Successful college writing, Eighth edition - Kathleen T. McWhorter 2020

Reading and writing for college success
An introduction to reading, writing, and learning in college

✵ 1 Reading and Writing for College Success

✵ 2 Active Reading and Responding

✵ 3 Thinking, Reading, and Writing Critically

CHAPTER 1Reading and Writing for College Success

In this chapter you will learn to

✵ discover the factors that contribute to college success

✵ develop learning strategies to improve your reading and writing skills

✵ understand what academic reading and writing involves

✵ grasp the importance of improving your reading and writing skills

Writing Quick Start

ANALYZE

This photograph shows a college student studying. What factors might explain why this student does (or does not) excel academically?

WRITE

Write a paragraph based on your experiences with education up to this point that explains which factors you think contribute to (or detract from) academic success. Be specific: You might discuss tasks that students need to know how to perform, offer tips, identify pitfalls, or consider nonacademic factors, such as jobs and family responsibilities.

CONNECT

What factors did you identify as contributing to college success? Some you may have mentioned include the following:

✵ being motivated and organized

✵ completing all assignments

✵ focusing on a task to study and learn

✵ having good instructors

✵ performing well in class and on exams

✵ knowing how to write papers and essay exams

All of these skills, and many others, contribute to academic success. This chapter begins with a reading that discusses several key factors that contribute to college success. The remainder of the chapter presents numerous strategies to help you develop the skills you need for success in all your college courses and in your writing class in particular.

Factors That Contribute to Success

Read “The New Marshmallow Test,” the article that follows. As you read, highlight the main points the writer is making about multitasking and academic success, and write notes, questions, and comments in the margin about your own media multitasking habits and your ability to devote your undivided attention to class lectures and course materials during your study time. You’ll be glad you did!

READING

The New Marshmallow Test: Students Can’t Resist Multitasking

Annie Murphy Paul

Annie Murphy Paul is a contributing writer for Time magazine and often writes about learning and its improvement. She also blogs about learning at CNN.com, Forbes.com, and HuffingtonPost.com and has written several books, including The Cult of Personality, which explores the historical quirks of how personality tests were developed and critiques their value; Origins: How the Nine Months before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, a book about the science of prenatal influences; and Brilliant: The New Science of Smart.

1Living rooms, dens, kitchens, even bedrooms: Investigators followed students into the spaces where homework gets done. Pens poised over their “study observation forms,” the observers watched intently as the students — in middle school, high school, and college, 263 in all — opened their books and turned on their computers.

2For a quarter of an hour, the investigators from the lab of Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University—Dominguez Hills, marked down once a minute what the students were doing as they studied. A checklist on the form included: reading a book, writing on paper, typing on the computer — and also using email, looking at Facebook, texting, talking on the phone, watching television, listening to music, surfing the Web. Sitting unobtrusively at the back of the room, the observers counted the number of windows open on the students’ screens and noted whether the students were wearing earbuds.

3Although the students had been told at the outset that they should “study something important, including homework, an upcoming examination or project, or reading a book for a course,” it wasn’t long before their attention drifted: Students’ “on-task behavior” started declining around the two-minute mark as they began responding to arriving texts or checking their Facebook feeds. By the time the 15 minutes were up, they had spent only about 65 percent of the observation period actually doing their schoolwork.

Attending to multiple streams of information and entertainment while studying, doing homework, or even sitting in class has become a common behavior among college students.

4Rosen’s study, published in the May 2013 issue of Computers in Human Behavior, is part of a growing body of research focused on a very particular use of technology: media multitasking while learning. Evidence from psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience suggests that when students multitask while doing schoolwork, their learning is far spottier and shallower than if the work had their full attention. They understand and remember less, and they have greater difficulty transferring their learning to new contexts. So detrimental is this practice that some researchers are proposing that a new prerequisite for academic and even professional success — the new marshmallow test of self-discipline — is the ability to resist a blinking inbox or a buzzing phone.

5The media multitasking habit extends into the classroom. While most middle and high school students don’t have the opportunity to text, email, and surf the Internet during class, studies show the practice is nearly universal among students in college and professional school. One large survey found that 80 percent of college students admit to texting during class; 15 percent say they send 11 or more texts in a single class period.

6During the first meeting of his courses, Rosen makes a practice of calling on a student who is busy with his phone. “I ask him, ’What was on the slide I just showed to the class?’ The student always pulls a blank,” Rosen reports. “Young people have a wildly inflated idea of how many things they can attend to at once, and this demonstration helps drive the point home: If you’re paying attention to your phone, you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in class.” Other professors have taken a more surreptitious approach, installing electronic spyware or planting human observers to record whether students are taking notes on their laptops or using them for other, unauthorized purposes.

