In High School, Teachers Handed Out Essays As If They Were

Why do some college freshmen find it harder to write an essay in college than in high school?” College freshmen usually struggle with the transition from high school writing to college writing. They do not know that the writing in college has a lot of differences. They also do not know that college writing has different rules. These students get confused with these rules. There are many other reasons cause these struggles. There are different styles in writing, for example: In college writing in college need to be done with at least two pages or more unlike in high school which takes four to six paragraphs. As a first-year student and English is my second language, I am really struggling to write a paragraph, spending hours to finish

I felt that I put a great deal of effort toward the grade that I wanted, through my strict self discipline in my class effort. I was extremely critical when I was reading novels and stories, editing essays, and writing essays. Moreover, I was able to improve my writing and analyzation

I was pushed constantly to work harder at my writing. I studied and practiced several new techniques and methods for prewriting and organizing the essays I found so hard to create. At first, I had quite a few bad days and quite a few subpar essays. My grades would vary greatly from paper to paper. This really scared me, as I hoped to keep myself from drastically dropping in my grades. Yet, I wanted to maintain my grade point average so I had no choice but to succeed and impress around every corner. I began to pour in, even more, work and apply all of the newly learned skills from that class into my mind. I hoped that soon I would be able to find a system for writing that helped me form proper

If exceptional grades and numerous excellence awards are to indicate anything, I have succeeded academically thus far. However, such achievements are only possible because of my work ethic and determination. I pride myself on submitting my best work, pitting myself against my past performances. I remember my tenth grade English class; I was writing essays every week. I took every critique from my teacher and considered it for the next piece. Experience I gained from that class carried over into eleventh grade, where I achieved the highest English grade I have ever made. Even now, I look back at my older essays to help me write, so I know what works and what to avoid. Perseverance through school and desire to improve have carried me well, even through activities outside of my education.

Growing up I never had much experience when it came to writing. In school they would tell us to write an essay about a certain topic and turn it in. We rarely got any feedback in return, the feedback we received was our grade. If you received a high grade that meant you did well, and obviously a low grade meant you didn’t meet the

My high school years were not spectacular, nor were they terribly productive.I left high school without learning how to proficiently write an essay. However, CUNY's Borough of Manhattan Community College afforded me a desperately needed second chance. It was at BMCC that I sharpened many of the skills I should have mastered in high school. I was able to greatly improve my writing ability. I began college as a student who found writing a 2 page paper to be a terrifyingly daunting task, but due to practice and numerous resources offered by CUNY, I soon was able to compose papers consisting of 10-14 pages with confidence and efficiency.

Essays have always seemed like just another assignment. Rarely did I like doing them and most of the time I did not like the prompt. Essays were straight forward and very dull. You were given a question about something in class and told to write about it. So far college English has been different. The class takes an abstract point of attack. There is still a prompt but is about more complex and controversial issues. This would have to make me think critically and in an unorthodox manner. This, however, was not my main worry. At the beginning of the year I had two major concerns going into a college level English class. Grammar and mechanics, those are the two words that have always been brought up in parent-teacher conferences or written in red ink on my paper. I was not very worried about making a thesis or analyzing quotes. One thing I rarely did in high school was revision. It was either last minute or I thought the essay was already good enough. The first essay was proof of a lack of revisions. The prompt asked us to take our rough draft, revise it, than make more revisions to that paper so that it can become your final copy. I did not make an attempt to do a revised copy. I did however revise my first draft and went straight the final essay. During this process my analyzing could always be more in depth (clarity was also an issue through out primary and secondary education). Although receiving a slightly better grade on my first paper, it had more mistakes and had less

As seniors about to embark on a journey into the adult world, it’s important to be prepared for what college professors expect in an essay. The article, What do College Professors Want from Incoming High School Graduates, was very insightful on how different the rules are. It states the different skills and mindsets an incoming freshmen must have to succeed in more advanced writing classes. It explains how high school and college writing differ, also how the two are similar. In order to be successful in school and in life one must become independent and open to change.

