Write Better Essays in 20 Minutes a Day

by LearningExpress LLC Editors

Essay writing need not be daunting. Taking the reader step-by-step through the entire process, from the initial organization of ideas to the final stages of proofreading, Write Better Essays in Just 20 Minutes a Day covers all the essentials: how to understand essay questions, create a strong thesis, develop a captivating introduction, support ideas, and revise the work. Included are plenty of sample essays, strategies for planning and revising in-class essays, ways to overcome writer's block, and tips on achieving higher scores on essay exams.

Genres: Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2006

Reviews

[Joseph Wetterling]

This is a relatively short but effective workbook on essay writing. The content is split into sections on pre-writing, writing, and revising. Each section has a series of skills, ordered and taught sequentially, so the student working through it gets a good sense of how to write an essay from start to finish.

While going through the exercises, we took notes, summarizing the steps and advice, duplicating tables, and so on. In the end, we produced about a dozen pages of sequential notes that can be used over and over in future essay assignments. The book itself is somewhat flimsy, and it is a workbook with single-use exercise pages; a good set of notes help apply the value of the book over and over without needing to keep the whole workbook on hand while writing.

While the specific exam information is outdated (and any would be in short order) and the online tools don't seem to be available, the core of the book has been useful and definitely improved my student's writing.

[Erin]

Some useful information that I'm going to try to incorporate into my classes this year.