Homework  

After a long school day, when finally arriving home and having the objects of relaxation right at her finger tips, the last thing a child wants is more school work; and, the last thing a parent wants is to argue over homework. The good news is that over the last fifteen years of teaching and tutoring, we’ve witnessed first hand that with guidance and regular practice, most kids can internalize good homework habits and are eventually able to complete homework independently on a regular basis. 

Here are some tips for helping your child to eventually become independent and successful. 

Establish A Routine

One of the keys to painless homework is to establish a consistent routine. To establish a healthy homework routine, it’s important to involve your child in the discussion. Every person wants control over his/her circumstances and children aren’t any different. A child who has agency will participate more willingly than one who feels controlled and forced, and when children know what to expect tasks become more manageable.  

You should discuss details such as:

• where s/he would like to do homework
• what materials s/he needs and would like
• the time at which s/he would like to begin. Does s/he want to eat for a little while and then complete homework or does he/she prefer to get it done right away and be free? 

The homework session…

Get Organized: Begin each and every session by getting organized. Organize backpacks, folders and notebooks then come up with a game plan for completing the day’s work. 

Plan: Review what there is do, make a list and estimate how long each task will take. Having a sense of the landscape will make navigating it much easier. Also, everyone needs a break and knowing that homework will not be an interminable task can alleviate stress. This is also the time to come up with a plan for long-term assignments. Longer assignments should be broken down into manageable parts and self-imposed due dates should be written into the child’s homework planner. Determine if there will be break in between or if the child would prefer to work uninterrupted. 

Completing the task: If they are to eventually become independent, children must learn how to find information on their own and teach themselves. Teach your children how to search the internet, use youtube.com and reference their textbooks to figure out how to complete work they don’t understand. Anyone who has watched a child type full sentence questions and paragraphs into an internet search box knows that searching the internet successfully is not an innate skill. While you’re helping your child with homework, you should be also helping them to learn how to teach themselves what they don’t know. Model how you would learn something which you had to learn independently. Teach them how to evaluate the quality of a website, how to find useful website and bookmark them. For example, a website such as Khan Academy should be bookmarked and children should know how to navigate it to help themselves. Please see below for list of useful websites.

Hocus Pocus Focus! or What To Do with a Distractible Child

With practice, children (and adults) who have a difficult time concentrating can develop their ability to focus. A useful technique is to work in concentrated spurts and then take a break and gradually increase the time of the work spurts.  With your child, estimate how long s/he could focus very intently on a task. Get a timer, set it for that amount of time. Tell the child s/he will work very intently for that amount of time and then take a five minute break. During the break the child should move around. At first a young child may be able to focus for three-five minutes and an older child or teenager may be able to focus for 10-12 minutes. By adding a minute a week you can develop the child’s ability to focus gradually.  

You may find it hard to imagine that your child will ever start a homework session by organizing folders and backpacks and then setting self-imposed due dates, but we’ve seen it many times that by going through the same process, day after day, children will begin to internalize the routine. It won’t happen overnight and will probably require several months, and in the toughest cases maybe even years, but eventually most children will internalize the homework routine and become independent.

Modeling Behavior: One of the most important ways parents can help their children learn good homework habits is by sitting with their children and modeling the homework routine. We all learn by imitation. By working through these steps together with their kids, parents can help students see the value of them. Taking time to do the first fifteen minutes of homework together each night for a few weeks can help establish the training wheels for good homework practices, and once these are routinized, the training wheels can come off as your kids learn to ride on their own.

Long-Term Thinking. By going through the same routine, day after day, children will begin to internalize the routine. It won’t happen overnight and will probably require several months and maybe even years, but, eventually, although they will probably never grow to love homework, most children will internalize the homework routine and become independent and successful.

-Susana Kraglievich

Central Park Tutors

For more information about how we can help your family with tutoring in NYC, please click here!

I have heard it a million times. “I don’t like reading. Books are boring.”

