Common Writing Errors: The Horror!

This is a new week, and I am desperately trying to keep up with everything I need to do, much like most of my students. Yes, as a semester progresses and more assignments are due, most will start to feel the pressure mounting. Indeed, some may even slack off on their work in their attempts to just "get it in." Part of the challenge of college is learning how to navigate through the many challenges and obstacles unscathed while still turning in the best work manageable. This means students need to work on proofreading and learning how to recognize the most common errors in their writing. Doing so will impress instructors and improve a student's chances of exiting out of developmental writing.

First and foremost, students must learn to work ahead of time. Most essays are given in advance. However, many students wait, for various reasons, until the last moment to work on their essays. Waiting until the last moment creates an environment where a student has very little time to proofread and correct his/her writing. Students frantically try to push out an essay in an hour or two and think that's the best they can do. Good writers do not wait until the last minute. They write and revise and revise and revise and revise. Indeed, good writing is not found in the writer who can complete an essay the fastest, but good writing is found in the writer who spends as much time as possible perfecting his/her work. Spending about an hour a day (between the date the essay instructions are received and the due date) on an essay is a good place to start.

Now, I'm going to depart from the normal essay structure here for a bit and define some of the most common writing errors: run-ons, comma-splices, and fragments.

A run-on is a sentence that fuses two or more complete sentences together into one long sentence students who commit this error fail to recognize that punctuation helps the reader more clearly understand the ideas in each sentence.

A comma-splice is similar to a run-on, it occurs when a student fuses two complete sentences together with a comma, a comma is not a strong enough punctuation to join two sentences together.

When writing sentences, because they are so worried about creating a run-on. Students tend to forget to complete. The idea the sentence is about, which usually results in a fragment.

The above sentences are examples of each of the errors they describe. The sentence describing run-ons is in fact a run-on. The comma-splice definition actually contains two comma-splice errors, and the fragment definition includes a couple of fragments.

Below are the correct versions of the above sentences:

A run-on is a sentence that fuses two or more complete sentences together into one long sentence. Students who commit this error fail to recognize that punctuation helps the reader more clearly understand the ideas in each sentence.

A comma-splice is similar to a run-on. It occurs when a student fuses two complete sentences together with a comma, but a comma is not a strong enough punctuation to join two sentences together.

When writing sentences, because they are so worried about creating a run-on, students tend to forget to complete the idea the sentence is about, which usually results in a fragment.

 In order to help recognize these type of errors, there are a couple of techniques students can use.

1. Read your essay out loud. Yes, it may feel awkward at first, but your ears will catch the errors your eyes may miss.

2. Read your essay from end to beginning. I may have mentioned this one before, but it's worth repeating. Start with the last sentence, read it, and move on to the sentence above it. If the sentence sounds odd, or a little off, then you know something needs to be corrected.

3. Have someone else read the essay. It never hurts to have another pair of eyes to read the essay. Professionals do this all the time, and if it's good for the professionals, then it'll be good for students, too. 

4. Pay attention to subjects and verbs. Most of the errors that occur in student writing happen because students forget to pay attention when a new subject and verb appear.

5. One idea per sentence. One way of helping minimize run-ons and comma-splices is to keep in mind that the best sentences are the ones that express only one idea. Having multiple ideas in one sentence only confuses the reader.

Using the above techniques will assist students with editing their own papers. Unfortunately, during a timed essay, students will not have the opportunity to use option three, but if they take their time with options one, two, four, and five, then they should be able to catch quite a few errors themselves.

But again, the most important part of writing students need to remember is saving time for these type of exercises. Waiting to the last minute will only result in substandard work, and instructors want to see students turn in the best work possible.

Rambling: The Dangers of... SQUIRREL!

