Professor Jean-Michel Rabaté

About the Professor

Professor Rabaté is a professor of both English and Comparative Literature here at Penn. He has an extensive collection of work and has written or edited more than thirty books. In addition, he is the managing editor of the Journal of Modern Literature and president of the American Samuel Beckett Studies Association. He emphasizes specificity when choosing topics for essays. To improve writing, he suggests that students copy pages from books by hand.

Writing Tips

1. Copy passages from books writing them out by hand to improve style.
2. Don't choose too broad a theme to tackle in a paper -- trust yourself to be able to write a paper on a specific aspect of your topic.
3. Re-write, re-write, re-write! Don't be afraid to re-write your paper or have multiple drafts. They should get better every time.
4. Write an abstract of your idea before you write the paper itself.

Examples of Professional Writing