Over several weeks, you will have to write several essays on multiple topics in different courses. Some instructors will provide you with the subject, and some instructors will allow you to choose your own topic. The topics can range from personal narratives, documentary analysis, laboratory reports, literary analyses, or ethnographic research. Whatever the case, you need a strategy. This may sound daunting, but you will do well if you plan ahead before you began your writing. Gone are the days of the five-paragraph, pyramid, or the AP essay as a form to compose your topic. Instead, most college instructors will give you an assignment with an enormous amount of information that you must scale down to write a clear and focused essay. But before you write the first word in your writing—you must read the first word in the texts that are assigned that you discover during your research.

Close Reading is Critical Reading

Close reading is simply being observant of the nuances in the text. Therefore, close reading is critical reading. Most authors will unfold their information in texts incrementally rather than abruptly. This helps the reader to engage a topic and to understand all of the subtleties that comprise it. If you find a topic difficult, you may have to read it more than once. This doesn't mean that you cannot understand the subject. It simply means that you realize that there is a missing link in your grasp of the topic. And before you can move forward, you have to reread a passage or two again. Believe it or not, that's a good thing! You realize that your learning style requires a certain level of information before you can carry on.

Since you will have to read a lot in college on a multitude of topics, you need a few strategies:

• Have a conversation with the text, particularly with confusing and complex information
• Reread critical passages for comprehension and clarity
• Annotate important passages for in-text citation and classroom conversation
• Note the transitional words and sentence structure for meaning
• Summarize what you read in your own words
• Synthesize what you read to other information

Writing is Reading, Research, and Re-Writing

Now that you have read the texts and completed your research reading, it is time to write. There are many books on writing, but what they all agree on is time -management. Writing is not a night before an assignment is due task. It requires strategic action if you want the optimum assessment of your writing from your instructor—an "A" on the essay. After all of your reading, you should have narrowed your topic. Now you need to outline and get started with the writing. But here are some steps to get you started in the process:

• Define Your topic and narrow its scope depending on the number of pages required defined by your instructor
• Do your research and read the assigned texts
• Write a thesis statement to argue and support with passages from the readings
• Outline your essay so that you stay on course and help your reader to understand the journey you are taking them on
• Paragraphing is essential, so consider these: introductory paragraph, body paragraphs, and concluding paragraph
• Don't forget to cite your sources -- your instructor will tell you to use either the Modern Language Association (MLA) or American Psychological Association (APA)

Your instructor will probably introduce you to Aristotle and his treatise on ethical and persuasive writing in your First-Year Writing course, The Art of Rhetoric. Aristotle created a framework that most writing instructors still use to teach writing. The five canons of rhetoric are critical to the prewriting and writing process:

• Invention            (inventio)            the beginning stage
• Arrangement     (disposition)       organization of the argument
• Style                     (elocutio)            your tone and voice
• Memory              (memoria)          your retrieval of information from thought
• Delivery               (actio)                  the presentation

Of course, each instructor has their unique way of teaching the process of writing—but all will agree that reading and writing are connected. Further, close reading should become a habit of mind when expanded thinking is needed to create longer forms of writing. It all begins with time management