How to Write an Essay

by Maggie Sokolik

What does it take to write a good essay? This book covers the basics of grammar, sentence construction, and paragraphs, and then outlines how to plan and write an essay. You will find writing prompts, vocabulary lists, and editing exercises (with suggested answers).

This text was written to accompany the online course of the same name, the first of two courses offered by College Writing Programs of the University of California, Berkeley through edX.org. For students in the course, this book offers additional ways to practice writing, editing, and reviewing the materials. However, the materials here are independent of the course, and function as an effective study of the essay writing process.

90 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 2013

About the author

Maggie Sokolik holds a BA in Anthropology from Reed College, and an MA in Romance Linguistics and Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA. She is the author of over thirty ESL and composition textbooks. She has taught at MIT, Harvard, Texas A&M, and currently UC Berkeley, primarily in College Writing Programs, where she his the Director of College Writing Programs. Most recently, she developed and taught the MOOC course “How to Write an Essay,” through edX (http://edX.org) and in partnership with the US Department of State; this course enrolled over 130,000 students in its first year. She is the founding editor of TESL-EJ (http://tesl-ej.org), a peer-reviewed journal for ESL/EFL professionals, one of the first online journals--nearing its 20th anniversary. Maggie travels frequently to speak about grammar, writing, and instructor education.