Making the Transition from High School to College Writing
Photo courtesy of Redd Angelo
At summer orientation, I spoke with several students who asked me the same excellent question: how is high school writing different from college writing? They knew their first semester courses would require a significant amount of writing and research and they wanted to begin preparing for the challenges they would face. Although each high school prepares its students in different ways, my Writing Center colleagues and I came up with a few key differences for incoming students to keep in mind.
In college, you need to have a clear understanding of the difference between summary and critical analysis, and recognize that argumentative papers focus on the latter. Analytical papers provide an opportunity to explore your own interpretation of an idea, which you back up with evidence. Unlike high school, college is less about right and wrong answers, and more about having something significant to say.
On a similar note, instead of worrying about the “correct” number of paragraphs for essays, focus instead on the argument you want to develop. We rarely see the five-paragraph essay in the college context. Ask yourself: does each paragraph make a claim, provide evidence to support that claim, and include your own reasoning? If it is missing any of these elements, the paragraph is incomplete. Rather than stressing about how long your introduction should be, think about communicating your main points as clearly as possible.
One of our favorite mantras here in the Writing Center is “show don’t tell.” If you simply tell your reader they should believe your argument, you are not going to convince anybody. However, if you provide evidence and reasoning, you are showing that your argument has substance, and your writing will be persuasive. Evidence is central to college writing. More emphasis is placed on the quality of the sources you use, therefore you are responsible for verifying their credentials (i.e. Who are they? What kind of research have they done? What have they published?). Wikipedia may be a good starting point to learn about a subject, but because you often cannot verify the credentials of the authors, Wikipedia articles do not function as acceptable sources for academic research essays.
Finally, college is a time to ask questions for which you don’t know the answers. Take every opportunity to investigate new topics and ideas. If you approach a research paper with a solution in mind, you aren’t conducting real research. If you know the answer, you are simply confirming your opinion. True research begins with a question and ends with an argument only after investigating every side of the story. Focusing on what you already know can be boring, and you will miss an opportunity to discover something new that captures your interest.
To make an appointment at the Writing Center, go online at go.vcu.edu/ucme, call us at (804) 828-4851, or stop into the Academic Learning Commons, 1000 Floyd Avenue. Good luck and happy writing!
Lauren Boasso is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Art & Text program at VCU.
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