Mccracken: I think the three skills that students need to write in college settings are all tied into understanding the rhetorical situation. So every time they sit down to write, I tell my students I want you ask, who am I writing this for? Who's going to be my audience? Am I writing this as an essay exam for my faculty member? Am I writing this as a note to myself, or a letter to someone? So think about your audience.

I want them to think about why am I doing this assignment? So there are assignments that you do because you're trying to demonstrate that you learned the material. That's going to be a very different assignment than if you go into a philosophy class, for example, and you need to demonstrate that you can think about it, and kind of engage with a text.

So think about your audience, think about your purpose, and then think about the form. What are the expectations? An in class essay is going to have some different expectations on it, in terms of content, and style, and correctness than that in class essay that the professor gave you 15 minutes to complete. So if they can think about audience, purpose, and form, I think that will at least get them ready to start asking the kinds of questions they need of their professors to determine how am I going to shape this for this particular audience, this particular discipline, this particular professor?