7In a study involving spyware, for example, two professors of business administration at the University of Vermont found that “students engage in substantial multitasking behavior with their laptops and have non-course-related software applications open and active about 42 percent of the time.” Another study, carried out at St. John’s University in New York, used human observers stationed at the back of the classroom to record the technological activities of law students. The spies reported that 58 percent of second- and third-year law students who had laptops in class were using them for “non-class purposes” more than half the time. Texting, emailing, and posting on Facebook and other social media sites are by far the most common digital activities students undertake while learning, according to Rosen. That’s a problem, because these operations are actually quite mentally complex, and they draw on the same mental resources — using language, parsing meaning — demanded by schoolwork.

8David Meyer, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who’s studied the effects of divided attention on learning, takes a firm line on the brain’s ability to multitask: “Under most conditions, the brain simply cannot do two complex tasks at the same time. It can happen only when the two tasks are both very simple and when they don’t compete with each other for the same mental resources. An example would be folding laundry and listening to the weather report on the radio. That’s fine. But listening to a lecture while texting, or doing homework and being on Facebook — each of these tasks is very demanding, and each of them uses the same area of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.”

9Young people think they can perform two challenging tasks at once, Meyer acknowledges, but “they are deluded,” he declares. It’s difficult for anyone to properly evaluate how well his or her own mental processes are operating, he points out, because most of these processes are unconscious. And, Meyer adds, “there’s nothing magical about the brains of so-called ’digital natives’ that keeps them from suffering the inefficiencies of multitasking. They may like to do it, they may even be addicted to it, but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s far better to focus on one task from start to finish.”

10Researchers have documented a cascade of negative outcomes that occurs when students multitask while doing schoolwork. First, the assignment takes longer to complete, because of the time spent on distracting activities and because, upon returning to the assignment, the student has to refamiliarize himself with the material.

11Second, the mental fatigue caused by repeatedly dropping and picking up a mental thread leads to more mistakes. Third, students’ subsequent memory of what they’re working on will be impaired if their attention is divided. As the unlucky student spotlighted by Rosen can attest, we can’t remember something that never really entered our consciousness in the first place. And a study last month showed that students who multitask on laptops in class distract not just themselves but also their peers who see what they’re doing.

12Fourth, some research has suggested that when we’re distracted, our brains actually process and store information in different, less useful ways. In a 2006 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Karin Foerde of the University of Texas—Austin and two colleagues asked participants to engage in a learning activity on a computer while also carrying out a second task, counting musical tones that sounded while they worked. Brain scans taken during Foerde’s experiment revealed that different regions of the brain were active under the two conditions, indicating that the brain engages in a different form of memory when forced to pay attention to two streams of information at once. The results suggest, the scientists wrote, that “even if distraction does not decrease the overall level of learning, it can result in the acquisition of knowledge that can be applied less flexibly in new situations.”

13Finally, researchers are beginning to demonstrate that media multitasking while learning is negatively associated with students’ grades. In Rosen’s study, students who used Facebook during the 15-minute observation period had lower grade-point averages than those who didn’t go on the site. Meyer, of the University of Michigan, worries that the problem goes beyond poor grades. “There’s a definite possibility that we are raising a generation that is learning more shallowly than young people in the past,” he says. “The depth of their processing of information is considerably less, because of all the distractions available to them as they learn.”

14Given that these distractions aren’t going away, academic and even professional achievement may depend on the ability to ignore digital temptations while learning — a feat akin to the famous marshmallow test. In a series of experiments conducted more than forty years ago, psychologist Walter Mischel tempted young children with a marshmallow, telling them they could have two of the treats if they put off eating one right away. Follow-up studies performed years later found that the kids who were better able to delay gratification not only achieved higher grades and test scores but were also more likely to succeed in school and their careers.

15Two years ago, Rosen and his colleagues conducted an information-age version of the marshmallow test. College students who participated in the study were asked to watch a 30-minute videotaped lecture, during which some were sent eight text messages while others were sent four or zero text messages. Those who were interrupted more often scored worse on a test of the lecture’s content; more interestingly, those who responded to the experimenters’ texts right away scored significantly worse than those participants who waited to reply until the lecture was over.

