First in an ongoing series to improve writing, based on Strunk and White's Elements of Style.

1. Academic Writing
A Case for Quality
M. Shawn Gilliand

2. Seniors, if
this looks
like your
most recent
essay,
your approach to
writing needs to be
different this year!

3. According to the ACT’s 2003
National Curriculum Survey,
college faculty members rank
grammar and style as the most
important skills for entering
freshmen.

4. Unfortunately, for the
graduating class of
2009, 43% of
students tested
nationally scored a 19
or lower on the ACT
English Test;
these scores indicate
that our students are
“marginally prepared”
for entry-level college
coursework.

5. How could
this happen?
In Ohio, our instruction
has become so focused
on the Ohio Graduation
Test (OGT) that we’ve
been left with just one
reference to grammar in
our State Course of
Study.

6. What does
this mean?
We don’t teach
grammar, usage and
style in Ohio schools!
Consequently, our
students lack some of
the foundational
knowledge they need to
improve as writers.

7. A plan for
improvement.
For the rest of the
school year, we are
going to work on
building the foundation
that you lack.

8. As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into
“Quality Academic Writing.”

9. Collaboration:
Writing Across
the Curriculum
By recruiting all of the core
teachers in the SHS
collaborative, we plan to
help you become better
academic writers, no matter
what class you’re writing for.
Academic writing is a part of
every discipline.

10. Good academic writing:
Is stylistically simple,
clear, and concise.
In other words, it is
easy for the reader to
understand.
You need not "sound
smart" to be smart.

11. Good academic writing:
Is free of grammatical
distractions.

12. Good academic writing:
Clearly identifies topic,
audience, and purpose
(TAP).

13. Good academic writing:
Uses rich and appropriate
academic vocabulary that is
relevant to the paper's
topic.
Avoids the use filler
words (stuff, a lot,
many, some, etc.).
Avoids the use of
weakening qualifiers (I
believe that, it is
possible, perhaps, etc.)

14. Good academic writing:
Demonstrates a detailed,
accurate and thorough
understanding of the topic.

15. Good academic writing:
Is logically organized,
offering the strongest
presentation of academic
understanding.

16. Good academic writing:
Gives credit where credit is
due.
All sources of outside
information are cited
correctly, both in the
text and on a Works
Cited page.

17. There is no such thing as a
graded "rough draft" in the
academic world. In college, what
you turn in is your final product, a
representation of your
accumulated understanding and
personal insight on your topic.

18. The drafting process as you have learned
it in high school, is intended to create pre-
writing, writing, and proofreading
habits to be applied, as part of your
personal process, to your work. This
process is a strategy to make you a better
writer, not an excuse to allow your
teachers to be your proofreaders. In higher
education and, indeed, in real life, you will
rarely get a second chance to turn in
something important.

19. Simply put, any piece of writing that you
turn in shouldn't be a rough draft, but
rather your "best draft." If it falls short, our
job is to help you to understand your
mistakes and correct them.
We can not do this if what you turn in
doesn't represent your best effort. You
should want to improve.

20. Each stylistic and grammatical mistake
amounts to you doing less work and your
reader doing more.
That equation is backwards.
It is the writer's job to make meaning
absolutely clear. Content and knowledge
cannot be shared in the absence of good
communication.

21. No-Brainers
Each week SHS is going to add to a list of "No-Brainer" mistakes.
Once we have discussed them in class, you are responsible for avoiding
these mistakes for every paper you write. If you commit a "no-brainer"
in an essay, you will be docked 1 point for each occurrence. If you make
the same mistake 100 times, you lose 100 points. In other words,
grammar and style will be graded separately from the content, which
will still be graded according to a rubric.

22. No-Brainers: Week 1: Homonyms
•its-possessive adjective (belonging to or associated with it); it's-contraction (it is)
•their-possessive adjective (belonging to or associated with other people); there-adverb (in or
at that place); they're-contraction (they are)
•our-possessive adjective (belonging to or associated with us); are-verb (2nd person singular
present and 1st, 2nd, 3rd person plural present of to be)
•your-possessive adjective (belonging to or associated with the person being addressed);
you're-contraction (you are); yore-noun (long ago)
•to-preposition (expression motion in the direction of something); too-adverb (to a higher
degree than desirable, as in, "too much," or, in addition to, as in, "He went too."); two-cardinal
number
•accept-transitive verb (to consent to receive); except-preposition (not including
•allowed-verb (given permission); aloud-adverb (audibly)
•write-verb (to compose in print form), right-adjective (morally correct), adverb (correctly),
noun (an entitlement, what is morally correct, or the opposite of left); rite-noun (a ritual, as in,
"rite of passage."
•principal-adjective (first in order of importance), noun (the person with the highest authority
in an organization); principle-noun (a fundamental truth)
•whether-conjunction (expressing a doubt between alternate choices); weather-noun (the
state of atmospheric conditions), verb (to survive a hardship, as in, "to weather a storm," or, to
wear away over time, as in, "the rain weathered the mountains."
•whose-interrogative possessive adjective or pronoun (belonging to or associated with an
unknown person, as in, "Julia wondered whose it was."), relative possessive adjective (of
whom or which, as in, "He is a man whose opinion I value."); who's-contraction (who is)

23. What does success look like?
Better ACT scores and fewer mistakes in writing.