I don’t know why this time was different, but, when Joey said it to me, I challenged him. “It’s impossible,” I said. “To say books are boring means you think stories are boring. A human who doesn’t enjoy stories is about as likely as a monkey who doesn’t like to swing in trees. Humans are story. You haven’t found what you like.” The room fell quiet and we continued with our lesson on pronouns.

The competition was on. I knew I was right and wanted to prove it. I wracked my brain for how to proceed. Should I let him read comic books? Should I begin with magazines? I finally remembered another student, who was also a reluctant reader and about the same age, who’d become hooked on the Cirque du Freak series. Well, I knew that handing Joey the book and saying, “Give it a try. You’ll love it” would be the equivalent of me trying to tackle Jean Paul Sartre’s autobiography in its original French: not happening. Like a candy salesman trying to hook her customer, I decided to let him taste the sweetness, in hopes of getting him so addicted that he would do anything to get more — even if that meant reading on his own.

I began reading aloud to him and he was immediately addicted. Each day when our time finished, he begged for more. Hearing fluent reading is beneficial for developing fluency and nuanced reading, major factors in comprehension, so I was excited he was spending so much time listening to me read aloud, but I was determined to have him fall in love with reading, and to actually read. Luckily I’d picked a 12 book series, so when we finished the first book I agreed to delve in to the second only if he read every fourth page.

I dreaded when it was his turn to read. He stumbled, I corrected and we both felt bad. But after a couple of weeks I started noticing an improvement — nothing monumental but enough to keep my hopes up. I hated correcting him and trusted my instinct enough to do research on what literacy experts recommend. I was relieved to learn studies show that correcting a child during read aloud is counterproductive, as it frustrates and embarrasses them to the point of avoiding it altogether, so I stopped. It was difficult to stay quiet when he butchered common words, but I knew if I wanted to hook him I had to let it go.

We read two 200+ page novels in three weeks. He begged for more and I agreed as long as he read every third page. We continued this way – I modeled, he butchered- for another two books. His progress was slow and I started worrying my plan was going to fail. Then one day Joey came running into the classroom saying he couldn’t take the suspense anymore and had finished the novel on his own. The boy who “hated books” had read 100 pages on his own in one night! I was stunned and delighted.

Joey and I read the next nine Cirque du Freak books alternating pages. Often he would take the book home and read ahead. My experience with Joey confirmed what I suspected to be true. Kids don’t hate reading, they hate reading what we expect them to read. Left to choose their own books, at levels they can handle confidently, kids will read willingly.

When I tested Joey at the beginning of the year, he was reading at a sixth grade level. By the end of the year and twenty novels later (five of which he read independently), he was reading at a tenth grade level. On the last day of school I proudly gave him a sterling silver bookmark with his name engraved on it.

I encourage you to help your kids find what they love. Take them to the bookstore and let them browse. Teach them to read the first page of a book to see if it feels right and don’t limit their choices. Any book they read, the classics or not, will improve their skills and set them on their way to falling in love with reading.

Susana Kraglievich is the founder of Central Park Tutors. She spent her adolescence reading Sweet Valley High and Danielle Steele and her adult years in love with Tolstoy, Ibsen and the occasional Vogue.

One of the most frequent struggles parents and students ask us to help them with is the disorganized student.  Given the stress that so many students are under in high school these days, often it can feel like a Sisyphean battle, and one that undergirds so much else – academic success, calm at home, family dynamics and even general happiness.

Not to fear!  Organization and time-management are both developmental skills that improve with age (if properly guided) and learned skills that can be internalized. Learning organization is like anything else – it takes time, practice and dedication and the process can be as rewarding as the goal.

