BetterRhetor – a TOSCrew Review

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BetterRhetor – College-Ready Writing Essentials™

The opportunity to use and review BetterRhetor‘s – College-Ready Writing Essentials™ couldn’t have come along at a better time.

Judy, age 16, told me that she planned on going to college in order to further her interest in being a firefighter. She is already a junior firefighter but doesn’t want to stop there. Her next step is to become an EMT. (EMT = Emergency Medical Technician) She doubled up on her schoolwork, forfeited her summer vacation, and said she was preparing to go to college as soon as possible.

I have been a homeschooling mama of many since 1993. I am a self-published author of multiple e-books for over a dozen years. Plus, I have authored blogs since before the general public even knew what the word blog meant. Even with all of that writing and teaching experience, the words College-Ready Writing struck fear into my heart.

Truthfully, we were totally intimidated when we read the Overview Section of CRWE, but we stayed calm and remembered that they were discussing things we were going to learn, and not talking about stuff we should already know. CRWE reminded us that we weren’t actually doing college-level work, but we were taking this course in order to be prepared to do college-level work.

BetterRhetor Lessons

BetterRhetor consists of 25 lessons. These lessons are aimed at helping the student to work through the writing course on their own.

These lessons are made to be completed over a five-week study plan. But, the nice thing about the lessons is your student can work through them at his or her own pace.

My student was not able to complete the plan in five-weeks, and that’s okay. She is taking it all in at her own pace.

Isn’t that what homeschooling is all about? BetterRhetor works perfectly as a homeschool curriculum.

Since there are only 25 lessons, we decided to go with the “a little dab with do ya” approach.

Lesson One

Lesson one is simply an overview of the entire course. It walks your student through what is expected of them, and what exactly college will be looking for in a written report.

We learned that college is looking for more than just good sentences and paragraphs. They are looking for things like critical thinking, perspectives, and community. They want to see your student be able to interact with others logically.

Honestly, this part surprised me. I figured college writing would just focus on your writing skills. It makes sense, however, that they are looking for good communication skills overall.

Lesson Two

My student was ready to jump into the writing process with lesson two. CRWE wasn’t quite ready for us to start that part yet, though.

We needed to slow down and take time to think over a few things first.

Who was our audience?

What was our purpose in writing?

Lessons Three and Four

Next, Judy had to choose a topic and start researching it.

Sounds simply, right? Not so much. Judy took quite a few days just deciding on her topic. She finally decided on writing a persuasive article to prove that, of all things, the earth is round.

(Yes, there are a number of people today who believe in a flat earth!)

Lesson Five

This lesson taught us to read our researching sources critically.

Who wrote the information we were reading?

What was their purpose in writing?

We needed to make sure our sources were credible.

One of Judy’s sources was NASA.

(Seems pretty credible, wouldn’t you say?!?)

Lesson Six

By this point, the student should have their topic picked out and researched. They should have chosen a controversial topic and are preparing to write a good argument stating their position.

Lessons One through Six

Although, Judy wanted to jump into the writing process on day one, it really did take lessons one through six to get us prepared to write.

Who Could Benefit from This Course?

College-Ready Writing Essentials™ is meant to be used by both Junior and Senior high school students. Sophomores could definitely benefit from it too. I also recommend it for high school graduates who are planning to go on to college at some point. Even adults who want to really improve their writing skills could benefit from CRWE.

CRWE

College-Ready Writing Essentials™ (CRWE) was created by Ph.D William Bryant.

CRWE offers a FREE mini-course, a full-package deal for $49.00, or a premium package for $99.00.

The premium package comes with Dr. W. Bryant’s personal feedback on your student’s composition.

Dr. W. Bryant’s Personal Feedback

We received the premium package in exchange for an honest review through the TOS Homeschool Review Crew.

Like I mentioned earlier, the premium package comes with Dr. W. Bryant’s personal feedback on your student’s composition.

This is not a complicated process either!

Dr. W. Bryant makes this process as painless as can be.

We were given very detailed directions on how to type up our completed report.

After that, we just simply emailed the report to him and awaited his response.

The feedback started out by praising Judy’s topic, and telling her which parts and points worked well in her report.

Then, he followed up by pointing out where it needed to be improved and how following the CRWE’s direction more closely would result in a better finished product.

I appreciated how he used both praise and instruction in his critic.