The Writing Wizard
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Hello dear readers! The Writing Wizard is back with a few quick tips to help you prepare for the last few weeks before test day for your SAT-I and SAT-II Subject Exams. If you have been reading this excellent blog, then you know that other posts from April and May have been providing dynamite advice on how to structure your testing schedule week ...
A blank page intimidates people. Time and again as a writing tutor working in Boston I have had the following experience: I meet a student, I read their paper, and I come across an unclear passage.
Writing is essentially about communicating something to another person. You have an idea in your head, and you want to put it on paper so that when another person looks at the paper, they know what your idea was. As a writing tutor, I know that a number of factors can interfere with this, and putting your idea into words is only part of your task. ...
With the school year drawing to a close, many students are gearing up for summer classes for standardized test preparation. The summer can be an optimal time to prepare for an exam such as the SAT, LSAT, MCAT, or a number of other standardized exams. Students can focus all their energies into studying for an exam, without the extra demand of ...
Nothing is more frightening to a writer than a blank page. When you sit down to begin an essay, and as you go along, you can often feel anxieties that cause the writing process to be more painful or difficult than it needs to be. As a private writing tutor in Cambridge I've seen a variety of difficulties, but for the most part they all boil down ...
I’ve been a history student and history tutor for more years than I’d like to count. So needless to say, I’ve written (and graded) many papers. And as an academic tutor in New York City, I’ve worked with many students who have trouble getting enthused about any kind of research paper, let alone in turning that paper into a clear, well-argued, and ...
Hello, faithful readers! The Writing Wizard is back with another tip to help you organize your ideas for papers and projects.
Critical Reading Leads to be Better Blood Flow in the Brain….. A recent Stanford MRI study has confirmed what many of our literary forbears and many a current teacher & tutor have always known sans a fancy neuroscience machine: Reading critically and actively expands how one thinks. Maybe then it is no surprise that the Stanford study was an ...
We’ve all been subjected to that lecture in middle school Language Arts class about the differences between “showing” and “telling” with our writing—about the stylistic separation between providing sensory details around a piece of information and just stating that piece of information outright. In the context of seventh-grade compositions, this ...
Greetings from the Writing Wizard! Continuing the thread of posts related to minimal language, maximal impact, today we’re going to talk about two editing strategies that may help you in your travels through the worlds of homework, papers, admissions essays, cover letters, etc. Both originate in popular culture, although I can only definitively ...
Happy New Year from the Writing Wizard! Today’s short post will introduce you to an important concept for all sorts of writing projects: The Arsenal of Adjectives. Don’t be put off by the intimidating title; you won’t need a background in military strategy or nuclear arms proliferation theory to master this simple idea: have lots and lots of ...
Today is Black Friday, that infamous day in consumer culture marked by deep discounts, long lines, and equal demonstrations among Americans of civility and barbarity. Although I am not in a position to offer you flat screen TVs, flannel sheet sets, or iPhones at incredibly low prices, I do want to partake in the spirit of the season and give you ...
The Writing Wizard is back again with a strange but useful tip for breaking through your mental blocks and clearing the cobwebs from the furthest reaches of your brain when you prepare to write. Other people may think that you are a crazy person for doing this, or perhaps you do it already, but here it is: have a nice, long conversation with ...
Hello out there in TV Land! The Writing Wizard is back with some short pieces of advice about time-management and self-confidence during the writing process. All too often, I hear students bemoan the time they “waste” on “unproductive” habits while working: generating sloppy first drafts that just end up in the trash bin; doing too many other ...