16The ability to resist the lure of technology can be consciously cultivated, Rosen maintains. He advises students to take “tech breaks” to satisfy their cravings for electronic communication: After they’ve labored on their schoolwork uninterrupted for 15 minutes, they can allow themselves two minutes to text, check websites, and post to their hearts’ content. Then the devices get turned off for another 15 minutes of academics. Over time, Rosen says, students are able to extend their working time to 20, 30, even 45 minutes, as long as they know that an opportunity to get online awaits. Device-checking is a compulsive behavior that must be managed, he says, if young people are to learn and perform at their best.

Understanding the Reading

1. Main Idea Explain the author’s main point in your own words.

2. Effects According to the reading selection, what are some short-term effects of multitasking while studying? What may be some long-term effects?

3. Comparison What was the original marshmallow test, and what did it show? How would the new marshmallow test work?

Responding to the Reading

1. Collecting Data Explore your media multitasking habits by trying to replicate Larry Rosen’s investigation. For one hour while you are studying, use the following categories to mark down once every fifteen minutes what you are doing as you study:

o □ reading a book

o □ writing on paper

o □ typing on the computer

o □ playing computer games

o □ reading and writing texts

o □ posting or liking posts on Instagram or Snapchat (or another social media site)

o □ watching television or streaming videos

o □ listening to music

o □ surfing the Web

2. Analysis At the end of the hour, analyze your findings.

o What percentage of your one-hour study time did you devote to studying?

o How long were you able to go without a distraction?

o What was your primary distraction?

3. Assessment Write a paragraph or two explaining how well you think you “learned” what you were studying and what lessons you will take away from this exercise. What changes will you make in your study habits (if any), and how will you make them?

Adopt Success Strategies for All Your Courses

“The New Marshmallow Test” showed that focusing on what you’re studying both inside and outside the classroom contributes significantly to your success in college. There are also other strategies for college success that will help you read, write, and learn more effectively and efficiently. These strategies are presented in this section.

Use Effective Learning Strategies

The more you know about how learning works, the easier learning becomes. The following section summarizes some tried-and-true, practical learning strategies based on verbal learning theory. Applying them will make many tasks you face in college easier — especially those in your writing classes.

Focus your attention

As you learned from reading “The New Marshmallow Test” at the beginning of the chapter, you cannot learn if your mind is wandering. Use the following strategies to direct your concentration to the task at hand:

✵ Work at peak periods of attention. Identify the time of day or night that you are most efficient and focused. Avoid working when you are tired, hungry, or distracted, if you can.

✵ Vary your activities. Do not complete, say, three reading assignments consecutively. Instead, alternate assignments: for example, read, then write, then work on math problems, then read another assignment, and so on. Use writing to keep you mentally alert and physically active. Highlight, annotate, and take notes as you read.

✵ Don’t work too long on any given task. It is better to space out your study. Don’t work on an essay draft for four hours. You will accomplish more if you spread out your work into two, two-hour sessions.

✵ Challenge yourself with goals and deadlines. Before beginning an assignment, estimate how long it should take and work toward completing it within that time limit.

✵ Keep a to-do list. When you are working on an assignment, stray thoughts about other pressing things (getting your car repaired, planning a birthday party for your mother) are bound to zip through your mind. When these thoughts occur to you, jot them down so that you can unclutter your mind and get back to work.

Reward yourself

As Professor Rosen (in “The New Marshmallow Test”) suggests, use a fun activity, such as texting a friend or getting a snack, as a reward for reaching your goal or completing your assignment.

Decide what to learn and how to learn it

It is difficult to learn something unless you intend to. Try drawing the front of a one-dollar bill. Most likely you could not provide much detail. Why? You never intended to learn it, despite the many bills you have handled.

See the Just-in-Time Guide to Reading and Responding following Chapter 3 for more help with deciding what to learn.

You cannot learn every detail in this or any other textbook. Learning will occur more easily if you decide what you need to focus on. Some instructors may help you decide what is important by providing grading rubrics that make the criteria of evaluation clear. Others may not, but you can develop your own sense of what strong and weak work looks like by asking your instructor for examples and then making a list of the features that make one piece of writing work better than another.

Learning theory shows that you shouldn’t learn everything the same way. You shouldn’t study mathematics the same way you study art history. Similarly, you may not write an essay for your composition class the same way you would write a lab report for your biology class. Analyze each writing assignment you are given; understand the genre, or type of writing, you are expected to produce; and decide the best strategies to complete it.

