Frances C. Learn to write with an Oxford literature scholar

Frances C.

A graduate of Smith College (A.B.) and Oxford University (Ph.D.), I have twenty years of experience in teaching English literature and history to undergraduates at Oxford (UK) and The New School (NYC). At Oxford, where individualized tutoring is the norm, three-quarters of my students obtained either Firsts or Upper-Seconds (A and B+ averages ) on the subjects I taught. At the New School (where I teach presently), I have received excellent and superlative course evaluations and faculty observation assessments; in fact, in 2011, I was nominated for a Distinguished Teaching Award. During this period (2000-2019), my experiences in writing and editing have enhanced my skills in teaching essay writing: I have not only produced modern editions of two pre-20th-century novels and reviewed scholarly monographs, but also published a few peer-reviewed articles as well as pedagogical materials on history and literature. Not least, I have just completed a textbook on Thomas Paine's Rights of Man for Routledge and have recently been appointed as an advisory editor at Anthem Press and Manchester University Press.

So why am I tutoring on top of my regular teaching and editorial activities? Because I've come to realize that far too many students arrive at college without sufficient training: at least a third fail to write an essay that is both cohesive and compelling as well as grammatically and syntactically correct. There is, after all, only so much that any one teacher can do to help students learn how to construct an argument given the limitations of time and space. The fact is that the practice of good writing demands close attention and practice. It begins with learning how to craft a solid argument, provide pertinent examples, and arrange them strategically.

But good essay writing doesn't end there. Many students--and sometimes even literature instructors themselves--are too frequently prone to writing drab sentences with little variety in structure or length. They reach for the same words over and over again: and th