College-Ready Writing Essentials™ (A Homeschool Crew Review)

Any of the juniors or seniors in your homeschool heading to college? I had the chance to review College-Ready Writing Essentials™ from BetterRhetor. This just might be what you’re looking for.

I don’t know about your college experience, but mine required a lot of writing. A WHOLE lot of writing. Did you know that the majority of students who are heading off to college aren’t prepared for college-level writing? It’s true. I have heard it first-hand from college professors.

College-Ready Writing Essentials™ was developed by William Bryant, PhD. Dr. Bryant knows what he’s doing. He spent ten years as part of the ACT Test Development team, which included the position of Director of Writing Assessments.

So what is College-Ready Writing Essentials™? It is a self-guided online program. The program is available in two packages, Full or Premium. The Premium package offers personal feedback by Dr. Bryant, himself. We chose to review the Full package.

The program is intended to be a 25 lesson/five-week program. Of course, the beauty of homeschooling allows the user to go at his or her own pace.

The whole goal is to help the student go through the whole process of writing a 3-5 page college-level essay. This process is broken down into easy to inhale steps.

I want to take a few minutes to highlight the basic bones of the program.

The CRWE lessons are divided into 4 Stages.

Planning

Drafting

Revising

Finalizing

Each portion has a certain number of lessons that gently lead the student through a particular process.

For example, Lesson 3 (under the Planning section) is all about Topic. I, myself, have had “topic remorse.” There was that essay I wrote on the hidden symbolism of Our Town.  That experience was miserable. I had a much better time writing about the impact female spies had during the Civil War.

Dr. Bryant helps the student take into consideration a number of factors, including the audience and purpose of their potential topic.  You can imagine that no one was really interested in reading my poor attempt of analyzing Our Town, including me.  Dr. Bryant has terrific advice for this process.

The Drafting portion of the lessons takes the student through the actual writing of the essay. Lesson 16 deals with how to explain your position and provide supporting arguments.

Example essays and other links are provided all throughout the lessons. I personally think it is helpful to have those resources available and included in the lessons. There are also downloadable worksheets that are editable included in each lesson.

By the Revising and Finalizing Stages, students are making adjustments, getting feedback from others and polishing up their work.

This is really a great resource. It is easy to navigate and the student’s progress is easy to track. Most importantly, this is a resource that we have access too for any writing project now and in the future. It can be used for paper writing about multiple topics and disciplines. It is invaluable.

My goal is for my son to enter the world with the ability to express himself. Not only verbally, but with the written word. I want him to sound informed and able to write about things he cares about in a thoughtful and persuasive way. My only complaint about CRWE is that I wish there were some video or audio components available.

Be sure to check it out! Other families reviewed College-Ready Writing Essentials™. Click on the banner below to read more reviews.

You can connect with BetterRhetor via the following social media outlets.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/collegereadywriting
Twitter: https://twitter.com/collreadywrite
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/collegereadywriting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/collegereadywriting