The Steps to Writing Your Way to Success

Why do so many students fear writing?

People fear what they don't understand. To get beyond that fear, writing is like any other endeavor in life. To understand it, you first learn the basics; once you've done that, you master writing in the same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.

Research shows that if you can write a good first draft of a short, timed essay, you'll do much better in college courses that require writing. Academic success in college is the foundation for a lifelong fulfilling career. For that reason, and in order to reinforce the importance of writing skills throughout your education, The College Board added an essay component to the writing section of the SAT. Therefore, you can't procrastinate about learning writing skills until you get to college. It's to your benefit to begin to hone your writing skills now.

Learning how to write well may not seem that important, but in today's information age, good writing skills are an asset even if you don't intend to be a writer. Despite the ease at which almost everyone can be reached by phone at any time, e-mail and text-messaging continue to gain momentum as the communication of choice. More than ever, writing is an important part of everyone's everyday life.

In the essay component of the SAT, you will be asked to write a response to an essay assignment, or prompt. How well you complete that task determines how well you score.

On the essay component of the SAT, carefully selected assignment topics are broad enough to allow you to write your essay in a variety of ways. Free of figurative, technical, or specific literary references, the topics are such that they are meant to be easily understood, even if English is your second language.

However, understanding the topic won't be enough. You need to know how best to respond to the essay prompt. If you begin learning the basics and doing some simple practice exercises now, knowing how best "to respond to the [SAT essay] prompt" will become second nature.

Begin by perfecting your spelling skills. The spell check on your word processing program will help you somewhat with this -- if you pay attention to which words you consistently misspell and then learn the correct spellings for those words. But that isn't enough. You also need to recognize what can be problem words and expressions:

• Learn the difference between a contraction and a possessive pronoun (you're and your)
• Learn to distinguish between homonyms (they're, their, there)
• Learn the proper ways to spell the plural versions of singular nouns (noun, nouns; vocabulary, vocabularies)

Along with mastering spelling and learning the basic rules of grammar, to be able to write an effective essay you'll also want to learn:

• The difference between exposition and persuasion
• The different types of essay styles
• How to formulate your outline
• How to develop an essay thesis
• How to gather the evidence for your essay
• How to write a strong conclusion

Once know the basics, you're ready to begin practicing ways to engage your reader and create a strong argument. It's not enough to write that "history teaches us that this has never been a viable alternative." You need to cite examples of how and when that alternative has failed. (Be sure you eliminate any ambiguous antecedents for pronouns, too.)

If knowledge of history isn't your strongest subject, there are other ways you can choose to present and defend your essay argument. The SAT essay allows you to support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

The secret to your future SAT essay success is to begin now learning how to plan your work -- and work your plan. It's impossible to know what you'll be expected to write about when you complete your SAT essay in the allotted 25-minute test time limit. But, you can anticipate what you may be asked to write about and come up with some examples from your reading, studies, experience, or observations that you could use to define and defend your position.

You wouldn't be able to walk onto a stage, sit down at a piano, and give a command concert performance without first taking lessons and spending hours and hours practicing what you learned in the lessons. Writing is no different. When you prepare, writer's block becomes a forgotten myth. More often than not, writer's block is a result of stress caused by lack of preparation. The preparation you begin doing now will result in your SAT essay, college, and lifetime writing success.

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