Use metacognition

Metacognition is self-awareness of how your reading, writing, and learning is going. It involves monitoring and assessing what is working and what is not, and experimenting with approaches to learning. Writing is a gradual process, but you will learn to write better if you are aware of strategies that work and those that don’t. While writing, take time to ask yourself whether what you are doing is producing the results you expect. If not, make changes. You may discover, for example, that when planning an essay, outlining is too rigid but free-flowing brainstorming works much better.

Group and organize information

New information is more easily learned if it is organized or grouped into chunks. The graphic organizers used throughout this book (see Graphic Organizer 11.2) help you see an essay as a whole, rather than as numerous individual pieces. Outlining and mapping or clustering are also effective means of organizing information.

For more about mapping and outlining, see “Discovering Ideas to Write About” in Chapter 4 and “Organizing Your Supporting Details” in Chapter 7.

Practice, review, and respond

Rereading and rote memorization are two of the most ineffective ways to learn. Instead, interact with the information by applying it, discussing it, and evaluating it. The writing activities throughout this book enable you to learn writing skills through practice, review, and response. Peer review (assessing your writing and that of your classmates) is another tool that can help you hone your skills for assessing your own writing.

For more about peer review, see Chapter 8.

Activate prior knowledge

It is difficult to store new, unfamiliar pieces of information in your memory and then retrieve them when needed. Activating prior knowledge can help you connect new learning to something that you already know. That’s why previewing techniques such as asking and answering questions based on the headings in a reading selection aid learning. You can also connect a new essay you are reading with something you’ve experienced or learned about in another class. For example, if you are reading an essay on language change and the evolution of new words entering the English language, you might think of the new and recently coined terms you just learned in a computer science class. In this book, the headnotes that precede each reading provide helpful background information.

For more about this topic, see the “Preview” section in Chapter 2.

Synthesize your learning

Synthesis is a way to extend and reinforce your learning. It means pulling together ideas from your reading assignments, your class lectures, and your own experience. It involves analyzing similar or competing ideas and using them to extend or challenge your understanding. It may also involve connecting ideas to your own experience to see the practical consequences of an idea. For example, if after reading “The New Marshmallow Test” earlier in this chapter you considered your own media multitasking or completed the checklist in the “Responding to the Reading” section, then you were synthesizing the reading with your own experience. During a biology class lecture on genetics, you might write a note connecting the topic of trait inheritance with your personal family history. In an American history class, you might read a letter from a freed slave, a diary of a plantation owner, and a speech by an abolitionist and then write about what life as an enslaved person was like prior to the Civil War.

Use Your Course Syllabus

The most important document you will receive in your first week of class is your course syllabus, a document that describes how the course operates and directs you through your class. A typical syllabus includes information on required texts, attendance and plagiarism policies, the grading system, course objectives, weekly assignments or readings, due dates, and dates of exams. A sample syllabus is shown in Figure 1.1. Here are some tips for using a syllabus to maximize your learning and your course grade:

✵ Read the syllabus carefully at the beginning of the course. Check it regularly so that you are prepared for class.

✵ Ask your instructor any questions you may have about the syllabus, course structure, deadlines, and expectations about course objectives. Note the answers on the syllabus or in your course notebook.

✵ Mark all deadlines on your planner, including the intermediate dates you will need to meet your deadlines. For example, include not only the due date for a paper, but also the date by which you will need to complete the research and the date by which you will need to complete the first draft in order to have time to revise thoughtfully.

✵ Pay close attention to the course objectives. These outline what you are expected to learn in the course. Papers and exams will measure how well you meet them.

✵ Make sure you can access the syllabus. Print a copy and keep it in your notebook or save a copy on your computer, tablet, or smartphone.

The text reads,

I. General Information

Course Title: English Composition I

Course Number: ENG 161

Semester: Fall

Instructor: John Gillam

Phone: (724) 555—7890

Email: gillam at the rate Indiana dot edu. The annotation corresponding to “Email” on the left margin is “This is a good way to contact your instructor.”

Office Hours and Location: MWF 3 to 5 English Department offices in Ryan Hall. The annotation corresponding to “office Hours” is “important: Be sure to use them.”

II. Text

McWhorter, Kathleen T. Successful College Writing. 8th edition Bedford, 2021.

III. General Course Objectives

1. The student will learn to organize his or her thoughts into a meaningful written work. The annotation corresponding to this line is “planning and organizing are expected.”

2. The student will easily recognize grammar mistakes.

3. The student will be familiar with the conventions of academic writing. The annotation corresponding to this line is “Learning to write for an academic audience is important.”

