This level of the Writing Tutorials is modeled on college-level composition courses. Students complete a lesson every ten to twelve days. In addition to individual attention from a tutor and interaction with CD ROM lessons, students access an online writing community where they interact with each other. In response to student essays, tutors comment on form, style, and content, generally holding students' work to college-level standards.
Critiques explain successes and delineate problems needing further work.
Sentence-level issues of grammar are not the main focus of instruction. Rather, tutors help students understand that conventions of Standard Written English are part of what, for many audiences, marks a careful, learned writer, but that writing is always much more than adherence to conventions. Level 3 develops clear communication of personal experience, primarily through the familiar essay. This level addresses such tactical issues as parallelism and such strategies as narration, description, and the use of persona. Students discover the correlation between experience and ideas.