In this article, “College Success” written by Bruce Beiderwell, Linda Tse, Thomas J. Lochhaas, and Nicholas B. deKanter, they explain the differences of high school and college writing, expectations of the instructors, and the types of papers that are assigned. Most students who struggle in their writing are usually still going through their transformation into college, without even knowing it. Though, how can you see these symptoms? “Students who struggle with writing in college often conclude that their high school teachers were too easy or that their college instructors are too hard” (Beiderwell, P. 1). When going into college there are all sort of ways of writing an essay, in high school you were taught the five paragraph basic

     As writers, many students write to the expectations of their professors and not to their fullest potential. Throughout English 101 I had been writing only to please my professor or to fill the basic requirement to pass English. I always felt that my writing ability was never enough for my professors throughout the previous years. They always wanted clear and concise essays, which for some reason was unreachable by me. However, starting college and taking English 101 helped me with my weaknesses and changed my technique of writing essays. My experience in English 101 taught me to write to my fullest potential and to write what I felt; rather then writing what was required.

I entered my first-year college composition course believing I was equipped with the knowledge, skill, and ability to write an efficiently researched and well-organized essay. In high school, I learned how to create the traditional five-paragraph paper with its introduction of a thesis, explanation of that claim through three sections riddled with supporting quotes, and conclusion that restated the author’s substantiated statement. This was the prescribed formula I had learned and grown accustomed to using for book reports, compare-and-contrast papers, and research essays and, from my bestowment of high grades and praise, I’d never thought to question or deviate from its pattern. When I attended my first college writing class, I thought

At the beginning of the semester I entered General Studies Writing 1110, not knowing what to expect. I knew the class was solely based on writing and perfecting personal style, but I never anticipated the valuable information I would learn throughout the course of the year. The only advanced English class I have taken in high school was English Honors in eighth grade. That class gave me the base knowledge of writing, grammar and form that has helped me through my four essays in this class. Starting out, I was not sure what the standard for passing was; even though it was unclear to me what passing was, I strove for perfection. By the time the second essay came around I realized my writing was never perfect. Peer editors and family played a

I, one of millions of first-year college students, believe that I write bland essays due to the fact that my high school English teachers failed to teach me how to think clearly and creatively. For instance, with my twelfth English teacher, Mrs. Tuttle, there are many cases to which I felt she could’ve improved her teachings not only for me to understand how to write a well-developed paper but as well as others students. First case scenario being how she gave class activities and her teaching style. She had a way of giving activities based on the feeling of how she felt would be a good way for us to learn the material versus what we felt would be the best way to learn the material. These ways included little to no group work. Writing a bunch of illegitimate papers that would be graded by my peers who had little to no idea of what right or wrongs they were looking for. Thus for leaving me with an ambiguous reason to what my writings were lacking or why I never made anything higher than a C in her class. Another way would be the fact that she lived off the teaching theory of “if one can do it then all can do it”. This hands down was the number reason why I could never write a well thought out, clear and creative paper. With this method she felt that if Amanda Ho, class valedictorian, could write an outstanding paper, then the entire Class of 2015 could write one just as well. Never coming to an understanding that everyone wasn’t Amanda Ho, everyone didn’t have the brains

Writing has never been my strongest point, so writing essays were always a struggle for me. Professor Sndograss taught me how to dig deep and find something inspiring to write about If that meant rereading the poem and litter over and over again then thats what I did.

My experience with English has changed drastically from middle school to college. Being in middle school I have really had to do much of a big paper, but as I progressed through college I’ve realized there much more that has to be added. I had always wondered why middle school was so easy but as years went on, I realized that advancing to college there’s a lot more requirements and importance to writing. In middle school, I was young and just starting to really realize what an essay was and after high school I really understood what an essay consists of. No matter how