4. The student will be able to read and respond critically to print and digital text.

IV. General Course Objectives

The annotation corresponding to it is “You will be graded on these.”

1. The student will write papers using the following strategies: description, illustration, process analysis, comparison and contrast, classification and division, and cause and effect. The annotation corresponding to this line is “learn these strategies”

2. The student will edit and proofread for errors in grammar, punctuation, mechanics, and spelling. The annotation corresponding to it is “correctness counts: Allow time for proofreading.”

3. The student will be tested on reading comprehension. The annotation corresponding to it is “Read assignments carefully.”

4. The student will write a research paper using appropriate documentation. The annotation corresponding to it is “learn about documentations.”

5. The student will critically analyze readings that use specific writing strategies.

6. The student will use the Internet as a tool for research.

FIGURE 1.1 Excerpted Sample Syllabus for a College Writing Course

The text reads,

V. Classroom Procedures

Absences: The student is responsible for attendance. Attendance affects performance, and all students are expected to take part in class discussions and peer-review editing sessions. Each student is expected to be present and is responsible for class notes and assignments. If absent, the student is responsible for arranging an appointment with the instructor to discuss the notes and assignments missed.

Format for papers: Papers must be typed double-spaced using a 12-point font. Be sure to keep a copy of each assignment for yourself.

In the above information, “Attendance affects performance, and all students are expected to take part in class discussions and peer-review editing sessions. Each student is expected to be present and is responsible for class notes and assignments,” implies that attendance is essential.

VI. Disability Statement.

If you need to have special arrangements made due to a physical or learning disability, please notify the instructor as soon as possible. (Disclosure of the type of disability is not required.)

In the above information, “If you need to have special arrangements made due to a physical or learning disability, please notify the instructor as soon as possible” implies that people do not have to hesitate to ask for needed services.

VII. Grading.

All papers must be turned in on the due date. Late papers will be lowered one letter grade. No papers will be accepted after the last day of class. If you do not understand the grade assigned to a paper, see me immediately. You are encouraged to save all papers in a folder to enable you to keep track of progress and compute your own grade.

In the above information, “All papers must be turned in on the due date. Late papers will be lowered one letter grade. No papers will be accepted after the last day of class” implies that meeting deadlines is essential. The phrase “see me immediately” implies that the instructor encourages questions. The phrase “save all papers in a folder” implies that people should keep a copy of assignments.

VIII. Tentative Schedule.

Week of Sept. 3: Course Introduction.

Chapter 1 (Reading and Writing for College Success).

Chapter 2 (Active Reading and Responding).

Week of Sept. 10: Writing Assessments.

Chapter 3 (Thinking, Reading, and Writing Critically).

Chapter 4 (Prewriting).

Chapter 5 (Developing and Supporting a Thesis).

Week of Sept. 17: Ch. 7 (Drafting an Essay).

Chapter 11 (Narration).

Draft of Essay hash 1 due.

Week of September 24: Chapter 13 (Illustration).

Draft of Essay hash 2 due

Annotations on the right margin explain that the above chapters should be read in the first week. Your instructor may not remind you of reading assignments, so check the syllabus weekly.

“Draft of Essay hash 1 due” and “Draft of Essay 2 hash due” imply that the assignment due dates are noted.

EXERCISE 1.1

GETTING THE MOST FROM YOUR SYLLABUS

Review the syllabus that your writing class instructor distributed. Write a paragraph describing your expectations and concerns about your writing course based on the syllabus. Be sure to answer the following questions:

1. What are you expected to learn in the course?

2. What kinds of essays will you write?

3. What are the grading and attendance policies?

4. Is class participation expected and required? Is it part of your grade?

5. Is research required? Is Internet use required or expected?

Avoid Procrastination

Procrastination is putting off things that need to be done; you know you should work on an assignment, but you do something else instead. To avoid procrastination, try these tips:

✵ Develop a schedule at the beginning of each week in which you allot time to complete each assignment due that week.

✵ Divide each task into manageable parts.

✵ Avoid making excuses. It is easy to say you don’t have enough time to get everything done, but often that is not true.

✵ Avoid escaping into routine tasks such as shopping, cleaning, or doing your laundry rather than completing the task.