Before you jump into these resources, we also recommend perusing our page on teaching principles. Many times, organizational issues can be compounded by academic issues, and helping students find the right approach to learning the material can help tremendously with their ability to organize it. Of course, the reverse is also true, and organization can help improve academics. In that vein, here are ten quick things to think about to help students on their way:

1. Create an office.  Your son or daughter isn’t a CEO yet, but they might as well be. With up to ten classes, plus extra-curricular affairs, students are drowning in paper-work the way most of us are too. They need a proper workspace if they are to keep proper filing methods. Do they have filing cabinets?  Do the cabinets have a clear system? Does everything have a place? Is there enough light, desk space, ample pens, paper etc.? Would you want to do your most important inspired creative work there? If not, how can you help fix it?
2. Break down complex topics. Most major tests and papers will require multiple steps to prepare for and complete. Help your students plan out these steps with clear goals and schedules. As planning goes up, anxiety goes down!
3. Check in with your son or daughter. Ask them if there is any area in regards to school that they need help. Often simply the reminder will prompt them to reflect upon their school work in a new way.
4. Try different note-taking strategies. Some students respond to Roman Numerals, other respond to Web-Notes. Others are best when everything is digitally driven. Others still find recording everything with their iphone is the best way to keep track.  Try out different strategies until you find one that works.
5. Reduce Clutter. Reduce Clutter. Throw away stuff you don’t need. Enough said.
6. Talk through school anxieties with your kids. Often disorganization is a result of anxiety. Usually students’ anxieties are focussed around specific subjects and teachers. Help them come up with strategies for the anxiety and use organization as a way of fighting the anxiety. If you are too nervous to work, use the time to organize!
   
7. At least a week before test, check notes to see if there are any confusing topics or missing notes. Help your students plan ahead to see what the potholes might be and to be proactive in responding to them.
8. Use your old material! Scaffolding is the process of returning again and again to topics covered earlier in the semester to help make sure that learning is building upon learning, and information has not been simply forgotten or thrown away. Spending some time scaffolding before tests is a great reminder of how valuable being organized is and a great spur to help students stay organized.
9. Model organization yourself. As always, most children learn by seeing as much as by instruction, and modeling is the key to great teaching
10. Get help from the experts. If you are still struggling with organization, enlist teachers, tutors, other family members, or turn to some of the experts out there.  

Here are practice tests for the ISEE. Make sure that you select the right practice test for your grade level. Students entering 9th grade or above will be taking the ISEE Upper Level Test. Students entering 7th and 8th grade will be taking the ISEE Middle Level Test, and student entering 5th and 6th grade take the ISEE Lower level test.

Click here for the Lower Level ISEE

Click here for the Middle Level ISEE

Click here for the Upper Level ISEE`

ABSTRACT:

In this four-part series on the college application essay, we consider how to select a topic, some common topic pitfalls, the elements of a great essay, and the writing process in order to help students navigate this under-emphasized portion of the college application process. This is part two: Topics to Avoid for the College Application Essay.

ARTICLE:

Working with students on college application essays, certain topics consistently appear. Students believe these topics will show them in a good light. Unfortunately, the topic is usually obvious, mundane, and will be covered by many, many other students. Rather than highlighting their individual qualities, it reinforces how average they are. What follows are some commonly selected topics that do not accomplish what they are perceived to showcase.

1. The “Try, Try Again” essay––In this essay, the student hopes to show how they have ambition and conviction. S/he tried out for the school team/band/play/club and was not accepted. After a year of practice and good effort, the student went to trials again and this time succeeded. Or, the student expected to ace a class, but then failed a major test, forcing a re-evaluation that led to eventual success (presumably an A). Many students have this experience. I have worked with a group of 20 students in an international workshop and had 4 of them wanting to write this essay, 2 of them about their experience with the soccer team. This essay does not show ambition as they hope; it shows limited experience since this mundane experience is one of the great events in their life. Most teenagers will have had to face failure. In the larger scheme of the world, this is hardly a great personal barrier to have to overcome.

