Writing Resources

This SUPERB handout suggests reading, note-taking, and writing strategies for when you need to use reading assignments or sources as the springboard for writing a paper.

Critical reading is a vital part of the writing process. In fact, reading and writing processes are alike. In both, you make meaning by actively engaging a text. As a reader, you are not a passive participant, but an active constructor of meaning. Exhibiting an inquisitive, "critical" attitude towards what you read will make anything you read richer and more useful to you in your classes and your life. This guide is designed to help you to understand and engage this active reading process more effectively so that you can become a better critical reader. There is a link on this site in the right navigation bar to download a printable version, with this URL: https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/pdfs/guide31.pdf

This link is to a Quick Guide in Academic Writer that describes how to develop unified paragraphs with one main idea and supporting points for the main idea, and how to organize content and introduce transitions to make the message "flow."

This handout will discuss strategies to evaluate secondary printed sources—books, journal articles, magazines, etc.—based on three criteria: objectivity, authority, and applicability to your particular assignment. Printed sources, whether primary or secondary, provide the evidence for most of the academic essays you will write in college. Non-print sources, such as webpages, works of art (performance and fine), and interviews often provide significant source material for analysis but are not covered in this handout.

This site offers an extensive archive of handouts and links to videos and other resources to support writing--including reading strategies.

Note taking is an integral skill for learning college material and for writing effective papers and essay exams. Click on the links below for tips about note taking in both lectures and classroom discussions and for moving from your notes to other kinds of writing. Please note, however, that some lectures and some learning styles don't lend themselves well to linear note-taking. If you find yourself listening to a speaker whose ideas are hard to capture in a linear outline, try making a cluster or Web.

This Writing Commons site offers strategies for reading and annotating to help learn large concepts. A video on Active Reading demonstrates annotation processes. Suggestions are listed for types of information to emphasize through annotation.

This SUPERB set of guidelines describes strategies to employ to read critically. Successful critical readers read with a pencil in their hand, making notes in the text as they read. Instead of reading passively, they create an active relationship with what they are reading by "talking back" to the text in its margins.

This Writing Commons site describes a strategy for reading and taking notes that lead to synthesizing information to support your ideas—as opposed to summarizing in order to memorize. This strategy is modeled succinctly in 6 steps.

One very effective technique for avoiding note-bound prose is to respond to powerful quotations in what writing theorist Ann Berthoff calls the double-entry notebook form. The double-entry form shows the direct quotation on the left side of the page and your response to it on the right. There are two advantages to this technique: first, it helps you think about your subject; second, it helps you step away from your sources and discover your own approach and voice.

This workshop handout includes checklist and strategies for improving concentration while studying. The handout is from a San Francisco University Motivation and Concentration Workshop.