Demonstrate Academic Integrity

Demonstrating academic integrity means conducting yourself in an honest and ethical manner. It involves avoiding the obvious forms of classroom dishonesty such as copying homework, buying a paper on the Internet, and cheating on exams or helping others do so. It also means not plagiarizing, using the ideas or language of others — deliberately or unintentionally — without giving credit. An example of intentional plagiarism is cutting and pasting information into your paper from the Internet without indicating that it is borrowed. Unintentional plagiarism occurs when you use language too similar to that of the original source, inadvertently omit a citation, or forget to place quotation marks around a quotation.

To learn how to avoid unintentional plagiarism, see “Avoid Plagiarism” in Chapter 23.

Consult Your Instructors

Don’t be afraid to take advantage of your instructor’s office hours. Most instructors will happily work with you to understand a reading or an assignment and to provide information on research, academic decisions, and careers in their fields. But you need to take the initiative. Find out when your instructors hold office hours, and if invited, use their email addresses to communicate.

Listen Carefully, Take Notes, and Participate in Class

Classroom participation involves both listening and speaking. Because you learn so much through listening, learning to listen carefully and critically — grasping what is said and discussing, questioning, and responding to what you hear — is a crucial success strategy.

Listen carefully and critically

Did you know that you can process information faster than speakers can speak? As a result, your mind has time to wander while listening. Try using the following suggestions to maintain your attention in the classroom and prepare to respond:

✵ Focus on the lecture. Arrive promptly for class, shut off distracting media (your phone and your Web applications), sit toward the front of the room (not among a group of friends), and maintain eye contact with the speaker — all will make you feel more involved and less likely to drift off mentally.

✵ Try to anticipate the ideas the speaker will address next. Doing so will keep your mind active.

✵ Maintain an open mind. It is easy to shut out ideas and opinions that do not conform to your own values and beliefs. Try to avoid evaluating a message as positive or negative until it is complete and understandable, and strive to understand the speaker’s viewpoint, even if you think you disagree.

✵ Identify and assess the speaker’s main point and key supporting evidence. Once you’ve identified the speaker’s thesis, or main point — it is likely to be repeated in different forms throughout the presentation — consider the speaker’s reasons and evidence: Has enough support been supplied? Is the evidence relevant? Are the reasons logical?

✵ Take notes. Create an informal outline to keep track of the key points and the main reasons and evidence the speaker offers. After class, flesh out your notes while your memory is fresh.

Participate in class

You can learn more from your classes if you participate fully in class. Ask questions when you need information and clarification, and answer questions posed by the instructor to demonstrate and evaluate your knowledge and express interest in the class. Use the following tips to strengthen your questioning and answering skills:

✵ As you read assignments, jot down questions to ask in class — don’t worry if they seem silly or unimportant. Bring your list to class, and use it when your instructor invites questions. And don’t apologize for asking; other students probably have the same questions but are reluctant to ask them.

✵ Speak out. Stop worrying about what your friends and classmates will think. If you’re nervous about participating in class, composing your response before volunteering to answer may give you confidence.

✵ Focus on critical questions. Instead of asking factual questions, think about how the information can be used, how ideas fit together, how things work, what might be relevant problems and solutions, or what the long-term value and significance of the information are.

EXERCISE 1.2

IMPROVING YOUR LISTENING AND CLASS-PARTICIPATION SKILLS

Review the advice given above. Then choose at least three points to apply in the next two lectures you attend for one of your other courses. Finally, write a paragraph reflecting on what you learned from the experience.

EXERCISE 1.3

WORKING TOGETHER

Working with a classmate, brainstorm a list of questions you could ask about the content presented in this chapter.

Learn to Manage Stress

Stress is a natural reaction to the challenges of daily living, but if you are expected to accomplish more or perform better than you think you can, stress can become overwhelming. As a successful student, you need to monitor your stress. Take the following “How Stressed Are You?” quiz to assess your stress level.

You can use stress to motivate yourself to start a project or assignment, or you can let it interfere with your ability to function mentally and physically. If you answered “Always” or “Sometimes” to more than two or three items in the “How Stressed Are You?” quiz, you may be reacting to stress negatively. Here are some effective ways to change your thinking and habits to reduce stress:

✵ Establish your priorities. If college is more important than your part-time job, for example, request a work schedule to accommodate your study schedule. If someone asks you to take on an extra shift that will cut into study time, be selfish and say no.

✵ Simplify your life by making fewer choices. For example, instead of deciding what time to set your alarm clock each morning, get up at the same time each weekday.

✵ Focus on the positive. Instead of saying, “I’ll never be able to finish this assignment on time,” ask yourself, “What do I have to do to finish this assignment on time?”

