She helped me improve with my essay writing. Take advantage of her office hours so that she can give you better feedback.

Westbay is super nice. She does this: first you go to conference and she's like your paper is overall very well said and effective don't worry too much and then you submit it after edits and she gives you a B and you don't know why.

Everyone knows english professors tend to be subjective with grading and she's really no different about some things. She really cares about coherence and cohesion so make sure you use lots of metabasis and transitions in your paragraphs and in individual sentences. Also parallel structure and things like that she likes. Also if you have too many grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes it will lower your grade a lot.

She also really likes organization and readability. And what I mean by readability is break up your paragraphs a lot and make more than one line space between them sometimes and use small headers. As in "So who's to blame" then paragraph then "What can you do?" then paragraph, that sort of thing. (She really really likes this)

I've talked to others in our class and they have noticed the same pattern. Additionally I would recommend always talking to her after you get each paper back, try to figure out EXACTLY what you did wrong because usually they are just small things and then you can do really well next time. She likes seeing the effort.

great teacher. the best english teacher i've ever had.

take her class if you can!

Professor Westbay is a great professor. She really treats students like adults and it feels like a real college class. Having said that, while she comes of as kind, when it comes to your essay she is very picky, but this is good as for each essay you submit a rough draft to her which she marks and tells you what you need to fix. The reading load is just right, and with work you can do well in the class. Also, always go to her office hours. I ended up with an A- in the class which I was happy with. Take her for 5W!

i took westbay for english 5w, a course which focused on muckraking. it was amazing! shes is such a caring and talented woman! she was always available to discuss papers and really cared about this topic. the things i learned in class were interesting. she gave us a lot of freedom when it came to paper topics. i got an A in her course. to do well in her couse, show interest in the material and do the readings! shes great and is one of my favcorite professors!