Week 10: Week 10 — Q1 Review and Timed Writing

1. Metacognition is thinking about your own thinking — identifying what you know, locating your gaps, and adjusting how you study. It is the first step in effective revision.
2. Revision is substantive rethinking: strengthening claims, adding evidence, improving organization. It is distinct from proofreading, which corrects surface errors.
3. Development means fully explaining and supporting every claim — not just asserting a point and moving on. Each claim needs evidence and a sentence that connects the evidence to the claim.
4. Unity requires that every sentence in a paragraph, and every paragraph in an essay, serves the central claim. Anything off-topic, however interesting, should be cut.
5. Precision means using the exact word for the exact idea, not the approximate word. Precision often requires deleting rather than adding.
6. Fluency in a timed write means keeping ideas moving onto the page, accepting imperfection in the moment, and generating enough material to work with.
7. Organization: thesis first, each body paragraph with a clear topic sentence, a conclusion that returns to the thesis with earned insight (not just restatement).
8. Emphasis: first and last positions in a sentence and in a paragraph are strongest. Peripheral information belongs in the middle.
9. Coherence across an essay: consistent key terms, clear pronoun reference, and transitions that remind the reader of the essay's direction.
10. Voice is the distinctive combination of diction, syntax, and perspective that makes a piece identifiable as the work of one writer. Voice is developed through volume — reading and writing a great deal.

Ask at home: What do you know now about how you write that you did not know in Week 1?

En español: ¿Qué sabes ahora sobre cómo escribes que no sabías en la Semana 1?