2. The “Community Service” essay––This essay is often based on a church or community service trip to an impoverished nation, where the student discovered the heart-wrenching poverty in this world. Again, many students have this experience. One hopes that young people are aware of the poverty even within their own immediate geographical area. Unless the student can address some major initiative that s/he successfully launched upon return from this experience, which development and execution should be described in detail, this essay too often reads as a sigh of relief at not being poor like those others. If this trip has lead to a career focus, then the essay can be transformed into a detailed discussion of that life’s goal, telling the story of the trip in a sentence or two as a motivating experience.

3. The “I moved” essay––This has the same flaw as the two above in being too common to be inherently interesting. The difficulty of making friends, getting to know a new language or culture, the challenge in changing education systems, the discomfort of being a representative of one’s previous home are true of everyone who has ever moved. Can the student share something truly individual about that experience? Something that no one else could describe? That essay should then be about that experience, which just happened to occur because the student had moved.

4.a) The Death or Loss essay–– The problem with essays about a friend or a family member’s death or suicide, friend’s abuse of drugs or alcohol, or someone else’s eating disorder is their focus on someone other than the student. The first encounter with death, disease, or destruction is shocking, but recognizing the importance of friends and family does not make an adequate college application essay. In addition, this limited space must be devoted to the student’s own life story and personal traits, not the challenges of someone else. Can the student discuss significant new insights they have on the meaning of life, and how they are already implementing these realizations into their current life? If so, the student can write an essay about how s/he makes those values apparent, and mention in passing how this realization was brought forth by a friend or family’s addiction or death.

4.b) The Best Person Ever essay–– The student here usually sees much of their own character being altered by their relationship with this grandparent/teacher/priest/coach. That may be true, but usually the essay becomes entirely about the other person, rather than presenting important qualities about the student. This difficulty can be overcome by shifting the essay to find a story about something the student has accomplished, and narrating that story with reference to qualities that they try to emulate in this other person. This reveals more about the student by presenting how they overcome a difficult situation, showcases traits they admire in others and how they attempt to reproduce them within the context of their own life. 

5.a) The “Parent’s Divorce/Remarriage/Affair” essay––Unfortunately, I have yet to read a student’s essay on a parent that has the necessary distance to avoid sounding plaintive. An application to college implies the student’s maturity to live away from the governing eye of parents. Even a student with the best intentions will likely appear to be caught in their kid-parent turmoil, in the adolescent blame game. I discourage students from writing about their parents. This is related to the other dangerous parent topic:

5.b) The “Parent is a Celebrity/Important Person” essay––This essay can be done well…if it focuses on the student. Otherwise, the student sounds like s/he expects to coast on the parent’s success, even if the student is complaining about how misunderstood s/he is because of the parent’s celebrity (in which case see item 5a above). The student can write a revealing essay about juggling the public and private of his or her own life, explain how difficult personal decisions get made because of the public, or share aspects of life in the shadows of someone’s celebrity. This remains focused on the student and presents the student as self-aware.

These problem topics highlight the difficulty in picking a good essay topic. How to do that is our next topic.

AUTHOR BIO: Charlotte Kent, PhD. lives and works in New York City, where she helps people of all ages improve their writing. 

ABSTRACT:

In this four-part series on the college application essay, we consider how to select a topic, some common topic pitfalls, the elements of a great essay, and the writing process in order to help students navigate this under-emphasized portion of the college application process. This is part one: How to Select a College Application Essay Topic.

ARTICLE:

Selecting the topic for your college admission essay is a major hurdle in the writing process. Though the General Application does provide prompts, the five questions are broad, precisely to cover most high school students’ experiences. Selecting a topic is a matter of personal choice, but it must be done carefully since the essay is the one place, beside the interview, where a student can emerge as an individual from the bulk of high-achieving, athletically-talented, community-oriented student applications.

Picking a topic can not be done well simply by thinking about it. You have to start writing before you even know what to write about. A wise teacher once told me that there was no thinking outside of writing. This is true because writing takes the crystal clear thoughts inside your head and reveals how murky they are when shaped into concrete words.

