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respond to this post with any ideas you have for revising your essays. What do you see as a common error among all your essays? Posted by olawale on Aug 31, 2009. |
Essay Lab Group
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You are being asked to do a self-assessment of your writing, and obviously, since none of us has seen your writing, we cannot provide you with anything but the most general advice. Probably the first step is to examine all of the writing that has been turned in and assessed and to see if any of the feedback you have received has common elements. Then, there are various categories of assessment that you will want to look at as you do your self-assignment. Are you organized in your writing? By that, I mean does each paragraph discuss just one topic or point? Do you have introductions in your papers that give the reader the main idea and provide a preview of your writing? Do you provide conclusions that offer the reader a review of your ideas? How about your use of APA or MLAfor citation? Do these conform to requirements? Do you rely too much on quotations to make your point or do you use your own ideas and rely on sources to just support your ideas? Is your sentence structure correct, with no comma splices, run-ons, or fragments? Do your subjects and verbs agree in number? Do you have good sentence variety, sentences of varying length and complexity? Are your ideas clearly expressed? Do you have any difficulty with frequently confused words, such as "there" and "their"? Those are just a few ideas to get you going. Good luck in your self-assessment! Posted by speamerfam on Aug 31, 2009. |
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I like the previous post's idea of examining the writing from different points of view. I would echo such sentiments. One thing that I think helps here is reading/ editing of one work with different elements in mind. Perhaps, one reading of it could be for content, another time for mechanics, and yet another for accuracy of statements. When one is engaging in the self reflection of writing, it is a process that is quite literally under erasure and revision. Posted by akannan on Sep 3, 2009. |
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One thing I try to have my students do when revising their own writing is to look at sentence structure and fluency. I have them create a two column chart. On one side of the chart they will record the number of words in each sentence. They enter a new sentence word count in each row of the table. This allows them to see if they have a tendency to use repetitious patterns in their sentences too frequently. In the other column I have them record the first four words of each sentence. They enter a new sentence beginning on each line. This shows them boring repetitions at the beginning of their sentences. What many of my students find with this part of the activity is that they use too many pronouns. Revise your paper to eliminate these weaknesses. Posted by ask996 on Sep 7, 2009. |