✵ Separate work, school, and social problems. Create mental compartments for your worries. Don’t spend class time thinking about a work problem. Deal with problems at the appropriate time.

✵ Keep a personal journal. Relieve stress by writing down your worries, but include notes about how you can resolve those problems, too.

Manage Online Courses Responsibly

Online courses are convenient, but they require more self-direction and ability to work alone than face-to-face classes do. Here are some tips for succeeding in online courses:

✵ If possible, avoid taking online courses during your first term in college. Once you are familiar with college expectations, you will be better prepared to take an online course.

✵ Study for online courses as you do for face-to-face classes. Most students who fail online courses do so because they fall hopelessly behind on reading and assignments. Even if a class does not meet at a specified time, build study time for the course into your schedule to avoid procrastinating on classwork.

✵ Plan on doing a lot of reading and writing. In addition to reading assignments and papers, you will also need to read posts from your professor and other students and contribute to written class “discussions.”

✵ Write thoughtful posts, and use appropriate language online. Make it easy for classmates and your instructor to read your posts. Think through what you want to say, and use correct spelling and grammar. Besides adding your own ideas, respond to earlier posts, and be polite, even when you disagree with an earlier comment. Finally, be sure to reread your comments before posting them.

Don’t Let Nonacademic Problems Interfere with Success

The reason large numbers of students drop out of college has nothing to do with academics. These students would be able to handle the work if only nonacademic problems — from erratic work schedules and child-care difficulties to financial problems and family conflicts — did not interfere. These kinds of problems can result in missing classes or coming to class unprepared and failing to turn in assignments on time (or at all), which can all lead to low grades.

Your campus does have resources to help you. If personal problems are interfering with your performance at school, the first thing to do is talk to your instructors. Once they understand your circumstances, most instructors will do everything they can to help you succeed. Then seek help from student services, such as the financial aid office, the health center, the counseling center, and commuter service centers. These services are usually free. (You are already paying for them through your tuition.) Your campus’s Web site will list the services available and indicate where to find them.

Academic Reading and Writing: What Should You Expect?

An important part of doing well with any task is knowing ahead of time what it involves. The list below explains expectations for reading and writing in college.

✵ Expect your reading and writing to become less personal and more academic. Most of your reading and writing in college will be informative or persuasive. Informative writing presents information in an objective, nonpersonal way; persuasive writing attempts to convince readers to act or to understand a text or an event in a certain way.

✵ Expect to read and write in different forms, or genres. Academic reading and writing assignments may include specialized types, or genres, from scholarly articles and scientific studies to abstracts and research projects. Each genre has its own conventions. For example, lab reports have a specific purpose (to report the results of a laboratory experiment), format (including sections with headings such as Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results/Data, and Conclusions), and style of writing (brief, factual, and concise). As you encounter new genres, study samples that can serve as models for your own writing.

For help with revising, see Chapter 8; for help with editing and proofreading, see Chapter 9 and the Handbook. For suggestions about learning vocabulary, see the Just-in-Time Guide.

✵ Expect to use standard American English and the language of the discipline. College students are generally expected to avoid slang, present their ideas clearly and accurately, and write in complete and grammatically correct sentences. They are also expected to understand and use the specialized vocabulary of the field, words like photosynthesis and homeostasis in biology, or allegory and personification in literature. You may need to consult a specialized dictionary, encyclopedia, or database for help with unfamiliar terms.

✵ Expect to read, write, and think critically. In college, instructors will expect you to go beyond merely repeating what you hear in class or read in the textbook; they will expect you to demonstrate understanding by being able to draw your own inferences based on what you have learned; synthesize, or combine, information to support your ideas; and apply ideas to new situations.

For more on reading actively and critically, see Chapters 2 and 3.

✵ Expect to read, use, and document scholarly sources. Instructors expect you to locate and use books and articles written by experts and published in scholarly journals and by university presses. Whether you quote, summarize, or paraphrase words and ideas from sources, your instructors will expect you to credit them by including an in-text citation and a list of works cited (or references).

For guidance in identifying, locating, using, and citing scholarly sources, see Part 5.

Why Improve Your Reading and Writing Skills?

Most college students ask themselves these two questions:

1. How can I improve my grades?

2. How can I improve my chances of getting a good job after college?

The answer to both questions is the same: Improve your reading and writing skills. Here are three reasons why doing so will be worth the time and effort:

1. Reading and writing help you learn and remember. In general, the more senses you use in learning, the more easily you learn and the more you will remember. You take in information visually while reading, and you engage your sense of touch as you put your pen to paper while writing. (Evidence suggests that handwriting is more effective than typing at solidifying memory.) Taking notes, outlining, summarizing, and annotating enhance learning by engaging your attention and getting you to think about the subject matter as you connect, define, and evaluate ideas.

