How Do I Get a Higher Score on My In Class Essay?

To improve your expository (or analytical) writing, consider the following:

1. Textual support. Your statements may be correct, but does each have specific support from an event or conversation? Let "for instance" be your motto, even though we won't write those words so often. Lots o' support; lots and lots of specific support; yes, support.  Support after your topic sentence; tie the support back to your thesis before you go to the next paragraph...where you provide more extremely specific support for your next topic...until you conclude your well-supported essay.  

2. Development. If you don't get much down on paper, there's less room for you to make a good case.

3. Intelligent word choices and phrases. Are you repeating the same verbs, nouns, or adjectives needlessly?  Passive voice? 

4. Sentence variety. Have you put punctuators (beside the comma and period) to good use?  Semicolons?  Dashes?  Rhetorical sweetness?

• Schemes (creative structures...for both your reading and your writing)
• Tropes (creative meaning..more for your reading and interpreting)

5. Elements: Slip in literary elements connected to your thesis and text (not simply for the joy of naming) whenever possible.  Tie that element back to your topic sentence and/or thesis.  Yes, tie that element back to your topic sentence and/or thesis.  Yes, do that.  Yes, indeed, do that.