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Is your student about to embark on a college adventure? It doesn’t take long before new college students have an “eye-opening” run-in with college writing! Academic writing is the type of writing students do in college, and it’s quite different from high school-level writing. While in high school, your students probably got accustomed to the traditional “five paragraph essay.” In college, students become very familiar with research-based writing. How are these two types of writing different? How can you best help your student prepare for college-level writing?
A key difference between college-level writing and high school writing lies in intent. The intent of high school writing is often to inform and sometimes to persuade. In college, this focus shifts to a more research-based approach.
College students engage in what we mentioned previously as academic writing. This type of writing is developed in response to other forms of writing, namely to controversial topics and argumentative prompts.
Often, new college students feel either their high school teachers didn’t prepare them well enough for college or that their college professors are too tough. In most cases, the student simply didn’t make the proper transition between high school and college writing.
Beginning in your student’s senior year, you can start giving writing assignments that more closely relate to the types of assignments your students will have to write in college. Knowing how high school writing differs from college-level writing will help you teach your student. Here are a few ways the two types of writing differ:
With so many differences between high school and college-level writing, you may wonder how you can best prepare your students for academic writing. The following steps are written for the student who will be making the transition from high school writing to college-level writing:
High school writing is certainly much different from college-level writing. It’s almost as if your students will have to “undo” everything they’ve been taught about writing! There are similarities, but the differences are what sets academic writing apart. Make a conscious effort to help your student transition from high school writing to college-level writing; it will make a world of difference once they enter college.
June 25, 2018
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