Two things are required in order to do well on any college entrance test. The first is being fully familiar with the test, what is in it and how it works - before you enter the testing room. The second is to have a clear plan for each part of the test.

The SAT essay is somewhat formulaic in that you must have an introduction, a thesis statement, at least three paragraphs devloping the thesis - with evidence, and then a concluding paragraph. Th…

In teaching your home-schooled teenager how to write well, what are the most important writing skills they need to learn? Different writers would likely produce different lists of skills, but here are five that I consider at least among the most important for effective writing.

1. Change weak verbs to action; omit useless words.

Although maybe not as important as my second on this list, I place…

It is general knowledge that more of Agatha Christie’s books have been sold in more languages than any other writer in history, save the Bible.

Why?

I have held this question in my mind as a strong curiosity for many years. I have no doubt that a thousand years from now millions of people will still be reading and watching Agatha Christie stories. At some point the “experts” will be forced to…

I taught a poetry unit to high school students twice over the years. I have all of the things I used stuffed incoherently into three large file folders. The thing is, I really enjoyed teaching that unit, yet I have never before brought it out of the total mess in which it exists and into a form useful to anyone wishing to learn a bit about writing poems.

Again, I took a graduate level course on…

The Internet is a whole world in itself. Three kinds of people rule the web: programmers, designers, and writers. Programmers make it work, designers make it look good, and writers fill it with stuff. Never before in history has the writer had such a dominant and influential role.

Although anyone can write, the marketplace has a way of quickly separating out those who convince their readers from…

The Writing Road to Reading, developed by Romalda Spalding, is a unique approach to teaching children to read. This approach starts with the child writing the letters of groups of letters representing each sound in the English language. Children have already mastered the most complex learning task of their life by the time they are three - that of learning a language. They know the sounds and the words. Wr…

Many parents of home-schooled teenagers ask themselves: "Is my child missing out on science or math or even writing skills by not being in the 'mainstream?' Will they survive college?" Having been both a home-school dad and a public and private high school teacher, I know the questions. I also know the answers. "NO! Your child is not missing out." And: "They will make you proud."

Pick up any book or magazine on writing or learning to write and what do you find? You will find many things said about writing well. The problem is that reading ideas about writing or even reading great writers does not teach anyone how to write well. How then do we learn to write? Learning to write well involves copying great writers, writing and re-writing profusely, and finding outside critique of your writing.…