One way to find a topic is to identify at least three answers to each prompt on the General Application. Try writing one sentence about each answer for each prompt. This is harder than it seems. Here are the 2015-16 General Application Essay Prompts:

PROMPT #1: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

PROMPT #2: The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success.Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

PROMPT #3: Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

PROMPT #4: Describe a problem you’ve solved or a problem you’d like to solve. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took or could be taken to identify a solution.

PROMPT #5: Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

Go ahead. Do it. Try to identify at least three things, major or silly, that you could discuss in reply to these prompts.

From that list, a few will seem like viable topics, but keep this original list because there may be good ideas that need to be rediscovered later. Once you have narrowed the list to a few potential topics, the writing can begin. In ten concentrated minutes, try to write 300-500 words about each of the potential topics. You won’t know which ones have real potential until you see what you have to say about each one. Some seemingly great topics are summed in three sentences. Other less obvious ones will surprise with enormous detail and thought. At this point, there is usually one essay topic that glows with promise.

Take that essay topic and begin to write as much as possible. And, as your English teacher undoubtedly said at some point, show, don’t tell. Don’t tell us you were shocked, but describe the situation so that your reader will experience the shock. Don’t tell us you were excited, sad, that you matured, became a leader, found a friend, discovered your career choice, etc. Describe the event in enormous detail. Describe the colors, the sounds, the temperature, the season, contrast it to where you were coming from or where you went next. You need as much detail as possible here. You should go well over 1000 words. You will edit it later, but for now you need to identify what elements of your experience can be used to show the feelings and thoughts you had.

You may list them. You may select a few to discuss in greater detail. What you do with this information will become how you develop and organize your essay. If your topic is focused on one of these statements then you haven’t done the work yet of understanding why: 1) my religion/education/race/family/passion made me who I am; 2) I changed the way I thought; 3) I changed X because it was the right thing to do; 4) I’m going to do X because it needs to be fixed; 5) X changed me as a person.

The College Application Essay is a psychological experience. It asks you to ask why you are who you are, why you like what you do, why some memories and experiences have stayed with you and influenced you, while others haven’t. There are no easy answers. You can’t fall back on cultural or moral values. You need to identify and explain your own values. Your essay uses an experience as the starting point for addressing what you think is important, not because someone else told you it was important but because you are a self-reflective person who is mature enough to use your critical thinking skills to better understand your motivations, your fears, your aspirations…who you are.

That’s your topic.

AUTHOR BIO: Charlotte Kent, PhD. lives and works in New York City, where she helps people of all ages improve their writing.

ABSTRACT:

In this four-part series, we consider how to select a topic, some common topic pitfalls, the elements of a great essay, and the writing process in order to help students navigate this under-emphasized portion of the college application process. This is part three: What is Good About A Good Essay?

ARTICLE:

What makes a good essay? Some things we’ve been told our whole lives by every English teacher. Interesting syntax. Good grammar. A diversity of sentence styles. Just there, I made a stylistic decision to list noun phrases without a verb, thereby producing a string of incomplete sentences. I decided it would have greater impact on the reader to hear these oft-quoted elements of good writing independent of the supporting sentence structure. It was wrong, grammatically speaking, but to my ear, it was better. The ability to manage your content with intentionally designed sentences and choice words can help you keep your reader’s attention.

In the college essay writing process, keeping your reader’s attention is key.

The admissions folks are reading thousands of essays. They do this for days, for weeks, all day long, trying to answer emails, take phone calls, attend meetings, and manage their own lives too. Your essay either grabs them and holds them, or it slips away, forgotten into a pile as high as their desk.

So tell them a great story. Make them want to read about what you did, saw, thought next. Make them want to know you.

That means your story needs to be personal. It should be personally revealing, not exposing. Tell that truly individual story, but manage the details so that you are in control of what you present. The essay on one student’s stutter did not invoke pity or awkwardness, but revealed an incredibly talented young woman who is excited to discover much about the world, with interests in theater and photography. The stutter was just a catalyst for the rest of who she is.

