Very effective writing, for me, means writing that communicates the author's message clearly to their intended audience.
To write effectively, first consider who your audience is. In college, it is your professor, and they are interested in you analyzing and applying information from experts to real-world and often current issues. They want to know your original, authentic thoughts about experts' ideas, which you cite. In high school, we are often encouraged to just summarize experts' ideas, but in college, we must take it a step further and add our thoughts on how their ideas fit together or clash and what we think is true.
Second, consider what you want to say. What is your message? In college, it is very important that your opinions of topics are well-informed. Before you can even have a well-informed opinion, you must do your research, read many different expert ideas, consider your experience and knowledge, make sense of the information as a whole, and possibly how to apply it in the real world.
Finally, effective writing is clear, so consider how you want to say it. There are basic things: your ideas and sources must be organized in a logical way and transition easily between paragraphs and sections, it must use correct spelling and grammar, and your examples must be understandable and relatable. But there are also higher-level things like writing strategies and argument techniques.
I am confident your instructor can offer you examples of effective writing to give you an even clearer idea as it relates to your specific project. Please remember that you have many resources at PSCC to help you: Ask a librarian to help with creating a research question, finding sources, and citation; writing tutors (ascatutor@pstcc.edu) to help with making your writing clear; and your instructor for overall guidance. Please reach out: Helping students is one of the best things I get to do in my job!
