing in one sit-down, you might feel overwhelmed and wonder how the heck you will make it long enough. That scenario often leads to wordy ramblings that fail to make much of a point.

When you are ready to begin formalizing the assignment, proceed with the attitude that it is truly a rough draft. Don't concern yourself yet about presentation issues, spelling or grammar. Just get your ideas put down, and you can whip it into the shape that you want later. For most writers, revisions are the key to making it something worth reading. You will no longer have to use the "writer's block" excuse for procrastinating, and your assignments will hopefully be done on time.

Get organized. Seems like people have been saying that about everything forever. We all know that organization is the key to a better way of life on oh-so-many levels. Just how to go about it is a more complicated issue. For your writing to be clear, you will have to choose an organizing principle, and again, there is not one answer to that question. Typically, clear writing starts with a simple idea or generalization, then moves onto to more complicated concepts built off of that simple idea. Easier said than done, but try to think of moving from big to little in a way that makes sense to your reader. Maintain some kind of chronology where appropriate and give examples of concrete images in your descriptions. Writing is describing, and even when writing about something abstract, we need something to ground us to our senses.

Academic writing can be cumbersome to read, with pompous language and terminology. As you do your research it might start to feel like that's how very smart people write. A bit depressing, because it can be so boring. But, it doesn't have to be that way. Scholarly wisdom and obscure facts can be readable and memorable, and they should be. Your writing assignments for online classes are scholarly works as well. So keep it simple without losing intelligent ideas. No need for long and important sounding words (actually, avoid them whenever possible), or a stiffly formal tone. You want your readers to be informed, that means teaching them something, not showing off that you know stuff that they don't. The most serious academic tack you can take is to back up your assertions with evidence.

Statements that you make in your online college assignments are assumed to be based on your personal research. The things that you have read, journals, textbooks and other reference sources that your online instructor verifies as meeting scholarly standards. Two common mistakes of college writers; some make assertions but do not adequately state their source of knowledge. Others just make lists of research data and fail to tie it together. Do incorporate facts and literary quotes into your assignments, but be sure to put them in an appropriate context of your words. Your writing should flow in a way that the reader can reasonably follow, without jumping around and with the authority of experts backing you.

And when you get to your final draft, proof-read a hard copy (that's right, on real paper!) and mark it up with a pencil as you read it. You don't have to believe me, but I guarantee that you will find errors on a hard copy and ways to make improvements that you might not otherwise catch. Here is where you can really turn an eye toward those details of correct spelling, proper citations and the like. While these more nit-picky aspects are not the crux of good writing, you can't get around the effects of a first impression. Even if you are going to send an electronic copy of your assignment to your online instructor, you will find this to be a useful editing step.

There is no formula or one correct way to organize writing. Use reasoning and logic to make your presentation fit the assignment at hand. If you work on it, your ability to write well will be a great asset, a sign of professionalism and a demonstration of analytical thinking ability. Good writing communicates a message clearly. If you can do that with speed and accuracy, your skills could be sought after across many disciplines and fields.