Letter To Ninth Graders Summary

The article “An Open Letter to Ninth Graders” by Patrick Sullivan discusses what a first year highschool student should know about the importance of reading, writing, thinking, listening, grit, and attitude have towards college readiness and preparation. This article is helpful to first year students by informing what they should work on during their four years. The three concepts I have chose to elaborate more on are writing, reading comprehension, and listening. I believe these concepts are useful, and beneficial to new freshman students. Writing has a big role in college and takes a considerable amount of effort. For example, in the text Patrick Sullivan states that, “Students who are ready for college routinely plan to produce multiple drafts of essays; expect to read and reread assigned texts; expect to think and rethink key ideas they are exploring in their essays; and routinely ask friends, family members, tutors, and professors for feedback about their work”. This means that getting advice and having others read through your writing assignments and accepting their advice will benefit your writing. The article also explains that it is possible for you to improve your writing skills. It includes a list of behavioral skills to have in order to improve writing skills. Reading comprehension is

For example, Patrick Sullivan states that, “college success depends on establishing strong working relationships with professors, college staff, and fellow students. Such relationships are built… with strong listening skills… good listeners are also able to suspend an interest in themselves and focus instead in respectful ways on what others think and feel.”. He says this because being able to listen and hear what others tell you helps you to emphasize and understand them. If you do not understand what is being told to you, you can not