Reading and Writing Successfully in College: A Guide for Students

Abstract

I’ve organized the book in four sections, designed to help you locate the strategies and techniques you need as you work on your assignments: • Successful College Reading provides a guide for reading actively, including strategies for choosing where and when to read, annotating texts, and identifying main points. This section focuses on non-fiction texts because these make up the majority of what you will read in college. • Writing as Intellectual Work helps you think about writing assignments as more than just a demonstration of your knowledge. Using a model of learning called “Bloom’s Taxonomy,” this section helps you figure out the kinds of thinking that your professor is looking for when they give you a writing assignment. • Writing Process in College offers a range of techniques for managing the writing process, some of which may already be familiar and some of which may be new. I’m a big fan of leveraging technology to help us write more effectively, so a number of exercises rely on features in your word processor, but many of these same techniques can be done with paper and pen if you prefer. • Writing with Sources focuses on how to find credible sources and use them well in academic writing. Here you’ll find guides for evaluating your sources, with a focus on internet sources, as well as information about summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and citing.