Repetition is another problem that can be easier to spot if you read your essay aloud.

Reading your draft aloud is a great revision strategy for so many reasons, and revising your essay for transitions is no exception to this rule.

Make sure that the conclusion of your paragraph doesn’t sound like you’re leaving your readers hanging with the introduction of a completely new or unrelated topic.

phrases like first, then, next, finally, in sum, and in conclusion.

It’s important to consider how to emphasize the relationships not just between sentences but also between paragraphs in your essay

the idea behind a transition is to introduce something new while connecting it to something old from an earlier point in the essay or paragraph

If your thought process jumps around a lot (and that’s okay), it’s more likely that you will need to pay careful attention to reorganization and to providing solid transitions as you revise

While drafting, we often write what we think, sometimes without much reflection about how the ideas fit together or relate to one another.

Transitions signal the order of ideas, highlight relationships, unify concepts, and let readers know what’s coming next or remind them about what’s already been covered

So you have a main idea, and you have supporting ideas, but how can you be sure that your readers will understand the relationships between them

Figuring out the main argument is the key to reading the text effectively and efficiently.

the conclusion is often where authors indicate the limitations of their work, the unanswered questions, the horizons left unexplor

Read all of these to get a sense of the trajectory of the text before delving into the content in each section

but it will also often offer a road map for the rest of the article.

The introduction serves some of the same functions as the abstract, but there is a lot more breathing room here

An abstract is like an executive summary

Use the answers to help you focus on the really important aspects of the texts and to gloss over the parts that are less relevant to your coursework

many academic authors don’t use strategies to keep us hooked.

In the first reading of an article, it’s smart to hold off on looking too many things up

Sometimes you can tell if a reading comes from an academic journal based on the title

e publication venue

pay attention to the goals of the chapter, check out the summary at the end, ignore the text in the boxes because it’s usually more of a “fun fact” than something that will be on the test,

rhetorical reading strategies ask us to focus on how the text delivers its message

If we know something about what the writer cares about and is trying to accomplish, it can help orient us to the reading and understand some of the choices the writer makes in his or her work

practices designed to help us understand how texts work and to engage more deeply and fully in a conversation that extends beyond the boundaries of any particular reading

“rhetorical reading.”[2] Rhetoric in this context refers to how texts work to persuade readers

but it can push your thinking and clarify your own stances on issues that really matter to you

is to locate the writer and yourself in this larger conversation

Rather, they look at how others have approached similar issues and problems

Each of the metaphors here replaces a rule with an idea that helps you consider how real people communicate with each other through writing, and how writers make judgments and choices in order to have the most powerful effect on their readers.

In college, you might encounter essay questions on an exam. Learning how to be a good timed-exam writer can help you in lots of short-time writing situations.

The simplest thing you can do to get your money’s worth and your time’s worth from your books and other reading material is this: you can write on them.

You want to write paragraphs that your target audience can handle without straining their brains or leaving suds all over the floor.

Some of your reasons or stories will roll out of readers’ heads if they aren’t firmly attached to an argument;

That advice doesn’t always need to be in a thesis statement or a topic sentence, but it does need to happen regularly so that readers don’t miss something crucial.

to gain experience tailoring your performance to a “real” audience.

In a writing class, you also have to learn to be greedy as a reader, to ask for the good stuff from someone else’s head if they don’t give it to you, to demand that they share their cookies

using only language, it will take several sentences, perhaps a whole paragraph—filled with facts and statistics, comparisons, sensory description, expert testimony, examples, personal experiences—

f you tell without showing, your reader might not only be confused but might entirely disbelieve you

Unless you do a good job showing what you mean, your audience will not understand your message

three rhetorical principles, and the principles address lots of aspects of writing that aren’t on the list but that are central to why humans struggle to express themselves through written language

the author and the needs of the reader rather than the needs of the teacher

Show, don’t just tell

Always have a thesis. I before E except after C. No one-sentence paragraphs. Use concrete nouns. A semi-colon joins two complete sentences. A conclusion restates the thesis and the topic sentences. Don’t use “I,” check your spelling, make three main points, and don’t repeat yourself. Don’t use contractions. Cite at least three sources, capitalize proper nouns, and don’t use “you.” Don’t start a sentence with “And” or “But,” don’t end a sentence with a preposition, give two examples in every paragraph, and use transition words. Don’t use transition words too much

I also think, though, that writing is made harder than it has to be when we try to follow too many rules for writing

Always have a thesis