Focusing on something small but specific can demonstrate what you value, your character, your thoughtfulness regarding your own life. A student wrote an essay that started off listing all the things he doesn’t like, because that was the best way to challenge the notion that he should know who he is and what he wants at the young age of 17. In doing so, he made insightful remarks about American youth culture. Another student had always known he wanted to be a doctor, but he wrote about fundraising for a children’s cancer fund, frustrated that he couldn’t do more. HIs life goal was implicit in everything he did and his essay made that apparent.

Find the essay that reveals something special about yourself. A favorite word/color/book/artwork can explain more about who you are then describing your family, a trip you took, or how you always succeed. One young woman was writing a pretty standard essay about her nice upbringing, when she realized that even though she wasn’t a musician, music was important to her. She had music to study, and to wake up in the morning. She listened to music to calm herself, as well as to have fun. She shared it with friends and her family. In discussing the role certain songs played in her life, she presented a well-rounded, emotionally stable, pleasant young woman that would be a delightful contribution to the college community. The college admissions officer had only to look at her school transcript to confirm she was an excellent student and good athlete, too.

Students have often received good advice on strengths they can address in their essay, but every once in a while a student is advised by those who are well-meaning, but overly protective. Going to college means leaving home. Writing an essay that is true to who you are is the first step in establishing your own ground. You must do it well, if you want your new independence to succeed. I worked with a young woman from Beirut whose essay was able to convince her family that she should be allowed to go to fashion school in Paris rather than become a dental hygienist and stay home. The urgency with which she wrote about her passion was palpable. She had been through political uprisings but, as she acknowledged, so had many others around the world. Her consummate love of fashion on the other hand was its own revolution. She took a risk in writing that essay, but her clarity of purpose made every word ring. 

The challenge in explaining what makes a good college essay is that the rules will change for every person. The best college essays are personal and insightful. They express core qualities of the applicant. How they do so will depend on the person. Take your time. Keep a journal. Write, write more, write things that make you question and squirm. Struggle to be honest. Once you find the element or story that is deeply important to who you are, to how others should understand you, then you can shape it into the perfect college essay.

AUTHOR BIO: Charlotte Kent, PhD. lives and works in New York City, where she helps people of all ages improve their writing. 

ABSTRACT: In this four-part series on the college application essay, we consider how to select a topic, some common topic pitfalls, the elements of a great essay, and the writing process in order to help students navigate this under-emphasized portion of the college application process. This is part four: Shaping the College Application Essay.

ARTICLE:

I know that editing is a rushed process for most people– a quick read-thru to make sure there are no glaring spelling errors and voila! Done!

No one likes to hear that a good essay takes six or more drafts.

In this section, I will explain the ten steps and introduce the questions that a writer can ask to help focus the editing process.

By the way, in this process, save every draft, every sheet of free-writing, every note you take. Do not save over documents, but save each draft as a new document. I still use the numbering system from the publishing company where I worked, so that I can always find that sentence from an earlier draft that I deleted and now need again (Gen App Essay-d1, Gen App Essay-d2, etc.). This will save you much frustration later on when you want that perfectly phrased thought from a month ago.

Step 1. Your original list of potential topics, as addressed in the first part of this series.

Step 2. Your expansion of the selected topic in great detail.

Step 3. Begin to organize your essay. Select which details about the topic are important; decide their order so that they lead to the conclusion of what you want to present about yourself; cut and paste information until it is ordered as you wish; write a sentence for things that are missing, that you have not described yet, so that you know what you need to include later. (This is usually my -d1.)

Step 4. Draft. Based on your plan, start writing all the information that is missing. Try to describe everything that you state. Later, you can make stylistic choices about when to punctuate descriptions with statements of realization, of growing awareness, etc. For now, describe, describe, describe. There is nothing you cannot describe, only things you have never tried to describe before. At the end of this process, most find that they have somewhere between 1200 and 1800 words.