The other day I asked for some potential topics to write about here in our class' central blog. Out of the good ideas brought forth, I have decided to focus this next blog post on the problem of rambling. While writing instructors have quite a number of pet peeves when it comes to writing, rambling or going off topic has to be one of the worst offenders. As the title above suggests, rambling is what I like to call the "Shiny Object Syndrome" of writing. Avoiding the pitfalls of rambling requires planning and the ability to recognize supporting details that do not add anything to the topic.

Like I said in class the other day, planning is an essential part of writing. Even writers like Stephen King go through some sort of planning process; and, depending on the situation, the planning varies. For most students, this requires starting with some pre-writing. Funny enough, the pre-writing stage of the writing process is the only place where rambling, or veering off topic, is perfectly acceptable. Students can allow their minds to grab at anything and everything, even if the idea has almost nothing to do with the topic. However, as they move to the next stage of the writing process, they will need to do some editing of ideas. Disregard any idea that does not or will not support the thesis statement. At this point in the planning process students should start creating an outline of the first draft of the essay. Creating an outline, a visual path, for an essay is incredibly important. As long as the outline does not stray off topic, it will be a map for the first draft. Thus, planning out the essay before starting to write--as opposed to writing the whole thing a hour or two before the due date--will help writers to avoid rambling.

In addition to planning, recognizing supporting details that do not add anything to the topic will also help. Of course, the question is "How do I know if something is off topic?" This is a little harder to pin down than planing. Planning will help you to stay on course, but students may still take another route while in the middle of writing their essay. Yes, we English teachers do tell students to include as many specific details as possible, but we don't want them to include details that are not related to their topic. For example, if a student is writing about why he/she is attending Mountain View College, then sentences about how much he/she loves a loyal cousin may seem off topic. However, it would be on topic if that student wrote about how that particular cousin went to MVC and graduated, thus inspiring him/her to do the same. Rambling is a very fine line. In order to avoid crossing that line, students must look at each supporting detail and decide whether or not it's related to the topic. If it is, then the connection between the detail and the topic must be clear. If not, then the detail would best serve the essay by not being in it.

In certain circumstances, rambling can be a good thing, but if not stalling for time or attempting to generate ideas of a paper, then students should try to avoid it in academic papers. After all, teachers have to grade those papers, and part of the reason we dislike rambling sentences and paragraphs so much is because no matter what we have to finish the paper; we have to muddle through. So, in order to make the process easier on myself, I remember the scene below from one of my favorite films, and I think, yes, humans have "Squirrel!" moments, too.

By the way, the essay above is 623 words. This should give you an idea of how long an essay needs to be when an instructor--or the Accuplacer--asks for at least 600 words.

Welcome to the Central Blog for Your Class

Hello all!

This blog is a meeting place of sorts. Here you will find links to the students who are participating in one of the learning communities here at Mountain View College. Each of them have created their very own blog and will be posting the essays they have been, and will be, working on for the class.

As a beginning, I will post a short essay I once wrote for beginning writers who may have issues with that age old question: "What the am I supposed to write about?" In it, I hope you all will find some techniques to help you avoid writer's block.

I have only been teaching for a couple of years now, but I have noticed a trend among many of my students: Those who don't turn in their work or are often late usually have problems deciding on the topic of their essay. However, when I talk to students individually I find they usually have quite a bit to say. Part of the problem, I believe, lies in their lack of confidence (at least when it comes to writing) and their inability to articulate in writing what it is they want to say, but there is a problem with something else as well: If not used to looking for ideas, a writer won't have them when asked to write an essay. For a beginning writer, observation, the discipline to maintain a log of ideas, and the ability to organize those ideas are all great skills to develop.

