Top online tutors near McLean, VA

P
$120

3 lessons

60 mins each

Phil Ebersole
Silver Spring, MD

Teacher - Attorney

I love everything about writing - from the initial draft to the final edits - though writing good, solid prose is no walk in the park. But the benefits to learning how to write well, never stop. Scientists have even asserted that writing causes regions of a writer's brain to become more active because the writer may be subconsciously seeing the scenes in their head that they are writing down - just as though the action were happening to them in real life. When I taught high school social studies and tutored language arts, I always made sure that my students did a lot of writing. And though it may sound old-fashioned, I do still rely on E.B. White’s Elements of Style, as the foundation for teaching my students how to write. I know it has served me well in my work as a freelance writer formulating speeches and creating promotional pamphlets. My sense is that too often students and teachers allow the mechanics of writing to get in the way of what they want to express. I often tell my students to just "write what they mean." From there we can deal with the grammatical mechanics of writing, but with an emphasis on using the active voice. Using the active voice to write can be difficult to get used to, but when appropriately put to work, it often simplifies sentence structure, eliminates unnecessary words, and forces the students to write in more compellingly and persuasively. I think it's the key to good writing.

$120

3 lessons

60 mins each