Write It Review: A Process Approach to College Essays, with Readings

The goal of Write It Review is to reinforce the academic reading and writing skills you
learned in Write It. Each section of Write It Review, just as in Write It, helps you develop a
range of writing strategies. As you are guided through the writing process, you learn how
to use each stage to maximize its benefits. Using the strategies this book teaches will help
you strengthen the confidence and understanding you need to write effective academic
essays. As you work through the assignments and exercises in Write It Review, be sure
to complete all the activities, and give special attention to activities devoted to building
reading comprehension and idea development skills. If you have already worked through
Write It, you likely have adjusted some of the stages in the writing process to suit your
own methods and approaches to writing assignments; however, it is important that you
reassess the process you are using. In this way, you will focus on areas that need improvement
and thereby maximize the potential of Write It Review.
 

As you work through the writing process for each assignment, remember the series of
skills we introduced in Write It that are necessary for producing a successful essay: focused
reading, critical thinking, careful analysis, marshaling of evidence, drafting and editing.
Write It Review’s exercises will guide you through each stage in the production of an essay,
and will encourage you to practice each skill, one stage at a time. As you go through the
writing process step by step, remember that writing is always a recursive activity and when
you begin a paper you may not always begin at step one with your topic and proceed in a
linear way, one step at a time, to proofreading. As you move through the guiding exercises
Write It Review provides, new ideas will come to you. Don’t set these discoveries aside,
but carry them forward into the remaining exercises. As you relate old and new information,
you will explore each assignment’s topic from several angles so that your ideas will
build on one another. In this way the steps, though done in isolation, will come together
in a unified perspective. The organization of this book is intended to help reinforce your
understanding of essay-building as a process not a formula, the stages as necessary steps to
internalize until each becomes an intuitive part of writing itself.
 

Write It Review’s activities, exercises, and assignments will be familiar to those of
you who have used Write It. The book is organized to guide you through each stage in
the writing process, each unit beginning with a central reading and then moving through
a sequence for essay development, from “Questions to Guide Your Reading,” to “Questions
to Guide Your Writing.” A peer draft review form and a personal assessment form
will help you revise and edit your essay. You will also find class discussion and homework
activities that reinforce grammar, comprehension, and critical thinking skills. Following
the assignment units is a section that contains student essays, and you will be able to read
and evaluate the essays other students have written in response to similar essay topics.
 

Like Write It, Write It Review is designed to encourage you not just to become a writer
of college essays, but also to become a reader and writer in college. We hope that, as
you become a proficient college writer, and exchange ideas with others in the academic
community, you will both shape and be shaped by that community. Your experiences
are unique to you, and your writing will reflect the knowledge you’ve accumulated from
those experiences as you engage with others in defining the world in which we all live.
 

Here Is How to Use This Skill-Building Book
Write It Review is presented in three parts.
Part 1: BASIC INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTATION that presents information
and guidance for completing reading and writing assignments in your English
classes. Included in Part 1 are:
• A Step-by-Step Strategy for Reading Thoughtfully
• A Reminder of the Definitions of Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement
• A Review of the Resources in a Handbook
• A Review of the Argument Essay Structure and Two Alternative Structures
• A Strategy for Writing a Timed Essay
• A Review of the Elements of the Conventional Argument Essay.
• A Review of an Introduction in an Argument Essay
• A Review of the Guidelines for Writing a Directed Summary
• Strategies for Developing Your Ideas
• Writing Supporting Paragraphs for Your Thesis Statement
• A Review of Logical Fallacies
• Transitions
• Conclusions
• Strategies for Participating in a Rough Draft Workshop
• A Sample Scoring Rubric
• Finding and Using Arguments in Literature
• Proofreading Your Essay for Mistakes in Grammar, Punctuation, and Mechanics
• Grammar Diagnostic Tests and Self-Assessment Forms
 

Part 2: EIGHT ASSIGNMENT UNITS that contain a central essay to read and analyze
and a writing assignment to respond to with your own essay. For each of these, the
book will lead you through the writing process as you:
• read for comprehension and learn to recognize and evaluate a writer’s argument.
• develop your own position and supporting evidence.
• organize your ideas into an effective essay structure.
• revise and edit for coherence and clarity.
Preface xvii
• incorporate supplemental readings to expand and broaden the scope and complexity
of your essay response.
• participate in class discussion activities at the end of each supplemental reading
selection.
 

Part 3: CASE STUDIES that provide student writing examples to highlight strategies
other students have used to construct essays. This section gives you an opportunity to
practice applying criteria from the scoring rubric to evaluate others’ essays. By evaluating
the writing of others, you will become better at evaluating your own writing.
The step-by-step lessons in this skill-building workbook will provide you with a
strong foundation for good writing. The book’s techniques have been widely tested and
proven successful. In a recent survey on our campus, students awarded first place in their
success on an important writing exam to the lessons in this book. We are confident that
this book will work for you, too.