Observation is essential to the development of writing topics. However, this does not mean making daily trips to the nearest Starbucks to people watch, although having a daily dose of coffee goodness would not be unsavory. In order to save money, not to mention weight, I suggest just being observant of what happens all around us. Far too often, we become blind to our daily routines, forgetting that there are others out there toiling away. Even the most reclusive person, who stays shut up in his/her house or apartment all day, would eventually notice the various daily sounds that penetrate his/her protective cocoon of solitude. For example, I spend most of my time indoors when not teaching. I actually love the relative quiet and peace of my apartment; however, the outside world tends to intrude through banging doors, children running up and down hallways or screaming because they fell out of bed, late night lovers' quarrels, the unwanted vibrations of modified mufflers. The list could go on and on but such a list would be pointless to continue. The fact remains, I cannot escape the sounds of life beyond my walls and neither can anyone else. Cultivating an acute observer's eye is important to anyone who wants to be a writer (or at the very least wants to be a better writer), but having a good eye for detail is not enough. After all, not many people like to read lists (although lists are a great way to organize ideas and are the fallback of many of the articles on the web). For essays, there has to be something connecting those details together, something to keep the reader's interest, and sometimes it takes time to connect what you observe to a theme or unifying idea. For this reason, it is also important to maintain a log of ideas.

Whether you keep your ideas in your head or use a more tangible method, keeping a log of ideas is important to any writer, regardless of the level of writing. I keep a lot of crap in my head (memories, story ideas, future lesson plans, blog ideas, past dreams... you get the idea). Of course, this usually results in me being more than a little absent-minded. I can't keep dates in my head to save my life, a fact that results in many late birthday cards, and yet I have a good recall when it comes to writing ideas, so I rarely have to write down the idea itself. However, I do have to write down anything that comes after the initial idea; these notes usually take the form of long, rambling paragraphs, or fragmented sentences. I rarely use formal outlines; I don't know why but the outline has rarely produced quality work for me; it's too limiting. If taking plenty of notes is your preferred method then by all means take pages and pages of notes. The point is you have to start documenting the ideas that pop into your head. In addition, different techniques are required for different projects. For example, I did create a bare outline for my master's thesis because the organization of that work was way too much for my head to handle. It was nice to have a reference point whenever I felt myself veering off course. There are many methods out there; play around with a good variety until you start to find your groove.

Once all the notes are assembled and the idea is ready to be put down into an essay, you must keep one other thing in mind: organization. Organization is where I find most students have trouble. I believe the reason for this lies in the fact that most student papers are written once and with little to no preparation beforehand. An essay must have a logical flow where one idea clearly follows another; and, depending on the topic and style required, the organization of your essay can vary greatly. If you're a student, pay really close attention to how your instructor organizes information and it will give you a clue about what they will prefer when reading your essay. I have two examples in this regard. While in college, I had two professors with very different ideas on how to analyze literature and very different ideas on how organize essays. One preferred a theory-based approach to analyzing literature (an approach I prefer as well) and so usually preferred having an introduction to the theories the writer was planning on using packed into the first of the essay. The other professor preferred any theoretical analysis to be spread out, mixed up with the analysis of the literature. As their student, I had to modify the way I organized my essays depending on whose class I was taking. No matter how an essay is organized, transition sentences (which usually come at the end or beginning of body paragraphs) are necessary to help the reader follow your ideas. After all, just because an idea makes sense in your head does not mean it'll make sense to someone else. We all think differently, so it is the writers job to bridge the gaps between ideas. That way, the chance of confusion and/or misunderstanding is limited.

Observation, keeping a log of ideas, and being conscious of organization are essential to anyone attempting to write an essay, but these tools are also effective in the creative arena, as well as others. Being able to express yourself easily and concisely is important in today's world, especially if it's a part of your job description to send out mass emails to employees. It would be embarrassing and inefficient if you had to later clarify what you meant. All written communication needs to be clear, concise, and well organized. Amy Tan once wrote that the best compliment she ever received came from her mother, a Chinese immigrant who spoke in "broken English." The compliment was a response to her first novel, The Joy Luck Club, and is something most of us should strive for in our writing: "So easy to read."

Note: I don't know if any of you noticed, but the above essay was written in the "5-Paragraph" format. I wrote this to help my students with generating ideas and as an example of the type of essays required in most beginning writing classes.