Step 5. Refine. At least 72 hours after you’ve written the first draft, return to it and highlight only those phrases (not full sentences) that ensure the story is coherent. Do not highlight full sentences, because too many sentences are long and include superfluous information. Identify elements that you think add key characteristics about who you are in bold. These may be one sentence, but not a series of sentences. Copy (not cut) and paste these highlighted and bold items into a new document by themselves. Yes, they will be incomplete sentences, and disjointed elements. This allows you to see the skeleton of your essay. What is missing? Are elements missing because you have not described them or because you are vague in your descriptions? What minimal elements can you incorporate from the full draft in order to get the full panoply of the experience you are discussing? You may need to rephrase elements that took a whole paragraph in your previous draft. You can shorten or eliminate back story. How important are descriptions of secondary figures? Can their role be simplified, alluded to, or eliminated? Use a thesaurus to find words that can replace wordy phrases.

Step 6. Find fresh eyes. At this point, you will be sick of your essay. You will be confused about what you are saying now, versus what you said in a previous draft. This is normal and how all writers feel about their work. For that reason, you probably want someone with fresh eyes to take a look. You do not want to find someone sympathetic. You need someone who will give you a lot of harsh truths about how the work is organized, whether it is actually saying anything interesting about you, and make suggestions for how to improve. Many, many people get angry and depressed at this stage. Especially if it seems like they might need to start all over again with a new topic; this is more common than people like to think. Be aware of common defensive reactions, as these will only keep you from necessary improvement:

1. “My work is autobiographical. This event really happened this way.”

2. “It’s supposed to be vague.” or “You’re not supposed to get it.”

3. “I don’t believe in revision. My writing comes out right the first time.”

Ideally, at this point, you are still a month away from the due date. When you get the critical feedback, try to get it in writing, or make sure the person is willing to have the conversation recorded. If you are like most people, you will be so frustrated that you decide to take a week (or more) away from the essay to recover. You won’t remember everything when you return, so you need to have the information available for your review when you do.

Step 7. Revise your draft. Reorganize, change the focus, bring new details into the essay. This is another writing stage and the essay can start to seem long again. That’s okay, you will edit later. Nevertheless, try to write simply and succinctly. This stage takes focused attention because you have a clear directive. This step can result in two new drafts as you try something out, then try it out in a different way. As always, keep every major change you make as a new draft.

Step 8. Edit again. Read your new essay aloud and restate anything that is awkward. You may wish to have the person who reviewed your essay before take another look and give you some pointers. Consider the organization and make sure that the introduction captures what you will address and engages the reader to keep reading. Does every point lead to the next? Is your ending abrupt or too long? All this, and aim for your essay to be around 500 words.

Step 9. A week later, edit for grammar and style. Revisit the introduction. This might be all they read. Does it make them want to read more? Edit, edit, edit. You should have a really good reason why your essay is over 600 words.

Step 10. Edit again at least 48 hours later, to try to catch any last typos or missed punctuation marks. If you are lucky, you have enough time to edit one last time, another 48 hours later.

Notice that I did not mention the introduction until the end. Who knows what your introduction will be when you start? You haven’t written anything yet to introduce! Some find it easier to start by writing the conclusion and then backtrack because that can help them focus on including elements that lead to the conclusion. No matter what, I have consistently found that just about everything changes from the beginning to the last draft. That’s how the writing improves. You became clearer about who you are, what you want to say, and how you will say it. Good luck!

AUTHOR BIO: Charlotte Kent, PhD. lives and works in New York City, where she helps people of all ages improve their writing. 

The NY Times did a great piece on the New SAT today. Here it is:

Everything You Need to Know About the New SAT

Here is the relevant material from the College Board as well, publishers of the SAT:

The New SAT From the College Board