2. Reading and writing help you think and solve problems. Reading makes the ideas of experts available to you, and writing forces you to think through issues in a sustained way, define issues or problems, and see new aspects of them. For example, one student had a father-in-law who seemed hostile and uncooperative. The student described her problem in an email to a friend: “He looks at me as if I’m going to take his son to the end of the earth and never bring him back.” When she reread what she had written, she realized that her father-in-law might resent her because he was afraid of losing contact with his son. She looked for ways to reassure her father-in-law and strengthen their relationship. Writing about the problem helped the student define it and discover ways to solve it.

3. Reading and writing skills enable you to communicate effectively. Employers consistently want the “total package” — both technical knowledge and strong oral and written communication skills — in recent college graduates. Why? Because in almost all jobs, you can expect to read and write plenty of letters, email messages, and reports to customers, colleagues, and supervisors. Because your writing course offers both immediate and long-range benefits, it is one of the most important college courses you will take.

Adopt Success Strategies for Your Writing Class

You have already learned some general strategies for success in college. The section below presents strategies that will help you in your writing class.

Start with a Positive Attitude toward Reading and Writing

You have the ability to be a strong reader and a successful writer. To approach your writing course with a positive attitude and get the most out of it, use the following suggestions:

1. Think of reading and writing as processes. Reading a complex text requires more than just reading it through once; it requires prereading, annotating, and critical analysis to understand it fully. Writing, too, is not a single act of getting words down on paper. It is a series of steps — planning, organizing, drafting, revising, and editing and proofreading — all of which can be done in whatever order makes sense and repeated as needed. (Most writers go back and forth among these steps.)

2. Be patient. Writing improves with practice. On some days, writing will be easier than on other days, but as you draft and revise your essays, your writing will improve in small ways that build on one another. Build in extra time for completing writing assignments.

3. Understand how your instructor will assess your writing. Some instructors may have a rubric, or list of characteristics with examples at different levels of success; others may be willing to share past examples of successful writing.

Use the College Writing Center

Writing centers generally provide trained student tutors and professional staff, who may help you do the following:

✵ understand an assignment

✵ analyze a reading selection

✵ organize your ideas

✵ revise a draft

✵ use appropriate format and documentation

✵ understand errors on a graded paper

However, do not expect them to interpret a reading, write your paper, or correct all of its errors. When you visit the writing center, be sure to bring the following:

✵ your assignment

✵ all drafts of your essay

✵ any articles or essays to which the assignment refers

✵ paper and pen or pencil

Get the Most out of Writing Conferences

Many writing instructors require writing conferences with individual students to discuss the student’s work and his or her progress in the course. If the conferences are optional, be sure to schedule one.

The following tips will help you get the most out of a writing conference:

1. Reread recently returned papers and notes from previous conferences ahead of time. Your instructor’s comments should be fresh in your mind.

2. Arrive prepared and be on time or a few minutes early. Bring copies of the essay you are currently working on, as well as previously graded papers.

3. Allow your instructor to set the agenda. Still, you should be prepared to ask questions.

4. Take notes on your instructor’s comments and suggestions. Take them during the conference, if doing so is not distracting, or immediately after.

5. Revise the draft essay you and your instructor discussed. The revision will go most smoothly if you revise while your instructor’s suggestions are still fresh in your mind.

Keep a Writing Journal

Keeping a writing journal will help improve your writing by giving you a judgment-free place to practice and an opportunity to reflect on what you’re learning. In your journal, you can experiment with voice, topics, or approaches to a topic; comment on a reading selection or assignment; record your impressions and observations; or explore relationships among people or ideas. It can also be a good source of topics for writing assignments. Here’s how to get started:

1. Write in a spiral-bound notebook or create a computer file. Date each entry.

2. Set aside five to ten minutes for journal writing each day. You don’t need a long block of time; instead, you can write while waiting for a bus or for class to start.

3. Concentrate on capturing your ideas, not on being grammatically correct. Try to write correct sentences, but don’t focus on grammar and punctuation.

WRITING ACTIVITY 1

Write a journal entry describing your reaction to something you learned in one or more of your classes this term. For example, you might write about how you could apply it or how it relates to something else you already know about.