Studenting Skills - Specific Strategies

Introduction | General Strategies | Specific Strategies

Read each essay several times. Make notes both in the margins of the text and in your own notebook.
You are responsible for developing a critical response to the essays you read. See Reading Skills for more tips.

• These essays are very complex and can't be understood completely in just one or even two readings. You should mark significant passages in the text and make notes on the meaning of those passages and how they might connect with ideas discussed in class.

Take notes when both your instructor and your classmates speak. Do not wait for the instructor to write notes on the board.
The purpose of Writing Program courses is to help you develop your own ideas about the essays and to convey them in speaking and writing.

• Your instructor will not tell you what to think about the essays; he or she will not lecture nor put lecture notes on the board as in other classes.

• You must come to your own conclusions in collaboration with your classmates. This process takes place during class discussion.

• Thus it is important for you to write down any ideas you think are significant; these ideas will come from your classmates as often as from your instructor.

Ask questions and participate in class discussions.
Reading and writing are collaborative enterprises.

• If you have a question about the text or about writing, ask it. Chances are that at least five people in the room have the exact same question.

• Don't be afraid to test out new ideas in class discussion. By seeing how other students react to your ideas, you can evaluate how you can construct that idea in your paper.

• Listen carefully to what your classmates have to say. They might help you see a reading in a new light.

• Even if you don't agree with a point your classmate might make, hearing it can help you rethink your own ideas and come up with new ways to write about the essays you are reading.

Actively participate in peer review and follow the advice of your peer reviewer.
Often it is difficult to get an objective perspective on your own work. Peer review gives you that objective perspective.

• Your fellow students are educated and informed readers who, because they have learned the same writing strategies, can double-check to make sure that you are developing the strongest possible argument.

• They also may have advice and questions that you hadn't considered before. Follow the advice and answer the questions that your peer reviewers pose to you.

• Peer review is also a way to practice the reading and analytical thinking skills you need in order to revise your own work. You will use the skills you learn doing peer review for other people when you reread your own paper.