Writing with Precision, Clarity, and Conviction

Available Courses

Writing for the College-bound

We recognize that some students require a more structured writing program, with set deadlines and a clear focus on a particular goal. For these students, we will offer Writing for the College-bound, which focuses on composing the expository essay — the kind of formal prose required in most academic settings. This course meets in live chat sessions once a week to discuss the steps a student must go through to produce a more-than-merely-acceptable answer to an essay question. Students turn in a composition, receive feedback and critique each others' work, then rewrite their own compositions. With practice, they learn to recognize and correct their own mistakes, and formulate more organized and persuasive arguments to support their essay answers.

This course does assume that students have a certain level of proficiency already in writing correct prose. It does not focus on the mechanics of writing; students who still have issues with comma usage, noun-verb agreement, pronoun references, and other mechanical issues should take Practical Grammar during the summer to gain fundamental control of proper sentence composition before tackling Writing for the College-bound.

As with the Cursus course, Writing for the College-bound can be used in conjunction with writing assignments for other courses, providing both teachers agree to allow cross-class submissions.

Summer and Supplementary Writing Courses

In addition to our core writing course, we ofter a number of summer courses that cover practical grammar mistakes and how to fix them, writing for different audiences and using persuasive methods of arguing your case, and writing poetry.