I want to talk about the basic mental action that you’re performing while writing an essay. That is, when you’re writing an essay, what is it that you’re actually doing, mentally speaking? The short version is this: that when you write, you are taking ideas out of that foggy, nebulous region on the fringes ofContinue reading “Solidifying Ideas into Words”
Tag Archives: critical thinking
Research in the Age of the Coronavirus
Or Why it’s Tricky to do Good Research Without a Physical Library (and What to Do About That) I’m writing this partly to work my way through the challenge of helping my students develop their research papers when they can’t actually go to the library, given the whole Coronavirus situation. Pretty much everything hereafter isContinue reading “Research in the Age of the Coronavirus”
One of the hardest things to learn about college writing: separating out your ideas
Your average first-year student—but I’d wager almost everyone is like this—seems to hit a point in his writing process where he’s just had some inspiration about what he wants to say, but all the different ideas that make up that larger argument are so jumbled together in his head that it’s hard to take themContinue reading “One of the hardest things to learn about college writing: separating out your ideas”
Thoughts on Essay Writing 